“I appreciate that.” I did my best to give them a hopeful look, when in reality, I was ready to crawl under a blanket andI Dream of Jeanniemy way out of this mess with one wish: Make this nightmare vanish. Go back to yesterday, when ignorance was bliss.
“Let me know as soon as the secretary talks to Gray, will ya?” Alex hiked a thumb toward the door. “I think I’ll head over to Audrey’s and have a look around. I take it you have eyes on her place in case anyone tries to break in again?”
Beau nodded. “Deputy parked out front.”
“Wait,” I jumped in. “Shouldn’t I go with you? I mean, I knew Mitch. None of you did. Maybe I—”
“Absolutely not,” Trevor interrupted.
“Take Reed with you for backup,” Ryder ordered before turning to face Beau. “Can you send an extra cruiser over to park out front while my men are gone as an extra deterrent?”
Beau began texting someone as Reed quietly joined Alex at the door, where he’d been hovering—and why did Alex look like his dog just died?
Also, why the heck didn’t I feel that way?Because I already know Mitch is a bad guy,I reminded myself. I’d had a damn good reason to divorce him after all. I’d known he was bad, just not working-with-terrorists bad. Well,allegedly.
I closed my eyes and touched my cheek, remembering why I’d demanded the end to our marriage. And for the first time that weekend, I let the tears fall.
Chapter Ten
Alejandro
“See you two managed to get yourselves a real vehicle,” I said, buckling in as Reed started the engine of the F-250.
“As opposed to . . . ?”
I waved him off, letting him know to ignore me and my shit mood.
After that, he gave me five minutes of silence to stew. I’d have preferred all twelve the GPS said we had for the drive.
“You, uh, okay after what you saw back there?” His hesitant tone was on point with the question.
I sat taller, caught off guard that Jason “Doesn’t Do Feelings” Reed had even asked me that.
“No clue what you’re talking about.” My fingers dug into my palms where they rested on my legs. “Just tell me about the visit with POTUS’s guy yesterday. No one’s filled me in.”
“First tell me if you’re—”
“I’m not okay,” I snapped. “You know that, dammit.” I shut my eyes, cursed in English, then Spanish. “I can’t escape that woman. Every time I think I’m done with her, she comes back from the dead.”
“If only shediddie.” His flat tone had me parting my eyelids. “Sorry,” he quickly added, “but you know how we all feel about her.”
“I know, I know.” I couldn’t argue there. “Fate is cruel, though.”
“Or the world’s just small when it comes to who works with whom in the Tier One community.”
I glanced at him. “Is that you, Mr. Doom and Gloom, being optimistic?”
“Just realistic.” He shrugged. “Beth was CIA. And from what we saw in those case files, Mitch worked with the Agency more than once in the last two decades. Just a coincidence he piloted an op your ex was also on. A security company was attached to that mission, too. Doesn’t mean anything.”
I wanted to believe that. Because the idea that my ex—currently rotting in a black site halfway around the world—might’ve crossed paths with Audrey’s dead husband? That had me ready to jump from the damn truck.
“Don’t forget,” he went on, “Beth was busy being a traitor and running that drug operation here the last few years. No reason for her—”
“To be in the Middle East on that plane,” I said, cutting him off. “Exactly my concern.”
So no, I wasn’t ready to rule out that my ex was somehow up to no fucking good right alongside Audrey’s ex. Because, as I’d stated moments ago, fate was cruel. Not the slap-in-the-face kind of cruel, but the knife-in-the-heart (and in-the-back) kind.
And now fate was doing a number on Audrey, too. She’d lost her husband twice. First to death, now to dishonor. Well, that was still an unsubstantiated claim made by Trevor, but something told me he wasn’t wrong.
