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Breath falling from me in a shaky sigh, I trailed my fingers over the T-shirt.
I snagged the soft material and lifted it to my face. I breathed Ronnie in. Took her scent as deep into my lungs, my being, as I could.
I held her in there until my head swam.
Reluctant and broken, I dropped onto the edge of the bed—our bed, the one I would have made love to her on for the very first time as my wife—and exhaled.
I allowed myself a long, dark moment of grief and rage. Surrendered to the images swirling around in my head—the suited bastard’s neck in my hands, his eyes rupturing under my thumbs, his throat dissected by the very wire he’d mocked me with, his brains splattered on the floor…
Who was he?
What had I done, as Tripwire, for this kind of retaliation?
An eye for an eye.His smug proclamation twisted through the rage burning in my head. A grieving father, he’d called himself.
Who the fuck was he grieving?
“All right,” a stern female voice snapped. “The authorities are dealt with. We’ve got work to do.”
I jerked my head up, fists balled, and let out a growl as Lila strode into the room. There was no need to ask if we were going to be hassled by the cops for what happened on the beach. When Lila needed a situation shut down, she had it shut down. I also didn’t need to ask how. I’d seen her “deal” with cops before. Sometimes all it took was a call, sometimes just a whispered word. Her contacts—whoever they were—had some serious clout.
Normally, it intrigued me. Right now, I just wanted to save Ronnie and restructure the skull of the bastard who’d taken her.
Now.
“Tell me what I missed,” Lila instructed as she crossed to the bed, sat beside me, and opened the slim laptop I hadn’t noticed she was carrying.
A cold fist punched into my chest at the thought of everything that had happened on the beach. A tight vice squeezed my temples. “It was personal,” I said.
Lila’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
I told her everything that had transpired after she’d been shot. Everything the bastard in the suit had said.
Eye for an eye.
Grieving father.
“Okay.” She nodded, tapping something into her laptop. “So he’s connected to your Trinity days in some way.”
“Yeah, it seems so. But that doesn’t narrow things down much.”
Attention focused on her laptop, she wobbled her hand in a non-committal gesture. “Yes, but also, no.”
I stayed quiet, Ronnie’s T-shirt in my hands. The last time I’d seen her in it, she’d been curled up on the suite’s sofa, drinking a cup of tea and telling an attentive Groot how amazing he’d look in a black bowtie.
“Is Groot going to be okay?” I asked, throat tight.
“He’s going to be fine,” Lila answered without lifting her head.
I swallowed.
“Ronnie’s parents are at the clinic with him. I’ve instructed them to call me as soon as the veterinarian there removes the bullet from his shoulder.”
“And Fluffy?”
Lila snorted. “The Marine should be at the ER by now getting fixed up. But you know what a stubborn son of a bitch he is. He’s probably doing his own reconnaissance as the doc removes the bullet from his shoulder. Between him and Groot, I know who’ll be the better patient, and it’s not the one with two legs.”
I grunted. She wasn’t wrong.
