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Jamie laughed and dropped a hand on my thigh. “My pleasure.”
I turned to face him and sighed. “I’m sure she’s been to hell and back, and no matter how hard I’ve tried not to think of the details, I can’t stop. I know she’ll be different. I get that, but I still want her back.”
I sighed again, feeling frustrated that my words wouldn’t come out right. “I’m so angry at Mueller, goddammit. I wish I’d been the one to put that bullet in him.”
It was a petty thought when the asshole was already dead, but I couldn’t help it. The man had taken my sister from me, and it looked like I might never get her back.
“I get that feeling, Maddie. I do.” Jamie let out a long, slow sigh, and I froze, pulling back to get a good look at his face.
“What?”
His dark brows dipped low in confusion. “What?”
I shook my head and gave his chest a shove. “What do you want to say that you don’t know how to say?” It wasn’t like Jamie to keep his thoughts to himself; he was brutally honest. An open book. “You want to stop fucking me, is that it?”
“What?”
“Don’t say what like you don’t know what I’m talking about, Jamie. Just spit it out. We agreed that when this stopped working for one of us, we would just say it and go back to being friends. So, just…fucking say it.”
It was the last thing I wanted to hear, but if that’s where this conversation was going, then I’d rather know now. “Well?”
Jamie stood and shoved his hands deep in his pockets, jaws clenched with his gray eyes glaring down at me. He was pissed.
“I’d tear your clothes off and fuck you right now if I thought it’d knock some sense into you, because clearly you are out of your fucking mind.”
“Just say what you have to say, Jamie!”
“Fine.”
Just like that, his demeanor changed. Instead of frustrated and angry, he was resigned. Resolute.
“It’s about Mueller. Turns out he wasn’t a piece of shit. He was undercover FBI.”
“Bullshit.” I spat out, feeling the sting of betrayal all over my skin like the strap of Mom’s leather belt when it landed. “It hasn’t even been two months, and you’re already siding with the Feds?”
“That’s really what you think?”
I shrugged. “What else can I think when you suddenly do a fucking one-eighty on a child trafficker?”
“First of all, this isn’t some fucking job for me, Maddie. It’s my career. I have to think long and hard about what I share, but here I am, telling you information that only six people in the world know about. I don’t know if you’ll run back and share this info with Sadie and Jasper, who I have no loyalty to, but I’m trusting you with it, Maddie. You.”
When I didn’t say anything, he got in my face. “I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
I let out an angry snort. “That’s what everyone always says. You know why? Because it makes them feel better, that’s why.” I poked his chest. “That’s why Kat lied to me about my sister. That’s why Molly is keeping me away. She’s terrified of Mueller.”
He walked away, his bare feet smacking on the floor as he disappeared down the hall and reappeared a minute later.
“You know everything right, Maddie? So goddamn tough and knowledgeable about the world. Well, take this file and read it. Look through every fucking detail and then tell me I’m not trying to do the right thing.”
I hesitated, but Jamie held the file with a steady hand, daring me to walk away from the details contained within. Daring me to find out the truth.
“Fine. Whatever.”
I snatched the thick folder out of his hand and scanned the papers as he wanted me too, looking at name after name of women who’d gone through horrible shit and would never recover, no matter the good deeds done by one Richie Mueller.
I gasped when I saw what Jamie wanted me to see, a report written by Richie Muller about Mueller, requesting new identification for Molly.
“Polly Bennett.” It was the same name Cal had given me. “What is this?”
“What does it look like?”
“How long have you known?”
I didn’t even know why I was so angry, in general or at Jamie, but it roared through my veins like wildfire, making my skin itch and my heart burn. “Well?”
“A few days. Calvin went through hell and high water to get it to me. Still, I had to vet the information first before deciding if I could trust you with it.”
Calvin gave this to him? Was this why he was so desperate to have me come back from searching out Molly to take care of Ava Rose? So Cal told me but Jamie didn’t?
“A few days? You knew how desperate I was to find her and you sat on this for a few fucking days?”
