by Layla Reyne
But why were they in that position at all? Rose had to have had something on Isabella, and as far as Chris could reason, it was one of two things: a case asset or himself. This had to be why she’d gone dark in the days before her death. Because Rose had taken her, worked her over, and forced her hand. Like she’d done Scotty. Fuck, if they had watched this before the op this morning could they have anticipated Rose’s manipulation? Scotty’s appearance on scene? Hawes had wanted to, but Chris had said no. He’d had his reasons, but if things had gone wrong this morning, if it had cost Hawes his life…
“Christopher.” His full name, in Hawes’s command voice, snapped him out of his spiraling thoughts. Hawes shifted closer, his eyes anxious and full of concern. “You’ve got enough on Rose already. Maybe we just forget that other video exists.”
Chris knew what he was trying to do. Protect him, protect them. But Chris was too far into this—three years of his life into it—to turn back now. “I want to know the whole truth. I have to.”
“But what if it’s something you can’t come back from?” A shiver wracked his body, belying the control he’d injected into his voice.
Chris inhaled deeply, calming himself, and slung an arm around Hawes’s shoulders. “I think I need you to do that for me this time. I need you to keep me steady.”
A long stare-down ensued, but Chris wasn’t giving in. Hawes eventually realized that and relented. Removing his arm from around Hawes, Chris retrieved the phone and held it between them once more. Hawes wound his good arm around Chris’s waist, and Chris pressed Play.
An image filled the screen, and Hawes held him tighter.
Izzy was tied to a chair, arms wrenched behind her, feet secured to the posts. Her face was mottled with bruises, her nose was bleeding, and her shirt was dappled with spots of red.
“That’s the warehouse,” Hawes said. “One of the storerooms where we kept the explosives.”
Amelia entered the picture behind Isabella. She dug into a pressure point on Izzy’s back, and Izzy struggled in her restraints. Tears leaked from the corners of her scrunched-closed eyes, and her upper teeth chewed at her bottom lip. She didn’t speak. Didn’t make a sound.
“Enough,” Rose said. Calm, like someone telling a waiter that was enough water.
Amelia backed off, and Izzy slumped in her chair. Head falling forward, she added tears and more blood to the canvas her shirt had become.
Rose stepped into the frame, immaculate in a designer suit, pearls on her neck and ears, not a hair out of place. “Let’s try this again, Agent Constantine.”
Izzy’s eyes widened, too tired and tortured to hold back that tell.
Rose caught it. “We know you’re not just a secretary. You’re an ATF agent. A good one too. You almost succeeded where others have failed. You figured out to whom we were really going to sell those weapons. You even had an admirable plan to intercept them. But no one received it. We cut off your communications three days ago. No notes or contact. You’ve gone dark. Do you know what the feds think about agents who go dark?”
“I’m not dirty,” Izzy seethed.
“I think they’ll see it differently, especially with you in that truck with Zander tonight.”
“I’m not—”
“You will.” Rose stepped closer, daring Izzy to make a futile move from her position. “Or I will have your partner murdered.”
Izzy lurched forward, and so did Chris. Amelia hauled Izzy back, a grip on her collarbone that made her scream. Hawes hauled Chris back, an arm around his chest and a kiss on his shoulder that made him whimper. Helplessly trapped in the now as he watched his best friend, his partner, being tortured in the past.
Izzy tried to disavow him, but Amelia rattled off all his pertinent details. Real name, badge number, address—real and undercover. “He’s not here now,” she said. “But he’s got a niece that checks on his condo.”
Fucking hell, Rose and Amelia had known all along. Who he was, where he lived, where his family lived. She still knew it.
On-screen, all the fight drained out of Izzy, her body folding in on itself as much as the bindings would allow. “Fine,” she conceded. “Just leave Chris and his family alone, please.”
“You do what I ask,” Rose said, “and no harm will come to them.”
“Why not just kill me?” Izzy asked. “Rowe can deliver—”
Rose shook her head, smile patient, like she was indulging a toddler. “This is the part of the plan you didn’t know. Why I need you there too. Zander’s not going to deliver those weapons tonight. He’s going to die. By my grandson’s hand.”
“Hawes?”
“And once Hawes kills Zander, you’re going to kill him.”
Izzy paled, making the bruises and cuts on her face stand out in sharp relief. “Unless he kills me first.”
“If he does, then he goes to prison for murdering a fed.”
Except Holt and Kane had made sure that didn’t happen. They’d erased the incident footage, erased all evidence of Hawes’s presence at the scene that night, and Rose’s coup had been put on hold for three years.
Hawes took the phone from him as the video finished, the room going dark and Izzy’s cries the only sound left. “She said she would handle us,” Hawes said softly.
Chris’s voice was not. “And now I’m going to handle her.” The investigator side of him satisfied, neither Hawes’s hand nor his body were enough to stop Chris any longer. Not when he was powered by pure fury.
“Dante, no!”
He ignored the twin shouts, from Hawes on the bed and Izzy in his head. Instead, it was something Scotty had said that rang loud in his mind.
Time to slay the fucking queen.
Chapter Fifteen
Kane was waiting for him around the corner from the holding rooms where Rose, according to the desk officer, had just met with her attorney. “Perri, you don’t want to do this.”
“Yeah, Brax, I do.” Chris charged forward, intending to barrel right past him, and much like in his hallway yesterday, Chris found himself with his back to the wall and Kane immobilizing him with an arm across his chest. Chris struggled to wrench free and got nowhere. Even with both arms free, his sling discarded in the hospital parking lot, he was no match for the lean and wiry chief. Twenty plus years in the military, doing God only knew what, then a career in law enforcement, had taught Kane a maneuver or two.
“I’m trying to make sure you don’t hurt yourself,” Kane said. “Or those we care about.”
“That’s exactly why I’m here,” Chris said. “She used me as leverage, against my own partner and best friend. Then she did the same to Scotty. We can’t let her do that again.”
“Who’s to say she will?” Kane countered. “She could have called in my badge or had me attacked at any time this past week, but she didn’t.”
“Because that was the condition of Hawes’s deal with her. He’d do her bidding, and no harm would come to you.”
Kane’s hazel eyes grew wide. “Me? Why?”
The press of his arm slackened, the surprise distracting him, but not enough for Chris to fight free. Chris figured his answer, though, the truth none of them spoke but all of them knew, would do the trick. “Because if she hurt you, Holt would either fall apart or kill her himself. Hawes was protecting both of you.”
Kane staggered backward like he’d been punched in the gut. Chris shot off the wall and hauled ass toward the holding rooms, throwing over his shoulder, “She’s fucked with all of us for the last time.”
Lost in the rising tide of anger, Chris rounded the corner and nearly ran into Holt, who wore a stunned expression. His massive form was impossible to get past, as were his questions.
“Is that true? What Hawes did? The deal—”
“Why would I lie about that? And was he wrong?”
Holt’s gaze drifted past Chris, toward the corner. “He saved me.”
Chris didn’t think he was talking about Hawes. But Hawes’s future was on the
line here, as was Kane’s. “And now I’m asking you to save both of them.”
Holt’s eyes snapped to his, gazes clashing for a long moment in which Chris wasn’t sure what the big man would do, and then he stepped aside.
To Chris’s right, a door swung open. Amelia stood over the threshold with Lily in her arms, and behind her, Oakland Ashe, Melissa Cruz, and the local US Attorney sat at the table.
Fucking hell, if Cruz and that ex-SEAL prosecutor got out here and got ahold of him, there’d be no escaping. Not wasting another second, Chris ran flat out to Rose’s holding room, darted inside, and slammed the door shut behind him. He had just gotten a chair wedged under the knob when a thump hit the other side of the door, rattling it and the observation window in the adjacent wall.
“Agent Perri,” a cool, calm voice said behind him.
Chris turned to face the devil herself. Or at least the devil that had been fucking with him for the past three years. What he hated most was that he fucking owed her at the same time. He would have never found Hawes had she not set all of this in motion. But in doing so, she might have taken him forever, along with Izzy. Might have taken Scotty too.
“Perri!” Kane shouted through the intercom, along with more banging on the door and on the observation window. Chris ignored it, flipped off the intercom, and claimed the chair across from Rose.
“I won’t be Agent Perri for much longer.”
“You did seem to wear Dante better.” She smiled, like she had at Izzy in that video, and Chris wanted to wipe the smug look off her face. Mostly because she was right.
“I’ll give you that,” he said. “Your ability to read certain aspects of people. What makes them tick. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been able to move us around your board for so long. Wouldn’t have been able to leverage me against Izzy.”
“Ah, so that’s why you’re here,” Rose said, folding her cuffed hands in her lap. The guard had neglected to secure them to the loop in the table. Intentional? Or just too stupid to realize this seventy-something woman was the most dangerous person in the building?
It made his next move even riskier. He made it anyway. Reaching inside his jacket, he removed his service weapon from its holster and set it on the table. Banging on the door and window intensified. Chris raised his voice to talk over it. “You manipulated all of us, over and over again,”—his gaze flickered to the gun—“because of that.”
“My actions had nothing to do with a gun.”
“But they did, didn’t they? That was the final straw. That was the final weakness you couldn’t abide. That your grandson chose to do his job as ethically as he could, without the symbols of power you knew. The guns, the explosives, contracts with clients who lived in the past with you. Outdated symbols, outdated methods and ideas that create too much collateral damage and cost innocent lives.” Chris shook his head. “Moving beyond all that wasn’t weakness—it was strength.”
“Then why are you brandishing a gun now?”
He leaned forward, forearms on the table. “To end this.”
The supposedly dead speaker crackled, and Hawes’s strained voice filled the room. “Dante, don’t, please.”
Holt, Chris suspected, had overridden the electronic controls.
And given Rose a last playing card, or so she thought, judging by the Cheshire cat grin that stretched across her face. “He knows you wore it better too.”
“Except it’s not one or the other, Rose. It’s both. It’s me.”
“Chris, please,” Hawes begged. “Remember what you said. The future means more than the past.”
“Hawes,” Chris said, splitting his attention between his partner on the intercom and the threat across the table, “do you trust me?”
Hawes answered without hesitation. “Yes.”
“Do you trust me to do the right thing here?”
“You’re angry—”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.” No more equivocation.
He shifted his attention fully back to Rose. “As well as you read people, that right there is what you never understood. Trust. Your grandchildren do. I do. Hell, even Amelia does. That’s where our power, our strength, comes from. I don’t need a gun for that. I don’t ever want to touch one again.” Hawes’s sharp inhale echoed through the speaker, his own philosophy taken up by Chris as well. The banging had also ceased, a sign of their observers’ shared trust. Confident, his team at his back, Chris smiled as he carried on. “All I need to be strong and powerful is your grandson, the rest of his family, and mine. People I love and trust to have my back. That’s all any of us need. And if you ever come for us again, if you ever think to leverage one of us against the other, all that power will be directed against you. Do you understand?”
She shifted in her chair, a first sign of discomfort, but she lifted her chin, grasping at her last perceived straw of control. “He’s lucky to have found you. Or rather, lucky I gave him to you.”
“Bullshit,” Hawes bit out. “You didn’t do that. Isabella Constantine did.”
And just like that, the last weight lifted off Chris’s chest. Hawes was right. The connection he’d discovered with the man on the other end of the intercom wasn’t owed to Rose. It was Izzy who had brought them together. Chris’s anger vanished, snuffed out by love and appreciation for his old partner, who’d helped him find his new one. “Turns out Izzy saved my life, not once but twice. You don’t get to steal that from her—from us. And you don’t get to steal the Madigan legacy from your family. All you’ve stolen is your own chance to watch your grandchildren take that legacy, update it, and thrive. Maybe one day you’ll understand that.” He stood, reclaimed and holstered his weapon, then pushed in the chair. “And make no mistake, that’s my legacy now too, and if you ever threaten us again, I will defend it at my partner’s side.”
Blue eyes met his, and they were just as cold as when Chris had walked in there. But the ice couldn’t touch him, not with Hawes’s “I love you” from the intercom warming every part of him and carrying him out the door and into his future.
Chapter Sixteen
Four Months Later
Chris was late, and his sister was gonna kill him. He’d been the instigator of this idea, and then when the date had finally arrived, he couldn’t get here on time. Not that she didn’t have half a dozen other hands helping her plan and prep, but still, he was gonna catch hell. Even if it wasn’t his fault his flight was delayed. He pushed open the heavy glass door at Restaurant Gary Danko, and a chorus of “Happy Birthday” reached his ears.
“Mr. Perri,” the hostess greeted with a warm smile as she took his coat. “I don’t think I need to show you to your table this time.”
Chris returned her smile. “I’m pretty sure it’s all of them.” They’d bought the place out for a double birthday party—Mia’s and Lily’s. Lily’s first birthday landed two days before Mia’s sweet sixteen, a reason to celebrate for both of them and their families. Granted, Lily, asleep in her father’s arms, wouldn’t remember any of this, but Mia, holding court at the center table in the half of the dining room they were using, seemed to be having the time of her life. She wore a “Sweet Sixteen” tiara and, with help from Gloria and Jax, was passing out cannoli and birthday cake to the Perris and Madigans gathered to celebrate.
“Perri,” someone called from behind him.
Chris turned to find Scotty Wheeler emerging from the shadows of the empty half of the restaurant. It had been more than a month since Chris had last seen him, when they’d presented to the judge at Rose’s sentencing. She had pleaded guilty to avoid a trial, but the federal prosecutor had not gone easy on her in sentencing. They’d laid out all the evidence Scotty and Jax had assembled against her, detailed Scotty’s captivity, and each provided statements as to the events that had led to Rose’s arrest.
Scotty had looked half-dead the entire time they’d been working, surviving pot of coffee to pot of coffee, and avoiding Chris at every opportunity. Gone was the ne
wly found friend, replaced with a robot who just wanted to work in his own office with the door closed.
Now, “half-dead” was being generous. Scotty’s hair was overlong and tousled, his eyes puffy, red-rimmed slits of brown, and his pale cheeks were rough with stubble. The thrown-together outfit was also uncharacteristic—jeans that fit too loosely, a wrinkled dress shirt, and an overcoat buttoned unevenly. He looked barely any better than when he’d checked out of the hospital, against medical advice.
“What did we say about calling me Chris?”
“Shit. I’m sorry, Chris.” He fiddled with the wrinkled collar of the shirt, smoothing it down like he’d just realized it wasn’t pressed. “And I’m sorry to crash.”
“Scotty, you look…”
He gave up on the collar and scrubbed his hands over his face and into his hair. “Like I haven’t slept for four months? Because that’s about right.” He dropped his hands, opened his mouth to say something else, but then from behind them, Hawes called, “Chris, is that you?”
Chris rotated sideways, enough that Hawes caught sight of the person he was talking to and his steps faltered. Chris suspected more from shock at how haggard Scotty looked than at his presence here or from some leftover animosity. Hawes carried none of that, but Scotty still suffered the guilt from it. “I’m sorry to crash,” he repeated to Hawes. “I just wanted to apologize.”
Hawes reached Chris’s side, sliding an arm around his waist as he addressed Scotty. “You have nothing to apologize for. We’ve told you that.”
“I shot you,” he said to Hawes, then to Chris, “I wasn’t a good partner.”
“You were the best partner I had since Isabella.”
“I was the only one you had since Agent Constantine.”
“Because I wouldn’t work with anyone else.”
“And you shot me,” Hawes said, “because you didn’t have a choice.”
“I keep replaying it…”
“Are you seeing someone? A therapist?” Chris asked. “The agency has resources.”