Britt accurately read the question in his teammate’s eyes and raised a hand. “It’s a short story titled: I needed a distraction to stop her from coming in here in search of Peanut’s cat treats, and the only thing I could think to do was kiss her.”
Hew snorted as he shoved his substantial bulk to a stand. “Pretty long title for such a short story.”
Britt waved him off and watched his brother offer a hand to Miss Greenlee.
Strange that Julia didn’t mention Sabrina when she was accusing Knox of murdering his former cellmate, Britt thought, eyeing the woman in question.
She had a pretty face and the kind of mouth that promised heaven. But her current expression looked like hell.
Knox didn’t look much better. Now that Britt had the opportunity to study his brother, he could see the stress that pinched Knox’s eyes and hardened the muscles in his jaw. Frown lines deeply etched the sides of Knox’s mouth, and there were gray glints in the stubble pebbling Knox’s chin.
Knox caught Britt staring and twisted his lips. “Yo, Captain Side-Eyes. Go ahead and spit out whatever is causing you to look at me like that.”
“The feds said you double-crossed your handlers and killed your former cellmate in cold blood.” The words tasted like poison as they dripped from Britt’s tongue.
He hadn’t wanted to believe anything Julia had told him. He knew his brother wasn’t exactly what anyone would call an upstanding citizen. But the thought of Knoxkillingsomeone stretched his credulity.
Knox had taken on a paper route when he was twelve so he’d have pocket money for cat food to feed the neighborhood strays. In sixth grade, Knox had befriended Tyler Jenkins, a kid with cerebral palsy, because none of the other punks had wanted to hang out with a little boy who scooted around in a motorized wheelchair. When their father died, Knox hadn’t batted a lash at dropping out of college to come home and take care of Britt and?—
“He didn’t do it.”
Britt blinked at the skinny brunette and watched as she vehemently shook her head.
“Knox didn’t kill my brother,” she swore in a voice that somehow sounded both watery and hoarse.
“Wait.” He rubbed at his suddenly pounding temples. “Knox’s former cellmate was your brother?”
She nodded. “His name was Cooper Greenlee. He took a bullet to the brain trying to save me and?—”
Her voice cut off as a sob burst from the depths of her chest. Huge, glistening tears flooded down her cheeks. And before he knew what was happening, she wilted.
She just sort ofsunkdown onto her knees, buried her face in her hands, and let loose with a sound that epitomized heartbreak.
To Britt’s astonishment, Hew fell to his knees beside her.
So, to recap, Knox and his former cellmate had partnered with the FBI to bring down a major narcotics trafficking organization. But according to the feds, Knox had double-crossed them, killed his cellmate, and gone on the run before he could turn state’s evidence. And yet, according to the former cellmate’s sister—whom the FBI didn’t seem to know about—none of that was true. Only instead of Sabrina Greenlee walking through the feds’ front door and clearing Knox’s name, she’d let Knox drag her halfway across the country.
Britt was missing something. Or, more likely, he was missing alot.
“We need to talk,” he told his brother, a muscle twitching beside his right eye.
“No shit.” Knox nodded.
7
FBI Field Office, Lexington, South Carolina
Special Agent JD Maddox took another look through the crime scene photos.
He was used to seeing death. It was never pretty, but it was part of his job, and so…yeah, he’d learned to live with it. Although it wasparticularlyobscene when that death came by way of a lead round traveling at over a thousand miles per hour.
Cooper Greenlee’s sightless eyes stared out at him from the picture. The man had fallen against a wall. Or rather, he’d died sitting propped against the wall, his legs sticking out straight and his hands lying palm-up at his sides as if he’d been a ragdoll arranged on a shelf by a child.
The photo might’ve looked uninteresting,mundaneeven, if the contents of Greenlee’s skull hadn’t been painted across the wood paneling behind his head.
“I’m having a hard time believing Rollins would do this.” He shook his head as he continued to examine the photos fanned out across his desktop.
“Is this your first day as an agent?” Keplar snorted his derision from his spot at the desk to JD’s right. “You don’t think a hardened criminal would take out another hardened criminal?”
