Absolute Trust

by Piper J. Drake

  “Anything we can do?” Forte was glad Ky was continuing. Others might stop at the surface reasons and decide they had enough of the truth to call it a day. Not Ky.

  “Keep our friend hidden.” Ky was sober, sincere. “There’s no way the former employer had the knowledge or skills to be directly responsible for either the car bomb or breaking into her apartment.”

  Forte did his best to keep his own tone light. “Is there evidence your man hired someone else to go after our friend? Is there any connection?”

  Ky would look into Labs-Anders Corporation and understand why Forte was asking. And then the police officer would tie in the evidence he had, hopefully.

  “I’ve got some e-mail exchanges, but it’s like one side of a conversation. The other party was good about trimming e-mail threads and hiding their tracks on their ends.” Ky sighed. “So this former employer is responsible for searching for a fix to his problem, but it looks like he contacted a vendor to design and execute the solution.”

  “A vendor.” Forte heard the word “mercenary” even though it went unspoken. If Ky had intended to indicate hired muscle, he’d have just said so. But a vendor tended to respond to requests for proposal and work via contracted agreement.

  For a few moments, Forte considered Raul Sa’s mercenary squad. The man had been very eager to help. But, no, mercenary teams tended to develop defining characteristics. Beckhorn would’ve sent Forte, Cruz, and Rojas a red flag instead of a recommendation if Sa’s mercenary squad was the type to take on shady jobs like eliminating a civilian like Sophie.

  “Please let me know if you gather enough to identify the vendor.” Forte made the request pleasant, but he was already looking into Labs-Anders Corporation. The thing about his kinds of connections was that years could go by, but good friends never forgot. He’d be able to reconnect. And if he didn’t find what he was looking for, Cruz and Rojas had their networks, too.

  The importance of Ky’s investigation was to cover the legal side of things.

  “I’ll keep you up to date.” Ky paused. “Will you do the same, in a timely manner?”

  Forte hesitated to answer. He wouldn’t lie to Ky, and he would’ve definitely shared any information he found eventually. But Ky’s definition of timely and his were almost assuredly not in alignment in this situation. “I hear Labs-Anders Corporation is a vendor that doesn’t like dogs. I’d have to think hard about working with them.”

  A few months ago, Cruz had run across a military contract organization in the process of forming. The highest-ranking individuals were building their mercenary group carefully and taking steps to ensure they had potential international contracts in place when they eventually did establish the organization officially. At least one SEAL team, probably more, had found themselves in a questionable circumstance and pressured into committing to more than just their service in the military. At times like those, right and wrong weren’t easy to identify. They were hazy, gray areas. A man did his best to make a decision he could live with, even if that decision wasn’t ethically ideal.

  Forte had been caught in several moments like that, when he’d had to make choices where there was no simple right or wrong. He could live with the decisions he’d made, but they definitively ensured he was going to hell.

  If he’d chosen to go private after he’d retired from active duty, he’d have gone further down the rabbit hole. Decisions would’ve gotten easier because the darker it got, the less a person looked for the light of doing the right thing. It was easier to just complete the mission and let someone else decide if it was right or wrong.

  He hadn’t wanted to take the easy route.

  But that didn’t mean there weren’t a lot of other men out there who had chosen that path.

  “Cruz should probably check and see if that vendor is involved in this particular project,” Forte said finally.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Let’s go for a walk.”

  Sophie sat up as Brandon eased out from under her on the couch. They’d sat in silence for a few minutes after he’d ended the call with Ky. “Are you going to contact Alex and David?”

  Brandon rose to his feet and held out a hand to her. “Yup. But we can do that as we walk. Then I’m going to need to leave you for a short while to ditch this phone.”

  He had an almost expressionless look on his face. Only she noted the way his lips pressed together slightly and his eyes were narrowed just a bit more than his normal expression. He was thinking, hard.

  “Things are getting more complicated, aren’t they?” She took his hand and let him pull her up to stand next to him.

  “How’s the ankle?”

  Oh, he could sidestep the conversation some, but she wouldn’t let him get away with it for long.

  “Better. It didn’t hurt at all in the few minutes of stretching I just did, and I’ve got no problems standing.” She headed over to the door where her sneakers were waiting and slid her left foot into one. “Why?”

  “Because we’ll be walking a short distance, and I want to be sure you’re up for it.” Brandon joined her.

  She glanced at Haydn and his prosthetic left paw. “Where he can go, I can go.”

  Brandon chuckled. “Probably not quite yet, but we can use that as a rule of thumb if you want.”

  She didn’t respond as they headed outside.

  It was a beautiful morning, actually. The sun was beginning to rise up over the trees and filter through the leaves. Brandon led her around to the back of the cabin and directly into the woods.

  “This isn’t a stroll for the fun of it, is it?” She picked her way across the wooded ground, wincing as branches cracked under her steps. Haydn was managing better than she was, keeping pace easily with Brandon.

  “Well, it’s a nice walk. And it’s always good to have options in case things come up.” Brandon’s attention was on the woods around them, his gaze scanning the area as they made their way slowly along. “So I’d like you to remember where we’re going so you can find your way back again.”

  Ah. She tried to look up more often and take note of unusual trees or shrubs as cues to mentally mark their path. “This seems easy to navigate.”

  Brandon nodded. “If something comes up and I tell you to run, this is the way I’d like you to take if you can.”

  “I’d be making a ton of noise.” Didn’t seem like the best way to bolt if she was running away from someone.

  “You’d be making a lot of noise no matter where you went.” Brandon paused and held out his hand to her to help her over a log. “The idea here is for us both to know which way you’re going and be familiar with what’s going to be around you. It’ll give me a better chance to take out whatever is pursuing you if I know your route.”

  Okay, that made more sense than a simple escape plan.

  “You do run faster than I do.” And Haydn did, too.

  In fact, both Haydn and Brandon were moving through the woods more quietly than she was managing. With or without the awkward medical boot encasing her right ankle and foot, she was managing to step on every dry twig in this entire forest.

  “I wish I could be more capable.” She hated being helpless. So far in this, she’d treated it like a mini vacation. It’d been easy to pretend Brandon was a super thoughtful boyfriend spoiling her with this retreat tucked out of the way. In reality, he was working to keep her alive. “You’ve taken care of everything, and I’ve done nothing useful at all.”

  They crossed a small creek bed, dried up but still there. As they reached the top of the slight rise, Brandon turned to face her. “You’ve been cooperative. You listen. You ask intelligent questions. That’s more than most people could manage. This isn’t exactly something they prepare people for in college.”

  She huffed out a laugh and closed her eyes. Tiredness washed over her in a wave. “I’m an accountant. There can’t be many other things in this world more normal and more boring. I think I got more preparation for this situation back when I was
in the Girl Scouts than I did in college.”

  Brandon nodded. “No one expects to be in this kind of situation. It’s amazing you’re not still in denial. But you didn’t waste precious time that way. You accepted what was happening and you did what I asked so I could keep you safe. You’re still doing it.”

  And he would save her, over and over again. She believed that with every cell in her body.

  “You wouldn’t lie to me.” She looked up into his eyes, a striking combination of gold and green in the changing light. “You said we had to do this, so we are.”

  He reached out, gathered her into his arms. When he spoke, his voice was so intense it cracked. “Your faith in me is unbelievable.”

  “I don’t know why someone is trying to kill me,” she whispered into his chest. “I don’t know what I saw in those client files, but that has to be it, right? The reason I got fired, too.”

  Ky thought so. She’d heard the conversation, and if Brandon thought a…vendor…was after her, then her employer had hired professionals to kill her. If it hadn’t been for Brandon and Haydn, she’d have died in her car and no one would’ve known it’d been anything but a freak accident. People would’ve shaken their heads and missed her, maybe, but they wouldn’t have imagined it could’ve been anything but coincidental.

  Brandon continued to hold her close. “We thought it could’ve been because you knew me, Rojas, and Cruz. We haven’t exactly been making friends over the last year, and someone could’ve been targeting you to get at us. There’s people out there watching us.”

  She drew her head back so she could look up into his face. “If you blame each other, you have to blame Elisa and Lyn, too. And don’t you dare feel bad or sorry because I care about all of you. I wouldn’t give up a single one of your friendships for anything.”

  He bent his head and pressed his lips against hers.

  She clung to him, opened, so he could send them drowning in this newfound thing between them.

  A few moments later she was breathless, and his voice wasn’t exactly steady, either. “It makes it simpler to know it was your boss who hired somebody. Now that we know who to look at, we can find the connection to whoever is coming after you. It’s a matter of timing now. Either we find them first and you’ll be fine, or they’ll find us and I’ll need to take them out here.”

  He made it sound straightforward, but she turned over the possibilities in her head. “What if you don’t find who is coming after me, though? What if they break off and don’t come after us here? We can’t stay here forever.”

  She was enjoying it. She was. But she wouldn’t hide much longer. There were practical things to think about, like how much this was costing.

  “I need to get back to the real world, get a new job.” She fretted about the cost now that she was thinking about it. “I’ll want to pay you back and then there’s fixing my apartment back up.”

  And when they returned, would this thing between them still be real?

  “Sophie. I want you to listen and not answer right away. Just think about what I’m about to ask you.” Brandon released her and gently grasped her upper arms instead. “This might not end. You might have to start over. Would you consider the pros and cons of disappearing, letting the world think you are dead?”

  The concept shocked her.

  “You mean you might not catch the person trying to kill me.” She forced the thought out.

  “Or you might have to testify against your employer and go into protective custody.” Brandon’s tone was gentle. “There are a lot of reasons to be legally dead. It’s a lot better than letting someone actually kill you.”

  No! She didn’t want to disappear. “My family.”

  “Would be hurt. They couldn’t know.”

  “My friends.” Hot tears burned as they fell down her cheeks.

  “Not even Elisa or Lyn or Boom could know.” His tone was grim. “They’d be the first anyone would look at to try to find you.”

  “What’s the point of living if everything you care about is gone?” She didn’t want to be practical or reasonable about this. Her heart was breaking into pieces and it wasn’t fair.

  What was worse, she hated herself for indulging in being counterproductive.

  Elisa had left everything behind, but that was because she’d hated the life she’d had and wanted to build herself a new one.

  Sophie loved her life.

  This was a completely different scenario. And she hadn’t made the choice to give up her life; she’d been chased out of it. Why? Because she was good at her job? Because she was friends with wonderful people?

  “I’d go with you, Sophie. You wouldn’t be alone,” Brandon promised her.

  She shook her head blindly. “The kennels. The dogs.”

  He tugged her close, his strong arms wrapping around her. “I’d start over again with you.”

  How could her heart expand so much to hear those words and break at the same time?

  She melted into him, pressing her face into the hard planes of his chest and leaning into his strength. Extending her arms around his waist, she held him to her every bit as much as he crushed her to him.

  “Sophie.” He whispered her name into her hair, and the darkness in his voice sent delicious shivers over her skin.

  She tilted her face upward, and his mouth covered hers. His kiss was hungry, demanding. But she had some demands of her own to make, and she nipped at the corner of his mouth until he paused.

  “Haydn’s still here.” First order of business. No watchers. Even in the woods.

  Brandon’s eyes were stormy, but he gave her a squeeze and let her go. “Haydn, hier.”

  The two of them crossed the creek bed and disappeared. Brandon returned alone a minute later. “He’ll stand guard at a distance. No one will sneak up on us.”

  She laughed, half full of nerves and half eager. “You said that the first time, out in the woods behind our houses.”

  His gaze was steady on hers. “Yeah, and no one did.”

  The first time. Their first.

  Her first.

  It’d been the week of graduation, only a few days before they’d finished high school.

  He was so many firsts for her, she didn’t want to think anymore. She closed the distance between them and gripped the hem of his shirt. “Off.”

  It was her second demand. Because this time, she wanted to take the lead.

  Brandon complied, wordless, with the sexiest hint of a smile playing over those incredibly kissable lips of his. He didn’t just drop his shirt, though; he knelt and spread it out on the forest floor at the foot of the big tree next to her.

  Still kneeling, he ran his hands up the sides of her legs. “Do you want the boot off?”

  “Yes.” Staring down at him, everything inside her burned hotter. She placed her hands on his shoulders as he helped her out of her medical boot, then her other normal shoe.

  He gripped her thighs then, looking up at her. “Do you want to walk back with no pants, or do we take these off carefully?”

  Another choice. The first option tempted her far more than she’d anticipated. But…

  “Pants. I want pants when we walk back.” That was about the end of her capacity for rational thought at the moment.

  He slid her pants down her legs, pressing a trail of searing kisses along her bare skin as he revealed it. Once she stepped out of them, she decided to push again. “Yours, too.”

  “Yes.” He gave her the simple word and rose smoothly. His gaze never left hers as he unbuttoned his pants, pushed them down, and stepped out of them. When he straightened, standing there naked, she couldn’t help staring at his very tempting erection.

  She reached out and wrapped her hands around the length of him. He groaned as she caressed his shaft, cupped his balls. Their first time, she hadn’t had the courage to do this. And now, she wanted to take every advantage. She took her time to enjoy the texture of his skin and played with the tip of his penis, trying to
find the most sensitive spot.

  Brandon groaned. “Do you still want your shirt on?”

  She let go of his erection for a moment to run her hands over his abs and chest. “No.”

  She wanted skin to skin.

  He helped her out of her shirt. Her bra followed a second later and she pressed her bare breasts against his torso, enjoying the tease of the sparse hair across his chest on her nipples.

  His hands wandered over her upper arms, her shoulders, her back. He pressed his lips into her hair but let her continue to do as she pleased. And she wanted to taste him.

  She started with soft kisses across his chest. She flicked one of his nipples with her tongue, making him chuckle. Smiling, she made her way down his front, spending time kissing every inch along the V down to his groin.

  She nuzzled his penis, enjoying the way it teased him into burying his hands into her hair, then she took as much of him into her mouth as she could, all at once.

  “Sophie!” Her name fell from his lips in a gasp.

  She steadied herself with one hand on his thigh and worked his shaft with her tongue, enjoying the ultra smoothness of his skin.

  “Let me taste you, too, before I lose it.” Brandon’s voice was coarse with need. “This time, you’re going to come first.”

  He wasn’t including their recent encounter. He was thinking back to their first time as much as she was.

  “Every time with you has been good.” She backed away with one parting lick to the tip of his cock. Sitting back on the shirt he’d laid out, she watched in anticipation as he knelt before her.

  He licked his lips as he gently pressed her knees apart and looked her directly in the eyes as he slid his hands under her behind. “There’s no one around. You can enjoy all you want. As loud as you want.”

  She started to respond, but he ducked his head between her legs and ran his tongue the length of her.