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Those tear filled eyes were locked on me, like she was etching each of my words into her memory. She sat here, thinking I held some sway when it was the other way around. I lifted my hand to her cheek and Lake leaned in, her eyes closing, sending tears over and down her face. Wiping at one with my thumb, I waited until her eyes fluttered open again. Those pools of the deepest green held questions and vows in equal measure and it scared the shit out of me. This woman could wreck me.
“Can you go hang with Turner until I come back?” I moved my hand from her face to check the time on my watch. He would have been back in his room after PT, and I couldn’t leave Lake here to pace and worry while getting information.
I saw defiance flash in her eyes before she cast a glance at Fitz who was trying to keep from fidgeting while waiting for us to hurry up. Turning back to me, that defiance was replaced with acceptance. “Yeah,” she whispered, and even with no tone, I heard that single word crack. And it cracked something in me. Another fissure in my walls? Maybe.
That was the only thing I could think to blame as I kissed her, crossing that professional line yet again. Well, I doubted I hadn’t crossed it when holding her in my lap, but this was blowing past the line and in that moment I couldn’t have cared less. The salt of her tears mixed with the sweetness that was all Lake as she opened to me instantly. She never held back physically, and even if this was our second kiss and only physical interaction, I knew she would be the kind to give as good as she got.
I felt it in the way she pressed further into me, inviting more. But I kept the kiss gentle and reassuring, and pulled back reluctantly. We didn’t have time for this just then, and we also still had an audience. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a small angry voice argued that it was also unprofessional, but for once it was easy to ignore that voice. Especially when my arms were wrapped around the delicious creature that was Lake Harrington.
With a ragged sigh I lifted her up and off my lap and set her gently on the couch. “Please go to Turner for now, Lake. It will be much easier to text him updates since you refuse to keep your phone on these days.” She narrowed her eyes ready to argue, and I fought a smile at the sight of her finding her attitude again. “I promise,” I continued, “to update as soon as I have information to give.”
Reluctantly she nodded, eyes still narrowed in irritation. She didn’t want to be kept out of this meeting, but I knew there would be pictures and if they were of her friends, well… no way in hell was I letting her near that. I reached out, stroking my thumb across her bottom lip and not giving a single fuck if the desire in my chest was evident on my face. I wanted her as much as I wanted to protect her.
Without another word, I headed for the door; Fitz turned and followed as we wordlessly made it to the elevator. Once the doors closed, I turned to face him.
“Which girl?”
Fitz shook his head, pressing the button for Kasey’s office floor. “John Doe was found a few days ago, Jack’s got the details.”
I was instantly confused as he turned from me. I was ready for the gorey details of murdered women, morbid as it may have been. I wasn’t ready for the curve ball of some unknown male that had to play a part in this somehow for me to be pulled from a situation that Fitz had been pushing for since day one.
The rest of the trip was silent between us and when the doors opened, Kasey and Cabot were at the door of his office, one man looking reserved, the other looking slightly smug. Usually the smug look was on Kasey, so I gave Cabot a questioning eyebrow raise and he bit back a smile and shrugged as if to say ‘no shame’.
We all filed into the room and Kasey took his seat behind his desk immediately. He began pulling up a police file to his murder board and instantly crime scene photos were lining the wall one after another. A man’s body lay slumped against a wall, a dirty cot beneath him, an obviously abandoned warehouse in the background. I stepped closer to the screen and focused on his face.
His eyes had been brown, fixed open in a surprised look, no doubt due to the bullet hole between them. An unkempt scruff on his gaunt cheeks did nothing to help me identify this stranger. The next photo showed a wide angle of the man and the room he’d been found in. There was absolutely nothing familiar about the warehouse in the background or the dead man in the forefront.
“Someone want to tell me who this is?” I asked finally.
“Allow me to introduce you to The Wraith,” Kasey said, his tone still holding some reservation.
I felt my eyes go wide and my attention was back to the photos, trying to match this man to memories of being out in public with Lake. Trying to mentally recall if he’d been in the background, watching. But there was one glaring concern. “He’s fucking dead.”
This seemed to be Kasey’s cue, because the pictures vanished from the screen and page after page of police reports came up. “Yes, he is in fact, dead. Some urban explorers discovered the body at the beginning of this week.”
I turned to face him. “And we’re just now hearing about this?” My tone was low and dangerous, and it did nothing but earn me a glare from Kasey.
“Um, yeah, boss.” His tone held the sarcasm he usually tried to hold back with me. “I don’t exactly have an alert set up for dead homeless guys in New Jersey.” He rolled his eyes and continued to give the rundown, pretending like I hadn’t interrupted him. “He was listed as a John Doe, so prints and DNA were eventually entered into AFIS and CODIS. No one ever found a name, but they did match DNA to the blood collected at the pharmacy robbery. And since I hadthaton an alert, it pinged and we discovered our very dead assassin.”
“How did someone get close enough to tap him between the fucking eyes?” The question was out of my mouth before I’d even thought twice, but I knew it was something we were all pondering. This was a ghost, practically a legend, who brought death with him and left without a trace. The idea that he was just dead and gone seemed too easy. I didn’t want to say I was let down because I wasn’t. It was a relief to know that we weren’t contending with the world's most dangerous assassin, but his quick death was hard to reconcile. Maybe it was because I’d pictured a showdown ending in more blood and loss of life before this was over.
“That would be Cabot’s handiwork,” Kasey said, shooting an appreciative look toward the viking of a man still looking rather smug.
“Turns out, my shot to his arm was infected. Guy had been going septic according to the coroner’s report. He was easy pickings from there.” Cabot ran a hand down his beard and shook his head. “But someone else put a bullet in his skull.”
“Any chance it was our stalker?”
All three men shrugged at me, since we all knew there was no way to be sure. It would make sense. The Wraith, whoever he actually was, had been compromised. He was a loose end who could talk, and that made him a liability worth cutting out. I let out a long breath and tried to shake some of the tension from my body. It was a tight feeling in my shoulders that I’d been carrying since the moment I discovered the man had been hired to kill Lake.
“Okay,” I breathed out, “one problem down, two more to discuss though.” I glanced at Kasey. “Anything on Voss and De Carlo that isn’t in the news already?”
“Yes!” He sounded excited all of a sudden, and I hoped it was good news and not just some weird tech thing that had him excited at the worst time. It had happened too many times before. He clicked and typed and the police report was gone from the screen replaced by a security video outside a busy club. “Footage not released to the public, but you see the girls leaving with three men in this video.”
And I did see that. Two very drunk women were stumbling between three large men. They appeared to be herded toward a waiting car, and while both women were easy to identify on the video, the three men seemed to keep their faces out of view of any and all cameras. At one point Bailey Voss seems to take a step away from the car, looking like she’s about to take a call, but one of the men yanks her back and rips the phone from her hand, shoving her forward and into the car.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
“Yeah, this CCTV footage is exactly why the Parisian cops and the FBI think they were actually abducted. It looks all fun and consensual until that shove. And before you ask, plates were blacked out and no traffic cams caught faces. These were professionals.”
