“Always,” he answers without shame. He has the right. He bared his soul to me years ago, and I thanked him by doing the same. He is the only person outside of my family who knows about Cameron and the investigation I’m conducting outside of bureau hours. “Do you think this could be the entity that took Cameron?”
I shrug, honestly unsure. “Macy has a ton of info?—”
“Macy? As in Special Agent Macy Machini?”
His ear-piercing tone arches my brow. I’ve not heard him use that pitch for anyone but his wife, and it balls my hands as quickly as it clenches my jaw.
“Yes, Macy, as in Special Agent Macy Machini.” The jealousy in my tone can’t be missed, so I won’t mention my expression. “Do you have something you need to tell me, punk?”
“No.” He cocks a brow and twists his lips. “Do you?”
When I glare at him through my screen, his cheeks redden, aggravating him further. He hates that he’s a blusher, and it sees him folding in under thirty seconds.
“Rumors are spreading like wildfire that Macy is pregnant.”
“Yeah, and?”
He takes my frustration in stride. “The same people who once said you guys had athingare spreading them. They’re saying you’re her baby daddy.”
I scoff as if the idea is preposterous. “That would be a little hard considering I haven’t seen her in person in over three years. My dick is big, but I doubt it can stretch across the country.”
Brandon wrongly reads between the lines, preferring to go in that direction rather than imagine the size of my cock. “So you guys hooked up previously?”
I don’t know what the fuck his hand gesture means, but he needs to stop immediately before masturbation is off the table for me as a way to relieve stress.
“No, we haven’t.” I drift my eyes to the bedroom door to make sure it is still closed. “Macy is a friend and colleague. That’s all she has ever been.” My jaw involuntarily quivers during my last sentence. Usually, it is a telltale sign that I’m lying. This time around, it is more in disappointment and anger.
Macy and I became close while working together; however, things changed quickly after I let her plead self-defense for a murder she didn’t commit.
I’m also not looking for a relationship. Not now or back then.
How can I when the one I entered seventeen years ago never officially ended?
Needing to get this conversation off my failures, I say, “I know you miss seeing my handsome face, pipsqueak, but I called for a reason.”
Brandon raises his chin. That is the entire scope of his reply.
“I need a favor.”
“Anything,” he says without pause for thought.
Over the next twenty minutes, I tell him about Macy’s extensive investigation and the mass of evidence she has gathered.
“But since she’s wary of inputting her findings through the appropriate channels, I don’t have access to ViCAP or any other software that could unearth something months of reading won’t find.” Again, my eyes flick to Macy’s bedroom door. “I don’t have the hours to keep this a manual process. I need help.” Since I delivered my last line to Brandon, it was less difficult.
He proves that the money he’s made developing software since leaving the bureau hasn’t changed who he is. He has a good heart. “Send me everything you have. I’ll run it through a system better than ViCAP. I’ll have the results to you within the next twenty-four hours.”
I appreciate his offer, but sending all this paperwork by fax would take weeks.
When I tell Brandon that, he laughs. “Does your apartment have a smart TV dangling pompously above almost everything in sight?”
I look at the television mounted on a far wall, then drag my eyes across the boards positioned directly in front of it. “Yep!”
“Then barring an occasional request for you to flip a page, that’s all I need.” Brandon winks before the television turns itself on. “You’ll need to watch your daily dose of porn on your phone to get off today. And please stroke your cock in the bathroom. Ican see almost every inch of your apartment… including the red face of a heavily pregnant woman who looks unwell.”
I follow his line of sight when a groan reverberates through my ears. Macy stumbles out of her bedroom and sluggishly walks toward the kitchen. From behind, you’d have no clue she is pregnant. She is the same five-foot-seven, one-hundred-and-fifty-pound-ringing-wet agent she has always been. Front on, though, she looks like she swallowed a beach ball—and that ball appears to be causing her a lot of pain.
“Is she all right?”
