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All the air and fight drain out of her.
“I met her a few years ago. She’s a honey trap,” I explain, giving her the truth. “I paid her to get close to Victor,” I confess with a wince.
“I thought you said she was a friend?” she asks, her brows pinching.
“Yeah,” I mutter, knowing exactly what she’s getting at. “But she’s good at her job. And I trust her.”
Alana nods, accepting my words.
“Only Reid Harris would send a friend in to fuck his father for intel.”
I internally cringe as she lays it out so bluntly.
“You got a better idea, Pet?” I ask, trailing my fingers up her arm before tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t need to.
Instead, we fall into another comfortable silence as I continue tracing patterns on her shoulder.
“Why has JD got a bandage on his arm?” she finally asks.
I knew it was coming. He’d crashed on the couch in the master bedroom with it fully on display since he gave Alana his shirt.
While they were all sleeping, I tried to come up with what I’d say if she were to ask me about it before she did him.
But I never did come up with a good answer.
“I fucked up the night you left, Pet,” I confess, my voice cracking with regret.
“You did that?” she gasps.
“Not physically, no. I got called to Mexico to meet Luciana Rivera, and I left in the middle of the night.”
“Right?” she asks, her brow furrowing as she pieces the puzzle together.
“I left J a note but he never saw it. Instead, he woke up alone. You and Mav had gone, he couldn’t find me…” My words trail off as memories of all the blood fill my mind.
“Reid,” she whispers, fear laced through her voice.
“Ezra found him. H-he… he nearly—” My words cut off when she presses her face into my chest. “He’s okay. Doc fixed him up good.”
“I found a notebook he started writing in,” I confess.
“I suggested that,” she mumbles against my skin. “I thought it might help get out whatever it is that haunts him.”
“He told you about that?”
She shakes her head.
“No,” she says, shifting around and settling back in my chest. “But I see it.”
“He lost someone a few years ago,” I explain. It’s his story to tell really, but something tells me that he won’t mind me giving her just a little bit of the story. “It broke him.”
“Loss has a way of doing that,” she says sadly, reminding me of something positive I need to tell her.
“Luciana gave me a list of names and locations of the men involved and where some of the girls are.”
She sits up so suddenly, water sloshes over the sides, spilling over the tiled floor.
