“My father won’t remember that I used to visit him, anyway.”
Part of me wants to comfort him. Part of me wants to tell him we’ll figure it out together, that love is supposed to conquer all the bullshit.
But a bigger part of me is too angry and hurt and betrayed to offer comfort to the person who was ready to sell me out.
“I need to go.”
“Tate, no. Stay. We can?—”
I shake my head, not letting him finish. “I need to think about this. About all of it.”
“What’s to think about? Don’t go to the meeting. Stay away from Petrov. Let me deal with Morrison.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to deal with Morrison. Maybe I want to deal with him myself.”
“What does that mean?” Zane’s expression is incredulous. “You can’t interfere with this operation.”
I shrug. “I’m tired of other people making decisions about my life.” I turn on my heel and head toward the exit. “Maybe it’s time I made some of my own.”
“Just wait.”
I don’t wait. I keep walking, my heels digging into the concrete floor, leaving him alone with his choices.
And I try not to think about the fact that the person I love more than anyone else in the world just told me he’s been helping people destroy me since the day we met.
THIRTY-ONE
zane
The coffeein Morrison’s office tastes like sludge, but that’s probably because everything tastes vile when you haven’t slept in thirty-six hours and the person you love just told you he never wants to see you again.
Morrison’s been staring at me from across his desk for the longest couple of minutes of my damn life without saying a word. Just sitting there with his hands folded.
“So,” he says finally. “Want to explain why our timeline went to hell?”
“Timeline?”
He opens a folder, pulls out surveillance photos. Recent ones - Tate at the grocery store, Tate leaving practice, Tate outside his apartment. “No syndicate approach, no contact, no progress on our case. Right? That’s what you reported.”
I shrug. “Maybe they changed their minds.”
“Cut the bullshit. They didn’t change their minds. You know how I know?” He shoves another photo across the desk at me. This one shows Tate sitting in a restaurant with someone I recognize. Viktor Petrov, the syndicate contact who approached Tate. “Because we’ve been watching. We know contact was made.”
Shit.
“When?” I can barely squeeze out the word.
“Four days ago at a restaurant downtown. It was an hour-long meeting.” Morrison leans back in his chair. “What I want to know is why you didn’t report it.”
My mouth feels dry. “I didn’t know about it.”
“I wasn’t fucking born yesterday, Christensen. You’re his coach. You see him every day. You’re supposed to be monitoring his activities, his mental state, and his contact with outside parties.” His voice gets harder. “You’re supposed to be doing your fucking job.”
“I am doing my job.”
“Really? Because from where I sit, it looks like you’ve been jerking us around since you started on this assignment. Giving us useless reports, avoiding our calls, acting like this operation is some kind of inconvenience instead of a federal investigation.”
A shudder runs through me as my mind trips back to Tate walking away from me in that parking garage.
