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“No, I was kidnapped and thrown in a basement.He never spoke to me.I don’t know anything about your situation other than you witnessed your boss being murdered.I have no connection to this case whatsoever.” It didn’t make any sense coming after her.Lawry had only taken her because he thought he could use her as a bargaining chip to lure Brooklyn out of hiding.She had been nothing more than a pawn on a chessboard.
“God, I’m so sorry I got you involved, Morg.If I had never been on the phone with you that night…” Brooklyn seethed, getting angry at herself all over again, which hadn’t been the reason Morgan had brought it up.
“Stop, I don’t blame you for anything.Never.” No, she was shifting all the blame to Jameson at the moment.Apparently, the man made it a sport of keeping secrets.The fact he asked Brooklyn to keep a secret from her hurt more than words could say.
Jameson came out of the bedroom fully dressed.He saw the look on her face and froze.His cop senses must be tingling knowing right now he was in danger.
“I have to go.I’ll call you later.”
“Morg, I’m so sorry.”
Morgan didn’t reply, simply hung up.She would talk to her friend after she sent Jameson packing, and the pain of this betrayal wasn’t so fresh.
Chapter 22
Jameson knew something wasn’t right when he came out of the bedroom.Morgan looked at him as if he were a stranger.She held the phone to her ear, he was willing to bet she’d been talking to Brooklyn, and the woman had told her everything.
“Morgan, I can explain,” he said calmly, but he knew there would be nothing calm about this conversation.Morgan was riled up, and there would be no stopping the onslaught of curses she was about to hurl at him.He would take every one of them because he knew he had been wrong to keep quiet about it for so long.
He should have been the one to tell her that Lawry was dead and an assassin was after her, not Brooklyn.If only she had waited to call Brooklyn, he could have.He’d planned to tell her everything later.As the saying went ‘a day late and a dollar short.’
“You lied to me,” she said softly.He accepted anger.Her anger he could deal with.This soft, defeated voice killed him.
“I did,” he admitted.The secret was out there.There was no point in keeping quiet about it any longer.
Morgan set her phone down and rose from the couch, picking up her coffee cup and just holding it as if she needed something to hold on to.“All that talk of wanting to get back together was a lie.You just wanted to stay close to capture this person before they killed me.” She shook her head in disappointment then glanced up at him with a look of utter betrayal, and it slayed him.Never had he seen her so upset with him.He had really fucked up.“You used me.”
“No.” He took a step closer to her, but Morgan countered and took a step further back to keep a distance between them.Jameson remained rooted, though he wanted to close the distance and shake her until she realized it wasn’t true.He loved her more than anything.More than his career.Yes, he had used their reconciliation as a play to get close, but he’d never used her.
“I never lied about wanting to get back together with you.What I said about your kidnapping changing my mind was the truth.”
Morgan laughed without humor.“You just conveniently left out the part where Lawry was murdered in his jail cell and that person is after me and no doubt Brooklyn.”
Jameson cursed.He had hoped Brooklyn hadn’t confessed all with Morgan, but obviously, that hope had been in vain.“I didn’t want to worry you.”
Morgan slammed down her cup of coffee on the dining room table and jabbed a finger in his direction.“Don’t for one second say you held that information back for my benefit.You’re lying to no one but yourself.”
“You wouldn’t have accepted protection if I had told you someone was trying to kill you,” he argued, surely she could see he had been doing it for her own good.
Morgan rolled her eyes and stepped toward the window as if she needed to keep moving.“I’m not an idiot, Jameson.While I don’t want protection, I would have accepted it had someone bothered to tell me someone was trying to kill me for something I don’t know anything about.”
“The less you knew, the better.” He wasn’t going to apologize for what he did.Was it wrong, sure, but he wouldn’t change how he’d handled things.His tactics had kept Morgan safe.She said she would have agreed to a protection detail, but he didn’t believe it, and he hadn’t had the time to try and convince her otherwise.
“And look how well that turned out for me.” She glared at him.“Someone is trying to kill me, and I didn’t even know why.I thought it was random like a lotto number.No, they are trying to kill me for information I don’t possess.”
Jameson took a step toward her, but one withering glance from her had him staying.“I thought by keeping you in the dark, I was protecting you.That you would resist help and try to do things on your own, making yourself a bigger target.”
“Then I guess you don’t really know me at all,” she said sadly.
“I was just trying to protect you.Both you and Brooklyn,” he added in a pleading tone.Why couldn’t she see that?He was just trying to keep her safe the best way he knew how.
“That doesn’t make it right.I can’t trust you, Jameson.I don’t know what’s truth and lie anymore.”
She wanted the truth, then fine.He’d give her the truth.All of it.“Lawry works for a man Rick Banner wrote about in a file.I called my brother who runs a WITSEC program and put Brooklyn in hiding while I looked into the case.Lawry was the man who killed her boss and was looking for the evidence as well.Brooklyn had it the whole time she was in hiding and didn’t realize it until Lawry came for her.Lawry kidnapped you to get to her.He used your phone to track her location down.The man who killed Lawry has also been looking for the file that I have.”
“What’s in the file?”
“I don’t know.He wrote it in some kind of code I haven’t been able to crack yet.For Brooklyn’s safety, I had her go back into hiding.I volunteered to watch over you myself.I thought I could protect you, and we could reconnect—two birds and all that, and that is everything.”
