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“I think I have a way to keep you safe.”
I raised a brow. “Really? How?”
He glanced toward the back porch where TJ sat sipping coffee and looking out at the fields. “Let’s go somewhere else. I don’t trust that guy.”
“Oh yeah, he’s…” I shuddered dramatically.
We went into the front room, which was cool and perfect for sitting in the mornings. I wished Grant had more time to enjoy it. Maybe one day. But unless he stopped hosting men like TJ, I didn’t know how that would happen?
We sat in chairs that faced the picture window. I glanced over at Evan and saw his hands were shaking as they held his mug of coffee. He was terrified, and I needed to know what was causing it. “What’s scaring you?”
He glanced around as if expecting someone else to appear. “You swear you can keep this secret?”
“Unless you’re about to tell me you’re going to hurt someone or that you have—”
“No, I’m trying to keep people safe. The good people.”
Did Evan really know who was good and who wasn’t? I felt slimy as hell deceiving him. He probably really thought he was doing the right thing, but the good people were the ones he was about to hurt. “Who does that include? I don’t know what to think of everyone here.”
“Me, you, some of the ranch hands who seem not to be involved, but the rest, they’re working with the mob. Did you know that?”
“I… I knew something wasn’t right, but aren’t they protecting people who are in danger?”
“How much danger do you think a man like TJ is going to get in that he can’t solve himself?”
“I don’t know. I thought… Isn’t Grant former military? Isn’t this a safehouse?”
“Of a sort.”
“I thought that’s why you were here. Because you need protection.”
He sighed. “I was born into an organized crime family. I did everything I could to get out. Finally, I realized I had to cooperate with the authorities, or I was going to be stuck working with criminals forever. My contacts weren’t moving quickly enough, though. Damn bureaucracy, you know.”
I nodded. “So you were working with the police?”
He shook his head. “This went way above anything local. I worked with the FBI.”
This was it. I had to keep him talking. “Wow. But what happened? How’d you end up here?”
“When one of my cousins realized I’d snitched, I was sure I was going to die, so I went to their enemies, a family who was trying to push them out of their territory. I offered to work with them.”
“So you turned on the FBI?”
“I sped up their timetable. We accomplished the same thing in the end. After they took out the main players in my family’s organization—”
“Took them out? Like killed them?”
He nodded.
“Is that what the FBI wanted?”
“They wanted them neutralized, but the court system wasn’t ever going to make that happen. My contact knew that, but he couldn’t get anyone to accept his plan for pitting the groups against each other. The only problem was that the other family remained as strong as ever. They took almost no losses.”
“They must be really strong.”
“Too strong, but that’s not my problem. I just want to be free. And those men won’t come after me.”
“Are they the ones who sent you here?”
