James
* * *
It was just past two in the morning when I walked out the back of the dry-cleaning business. I was hungry, exhausted, and pissed beyond words. My head pounded, and everything in me was desperate to get back to Harper. She had to be wondering what had taken so long.
My fucking handler had insisted I sit there while they went through the files, claiming they had to make sure they had enough information to get a search warrant for Natalie’s computer. They’d known within fifteen minutes—and I was pretty sure they were making arrangements for other agents to bust the shipment—but they took great pleasure in keeping me there for eight hours, loving every minute of my annoyance. Finally, they told me I could leave but insisted I wouldn’t be released from our agreement until the entire trafficking network had been taken down.
It had taken everything in me not to strangle the life out of them, but I’d walked away, mostly because Harper needed me, whether she knew it or not. If I killed my handler, I’d be living on borrowed time before I was arrested and imprisoned for life. I had to stay out until I helped Harper get the justice she deserved. I couldn’t do that from behind bars.
When I reached my car, I got inside and opened the glove compartment, pulled out my phone and turned it on.
It exploded with text after text, as well as calls from Harper’s burner cell and Carter’s number.
I called Harper first, but it went to voicemail, so I called Carter next.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he demanded, sounding more furious than I’d ever heard him.
While my instinct was to bite his head off, I knew there was a reason he was reacting like this. Carter was panicked.
“With my handler. What happened?”
“Harper’s missing.”
My stomach felt like a twenty-pound weight had been dropped into it. My hand tightened on the phone until my knuckles ached. “What do you mean she’s missing?”
“She went looking for you, and the last I heard, she’d shot Razor and left him in a parking lot. She was heading back to her car to go back to the hotel, but then her phone stopped sending a GPS signal about half a block from the bar.”
I forced myself to concentrate on his words and shove my emotions down. “Why was she with Razor?”
He started from the beginning, with Harper calling him worried because I hadn’t returned after two hours. They’d tracked my phone to a location two blocks from Razor’s hangout. She’d reasoned that I’d gone after Razor without her and had gone to find me.
“I told her to stay at the hotel!” I shouted, punching the steering wheel with enough force to put a dent in it. “Why didn’t you force her to stay?”
“I told her to stay!” he shouted back. “But it didn’t help that you took two hard drives and made a twenty-minute stop at a diner downtown before heading to your second location. She thought the first stop was with your handler and the second was to take on Knox yourself.”
Nausea roiled in my gut. I wanted to be pissed at her, but I could understand how she’d think that. While she’d started to trust me, I hadn’t proven she could trust me completely.
“You met with Deveraux first,” he said, leaving no doubt about his disapproval.
“What difference does it make?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he drawled. “Maybe if Harper had known you were visiting him first and your handler second, she wouldn’t have assumed you were going after Razor even though you parked your car two fucking blocks away!”
I ran my hand over my head, my panic rising. He was right, but I didn’t see the point in admitting it right now.
“She found your car,” he continued, calmer, “and when she saw no sign of you, she headed into the bar. Razor was there and she got him into his truck and questioned him. She got Knox’s home address and found out the exchange is happening at four this morning.”
“And then she shot him?” I asked, trying to focus and not panic.
“I’m not sure of the order of things, but yes, she shot him in the leg and called 911 to get him. She told me she was going back to the hotel.” He paused. “When her phone signal went out, I sent someone over to the bar to check it out.” His voice went tight. “Her car’s still there, and someone said they saw a man tackle a woman on the sidewalk. Two other men loaded her limp body into the trunk of a car and drove away. The guy I sent found her broken phone in the gutter of the street near her car.”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t let emotion take over. I had to reason this through. “What’s Knox’s address?”
“You don’t think he’d be stupid enough to take her there, do you?” Carter said in disbelief.
“It’s the first place to look. We both know he wants her.”
“And if she’s not there, you’ll let Knox know you’re looking for her, and he could move her somewhere else before you can find out where she is.”
