“Did you miss the part where I’m gonna help you?” she asks. “Because I thought I was pretty damn clear about that.”
“This is the mob!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She pulls out her phone, fingers flying over the screen for half a minute before she offers me the device. “This is Hidden Agenda.”
Venezuelan President Manuel Farias Ousted in Overnight Coup. Infamous Prison La Crypta Emptied and Destroyed.
The news story is vaguely familiar. I’d been living in New Mexico when it happened. One of the guys I hung out with at the local Home Supply Emporium had grown up in Venezuela, and he’d told me how bad the former president had been for his country.
“This…?”
“Happened about eight months before I joined.” She purses her lips and swallows hard. “Right before Brooks…died. It was Ryker, Austin—he’s got his own group of badasses now—Ronan, out of Boston, Dani, Graham, and Leo. Along with Wren and Ripper workin’ from here.”
“You took down the government of Venezuela.”
She offers me a grim smile. “Damn straight. You ain’t alone, Nash. And you don’t have to run ever again. You just have to trust me. And my…shit. My family.”
Raelynn
Tucked against Nash’s side with Kiki stretched out over our legs, I feign interest in the movie he chose—some horror flick about a robot doll who goes on a killing spree—so I can play our earlier conversation back in my head to get the details straight.
He doesn’t have any idea how the DeLuca family could have found him. He’s been careful his whole life, and there’s nothing tying Nash Grace to Nathan Rossi—at least nothing he knows about.
If there is, Wren will find it. I texted Ryker an hour ago and told him we’d be at the warehouse by 9:00 a.m. so Nash can meet the rest of Hidden Agenda.
Unless he sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night.
Nash twirls the end of my braid around his finger while, on screen, the cute little robot with the human face decapitates the babysitter. “Sweet Jesus.”
He chuckles, presses a kiss to the top of my head, and pulls me closer. “Not a horror fan?”
“Give me the first Halloween movie any time,” I whisper. “This…is somethin’ else.”
Pausing the film, he shifts so he can meet my gaze. “It’s been so long since I’ve had this.”
“What?”
Longing creeps into his voice, the emotion so strong, I can feel it. “Someone to sit with. To watch a movie with. In a place that felt like…a home. Not since I was a kid.”
He’s about to break, and if I’m honest, so am I. Kiki meows when I ease him onto the cushion next to me so I can wrap my arms around this man I’m falling for.
“You can have it here,” I whisper.
He holds onto me like I’m his whole world. “I called Duncan. My dad’s handler. I didn’t know what else to do. He’ll be here tomorrow. But…he’ll tell me to leave. I know he will.”
Tears prick at my eyes. “You don’t have to. We can keep you safe.”
“Raelynn…”
“No,” I say sharply, pulling back to glare at him. “Don’t give me that self-sacrificing bullshit. You get to decide what happens with the rest of your life. Not the DeLucas, not this Duncan idjit, not even me. So what do you want?”
He’s silent for the longest time, and I can’t breathe until he squeezes my hands. “To see where this goes.”
It takes a full minute for the lump in my throat to fade away. “Me too. When Brooks…died—and I couldn’t save him—I decided bein’ alone was for the best. I was wrong.”
“Tell me about him. Please?” There’s no pity in his eyes. No judgment. He truly wants to know about my life…before. Steeling myself for the painful memories, I think about the man I fell in love with at seventeen. To my shock, my heart doesn’t feel like it’s about to crack in two. Instead, a warmth blooms in my chest, spreading through my limbs. We lived a lifetime in twenty-two years, but he’s my past. And my future—Nash—is right next to me.
“Brooks and I started datin’ in high school. He asked me to marry him on our graduation day.” I smile at the memory. “Got down on one knee and everythin’. I was hell bent on goin’ to the Air Force Academy, but he’d torn his ACL twice playin’ football and couldn’t pass the medical exam. We had a quickie ceremony the day before I left and he went to work on his daddy’s cattle ranch. Every chance I got, I came home to Texas to be with him.”
