The guard gave him an odd look he couldn’t interpret before giving a very unhelpful response. “I’ll let the prisoner tell you that.”
Thanks for nothing, asshole.
Taking a seat, Torch waited anxiously.
He’d made the decision to come here only hours before. He’d been busy making the impossible arrangements for the after-hours visit to the maximum-security brig almost the entire flight between The Ranch in Texas and his arrival in San Diego. So those five minutes he sat waiting in the otherwise empty room were the first quiet moments he’d had to really think about all that had happened to bring him to this exact point in time.
Tension fluttered through his veins. Memories, good and bad, pelted him, raising his pulse. Torch had been so sure he’d put the burn of betrayal behind him that when the door finally opened and he caught his first sight of her, it was like a punch in the gut.
Amir pushed to his feet, despite feeling lightheaded. The anger at seeing the woman who’d betrayed him and his entire BSO squad again, he’d expected. The pity at seeing just how far she’d fallen from the warrior she’d been — not so much.
She stopped a good six feet away. Neither of them spoke, taking those first long seconds to instead take stock of how much each had changed in the six months since they’d seen each other.
Breaking the silence, Torch finally greeted her. “Lizzy… or should I call you Romi?” He was grateful that his voice held none of the pity he’d felt for her moments before.
Was that a flinch?
“I don’t care what you call me,” she spat back, some of the fire he’d admired about her in the past peeking through.
“Fine. Then I’ll call you Traitor,” he said, making it clear he hadn’t come here carrying any kind of olive branch.
He was here for one reason and one reason only. He needed information that only she could provide.
This time, her flinch was unmistakable.
“I didn’t betray you or anyone,” she defended, although some of her earlier fire was already being doused.
“That’s not what the judge and jury decided when they sentenced you to six years here at Shangri-La.”
“You cared enough to follow the trial, but you couldn’t be bothered to actually show up to support me?”
“Support you?” he spat. “Why the fuck would I support you? As far as I’m concerned, you got off easy. I know three men who never made it home to their families who would agree with me,” he snapped back, letting his long-pent-up anger surface.
“If you’d been there, you’d know they didn’t convict me for their deaths.”
“Yeah? Well, they should have. Those men would be alive today if you hadn’t lied to me… to all of us.”
Now he was getting to the root of why he’d come in the first place. Forcing himself to push down his anger about being played by a woman he never should have trusted, Torch instead asked the question he’d come to ask in the first place.
“I need to know everything you know about the Cold Case Squad.”
Lizzy’s — em Romi’s — eyes widened before she answered.
“You told me you didn’t believe me. That they didn’t exist.”
“Yeah, I’m still not sure they do. But their name has come up again in a totally different context, and I need to learn as much as I can about them.” When Romi didn’t answer, he tacked on. “What were you doing mixed up with them in the first place?”
“I thought you couldn’t trust anything I say. That I’m a liar and a traitor.”
She spat the words he’d used right back at him, and she wasn’t wrong. Even after going to all the trouble to come here to see her, he would only believe about half of what she told him.
He’d learned that lesson the hard way.
After a several long second standoff, Amir finally laid his cards on the table.
“My team has made contact with a group going by CCS. I’m still not sure I believe they really exist, but I do know one thing. If they were behind the shit you were doing over in the Middle East, then I need to know that now. I’m not going to stand by and let them infiltrate my team again.”
Torch stopped his rant there, but he couldn’t stop worrying about how hard it was going to be to kill Axel’s newfound hope at finding his long-lost daughter. As much as they all wanted to bring Mia home safely, there was no way Torch was going to stand by and watch his team be put into unnecessary danger again.
“Tell me. What do you know about the CCS?”
* * *
