Page 86 of Ruined By a Devil

“I want full access to the information,” I continue, my fingers twisting the heavy fabric. “I want to know what Ezekiel is planning. You call me every single day, and the exact second you find Nolan Devlin, you tell me. You don’t wait until the smoke clears, you tell me immediately.”

Malachi stares down at me, bringing his hands up, wrapping his large palms around my face. His thumbs brush over my cheekbones as he promises. “Every day. You get the intel, the calls… All of it.”

“I mean it, Mal,” I whisper, leaning my weight into his hands. “If you hide things from me while I’m there, I will get on a plane and walk straight back into this city and put myself in danger.”

“I know you will,” he smiles as he leans down, pressing his forehead against mine, his breath warm against my skin.

I close my eyes, letting the steady beat of his heart against my chest anchor me. I hate the thought of an ocean sitting between us while someone is actively trying to kill him. But I understand the math and I know this is the best option we have right now.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Jade

As I wake up, I reach out for Malachi, my heart dropping when I realize that the space beside me on the mattress is empty. I blink a few times, my eyes adjusting to the gray morning light coming in through the small cabin windows and stretching long and thin across the floorboards. I roll over, my hand hitting empty sheets. The indentation on Malachi’s pillow is the only proof he was there at all.

I decide to go look for him and I pull an oversized cotton shirt over my head, sliding my feet into the cozy slippers and then head out in the hallway. When I reach his office, I find the door is cracked open, a thin line of yellow light spilling onto the rug in the hallway.

“Hey,” I push the door open without knocking but Malachi doesn’t even look up. He is sitting at his wooden desk, surrounded by a mess of printed flight manifests, background checks, and city maps. There is a half-empty mug of black coffee in front of him, beside a stack of passport copies.

He didn’t get any sleep again.

The dark shadows under his eyes look bruised against his skin, making my soul ache at the sight.

He’s holding a red pen in his hand, striking out a highway route on the map and drawing a sharp, alternate line through the back roads.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my voice rough from sleep.

“Rerouting,” he says, his eyes still glued to the paper. “The main interstate is too exposed so we must take the service road to the airstrip, then switch vehicles at the lumber yard, and use the secondary charter terminal instead of the main hangar.”

I walk over, resting my hands on the edge of the desk. My eyes drop to the paper covered in his sharp handwriting. Every pilot’s file, every security guard’s background record, every mechanical log for the twin-engine charter plane is spread out before him. He hasn’t delegated a single piece of it.

“You're vetting the pilots yourself?” I ask.

“Every single one,” he answers, his thumb tracing the edge of one pilot’s license. “I want their families checked, their debts looked at, their flight paths tracked for the last six months. No one gets near that aircraft unless I know every place they’ve slept for a year.”

I watch the way his jaw works, the tight, rigid line of his shoulders. This isn’t just some security protocol. He’s become obsessed with it because my name is on the flight manifest.

“And the men staying in Ireland?”

“There are six of them,” he says, tapping a list of names. “Cain hand-picked them and I vetted them. They’re the ones that will stay inside the perimeter and make sure there are no visitors, no outside lines, no exceptions until I clear them.”

“And if something comes up?” I ask.

“I have people that I trust in Ireland on speed dial,” he reassures me.

I look down at the maps, then back up at his face. “Why aren’t you travelling with me?”

Malachi stops moving and when he looks up, his eyes meeting mine his expression is completely stripped of everything except for a hard resolve. “Someone has to stay here.”

“Right, to hunt him down.”

“To tear his world down to the dirt,” Malachi corrects me as he stands up slowly, pushing the chair back on the wooden floor. “Nolan is watching my movements and he knows all of my cars, my schedules, every shadow I cast in this city… If I board a plane, Nolan will feel the shift. He’ll look and he’ll find Ireland.”

“So you stay here as the target,” I whisper.

“I stay here to draw his fire from you,” he says, closing the distance between us. He stops right in front of me, before he continues. “Nolan wants to hurt me. I suspect he wants to break what belongs to me more than he wants to have a cigarette with his morning coffee. If I am in New Orleans, his eyes will be on me, not on an airplane crossing the ocean.”

“And who is flying with me?”