“We’re good.”
36
Dax
The commotion from the hall warns us Clive’s on his way a few seconds before Tank opens the door. “These your people, Special Forces?”
“Yes,” Evianna answers as she burrows closer to me. We finished the fries—and the scotch—and she cried the whole time, even though she tried her best to hide it. But when her tears started soaking into my shirt, she gave up, apologizing three times for “losing it” when I was the one who got shot. We’re going to have a serious talk about her incessant need to apologize later.
“Boss. Thank fuck. What happened?” Clive asks as Tank shuts the door. The wall of men in front of us is a black-clad blur, and I take off my glasses and rub my eyes. I need to sleep for a week, and so does Evianna.
“Short version: Evianna’s boss is responsible for this whole damn thing.”
She shudders, then sits up. “Longer version: Barry Nolan’s involved too. Kyle’s dead—I don’t know where his body is—and Noah was planning on killing me and making it look like a suicide. Complete with a note and a goodbye message to my Mom.” She stifles a sob, and I try to comfort her, but she straightens her shoulders and swipes at her cheeks. “Louie shot Dax when we were trying to escape, but it’s stopped bleeding now. Mostly. I checked the map on my phone a few minutes ago. He had us four floors underground in the building at 42 Harvest Street. When we escaped, we knocked them both out. But that was more than half an hour ago now.”
I turn to her, wishing, yet again, that I could see her face. “I love you, Evianna. You’re…perfect. Perfect and strong and…mine.”
The silence in the room against the low bass beat from the pub confuses me, until I realize what I just said, and I sigh, rolling my eyes at my men. “Yes. I love her. Can we get back to the part where one of you calls the police and the others go see if either of those two shitstains are still where we left them?”
“On it, boss,” Vasquez says, and he and Ronan double-time it out of the room. Clive crouches down in front of us. “You two have any liability here?”
“Not unless we actually killed one of them,” I reply. “But call in Decker. We wait much longer, we won’t be able to explain the delay.”
“Who’s Decker?” Evianna asks.
“Our Boston PD contact. He works homicide, but he’s been on the job for a hundred years,” Clive explains. “He’s got seniority everywhere. We start with him, we get a fair shake.”
“Make the call. Then wait outside the door.” I pull Evianna back against my side. “I need a few minutes with her before Decker gets here.”
When we’re alone, I find her lips, infusing as much calm and reassurance as I can into our kiss. She melts against me, and fuck. If I could just pull her into my lap and never let go, I would.
“Darlin’, I need to tell you what’s going to happen next. We’re going to be taken down to the local precinct, separated, and questioned. You tell them everything that happened. Everything. Even the break-in at my apartment. But you hold one thing back. Just one.”
“What?” The tremble is back in her voice, and she clings to me like she doesn’t ever want to let go.
“Your mother’s location. Decker’s a good guy. Solid. Fucking incorruptible. But you know how easy it is to hack into a computer system. Do not, under any circumstances, mention the name of the facility. And tell them why.”
My phone buzzes, then the calm, British voice says, “Call from: Wren.”
She doesn’t even wait for me to say her name before she starts talking so rapidly, I can barely understand her. I’m not even sure if she’s speaking English.
“Wait,” Evianna says. “You got a complete copy of Alfie’s code? And you isolated every single one of the differences between the earlier code and what we signed off on? Seriously? In…what…? Six hours?”
“Five and a half,” Wren huffs. “What else was I supposed to do when I was worried out of my mind about the two of you? Well, besides run facial recognition on every traffic camera feed in the whole flippin’ city. So…you want the report or what?”
“Hell, yes! Noah said he shut the server down. I thought…we’d lost any chance of proving he was involved.”
“Puh-leeze. As if I’d write code that didn’t immediately propagate itself to every machine on the network. That’s amateur hour.”
Evianna touches my cheek. “Dax, I’m sorry. I know what I said earlier, but I’m in love with Wren now.”
“You’ll have to go through Ry,” I say with a weak smile.
“What did I miss?” Wren asks. “Wait…never mind. I figured it out. I expect both of you to come out to visit us in Seattle by the end of the year. Now back to the evidence. Evianna, every single code change was logged from your workstation.”
“Shit. So they could still blame this all on her?” Anger prickles along my spine. “Wren—”
“Let me finish, boss. I got more than just the code change logs. I got a record of every single badge swipe in and out of Beacon Hill’s offices. And I can prove Evianna badged out for the day hours before any of these changes were made. And,” she continues, “that one Barry Nolan badged out less than half an hour after each one of these changes.”
