“I heard.” He gestured for her to move.
“What about the bodies?” Reyna whispered nervously. “Drew? Laura?”
Beckham shook his head. “They weren’t there.”
Static cut through whatever else he had been about to say. Then one word from Meghan broke through the line.
“Everett…”
Chapter Ten
Reyna ran for the stairs.
Everett was alive. He was at one of the safe houses with Meghan and Tye. What a disaster. A massacre and the spy returned from the dead.
When she had last seen Everett, he had been comfortably housed in one of Elle’s more secure rooms with an around-the-clock guard. He’d turned her in to Harrington the day that she’d been kidnapped. When she’d escaped, he’d admitted that he was a spy for Visage and had been researching Beckham for over a year to keep track of him for the enemy. He had delivered pertinent information about the reconnaissance mission her brother Brian had been on though. Information that could have stopped Brian from being captured and MIA. Everett had claimed he’d done all of this because they had his brother, Edmond, as collateral. She understood that, but it didn’t make it okay. And it made his next move unpredictable.
Beckham didn’t try to slow her down as she took the stairs two and three at a time, barreled out of the door, and into the open. The cold hit her like a two-by-four. They hadn’t been upstairs that long and somehow the temperature had already taken a nosedive.
“Harrington left a note,” Beckham said once they were in the SUV and far enough away from the safe house.
Reyna steeled herself for it.
“It said, ‘I’m watching.’ It was written in blood near one of the bodies. I think he had the building monitored.”
“Fuck.”
Beckham nodded as he glanced hastily at the rearview mirror. “I don’t want to get away only to bring him onto our doorstep.”
Reyna craned around to look through the back window, but she didn’t see anything that seemed out of the ordinary. “Do you think Harrington would suspect where we’re staying?”
“Honestly?” Beckham asked. “No. I couldn’t even believe it as I was following your trail. I never thought Washington would step foot in that house again. Let alone bring other people. He kicked us all out and didn’t even let us take a single thing with us that wasn’t already on our person. That’s why my room is still full of papers. There’s no reason for Harrington to suspect Washington’s mansion.”
Still, Beckham meandered them through the city for a full twenty minutes before angling toward the other safe house. Better safe than sorry.
“I don’t know if I should be more uneasy because no one has followed us or if someone had. At least with the latter we would know,” Beckham said. “But we’ve wasted enough time. We need to get to the others.”
Beckham continued to check the rearview mirror often all the way across town. The tension was thick. It only made Reyna more nervous when he finally pulled over and killed the engine.
“Stay close to me,” Beckham told her.
She nodded. No argument there.
Reyna jumped out of the passenger seat and fingered the guns strapped to her thighs and ones hidden in holsters against her ribs just like Gabe. Her new security blanket.
As they approached the house, Beckham nodded his head toward an alleyway. They found a back set of stairs around the corner and Beckham moved forward first, keeping himself in front of her.
He paused on the threshold, preparing himself for what was to come. Putting away the Beckham who made jokes about teaching her to drive, pulling out the animal. She could feel the shift and the stillness that resonated. She loved both feelings.How easily he could become the person he needed to be. She tuned in to his calm, and it seemed to radiate through her. She took a deep breath and tethered herself to it.
Beckham snuck a quick look back at her in surprise. As if he’d read what had just happened. She flashed him a grin. She was composed again. Composed and ready.
He could see it. Feel it. Sense it.
Beckham burst through the door without warning and barged into the house. They entered a scant kitchen where two girls who couldn’t be older than fifteen had their heads buried in the refrigerator. They took one look at Beckham, screamed, and then ran for the living room.
Reyna would have laughed if their fear wasn’t so genuine. Beckham was imposing and these girls had been ousted from their house. Perhaps a little more tact would have been better utilized.
When they entered the living room, Meghan had both girls by the arms. “What do you think you’re doing down here? We told you to stay in your room until we have this all sorted.”
