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FIVE
Garrison
I hadto admit that it was impressive how quickly Blaze could dig up information, not that I’d ever tell him as much. The last thing he needed was me swelling his head even bigger.
So when I finally let myself come over to join the group discussion after he’d dug up Dess’s former trainer at a third Malik rally, I watched him replay the clips without any overt reaction. My gaze slid to Dess instinctively. She was good at hiding her emotions, nearly as good as I was if not better, but even she couldn’t stop the tension from showing through right now. Didn’t the other guys see it?
Maybe they did and they were just giving her the space to work through her emotions on her own. Why did her response have to itch at me so strongly?
As I refocused on the laptop’s screen, Dess shifted on her feet. “How could this Malik guy be connected to the household? Does he have some kind of stance that’s friendly to criminals?”
I couldn’t help snorting at that suggestion. When she gave me a baleful look, I shook my head. “Couldn’t be more obvious how out of touch you’ve been, sweetheart. Anyone who knows anything has heard about how strict Malik is on crime.”
Blaze nodded. “He’s constantly pushing for harsher sentencing, as well as increased funding and authority for law enforcement.”
Dess frowned. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a guy who’d support kidnapping toddlers and murder for hire. Maybe he was a potential target.”
I shrugged, still studying the video recording. It was hard to make out much of this Noelle woman’s body language in the mass of the crowd, but she wasn’t giving anything away with what I could see. Other than her brief glance backward, she was simply watching the stage where Malik must have been speaking. Was she preparing for some kind of gambit? Standing guard?
I couldn’t tell with so little to work with.
“You don’t know much about how politics work,” I reminded Dess. “People can be total hypocrites, and I’d say that’s twice as likely when it comes to our dutiful representatives.”
“He’s kept a pretty consistent façade if it is one,” Julius remarked.
Blaze tapped at the keyboard of his own initiative and brought up a recent news clip of Malik answering questions at a press conference. A twinge of apprehension ran through me. Whenever I saw the guy with his implacable face and his gray hair slicked back impeccably straight, he set off warning bells in my head. That face was a mask—I’d have bet all the money I had in the bank on it.
Of course, every politician wore a mask, just as much as I did. But I couldn’t remember ever seeing Malik’s so much as waver. It was as complete and unshakeable as those silvery strands smoothed over his skull. Either he didn’t have much to hide anyway… or he was so used to hiding that he could do it effortlessly by now.
In my experience, the second possibility was way more likely.
“There’s got to be some connection, right?” Dess said. “We’ve found Noelle at three different rallies now, all in different states. And we haven’t found her image at any other rallies. Just his.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “Maybe she was just a big fan.”
Dess glowered at me again. “Of a guy who’d want nothing more than to shove her behind bars for the rest of her life?”
I couldn’t hold back a smirk. “Hey, some weirdos get off on that kind of thing.”
Dess let out a huff, but the upward twitch of the corners of her mouth suggested she wasn’t completely impervious to the joke. “I guess it takes one to know one,” she shot back, and it was my turn to restrain a laugh.
As irritating as I sometimes found her ability to snark back at me, I had to admit I kind of enjoyed it as well. She knew how to give as good as she got, and she never got her back up too much about it the way Blaze sometimes did. I wouldn’t have dared to say some of the jabs I’d aimed her way at Julius or Talon for fear of my life.
Maybe she did bring something a little bit refreshing into the honed dynamic the four of us had formed.
That thought brought a flash of memory to the front of my mind: her mouth colliding with mine, our brief crash of passion on the rooftop deck. I wet my lips instinctively, lust unfurling in my groin imagining her tongue flicking over the same terrain.
She could bring as much heat to her touch as to her banter. Even looking at her gorgeous face and the curves of her slim but powerful frame stirred my dick. Fuck.
I clamped down on those sensations as hard as I could and shoved them away. The fact that I couldn’t completely erase the flare of attraction set my teeth on edge. She shouldn’t have been able to get under my skin like this. Any emotional pull I couldn’t shut off was a weakness.
While I’d been grappling with my dick’s desires, the gears had obviously been turning in Blaze’s head. “I’ll start searching for the other people we’ve found with Noelle in the photos. That’ll help us get a fuller sense of the big picture.”
Julius nodded and gave him a brisk pat on the shoulder. “Get to it. And let us know as soon as you find any leads that the rest of us can follow up on.”
I inhaled deeply and found my nerves were still jangling too much for comfort. I needed to gather myself and get my head on straight again before I could get back in my element. There were a couple of things that could help with that.
I moved to the kitchen, flicked the kettle on, and grabbed one of my favorite instant cocoas from the cupboard. Just looking at the spread of boxes and tins sent a twinge of nostalgia through my chest that was reassuring despite the pang of homesickness mixed in.
