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“He helped me put that car back together,” he finally sighed. “We worked on that for months.”
The painful knowledge that the man he had believed was his friend had betrayed him still lingered in his eyes, in the tight grimace in his expression as he turned away from her.
“He would have hidden it where you would never think to look,” she pointed out. “He didn’t expect to get killed. This was insurance in case he needed to buy his way free of a conviction,” she said slowly. “The last few months, before he was killed, he was so certain he was suddenly better than you were. I never thought he would go this far.”
She had thought he was insane, not criminal. She should have known better, she admitted. Grant had dropped enough hints, she just hadn’t wanted to hear them.
“We’ll head back to Atlanta tonight.” He nodded abruptly. “The Fuentes family will know by now that I’m the one watching you. They’ll be watching my house. I very seriously doubt Grant was the only spy they had in either the Atlanta Police Department or the DEA. So we’ll go in quiet, check out the car, and if it’s there, we’ll head straight to the department from there.”
“What about Craig?” she asked nervously.
Joe’s broad shoulders tightened before he turned back to her.
“Craig’s my backup,” he sighed. “But at this point, I’m not trusting anyone else with your life.” His expression hardened as he faced her. “We’ll go in alone. I’m not taking any chances.”
“And if the information is there?” she asked him. She could see the doubt in his eyes that it could be.
“If it’s there, then we’ll do just as I said.” There was a fighting tension in his body now, a readiness that assured her he was planning, plotting out each move from here on out.
“And where will that leave us? Your DA, Craig, and everyone else involved will believe I knew where it was all along, Joe.”
“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” he growled. “And we won’t. The DA doesn’t give a shit one way or the other as long as he gets what he wants, and neither do the Feds. And I’ll make certain they don’t want you.”
Which didn’t reassure her on the fears rising inside her. But did it really matter? The main objective was to see if the information was there. If it was, then she would deal with whatever came later the best way possible. The way she had always dealt with unpleasantness. Straight ahead. She was going into this with her eyes open. Joe was here to get the information. If he believed in her, then he would trust in her. If he didn’t … Well, if he didn’t, then she would face it, and she would survive, just as she always had. The main thing was to get the proof needed and get Fuentes and his men off her back.
She nodded slowly. It was only a matter of hours before dark, and the trip to Atlanta wouldn’t take long.
“Do I need to pack?”
He shook his head. “No need. If the information is there, then your part in this will be over. The DA won’t need your testimony or much of a statement. I’ll bring you back here until we’re certain it’s safe.”
But where would he be? Suddenly, she felt as distant from him as she had the first day they had come here. On the periphery of his life, a job, and nothing more. And the thought of that truly terrified her.
chapter 9
joe could feel Maggie’s fear. Not her guilt, just her fear. It was amazing how easily he could read her. The way her green eyes would darken to the color of shadowed moss, the frown that puckered her brow. The way she caught the corner of her lower lip between her teeth and worried it absently. That was worry, concern, not guilt.
He remembered guilt. During the months they had spent together, Joe realized he had learned quite a bit about Maggie. Things he hadn’t known he had learned until this past week.
Guilt was a careful absence of expression. She had used it several times during their earlier relationship when she tried to deny that she was pushing for more—more commitment, more emotion from him. It was the way she would look down as she played with the hem of a shirt or picked at her nails. It was the shadowed tone of her voice that deepened her accent. That was guilt.
What he saw now was fear, and it wasn’t fear for herself. It was the same fear she showed just before he took her virginity, staring up at him, her eyes dark, her teeth worrying that lower lip, that little frown between her brows. The fear of a broken heart, of putting herself in a place where she truly wasn’t wanted.
Maggie was easy to read, unlike Grant. Grant had been trained to lie—being with the DEA demanded a certain talent in subterfuge—and Grant had always done it amazingly well. So well, in fact, that when it blended into the friendship Joe thought they had, he had never suspected.
Or maybe he had.
He remembered the uneasy feeling he had just before meeting Grant’s “fiancée.” The feeling that the other man was playing a carefully calculated game. Joe had pushed it behind him, especially after meeting Maggie. Little things, Joe admitted, that he should have taken into consideration long ago. Grant had shown brief spurts of mocking jealousy. It had made Joe uncomfortable at the time, though he had fought to ignore it. He should never have ignored it.
As he watched Maggie turn back to the coffee, he saw the sorrow in her eyes and knew he should do something, anything, to alleviate it.
She had no idea, even now, how much he did love her. Hell, he hadn’t known himself until early this morning, until the need to tie her to him for all time had overtaken him.
Primal. He had been like an animal taking his mate, and damn if he didn’t want to do it again.
He watched her, the defensive hunching of her shoulders as though expecting a blow, the careful movements as she poured her coffee. She kept her face lowered, but he swore he could feel the fear and pain radiating from her. As fiery as she could be, he knew Maggie had a core of sensitivity that was often her downfall. A sensitivity that would be breaking her heart right now. He’d bet dollars to donuts that her thoughts weren’t on herself, but rather on him, and how it would look to him that she had thought of a possible place Grant could have hidden the information.
Trusting might be the biggest mistake he had made in his life, as Craig obviously believed. Joe had fought trusting her, just as he had fought loving her once before. A battle he had lost, and he hadn’t even had the sense to realize it.
