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Brandon’s shoulders shake with silent laughter. “She is colorful with her vocabulary. Back to the matter at hand. You never told him your concerns about him leaving you again?”
“No. Gauge promised me a thousand times over he’ll never leave again. We took things slow, reestablishing trust. I thought that was our biggest hurdle. I didn’t even know I had this fear of opening up about Levi until you asked me what my hang up was.
“In the past, my primary concern with not revealing Levi was because of the power play of who had the upper hand. I assumed it was Levi until you pointed out he was powerless. Now my fear is more about losing Gauge if I reveal Levi’s FBI. How is Gauge going to respond to that? Back away again? Or go off and do something stupid to Levi once he knows? Either could cause me to lose him.”
Flustered, I grab the rolling pin again, aggressively rolling out the dough. These feelings are still raw, even after having been stewing with them for months.
“There’s a simple solution to this,” Brandon says.
Pausing my rolling, I stare at Brandon. “Yes?”
“Talk to Gauge. Explain to him everything you’ve told me. Once you’ve expressed your concerns, Gauge may be more prone to addressing your feelings of abandonment and handling Levi in a more controlled demeanor.”
I groan. Confronting someone with my feelings when I’m not confrontational is tortuous. However, it’s the only correct way to handle the situation.
CHAPTERFIFTY-FOUR
GAUGE
Late February 2021
It’s another late night of searching for Opal’s abuser. I haven’t let up on my pursuit to find the bastard. As much as I want to ask Opal to open up to me, I resist. She’s making progress with her therapy, and I won’t impede on it by upsetting her with questions about him.
Time is tight and things are stressful around headquarters with other missions running full force. My time is split into quarters: security assignments, club business, Opal, and hunting this asshole. The guys in the club are just as busy. They help as often as they can, but there’s only so much they can do if they aren’t as tech savvy as Chase and his intelligence team.
Most nights, after Opal drifts off to sleep, I fire up my computer to work through my composited list of suspects. FBI and CIA are on the list, along with government law makers and anyone else who has the power to pull strings.
Chase has put in countless hours hacking the agency’s private servers. It is sensitive work that can’t be rushed. One wrong keystroke or pause in hesitation can blow his cover, and we’d have law enforcement on our asses faster than we can blink. Because of this, Chase is only allowed to break into the system sporadically for mere minutes or risk being caught.
But with each cyber breach, I gain a few more names to add to my list.
The words bleed together on the screen. I rub at my eyes, trying to stay alert as I go through and eliminate possible suspects. Though I went into town this evening to grab my favorite cup of coffee, it’s not enough to keep me awake forever.
I have trimmed my list to eighty names, but I’m at a stalemate without pictures for most of the suspects. Facial recognition software failed to identify our perp from our surveillance camera. Likely because he kept his face down, as if he knew cameras were on him. The description Eagle gave us from his quick glance wasn’t enough to eliminate many.
I click onto the next profile on my computer. This guy has blue eyes, not the brown Opal described. I scratch him from the list. One down. Too many to go.
“Gauge?”
I turn my attention to the sweet voice in the bedroom doorway. Opal stands there looking fine as hell in a pink camisole. I close my laptop, not because I’m hiding it from Opal—she knows I’m trying to figure out who the bastard is—but because I’m ready to hit the sack with my beautiful woman.
“Gorgeous, why are you up?” I look at my watch. It’s almost two-in-the-morning. “You should be in our bed, keeping it warm for my return.”
Opal steps toward me before curling up on the couch against my side. She points at an ongoing case file lying open on the coffee table in front of me. “What’s that? Another assignment?”
“Sorry, I brought my work home to the suite. My office is getting overrun by the other cases. I wanted a fresh environment to review it without all the other distractions. It’s a missing person case. A family hired us to investigate the disappearance of their twenty-year-old daughter, Madison Chambers. She went missing back in August from her dorm at Colorado College. The FBI hasn’t found squat. With it being six months old, the feds aren’t investing as much time into the case, focusing on more recent missing persons.”
“That’s sad.”
“It is. But that’s why our company exists—to keep the investigations going and give hope to these families.”
“Will you be leaving on assignment soon?”
“When the crew has something concrete, yes. Someone needs to lead the investigation. With Jo’s pregnancy being complicated, Atlas is staying closer to home.”
I wrap my arm around her. “What’s keeping you from sleep?”
She releases a heavy sigh. “Brandon told me to talk to you about my feelings.”
