Page 70 of Maximus

And after my boys had woken up, eaten breakfast, and gotten dressed for the day, I was no closer to figuring it out.

When Max sat them down to tell them about Declan, Brooks, Kyle, and Thad coming over, the gentle way he did it, the softness in his tone, only made the ache in my chest hurt worse.

I was lost.

Chapter 20

Eva was giving me a wide berth and the distance she put between us was beginning to piss me off.

The physical reserve, I understood.

The emotional detachment made me want to grab her and lock her in the other room so she couldn’t avoid me.

“I think we need to call Bubba.” That was Declan’s suggestion as the team sat around the table discussing options while Eva paced. Her eyes grew round, then she immediately looked at her feet.

“I think you’re right,” Kyle agreed. “We’ve been over everything else.”

Kyle was correct. We’d spent the last two hours dissecting Eva’s life. We’d gone over Jay Dawkins and his partner in crime, Novak, which Eva was careful to discuss only after the boys were back in the bedroom watching TV so they didn’t overhear.

I hadn’t learned anything new about Jay and Eva’s relationship—however, my team had learned a great deal about Eva and what she and the boys had gone through.

We’d also touched on Liam’s biological father, a man who was not Jay Dawkins, but someone she’d met when she was seventeen. He was older, promised her the world, she fell for it, he got her pregnant and took off immediately, moving to the lower forty-eight as she called it, and she hadn’t heard from him since.

Tex had done a thorough background check on the dude and he was currently serving a nickel for fraud and identity theft so he’d been cleared.

We’d exhausted all other avenues—since Eva had moved to Florida, she lived clean and kept to herself. There was no indication someone there wanted to harm her. Therefore it was time to call Bubba.

That was a call no one wanted to make. The man had been through hell, including losing his father and twin brother. Not a single one of us wanted to pull him into this mess, but unfortunately, we needed to know about Alaska.

And he was the only one who could weigh in and give an opinion about Tracy Eklund, the only person still alive in the duo that hired Eva to kill Bubba and Zoey.

“Damn,” I muttered and looked at Eva. “We wouldn’t—”

“Maybe I should leave the room or something,” she whispered.

“Why?” Tex’s voice boomed from my cell phone laying in the middle of the table.

“Maybe…” Eva hesitated, then, “I don’t think you should call Mark at all. Actually, I would really prefer if you didn’t bother him about this.”

“We need his help,” Thad carefully told her.

Eva’s gaze swung to my friend and her lips pinched tight before she spoke.

“No, we don’t need anything. I need the help. And it is beyond anything that’s acceptable. I don’t want to involve him.”

“Acceptable—”

“You know,” Eva spat, cutting off Thad. “You know what I did. And now what, the tables are turned and someone wants me dead and I get to ask Mark Wright for help? Where was his help when I dumped him and Zoey off, huh? Who was there to protect him, when I left him for dead with nothing more than a pocketful of junk? I don’t get to ask Mark for help. The last thing he needs is to ever hear my name again. He deserves to be left alone.”

“Eva—” I tried to cut her off, to warn her that Tex may’ve already patched Bubba into the call, but she kept going.

“No. Just no. I don’t want anyone to bother Mark.” Eva shook her head and her eyes cut around the table looking at each man. “I don’t get to ask for his help.”

“Someone is trying to kill you,” Kyle reminded her. “They almost took out Max. If Bubba—”

“I’d rather die a thousand deaths than call Mark. It is not right. I don’t get to ask for anything.”

“I think I get to decide what’s right and what’s not,” Bubba cut in.