AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So much for me announcing how I felt, and for it not needing to be explained.
“Ignore me,” I offered after a pause. It broke my stupid heart to say that, and I waited for Josh to agree, and maybe stalk off to spend time with Ben. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his chin.
“I’m going to get it tattooed,” he announced. “You said that this was everything, and you’d better believe I’m remembering every single syllable.”
I shook my head and refused to let the spark of hope in my heart become a flame that consumed us both.
“A tattoo?” I smiled.
“Yep, we’ll both get one, the same thing, that this is everything.”
My heart melted then, I was in love, I was so damn deep in love that I couldn’t see a way out. But he didn’t need those words now, he needed reassurance of a future after we’d dealt with the present.
“Let’s get you and Ben safe, fix things out there, and then… See where this goes.” That was me giving Josh an out, a way of escaping any threads binding us together.
“Ethan.” He looked so adorable when he was confused, but whatever he was going to say was lost as an alarm warned us that someone had breached the cabin’s perimeter. I switched from kissing and affection to being on guard in a millisecond, only relaxing when I saw on the cameras it was Kayden at the door. I did my due diligence, as he waited, checking for any other arrivals that had maybe followed him here, and then buzzed him in. Security was tight around this place—it wasn’t the sort of cabin that people found by accident, but still Sanctuary admitted they’d had places compromised in the past. That wouldn’t be happening on my watch.
Kayden came inside, slipped off his jacket, placing it on the back of the first chair he came to, then straightened himself and turned to face me. I wasn’t an expert in body language, unless the other person had a gun on me. Kayden gave the impression of a man who was trying way too hard to act casual, and didn’t in fact have things he wanted to tell us that might mess up this little idyllic thing we had going on.
“What’s wrong?” Josh said from next to me. God, I’d forgotten he was right there, and that he could see Kayden as well as I could. “She can’t have Ben. Is that what this is? Is it all going wrong?” he asked. “That’s what my ex wants isn’t it? That’s why you’re here. To take Ben back?”
I put my arm over his shoulder and tugged him into my side. “Kayden is here to catch us up in the case. This isn’t about Ben. Right, Kayden?”
Kayden sat on a stool by the counter, and hesitated for a moment, which was out of character for the brash man who never seem to hold back saying what he wanted. “Where is Ben?” he began.
“He’s watching a movie. He wants me to go in with him.” Josh said.
I got the impression he said that to normalize everything. But what itreallyfelt like was that Ben was happy, and to leave him alone.
“Good,” Kayden said. “I really need to speak to Ethan alone.”
“That’s not happening,” Josh said. “My son and I are the ones in the middle of this, and I’m pretty sick of being in the dark, so start from the beginning, and leave nothing out.”
Kayden frowned. “I really think you should—”
“He stays,” I said.
Kayden narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s a mess,” he offered after another pause. “So many threads, but we have no hope of unraveling them alone. It starts with your old boss Danvers and he’s sticking to the defense that you and your team went rogue, which blocks internal investigations into him. Everyone is too concerned with where you and your team are.”
“And my team?”
“Safe.”
“Fuck that asshole,” I muttered, and Josh leaned against me as if he wanted to reassure me. The weight against me was grounding. I tugged him closer, not missing the way Kayden smirked before getting all secret-society-focused again.
“Sanctuary isn’t set up for undercover work in a federal agency. Nor are we in a position to fully realize all the intel we have on Rouxier.”
“What do you mean, ‘fully realize’?” Josh glanced at me as if I might have the answers. I had nothing, because I was in here with Josh and Ben and I was completely out of the loop. I’d been fooling myself that I could stay here, look after them both, and let other people fix the problemsout there. “I don’t understand what that even means,” Josh added.
Kayden stared at me, and with an awful sickening feeling I knew what the problem was. They were building a case against Rouxier, but if the man had enough crooked law enforcement personnel in his pocket, then that would be dead end. This case was much more than Rouxier—this was cartel, federal agency, and went deeper than any of us could really know.
“We can’t get anything to stick with Rouxier. We’re being blocked at every turn,” Kayden summarized. “And despite your assurance that your old boss Danvers is crooked, he’s still in position as the federal agent in charge concerning Rouxier, which means until we remove that protection, get the intel we really need, Rouxier is untouchable. Danvers is our pinch point and unless you can give us more… ”
I had more—much more. “What about the trail of information-tampering that my team pulled together? We have a whole audit trail of his reports on the things that he asked me in my team to do—always giving himself plausible deniability. He was getting ready to throw us under the bus if necessary.”
“It doesn’t mean he’s connected to Rouxier in a legal sense, but he’s blocking us—stating in no uncertain terms that Rouxier is not to be touched forreasons.” Kayden air quoted that last word and rolled his eyes.
“So, the first domino to fall has to be Danvers and whatever team he has surrounding him now that me and my team have gone,” I murmured.
