She was ushered inside and down a short corridor with closed doors on either side. Jacoby stopped in front of one of them and opened it. “After you.”
She entered and gasped, the rush of air filling her lungs. A shirtless Sin was propped up in a hospital bed, his arm in a sling, those piercing blue eyes locked on hers. She hurried over to him and kissed him again and again, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Miss me?”
“I hate you so much.” She sat beside him on the bed. “Sofuckingmuch.”
He wiped away her tears. “Lie beside me. I need to feel you close.”
For several minutes, she clung to him like a lifeboat in the middle of a turbulent ocean.Moving slowly, she rose and kissed him. Her mouth on his, his warmth bursting through her like the sun on a cloudy day. Her heart rejoiced and she smiled. “Loving you sucks, you know that?”
His smile helped alleviate some of her anxiety. “I’m sorry I couldn’t reply to your texts or calls.”
“I have never been so happy to see anyone,ever.” Not wanting to crowd him, she moved to the chair and held his hand. “What happened?”
“I took a bullet to the arm. That vest saved me from getting two bullets in my back.Yousaved me.”
That made her smile. “Did Joey do this to you?”
“Yeah,” Dakota said, walking into the room. “He sure as fuck did. And now, it’s payback time.”
“What do you need me to do?” she asked. “I’ll help any way I can.”
“I needed to see you,” Sin said. “Having you here, even if for a little while, is the best medicine.”
“You are one lovesick puppy,” Dakota mumbled.
Smiling, Evangeline kissed Sin again. “What’s the plan?”
Jacoby entered, carrying a laptop. “Evangeline, Sanchez and I can’t find Thomas Monty, er…Joey Thomason. He hasn’t been back to his house and he wasn’t at Mac’s when we checked. Walk me through where else he might be.”
“Tucker Henninger’s shooting range or Charlene Caraway’s house. He also goes to that strip club on K Street.”
“I’ll check those.” Jacoby left.
“Sanchez told me you two have a history,” she said to Sin. “Why did he try to kill you?”
“I’ll give you two a few,” Dakota said before exiting.
Sin slid his gaze to hers. “Come sit beside me.”
She settled gently on the bed, facing him. “I want to hear the whole story. No shortcuts.”
A moment passed while he stared into her eyes. “I met Thomas Monty—we called him Monty—at Harvard,” Sin began. “There were seven of us—Colton, Crockett, Jagger, Maverick, Dakota, Monty and I—who became good friends freshman year. The second year, we rented a house together. Not long after, Colton suggested we buy the house next door, renovate it, and rent it out. We worked well together, each managing different parts of the project. Monty was great with numbers and had an eye for the stock market, so he invested any excess rental income. That turned some good profits. By the time senior year rolled around, we had over a dozen rental properties in the area. Money not being used was kept in the joint brokerage account.”
“Sounds like you guys were quite a team.”
“We were. But during the first semester of senior year, I suspected Monty had plagiarized my work, so I confronted him. He admitted it, but told me he had only done it once.”
“That’s serious.”
“Sure as hell was. A week later, I found out he’d done it again, only this time, he turned inmypaper ahead of me.”
“Were you in the same class?”
“Same class, different profs. I didn’t want to get kicked out, so I spoke to my professor and he opened an investigation. It was a fucking nightmare. Everyone in the house was pissed at Monty and it caused a huge strain on our business. It was determined that Monty had plagiarized several of my papers over the years and, a month before graduation, they expelled him for violating the honor code. Right after that, I discovered two hundred and twenty grand was missing from our brokerage account, and not because the market was down. I confided my suspicions to Maverick. We suspected Monty might be stealing funds, so I changed the password, but never told him. When I caught him trying to hack into the account, he and I got into it. He pulled a gun and shot me.”
“Oh, my God.”
