Page 4 of Ghost Among Lies

I scrubbed my palm along my stubbled jaw. There were less than a handful of people who knew what I did when I worked for the Dunkin family. Not even Mason had known at the time. I only worked directly with Mason's father, Alexander, and his older brother, Lex. Alexander preferred it that way, and I liked knowing very few people knew what I did. Mason only found out after he left his family behind, and I was sent to kill him.

Clearly, I never followed through with the task, and after that, I never worked for the Dunkin family again.

"I need to know who he's blabbing his mouth to."

"Anyone and everyone who's willing to listen. He's desperate to make a deal that will save his ass," Mason confirmed my biggest worry.

I debated my options. I could take him out, but then someone might link it to the information he was spewing. Even if they didn't know my name, a prosecutor would dig in their heels to try to see what they could find. Or I could let it go and see how things played out.

I wasn't particularly fond of either option, but the latter was probably my best bet. I didn't need to draw attention to myself. Not now that I could've been seen with Mason.

"Keep me in the loop."

Mason dipped his chin, then pushed up from his seat to leave.

"Oh, and, Mason." He glanced down at me. "Don't ever ask to meet with me again. Moving forward, keep all communications to the encrypted servers."

Mason simply nodded. Then he left the coffee shop without a single glance back.

I waited a full fifteen minutes after Mason left before I got up to leave the cafe myself. There wasn't much to do in this Podunk town, but I had a couple hours to kill. I glanced across the street and noticed a library a few doors down. A flashback to my teenage years had me stumbling. Public libraries used to hold a special place in my heart, but now, they caused nothing but pain.

Yet, for some strange reason, I found myself headed that way. I always did.

It can't hurt me.

I lied to myself yet again. It always hurt, but one day I would tell myself that, and it would be true.

CHAPTER THREE

SLOANE

"You didn't have to come with me." I glanced to where Anita sat in the passenger’s seat of my Jeep.

"I wasn't going to let you do this on your own."

Anita acted like she didn't care about people, but I knew better. It was incidents like this one that proved me right.

"He's not going to be happy to see me."

Anita shrugged. "Who gives a shit? You did what was best for you. It's not your responsibility to make him feel better."

That was easy for Anita to say. She didn't rip her soulmate’s heart to shreds after promising him they were endgame. "It's not that simple."

"Maybe not, but you have two options. Accept that he's going to be pissed and there's nothing you can do about it, or you tell him the truth."

Just the thought of telling Hayes the truth had stomach acid threatening to crawl up my esophagus. I swallowed the bile down and shook my head vigorously. "I can't do that. He's going to blame himself." I knew my ex well enough to know there was no scenario where he wouldn't shoulder the blame for what happened to me.

"Probably, but you can't control how people respond to a situation."

I wish I could have Anita's carte blanche attitude toward life. There were times my overthinking got so bad that it drove me insane. "No, I can't, but I can save him from the truth, and that's exactly what I'm going to do."

There was no changing my mind. Ten years ago, I made the most difficult decision of my life, and I was sticking by it.

"Okay. Let's go inside and figure out how he knows Mason."

Anita didn't give me a chance to procrastinate any longer before she slipped out of the passenger’s seat and stood in the library parking lot. I managed to trace Hayes back to this very location after he met with Mason. I couldn't fathom why he would spend so long in a public library, but from what I could see, he had yet to leave.

Letting out a deep sigh, I shut the vehicle off and climbed out. Anita met me near the front of the Jeep.