“I think Dreya is about to do something stupid,” Braden said, wishing he didn’t have to do this.
“How stupid?” Coleman asked.
“She just broke into…”
Braden hesitated as Tommy’s voice echoed in his head.Trust your partner. Trust the woman you love…or it’s all over.
“Braden?” Coleman prompted. “Where did Dreya break into?”
Braden ground his jaw, ready to rip the bandage off and just get it over with, but then he saw Dreya dart across an open space between the nearest buildings and race for a part of the fence where two lengths met at a ninety-degree angle. She jumped up, her foot hitting the chain link mesh halfway up before she caught it with her hands. A yank and a somersault, and she was over, hitting the ground lightly and sprinting for her bike.
Damn. She’d been in and out of the place in ten minutes.
On the other end of the line, Coleman was asking if he was okay, if Dreya was okay. But Braden couldn’t answer. He was too focused on Dreya. She wasn’t carrying anything in her hands that he could see, but that didn’t mean anything.
As Dreya started her bike and sped away, Braden knew he couldn’t finish the conversation he’d started with the deputy director. Even though his gut was the thing that had gotten him into this situation, he still felt the overwhelming need to trust Dreya, to ride this out and see where it ended. It was probably going to end up exactly where he thought it would, but he had to know for sure.
“I’ll call you as soon as I know more,” he told Coleman, then hung up.
Braden turned his car around and followed Dreya as the sun began to crest the horizon. It was a short trip, across the river to Alexandria. Then she zipped through the small, quaint streets of one of the older parts of DC until she reached a warehouse near the river. He pulled over three blocks down the street.
He held his breath as Dreya climbed off her Ninja and walked toward the door. She had to be meeting with the buyer.
But when the warehouse door opened, Braden was stunned to see John. Dreya held out something small and rectangular. A flash drive, maybe?
John smiled, and she smiled back. Then they both went inside the building and closed the door.
Braden sagged with relief. Dreya hadn’t gone out to steal something from Thorn for the thrill of it. She’d gone after something for John and the DCO.
He was still pissed about her going without him, and they sure as hell would be having a long conversation about that particular subject. But as he cranked his car and headed to their place, he was grinning like an idiot. They were going to talk, but it wouldn’t be with her on the wrong side of a set of prison bars.
Coleman had been wrong about her—and so had he. Dreya wasn’t stealing again. He could trust her.
Digging out his phone, he dialed the deputy director’s number. When Coleman answered, he told him about Dreya sneaking into Chadwick-Thorn to swipe what looked like a flash drive for John, and that they could trust her.
When he got to his place, he took a quick shower, then made a fresh pot of coffee and sat on the couch to wait for Dreya to come home.
Home. Yeah, that had a pretty nice frigging sound to it.
Dreya walked in the door twenty minutes later. She froze when she saw him, a dozen different emotions flitting across her face. Fear, worry, regret, pain, doubt.
“Why didn’t you tell me that John sent you to Chadwick-Thorn to steal something?” he asked.
She frowned. “You followed me?”
He nodded.
Would she be upset that he hadn’t trusted her? He’d have nothing to say to that, because he hadn’t trusted her. That hurt like hell to admit, even in the privacy of his own mind. He couldn’t imagine it would be any better saying it out loud.
But Dreya didn’t go there. Instead, she came over and perched on the corner of the coffee table in front of him.
“John didn’t send me,” she said quietly. “Not directly.”
He listened in amazement as she explained about a hard drive she’d stolen from Thorn along with his honking big diamond, the encryption/decryption code, the security key, and everything John had thought might be on the drive.
“John didn’t want me going in there, but after what we saw up in Maine, I knew I couldn’t just let Thorn walk away,” she added. “Not if there was something I could do to help put him away.”
Braden had left the apartment a few hours ago fearing that Dreya was going back to stealing, but it turned out she’d risked her life to get evidence that would put a monster in prison. He couldn’t think of anything that justified theft more.
