She stopped dead in her tracks. She must have heard him wrong. What was he talking about? She was the one who had been attacked by those guys! She was the only one who was still a cop, for God’s sake! They couldn’t expect her to just drop this, like it didn’t matter to her.
“What did you just say?” she demanded.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not what you wanted to hear,” he apologized.
She almost laughed at how ridiculous that statement was. Not something she wanted to hear? Yeah, you could say that again. She had been working behind a desk for so long to get where she was right now, only for him to turn around and tell her she couldn’t be part of this mission? It was ridiculous.
“No way,” she snapped at him. “No way. I’m not letting go of this. I’m the only one with the credentials—”
“Yeah, and that’s exactly what they’re worried about,” he shot back. “They’re worried that your involvement might put your future career at risk.”
“And I won’t even have a future career if these cops don’t get what’s coming to them!” she protested. “I can’t… I can’t believe you would do this to me. You really think this is a good idea?”
“I think you’re great at your job, and you would be an asset to any team,” he replied carefully. “But this is dangerous. And you don’t want to put your future on the line when you have people who are willing to handle it for you.”
“I don’t want them tohandleit for me,” she replied through gritted teeth. “I want to handle it myself. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about that.”
They stared at each other for a moment, and she felt the anger crackling in her system. After everything they’d been through, he was doing this to her again. He was pushing her out of something that mattered to her.
“I don’t want you to get hurt, Bailey,” he told her, and she tore her gaze away from him. Was he right? Probably. But that didn’t make this any less painful, didn’t make listening to this any easier.
“And what about how I feel?” she demanded. “What about what you did to me? What you’re doing to me right now?”
She took a step closer to him, her anger getting the better of her. He stood his ground. He wasn’t going to budge on this, she could tell. He had made up his mind, and he had decided this was what was best for her. She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t wrap her head around him doing this to her again, as though they hadn’t been through enough already. They had found each other again and she had finally started to trust him, and then this. This betrayal. Again.
“If you think I’m going to let you stop me—”
“If you think I’m going to let anything happen to you, you’ve got another thing coming,” he replied.
Their hands grazed again, but this time, the electricity matched the anger in her body and morphed into something else entirely.
She pressed her lips to his before either of them could say anything else. She knew they weren’t going to resolve this by talking, she knew she couldn’t change his mind right now, and all she wanted was to find the one thing both of them could agree on. The feel of their bodies together, and the lure of this chemistry that never seemed to go away.
His hands tangled into her hair, and she kissed him hard, desperately—needing more, needing as much as she could have from him and so much more. His touch aroused her in a way nothing else did, and even though they were right out there in the middle of a field, she couldn’t deny how much she wanted him.
Before she knew it, they were sinking down in the long grass together, and forgetting everything else but the intensity of this kiss.
Chapter Sixteen
“So, what have you got?” Aaron asked as he took his seat at Xavier’s desk once more. This time, Lawson and Cade had pulled chairs around as well, a few pages of notes and screenshots lying out on the table in front of them. It was clear they had been hard at work, and Aaron appreciated the effort.
“I’ve been scouring the social media pages of everyone you mentioned to us,” Xavier explained. “Most of them were smart enough to have everything on lockdown, but Benning was tagged in a few pictures with his ex-girlfriend. Looks like they were together until a few months ago and, judging by some of her posts after they broke up, it didn’t exactly end well.”
Aaron nodded. That made sense. It was hard to imagine someone like Benning in a good relationship—hell, any of them, really. With the subterfuge and lies they had to live their lives under, how could they ever really be honest with anyone?
“If we can get her to talk, we can find out what she knows about Benning and the others,” Lawson added. “Seems like he’d be the kind of guy who’d have a hard time keeping his mouth shut, and he might have been flashing his cash with her in a way that made her suspicious. If we can get enough intel from her, it could be enough to get us a warrant and Bailey can take it from there.”
“What are we waiting for, then?” Aaron asked as he pulled one of the screenshots on the desk toward him to take a look. Sure enough, there was Benning, his arm wrapped tight around a woman who looked more like she was grimacing than smiling.He couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She had been dating a cop, probably thought he would be the kind of stand-up guy she could trust, only to find out she had managed to land one of the worst of the bunch.
Xavier and Lawson exchanged a look.
“There’s one problem,” he replied. “It doesn’t look like she’s willing to…talk to any guys about this. Seems like the experience with Benning was enough to make her wary of men. Especially law enforcement types. So, we’re going to have to find some other way to get to her.”
Aaron leaned back in his seat, staring at the picture. He couldn’t blame her for feeling that way. He had left his own life behind when he had found out the crap those men were tied up in. And being even closer to him? That would have screwed with her head in a big way.
But it posed a real problem. There was no way any of them could get her to talk without scaring her, and it was unlikely she would be willing to give them any useful information. They would need to find a woman to do it, but none of the women could know what was going on here. There was only one woman Aaron could think of who would fit the bill, but there was no way.
“I’ll do it.”
