My brows came together. “What do you mean?”
“My body was in survival mode, and I was trying to get out of the chains.”
I felt all the blood drain from my face. “What?” I breathed, my eyes going wide with shock.
“The man who saved you is not the same man who kidnapped me, Hals,” she urged me softly. “He's changed.”
“What did he do?”
“He left me, Hals. He chained me to a wall, questioned me when I came to, and when I didn’t give him the answers he wanted, he left me. But then he came back and brought me here. He watched over me like a hawk. That is one thing I do remember.”
I sat up. “Karina,” I gasped, touching her face.
“I’m fine,” she brushed it off.
“He—he abandoned you!”
She looked to the door and then back at me, her eyes pleading. “He didn’t have the strength to kill me himself, Hals."
“That doesn’t make it okay!” I yelled, and her hand shot out covering my mouth.
“Dean Connors faked his death, leaving Gwen alone with Aiden,” she snapped, “Your beloved agent lied to you formonths, Hals. Your relationship is based on lies, so don’t you dare.”
She wasn’t wrong.Fuck me.
“That man is complicated, okay? He didn’t hurt me, I promise,” she said quietly. She was lying, though. He did hurt her.
He crushed her heart five years ago.
She removed her hand and ran it through her hair, the golden strands framing her face. “I want to know everything. I told you my story; now you tell me what the fuck is going on.”
I got right to business.
“So, when Gwen and Aiden moved to New York…”
Chapter Six
Jeremy
“Answer the fucking question,” James hissed at the man cuffed to the table.
“Has he hit him yet?” I kept my gaze forward as the baseball player stepped up to the glass beside me. I folded my arms over my chest after I set down my cup of shitty coffee. “Nope,” I answered.
“He's innocent,” Dean stated flatly as I saw him tie his hair up into a bun out of the corner of my eye.
“No one is innocent anymore,” I murmured as the tainted FBI agent circled Haley’s co-worker, Grant. James’ team had been conducting interviews of all the employees of her marketing company since the Tyler Project launch.
“James, man, I have no idea! I swear! I didn’t know anything about Mr. Romano until the night of the launch,” Grant stammered. He had been Haley’s partner on a lot of projects and had met James a few times. Of course, he didn’t know what James really did for a living, not until the FBI showed up at his doorstep late last night. They brought him back here, to the field office in St. Louis, for interrogation.
“So, you had no idea Haley Austen was going to be attacked that night?” the agent asked. Grant shook his head back and forth.
“No! I swear! Please, tell me she's alright!” he cried.
James stared at him, bracing his hands on the metal table as he leaned down to get into the man’s space.
Here we fucking go.
Dean sighed through his nose. I knew Grant only had maybe two more minutes before James broke.
