Page 25 of Fallen Hero

Now he was dead, and I’d inherited Tom.

Lucky me.

“Did he?” Fallon rejoined.

“No. He refused, so I went in search of him myself using my connections as an investigative journalist. Tom caught word of what I was doing, tracked me down, told me to stop. We had words. And I went my merry way and continued fumbling into the underbelly of society.” I paused to fight back the shiver that threatened to rack my body at the memory of being taken. It was dumb luck Tom had been close before I was transported out of the country. “I found trouble, and when I still refused to stop, Tom agreed to help.”

“Agreed?” Pete contested.

I had to hand it to the guy, he was smart, intuitive, and didn’t bother with bullshit. If I was in the market for friends, I could see myself liking this guy. But I didn’t do friends. I was never in one place long enough to develop anything that minutely resembled camaraderie.

“Agreed might be a gross overstatement. More like he took me under his wing and trained me under duress. Then he introduced me to Atlanta and, together, they made me who I am.”

Made me who I am?

Lord, that was lame.

“Berta respects you,” Pete told me.

Berta Lanza, my fairy godmother. I’d met her while I was investigating the atrocities happening in her country for a story I was writing. The femicide rate in Honduras was appalling. But there in the midst of tragedy and evil, the purest woman I’d ever met worked hard to do what she could for her people. A woman with a golden soul, to whom I was eternally grateful.

“She’s a good human. The best the world has to offer. Tom and Atlanta trained me, they gave me the skills I needed. But Berta . . . she gave me soul, she gave me purpose. She showed me what it truly meant to be selfless.”

“No disrespect to Berta,” Fallon interjected. “She’s everything you said she is. But to some people, she’s not that.”

Fallon was correct; to those who harmed her people, to those who raped the land, who killed Honduran women just because they were women, to them, she was the Angel of Death.

“The duality of man,” Mason said, as he made his way back into the living room.

Hair still wet, a fresh black tee that molded to his chest, forearms on display, tan cargo pants, and socks on his feet, no boots. I had to remind myself he was an obnoxious asshole when he wasn’t being . . . Sweet wasn’t the right word, neither was gentle, and he’d never been kind . . .

Civil, that was the word. He was a gigantic ass when he wasn’t being civil.

But he was a damn good-looking jerk.

“Berta is both empathy and cruelty,” I added. “It’s up to the person which side of the coin they see.”

Mason’s lips twitched. “Tom almost found himself on the wrong side of that coin when he showed up in Belize while we were meeting with Berta, and she found out you’d been missing for three weeks and Tom hadn’t called her and was playing games instead of sending in someone to get you.”

That was a lot to unpack for so few words.

“Tom knew exactly where I was and what I was doing. He knew I’d planned to get taken by Carlos Quintero. I needed intel on someone, and I knew the best way to get that was to let Carlos’s men grab me. Now, I didn’t foresee being driven across Mexico and taken to an island to wait for my buyers to pick me up . . .”

The air in the room was suddenly icy cold, which made the heat behind Mason’s words boom across the space like a thunderclap.

“What the fuck?” Mason exploded.

Um.

I didn’t understand his question.

“What the fuck, about what?”

“Mase—”

“Let’s back up a second,” Mason went on, like Pete hadn’t called his name. “Tom knew you were in Juárez to allow a drug dealer and pimp to kidnap you?”

“Ah, yeah. That was the plan. Tom put the word out to some of his sources I was in the area. I made myself an easy target and was picked up.”