Page 33 of Weston’s Treasure

“Do you live in an alternate universe or is Weston giving—”

“Don’t go there, brother,” Weston growled.

“Now what does that mean?” I angrily asked.

“It means you bounce into the room, smile on your face, acting like you weren’t locked in the bowels of a yacht packed full of cocaine just yesterday.”

“I didn’t bounce,” I told him.

“Now she’s splitting hairs.”

“Well, I didn’t. And I don’t think I was smiling either. I know where I was yesterday because I was there. I also know that my apartment was trashed and everything I own will be in a dumpster as soon as I can arrange it. What were you expecting? Me to be a slobbering, sobbing, broken mess? That’s not me. Weston and his team got me out, I’m fine, they’re all fine, and my shit can be replaced. But now that you’re being a jerk I’ll recant the ‘nice to see you’ part of my greeting.”

“Glad to see a few hours of captivity did nothing to quell the attitude.”

I gave Alec a dirty look. One I’d hoped would make him cower under the weight of it, but all it did was make him grin and shake his head.

“Handful,” he muttered, then his gaze came to mine and held my eyes. “Glad you’re safe and everything worked out.”

“Me, too. Sorry you had to clean up dead bodies. Weston told me you weren’t happy about that.”

“Dead bodies mean paperwork,” Alec responded.

It struck me then as odd we were talking about human lives that had been lost like one would talk about taking out the trash, and that made me feel funny inside. Heartless. Cruel.

“Hey,” Holden called and I looked over to him. “Don’t do that. Don’t take that on.”

“Take what on?”

“I see it, the guilt starting. Nothing that happened was your fault. The men who lost their lives made their choices. The wrong ones. They were criminals. They were running drugs. And believe me when I tell you, they weren’t feeling bad they had you locked up and they weren’t thinking twice about ending your life. So let that shit go. All of it.”

Holden was right of course, they didn’t feel bad about chaining me up. They didn’t feel bad when they were dragging me out of the wheelhouse either. And one of them did tell me, he was going to kill me and toss me overboard. But I still couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways I’d gotten into that mess in the first place.

Weston came back to my side with a cup of coffee and gestured to the seat. “Sit.”

He set the mug down in front of me and I stared down at the blonde liquid remembering I didn’t tell him how I liked my coffee, yet the light color of it told me he’d gotten it right.

“How did you know how I like my coffee?”

“Watched you make it more than once while we were in DC.”

He had? I was a coffee junkie, therefore he’d have had plenty of opportunities to see me make it. But the fact he’d paid attention enough to remember made my tummy feel funny and butterflies start to flutter.

Butterflies? What was I, ten?

“Thanks,” I mumbled because that was all I could say while Alec and his team were sitting around the big country-style dining room table.

I couldn’t tell Weston that his thoughtfulness filled me with something that was more than joy, more than happiness, so much more I couldn’t find the word. No one had ever paid attention enough to know anything about me. Still to this day, my dad would ask if I wanted Coke or Pepsi when I visited him on his boat and he was stocking up on provisions in preparation for my arrival. The answer to that was neither. I drank Diet Coke in a pinch but preferred iced tea. Always had, even as a kid I’d hated Pepsi.

To sum that up, not even my father paid attention. My mother never cared enough to remember jack shit about me. My coworkers who I spent two weeks at a time with, after years of working with them, still couldn’t remember that I hated Hot Pockets, yet every shift Matt brought them in and offered me one. Every. Damn. Time. And I told him each time I thought they were gross.

So I didn’t know what to say or how to feel that Weston knew how I liked my coffee. Not because he’d asked and I’d told him but because he’d paid attention. But I did know how to feel when Weston’s eyes gentled and he gave me half-a-grin—scared.

He knew what it meant to me and when he reached out and traced the side of my face from my ear to my chin with a single finger before he dropped his hand and walked away, the rest of the room knew, it too. There was no missing it.

“We identified the couriers on the boat. All three men have ties to Jason Scott,” Alec stated.

“And you’ve identified Jason Scott as a captain, correct?” Nixon asked.