Page 80 of Declan

“I need time,” Beth returned.

“We don’t have time. My concern is growing. I need to know why she was in Maryland. What’s she working on?”

“You know I can’t tell you that,” she quietly told me.

“I get it. I’d be pissed if you told someone what I was doing. But I need to know if Declan or the team is in danger.”

“I…um…shit. They're not in danger. Let me make some calls and I’ll hit you back.”

“One more thing I forgot to ask. How’d you know I was in Iowa?”

“I didn’t, why?”

“No reason. I misunderstood something.”

“Autumn—”

“Make your calls and get back to me. I appreciate you, Beth.”

I hurried before she could inquire further and looked at Declan.

“We have a problem. Ash lied to me. She told me Beth told her I was in Iowa.”

“We have a bigger problem,” Zane grunted. “That was Elizabeth Turner.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Because Beth is Tex’s right-hand woman.”

Shit, oh, fuck, and dammit all.

“I didn’t know,” I rushed out.

“Tex is gonna blow his stack.”

Shit, damn, and more fucks.

I sensed Tex and the guys were close. I didn’t want Tex mad at anyone. And he was more than a little scary with what he could do with a computer. A computer that held all my secrets.

Fuck.

“Baby, he’s not gonna be pissed at you. And whatever you’re thinking, get it out of your mind. Tex would never give what he’s got over to anyone.”

“But—”

“Tex might be pissed, but it won’t be at you, and Beth will be fine. Tex is gonna be pissed because Beth had all the answers and he didn’t know. And it took him forever to dig up what he did on you which means Beth did a damn good job burying it.”

“And the student becomes the master,” Kyle mumbled.

“Told you, you were a pain in my ass.”

“Maybe we could just not tell Tex,” I suggested.

“Woman, who do you think Beth is calling? She needs guidance and she’s going to Tex. She’s considering breaking confidentiality and that shit is set in stone. I’m not talking the same discretion as a priest sitting in a confessional. I’m talking granite. She breaks that, she’s fucked, and in turn, Tex is fucked. What Ash is working on, we need Garrett to find.”

Shit.

I sucked in a breath, hating that I was about to betray a friend, albeit a friend who’d lied to me. But two wrongs don’t make a right however I had to make my move to protect the goodness in front of me. Something was off—way the hell off. And we needed to know what Ash was up to.