He stiffened.
“Sorry. I pretended to be a prostitute. Received quite the number of offers, let me tell you…”
“I can imagine.” Was that jealousy coiling in him? Like a snake ready to strike? Sure felt that way.
“I eventually caught the serial who’d been abducting and murdering women along the South Carolina coast. Things got a little dicey when he tried to drug me, but I just turned that needle right back around on him.”
He could not breathe. “He’s dead.”
“No, but he is on death row. Is that close enough? I think it’s pretty close. Anyway…” A bob of her head. “I was also an inmate at a women’s prison for two months. Food was crap, by the way. Some guards there had been reported for taking advantage of the inmates. Forcing them to perform sex acts.” Her expression hardened. “Rape.”
She’d faced off with a serial killer who drugged his victims and then she’d gone into a prison with bastard guards who’d hurt women? “Names.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Give me their names.” They’d be dead in days.
“Uh, I got evidence on all the guards involved.” She squared her shoulders. “I had them locked away. And let me tell you, other inmates don’t react very kindly to former guards who are now trapped in cells with them.”
No, he didn’t think kind would be a word that applied in that situation. “No one hurt you.” He needed to be clear.
“No one hurt me.” A pause. “But I appreciate you caring.”
And, sonofabitch, he did care. He cared that she’d nearly been drugged. He cared that she’d been locked up with monsters who hurt women. He cared that she’d ever been at risk for a single, solitary moment.
This was a clusterfuck.
Because he’d cared the entire time he’d been driving through the night, with her pressed to his back. All of those sweet, lush curves. He’d cared when the shots rang out back at The Bottomless Pitt, and he looked back, terrified for one, wild moment that she’d been hit.
Yeah, next time, he’d get a fucking script. “I thought Feds cared about innocent people getting hurt,” he growled.
Her brows climbed. “We do.”
“Then your FBI firing into a public street was…what? For shits and giggles?”
A shake of her head. “We made sure the street was secure. I had a transmitter in my ear. Malik did not fire those blanks until he was given the all-clear.”
She’d what?
She reached into the front pocket of her black pants and pulled out a small device. Looked like a super, super tiny ear bud. “Gray told us when everyone was clear. We had some Feds out there, dressed in plainclothes, but those were all people he trusts implicitly. The street was secure.”
Bullshit. “And the bikers who could have started shooting? Did he trust them implicitly? Is that the story you’re spinning right now?”
“Most of them had moved out of range. A few lingered, but those were people who were loyal to you. And you gave the signal for them to stand down.”
Tension knifed through him.
Sighing. She tucked the earpiece back into the pocket of her pants. Then she lifted her hand, and she fluttered her fingers. Almost looked like a “come here” gesture.
It wasn’t.
“Wait,” she said. She fluttered again. “Wait.” A nod. “As soon as you gave the order, I knew that it was time. Gray knew, too. He was there, watching in the shadows. When he saw you sign, that was when he gave the order for Malik to shoot the blanks.”
Check. The blanks. “You acted like you didn’t know sign language. When I made that motion, you literally asked me if I was telling Javion to come closer.” The woman had done recon work—he would bet his life she knew plenty about Javion. And about everyone else in the inner circle of the Night Strikers.
“Sorry. That was for show. You know sign language,” she said. “So I made it a point to know it, too.”
She would have needed a whole lot of time to learn sign language. He had the feeling that when she told him she knew sign language, Agnes wasn’t just talking about a few gestures. “Gray told you.” Fuck. Was nothing sacred these days?
