by Cynthia Eden
Now how do I make that happen?
Her breath came in soft pants. She still had her fingers in his hair. Still had their mouths so close together…
Let her go. Move back. If you keep holding her like this…
Slowly, he lowered her legs. Let go of her hips. She lowered her arms.
They stared at each other.
He should speak. “Any other demands?” Dex’s words were guttural.
“We don’t use sex against each other. That’s…not involved in the case. That’s separate.” She licked her lips. “And I am not saying I’m having sex with you again. I’m saying that when we touch, we go supernova.”
Yes, they did.
“And neither one of us should use that against the other.”
No, they should just enjoy the hell out of the situation.
“Final demand and it’s a big one.”
He waited.
“I want the highest-level clearance it is possible for me to get. You’ve already been researching my background. Do whatever else is necessary so you can’t stonewall me again by saying that things are classified.”
Now this part was gonna be tricky. “You have to work for the agency…”
“I thought I already was. You are the agency, right?”
That’s classified. Exactly what he did at the CIA and how much power he wielded—classified. “I can look into getting that clearance for you.” He wasn’t going to make her any promises, though. Because with Lacey, he wanted to try and not make promises that he couldn’t keep.
He didn’t want to let her down again.
“In return…” Dex reached for her hand. Lifted it up. The diamond engagement ring sparkled. “You’ll continue with our ruse? You’ll keep saying you’re my fiancée, even to Roman?”
“Keep promising that I love you?”
“Yes.” Gruff. “Keep promising that.” He moved his fingers so that he was holding her hand—as if for a handshake. “Deal?”
“Deal.”
Some of the heavy weight lifted from his shoulders. She’s not leaving me. I have time. “Then let’s get busy, partner. We have a suspect that we need to interrogate.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I want a lawyer.” Heather Madding was adamant. “I’m not saying a single word without an attorney present.”
“Oh, good news.” Dex pulled out a chair and sidled closer to her. “I am an attorney, so consider your needs met.”
He was? Lacey shot him a frown. They were in the basement of the lodge, but you’d never know it. The place looked like some sort of interrogation room at a police station—complete with one-way glass along the left wall.
When she’d entered with Dex a few moments before, she’d found Heather seated at a small table. Heather’s hands were cuffed, and an agent—a guy with brown hair and assessing eyes and a posture that said he was always at attention—had stood behind her. Dex had dismissed the guard, and now it appeared that it was chat time.
“You’re not my attorney.” Heather sniffed. “I know my rights. I know exactly what I can and can’t—”
Dex’s laughter cut through her words. “That is adorable.” He looked over at Lacey. “She thinks we’re the police. Maybe Fortune PD?”
“I know who you are, Dex,” Heather fired back.
“Good.” Just like that, his laughter faded. “Then you know I don’t take shit from anyone. You also know there aren’t any rules that I have to follow when I’m questioning suspects, especially a suspect who tried to kill my fiancée.”
Heather’s gaze darted to Lacey. “I didn’t miss.” A pause. “Bulletproof vest?”
“You left me with a bruise,” Lacey told her as she took a seat in the chair across from Heather. “Consider me not amused.”
Heather seemed to weigh her. “You’re not seriously marrying him.”
“I’ve got the ring to prove it.” She lifted her hand. Wiggled her fingers.
“He’s a fucking psycho,” Heather snarled.
Dex sighed. “Words hurt. They hurt.” He leaned closer to Heather. “But you know what hurts more?” His voice had turned dangerously soft. “Being thrown in one of the government’s off-the-books prisons. Being held there for years and years while you’re forgotten by everyone you ever knew. That shit really, really hurts.”
Because she was watching the other woman so closely, Lacey saw the faint tremble in Heather’s lower lip. It was a tremble that was quickly controlled. Heather’s lashes swept down over her cheeks while she apparently mulled things over, and then she tilted her head back as she lifted her lashes and asked Lacey, “When did you meet Roman?”
Unexpected question. “Yesterday,” she responded honestly.
Heather appeared taken back. “But…you…you weren’t with him before?”
With him?
She wasn’t going to touch that question just yet. Instead, Lacey told her, “We have you dead to rights. You shot the agents in the woods. You were apprehended right after you took your shot at me. With or without a confession, you’re going to the prison Dex promised.”
Heather tapped the edge of her cuffs against the top of the table. “It wasn’t anything personal. Just a job.”
I take a bullet to the chest very personally. “Who were you working for?” Lacey asked.
“Nope.” Heather exhaled. “Not going to be sharing that information. I am not going to tell you—”
The door opened behind Lacey. She looked back. Saw Roman. His furious stare was on Heather.
The man seemed to have so much rage bottled inside. She couldn’t help but wonder…where had all that fury come from? Part of her was afraid to find out.
Her stare turned back to Heather just in time to see…
Oh. Oh, damn. Yep. That would make sense.
Had Dex caught that little chink in Heather’s armor? Because in a blink, Heather was back to seeming all calm and cool. Lacey crossed her arms under her breasts, leaned back in her chair, and got ready to see what happened next.
Roman slowly stalked across the room. He stopped on Heather’s left side. Crouched next to her. She didn’t turn her head toward him.
Like Lacey, Dex was also just watching. She knew he’d told Roman to give them a few moments before he came inside. She’d been right beside Dex when he made that announcement when they’d all gathered outside of the interrogation room. Grudgingly, Roman had agreed.
Now it was show time.
“Aren’t you going to look at me?” Roman asked quietly.
Heather licked her lips before turning her head toward him. “It wasn’t personal.” She seemed to like saying those words.
“Liar.” Roman’s response sounded like a caress.
Oh, yes. There is definitely something going on here. Or there was.
Heather sighed. “I didn’t kill you, did I?”
“No, you just tried to kill someone you thought was important to me.”
Heather tossed a glare at Lacey. “So what’s your deal, lady? You screwing them both?”
Dex immediately moved to Lacey’s side. “Lacey is with me. No one else. I don’t know what you think is happening between her and Roman, but you’re dead wrong.”
Wait, wait, wait. Heather believed Lacey was romantically involved with Roman? “Dead wrong,” Lacey echoed. But now everything was making sense. “You’re in love with him.”
Heather’s glare became even darker. “Shut up. You don’t know me. You don’t—”
“You didn’t kill him. You left him alive. Probably because you just couldn’t bring yourself to do the deed, hmm?”
“You know nothing.”
“I think I know a lot. Like…I know the look in a woman’s eyes when she stares at the man she wants. You had that look when Roman walked into the room. It was only there a moment, but I saw it.” Now her stare slid to Roman. “During the big ball, Dex told me that you and Heather only pretended to be lovers, that she was really your bodyguard.” She thought of her own arran
gement with Dex. “Sometimes, it’s easy for a pretend relationship to become real, isn’t it? It’s easy for those lines to get all blurred.” And the next thing you knew, you were losing your heart when the whole thing was all a lie.
“I didn’t blur anything with you, Heather.” Roman’s voice was low. “We never crossed a damn line.”
“You…” Heather’s head snapped back toward Roman. “I was right there! In front of you every single day! But you didn’t see me!” Her words tumbled out in a furious rush. “Then I saw that picture you kept of her. You kept it hidden, but I found it.”
Not of me. Of my mom. Her stare darted to Roman. Their mom?
“I was supposed to get close to you,” Heather added. “I did. I fucking did.”
“Very close,” Roman agreed.
“No!” She jumped to her feet. Her cuffed hands lifted before her.
Roman rose to face her.
“You wouldn’t let me in! You rejected me. I told you that I’d give you everything, but you didn’t want it.” A low snarl escaped her. One that was a mix of pain and rage. “You didn’t want me.”
He didn’t look away from Heather. “You were paid to hurt me.”
“I was paid to kill you.” Then she gasped, as if she’d realized she’d said too much.
“Don’t stop now,” Dex ordered into the stark silence that stretched in the small room. “Do tell us who paid you. I can’t stand the suspense.”
Heather grabbed Roman’s shirt. “Help me.”
A muscle flexed along his jaw. “Why did you go after Lacey?”
“Get me a deal. We both know you and Dex work deals together. Get me out of custody. Get me a new identity. Let me walk away, and I-I’ll tell you everything.”
So this chick had shot several agents, assaulted Roman…and tried to kill me, yet the woman thought she was going to get to head merrily into the sunset? “I don’t think so,” Lacey informed her briskly. “This isn’t the time for deals. This is the time for you to talk. If I were you, I’d talk fast. Because from where I’m sitting…”
Heather’s head whipped toward her.
“It seems to me you were hired to do a job. You didn’t kill Roman, though, and I’m still breathing, too. I’d call that a double fail. If I were your boss, I’d be pretty furious. Especially seeing as how you are now a loose end. And you do know what happens to loose ends, don’t you?” She smiled. “They get cut.”
Heather’s lower lip trembled once more. “Protection,” she demanded. “I want it.”
Oh, now it was about protection? Not heading into the sunset? “Protection comes for a price.” Lacey tossed that part out casually, as if she had some magic power to give the other woman protection. She figured Dex did so… “Why did you shoot me? Considering it wasn’t, ah, personal, I believe you said, then that must mean someone else wanted me dead.”
Heather seemed to reach some decision. “I was hired to get close to Roman. To find his weakness. When I relayed the information about his obsession with you, my boss told me to aim for your heart. Because you seemed to be the only damn thing that mattered to Roman,” she finished bitterly.
A would-be lover scorned. Lacey couldn’t feel a whole lot of sympathy for the woman. Considering, you know, the whole shot-to-the-heart bit.
“He was going to find your body. Then I was supposed to kill Roman.” Heather heaved out a breath. “But I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to kill him. I—”
“We know you were running away after you took the shot at Lacey,” Dex interrupted to say with a rather bored air. “My agent already told us that part. Just to make certain I have all of this straight, let’s recap, shall we?”
Roman’s stare was on Heather. Heather was looking miserably at Dex. And Dex…
His eyes glittered as he told Heather, “You were paid to get close to Roman, so you took the job as his bodyguard. I warned you against hiring her, by the way, Roman—which makes this yet another time when I was right.”
“Fuck you, Dex.”
Dex rolled on. “You tried to find his weakness. While doing that, you fell for your target. He didn’t return your feelings and that pissed the hell out of you.” His fingers curled over Lacey’s shoulder. “Then you found her. You told your boss that Roman was obsessed. That he was looking for her and—wham—she’d just turned up at the same lodge Roman was visiting. I’m guessing you then received the order to take her out. To make that big, bloody statement to Roman, huh? Right before you killed him.”
“I told you, I wasn’t going to kill—”
“You were going to kill my fiancée. Mine.” Dex’s voice was different now, definitely not bored. She’d never heard him sound quite so lethal. “That means no deals,” Dex continued in a deep, dangerous voice. “That means if you want to keep living past this room, this minute, you talk now. I want the name of the bastard who was your real boss. I want to know where he is. I want to know every single thing about him.”
Fear flashed on Heather’s face. Her head jerked toward Roman. “You…you won’t let him hurt me?”
Roman spun away from her. He stalked for the door.
“No!” Heather lunged after him.
Dex jumped into her path and caught her shoulders. “I want the name. I want everything.”
“Roman! Don’t leave me!” Heather pleaded.
He was opening the door.
“I don’t have a name!” Heather all but screamed. “I never met him in person! We met on the Dark Web, and he paid me—he kept paying me. Wired the money to my account in the Cayman Islands. I’d email him info and—stop! Roman, don’t leave me—”
He opened the door and walked out.
“Did you use your computer for the emails?” Dex asked in the voice that sent a shiver down Lacey’s spine. “The one we confiscated already?”
A miserable nod was Heather’s response. Her attention was still on the closed door. Except, now the brown-haired agent from before was strolling back in. His posture was just as perfect as before.
“Thanks for the cooperation, Heather. That wasn’t too painful, was it?” Dex inclined his head toward Lacey. “Ready, love?”
More than ready. She stood up and took the arm he offered toward her.
Heather let out a guttural cry and rushed at them. Her cuffs were lifted high as she prepared to strike—
But the agent grabbed her. “Ma’am, you’ll be needing to sit down…”
“Why are you so important to him?” Heather yelled at Lacey. “Why you?”
Because he thinks I’m his sister.
Then Heather gave a keening laugh. “I might not have gotten you, but he will!”
He?
“You’re with a monster, the worst of the worst, and you don’t even know it! Ask him! Ask your precious Dex how many people he’s killed, how many lives he’s destroyed, how many—”
Dex pulled Lacey outside. The door closed behind them. “That was getting ugly,” he said, his voice now ever so casual. As if a woman hadn’t just shouted he was a monster and a killer.
Lacey shook her head. She saw another agent close by. A female agent with a gun holstered at her side.
“No one else enters this room, Diana,” Dex ordered.
“Absolutely.”
Dex led Lacey down the hallway. It turned to the left, and there was Roman. His head was bowed. He had the posture of a man who’d just gotten the hell knocked out of him during a boxing match. Maybe he had.
“I didn’t know.” His voice was wooden. “You won’t believe that. You’ll think I’m a fool for not realizing she was working for someone else, but…I didn’t know. I swear it.” He glared at Dex. “Don’t fucking say I told you so again.”
“I have a man who’ll be coming to work on Heather’s laptop. He’ll be arriving within the hour. When it comes to tech, there is nothing he can’t discover.”
Lacey wondered if this was the same man who’d already dug up so much information on her for Dex. Hadn’t he told her the fellow�
��s name had been Antony?
“You know that you don’t get to leave the lodge, right, Roman?”
“Yeah, figured as much.”
“Good. You’ll be staying with—well, why don’t you just consider them new bodyguards for the time being?”
Bodyguards. Lacey figured they were really just guards. Dex motioned vaguely with his hand and two men stepped from the shadows. They each grabbed one of Roman’s arms. The guy on the left was huge, with a carefully shaved, bald head and hard, angry eyes. The man on right was smaller, still obviously strong, but with thick, dark hair that he’d styled back from his high brow.
“Thanks so much for your cooperation,” Dex continued carefully. “Much appreciated.” He focused on Lacey. “I think we should get some brunch. Lunch.” He frowned at his watch. “Whatever. You haven’t eaten, and you’ve had a long day already.”
“I want a DNA test.”
Lacey flinched at Roman’s demand.
Dex stared into her eyes. “What do you want, Lacey?”
The truth. Wasn’t that what she’d always wanted? “The test.”
“Then consider it done.”
Didn’t he need a sample from her? From Roman and—
Hell, he already had samples. He just hadn’t run the test. Hold on. Or had he already done it? Her eyes narrowed on him.
Dex sighed and led the way toward the elevator. He’d had to use a special key card—and code—in order to reach the basement. Once she’d seen this whole hidden lair part of the place herself, she’d realized the whole lodge was just some kind of front. Sure, plenty of the guests were real. But a supposed retreat for the rich and famous was actually a location for Dex and his spies to keep tabs on everyone.
When she thought of all the things that went on behind the scenes of the world, stuff most people would never imagine, her stomach knotted.
The elevator doors closed, and they began to rise.
“No.” Dex’s voice was oddly tender. “I don’t have the results, and I didn’t run the test already. I told you that taking the test without your permission was something I didn’t feel right doing.”
“One line you didn’t cross?”
“With you, it seems there are more lines than you’d expect.”