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I looked up, met the eyes so much like my own, and took a giant step away from Lake and immediately dropped my hands over the erection that had grown the second I saw Lake in my shirt. I might have been 34, owned my own business, and made my own decisions, but Avery was my older sister and had always acted like more of a parent than a sibling. And I felt like I’d just been caught groping my high school girlfriend in bed by her… again.
“Avery, what are you doing here?” I asked, trying and failing to not sound like a kid being brought to task.
Her eyes shot from Lake to me a comical amount of times before she snapped herself out of her staring contest and gave a weak smile. “It was my three day weekend, and you weren’t in the field and I had no idea I would be interrupting. Lake, it’s great to see you again.”
“Yup, same. Sorry you’re seeing so much of me!” Her tone was light and joking but the immediate step back exposed the nervousness. “I’m just going to put some clothes on.” She turned to retreat but slammed straight into my chest, causing me to grip her shoulders to steady her. Her eyes met mine and I’d never seen such raw emotion on her face. And it ripped my heart in two to see it was humiliation that was so unrestrained. It broke me enough to release her, and Lake wasted no time slipping around me and darting past my bedroom door for the guest room. Her clothes were still in there, but she’d been in my bed since we’d started whatever this relationship was, and she was insane if she thought she’d be sleeping in that damn guest bed again.
Letting out a long sigh, I joined Avery in the kitchen as she watched me with a clinical eye as I moved to the fridge to grab the juice. I gave her a questioning look and, when she nodded, I pulled two glasses from the cupboard and poured out juice for both of us.
She snatched the glass and leaned a hip against the island and raised a questioning eyebrow. Damn it was the same as my eyebrow raise and while mine was ineffective on her, Avery’s was still powerful enough to have me trying to explain.
“She’s not a client anymore, Ave.”
“Well thank fuck for that, but I kind of figured since she was naked except for your shirt.” I raised my own eyebrow at her and she snorted before shaking her head. “Decker Mullins would never cross a line. You’re so rigid and uptight; I’m more surprised you managed to bag such a party girl.”
I should have known she would have looked into Lake after finding out that she was our current client and embroiled in some plot that had a body count. “She isn’t like that,” I said quickly, feeling overly defensive of Lake. “Everything you read on those gossip sites is bullshit. She’s got a career and…” I trailed off. I was ready to spill everything to make her see how fucking amazing the woman in the other room was. But they weren’t my secrets to share.
“And?” Avery prompted.
“It’s not my story to tell, but trust me when I say she’s an amazing woman with a heart that rivals yours.”
“Okay, I’m just going to point this out since I know you love to shove everything down and stomp out any emotion the second you start to feel it,” She paused for another long pull of the juice and I knew it was for dramatic effect. “I have never seen you light up when talking about a woman the way you just did. Hell, I haven’t even seen you with a woman since high school!”
“I’ve dated,” I grumbled, though random one night stands over the years hardly counted as dating.
“Okay,” she agreed sarcastically before continuing. “The point is, you like this woman and I’m fighting every instinct to go in there and hug the ever loving shit out of her for being the one to melt the ice castle around your heart.”
“You aren’t bothering her, and you need to stop with the dramatics before you scare her off.” I shot a nervous look behind me down the hall and to the closed door.
“If your attitude problem didn’t scare her off, then I wouldn’t.” Avery gave me a pointed look.
I’d been about to repeat my orders to leave Lake alone when the shrill alert of a message from Kasey shrieked from my room. Leaving my sister in the kitchen I hurried to the room and fished the phone from my pocket to see why he was messaging me at, looking at the time on the phone, 10:30 p.m.
Kasey: Video was sent to Lake. NOT. GOOD.
Instead of texting back I called, hearing him pick up before the first ring had even finished.
“What video?” I asked, immediately stomping through the apartment and to the living room to see Lake’s phone on the coffee table in front of the couch along with her laptop. Thank God she kept the phone off most of the time now.
“Bailey Voss being tortured.” Kasey sounded sick, and knowing what we’d seen in the past, I knew it had to be bad for his usually playful tone to be as lifeless as it sounded then.
“Fuck!” I shouted, grabbing a decorative glass bowl from the coffee table and throwing it with such force against the far wall that it seemed to explode on impact.
Avery squeaked in surprise and I faintly heard the sound of the guest bedroom door opened. I couldn’t turn to face either woman just then. It had been naive to hope that the abduction of her former friends had nothing to do with her, but with one video, there was no longer any hope.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” I said through clenched teeth, before ending the call with Kasey. I turned to see two wide eyed women staring back at me. Lake was fully dressed now, not for sleep, but in her normal casual wear of leggings and a tank. “I have to go.” I glared at Avery who immediately gave me a challenging look back. “You, leave Lake alone. Don’t force her into one of your inquisitions. And you,” I said, turning my gaze on Lake, one much softer than I’d given my sister. “We are going to have a long talk when I get back.”
I strode past them and down the hall into my room, slamming the door behind me. I didn’t waste time on looking professional, instead throwing on a gray t-shirt and jeans before lacing up boots and heading back toward the front door in record time. When glass crunched beneath my feet, I looked down and swore softly. I couldn’t leave glass all over the floor. Even in a hurry, my thoughts went to taking care of Lake and worrying that she’d get hurt on even a piece of glass.
“I’ll take care of it, Deck, just go.” The softness in Avery’s voice was so unusual that I whipped my head around to face her. She gave me one of those smiles she hadn’t needed to use since we were kids and my heart dropped in my chest. The times when I was breaking and her sad but loving smile was what kept me going.
“Thank you,” I choked out before walking out the door and leaving my sister to clean up yet another mess of mine.
Kasey wasn’t behind his desk when I walked in, and I looked toward the couch in the corner to see him pacing back and forth, tapping out a rhythm on his leg. Fitz and Cabot both sat on the couch, watching him with worried expressions.
They all looked up as I cleared my throat and Kasey tried to shake himself off mentally before returning to his desk to start tapping away on the keys. I’d expected the video to pop onto his wall of screens but instead all the blinds began to slide down in front of the walls of glass that made up his office. I’d forgotten the blinds even existed since Kasey never worried about privacy while working. The fact that we were being secluded from the rest of his team told me this wasn’t going to be good.
As the blinds clicked into place, fully blocking his office from the rest of the building, Kasey sent the video to the screens and once it began to play, the sound of a woman’s scream echoed through the room, sending a sick dread into my stomach immediately. It wasn’t the Hollywood version of a blood curdling scream. It was the tormented and pained scream of a woman who had been enduring hell for hours.
