“And?” Austin pressed. “It sounds like you know who the strongest one on your team is, so what is the problem?”
He sounded good on paper, but what if I made a mistake? What if he’d been a snake in the grass?
“I don’t know,” I said, sounding defeated. “He’s one of my best agents. I’ve never had any issues with him.”
“Has he done anything that made you pause?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But what if he seems a little too perfect? What if not making waves so that he doesn’t stick out is part of his plan?”
“Okay, wow. You’re spiraling.”
“I know,” I said as I stood. I paced the space in front of the fireplace. “I know. What else am I supposed to do? There’s a lot riding on this one thing. If I trust the wrong person, I’m dead. You might get hurt. And Reed’s whole project is fucked.”
“Make the call,” he said calmly. “If it’s the wrong call, I’ll keep you safe.”
I stopped pacing and turned to face him, silently taking him in for a long moment. He had a lazy smile on his face. His hair was a little messy in a way that said he didn’t care and not in a purposeful way. His socked feet were kicked up on the coffee table and his arms were spread out on the back of the couch as if to say he didn’t have a care in the world.
But his words…
His words held a heavy meaning. A weighted promise that one shouldn’t easily toss out there. Yet he did. He gave it to me, and as I looked into his beautiful brown eyes, I could see he meant it with his entire being.
I should have let him off the hook. Said something like, “No, you don’t need to promise that.” Except I felt the weight of that promise on me now. It said he needed this. He wanted to give it to me. He wanted something important and meaningful between us.
Or maybe I was just losing it and making shit up.
“Fine,” I said, holding my hand out as a silent ‘give me the damn phone’ order.
“Say please,” he said as he pulled the phone out of his pocket and wiggled it in the air.
“Give me the fucking phone, Austin,” I said flatly.
“Call Reed first,” he said, his face turning serious. It kind of bothered me how he could flip the switch like that. It wasn’t normal. It made my stomach twist and flip, but I couldn’t say why. Oddly enough, it didn’t feel like the typical warning bells. “We’re gonna need all this Violet person’s information, just to be on the safe side. Have Milo look into him. If he comes back with the all-clear, then we’ll make the call. Got it?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, not sure if I liked the tone of authority and superiority he was giving to me. Usually, that was my place. I was the one in charge. I was the one calling the shots and giving the orders.
I called Reed. I kept the conversation short but gave him everything I could think of off the top of my head about Agent Wilder Violet, and told him I’d wait until his people did all the checks they needed to do to feel safe.
Then I sat there and waited. I didn’t really have anything else to do. I felt out of place here in this house that wasn’t mine. And Austin seemed as thrilled to share his space as someone going for a root canal.
“How long do you think it’ll take?” I asked.
He shrugged, eyes on the wall across the room. “It depends. Could be a few hours, could be a day. If Reed can pull Milo off the Lipton shit, it will probably be quick. But Milo tends to be very focused and he gets severely irritated if you bother him while he’s deep into something.”
“Is… he doing okay after being kidnapped?” I asked though I knew the answer. Who would be okay after something like that?
His lips turned into a thin line and he gave a shrug of his shoulders as if to casually say he didn’t know. But the storm inhis eyes as he glared at the fire told another story. It gave away how much he cared about Milo, and how angry he was that this had happened to his teammate.
When he looked at me, a softness took over his expression before he started talking.
“Milo’s good people. He didn’t deserve that. He’s not like the rest of us.”
His tone made me think there was something in his statement I was missing.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked without really thinking.
“He’s not field-ready. He doesn’t know how to handle the types of situations we run head-first into. He sits in an office, hiding behind a computer.”
“Oh,” I said softly. Austin was protective of his team members. It was good to know that there was a real part of him coming through. I wondered if he was aware that he’d dropped his guard long enough to show me that. “So what should we do…”
