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Only one person knew he and Jennie were back in town and where they were. He hadn’t even called Jack and Kelly or his mother to tell them they were coming.
Nope. There was only one person other than the people sitting in the Evans’ living room who knew where he and Jennie were. Agent Burke.
As the police car pulled away from the house, Chad turned to Jennie’s parents.
“Pack a bag quickly. We need to get out of here before Bandon finds out they failed and sends someone else. Meet back out here in five minutes. Tops.”
They didn’t argue. Chad’s tone hadn’t left much room for that and they loved Jennie as much as he did. They wanted her safe as much as Chad.
He turned to Kyle’s parents next. “I doubt they know about you, so you should be safe here, but if you’d rather go stay at a hotel with Jennie’s parents, I’m happy to pay for it. We can get you guys a suite and call it a vacation,” he said, smiling.
Most people weren’t used to dealing with arson attempts in the middle of the night. A little levity couldn’t hurt.
Chad didn’t miss the look Annie gave her husband. She was frightened. Her hands griped his arm and her husband seemed to pick up on it right away.
“A vacation sounds good right about now,” Brian Evans said. “Where will you and Jennie be going?”
“We’ve got to go see one of my friends with the FBI. If Agent Burke leaked Jennie’s location, we need to bring him and Rick Bandon in quickly.”
Kyle’s father nodded and walked toward the house with his wife to pack their things. Chad waited on the front lawn, eyes on the road, scanning in case any other unexpected visitors arrived. They were sitting ducks right now. He needed to get them out of here. Quickly.
Chapter 34
After getting Jennie’s family set up with their new bodyguard at a hotel, Chad and Jennie drove to his condo in New Haven. It was nearly dawn, but Chad had to work out who had sent the two men to Jennie’s parents’ house.
After getting Jennie safely inside, he called the only person he trusted to help him take down a dirty federal agent.
Mike Hayes was a Supervisory Special Agent in the New Haven field office. Mike served in the military with a close friend of Chad’s and if there were dirty federal agents in the office, Chad was sure Mike wasn’t involved. Mike was clean as a whistle and as dedicated to the agency as they came.
Mike set things in motion quickly, getting in touch with Burke’s supervising agent and the Assistant United States Attorney in charge of the case, Caroline Waters.
AUSA Waters would have worked closely with Burke on the case and would have as much information to help them flush out any leaks as Burke’s supervisor would. She’d be able to help them figure out what they could and couldn’t do quickly within the bounds of the law, and she could help push through any warrants they needed in a hurry.
Since Burke’s phone belonged to the FBI, not Burke, they didn’t need to wait for a warrant to dump his phone records. With Burke back in Florida and Jennie here in Connecticut, normal procedure meant he should have called a field agent in Connecticut to take Jennie’s statement here. The phone logs would easily show if he’d done that or called someone else—Rick Bandon, for example.
Chad and Mike formulated a plan. The details would stay within their small circle of Chad, Mike, AUSA Waters, and Burke’s supervising agent. No one else would know the full details of what they were doing.
Burke would be given a fake meeting location and time. It would be a location that was not anywhere near Jennie. Mike would bring in a decoy posing as Jennie. Even the decoy wouldn’t have the full story.
Then, they’d wait to see what Burke did. If information had been leaked, they’d have their source, and hopefully, enough leverage to lead to the location of Rick Bandon.
Chad got off the phone with Mike and looked over at the couch. Jennie was curled in a ball, fast asleep with Zeke on the floor by her feet. He scooped her up and started down the hall toward the guest room he’d put her things in earlier, cradling her small body against his. He needed to make her safe, at all costs.
Jennie snuggled deeper into Chad’s arms, wrapping her arms around his neck. When he stopped at the guest room, Jennie shook her head.
“Take me to your room,” she whispered.
She wanted to be with him. She had no idea where this was going, but she knew that much. She needed to be near Chad.
Somehow, things had changed in the last day. It was as if tiny slivers of light had begun to come through the gray shadows that surrounded Jennie since Kyle died.
She wasn’t sure if it was the talk about Kyle’s death that started to let some light in, or something else altogether. But she felt better.
Her feelings for Chad swirled in her heart and her head and she didn’t know what she wanted. She only knew she didn’t want to let him go. She didn’t want him to leave her.
Chad set her feet on the floor of his room. Two minutes ago, Jennie had felt so tired she was sure she would fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Now, with one look, Chad set her body on fire again.
“I should let you sleep,” he said in a low voice that sent shivers through her. His eyes burned with intensity and his body brushed hers, letting her know he wanted her just as much as she wanted him.
