by Cynthia Eden
I trusted Chase. Chase was going to help me.
“I asked for Eric’s best undercover operative. A man who could get in—fast—and make an instant connection with the target.”
Vivian flinched. I’m the target.
“The undercover operative had to be good at finding weak spots.” Dex’s words battered at her. “We were working against the clock, and I needed someone who could get to your secrets right away. We were operating under the assumption that you would be selling the intel at any moment, so you can see where time was of the essence.”
She forced her gaze to Chase. “He’s lying.” It was supposed to be a statement, but it came out more like a desperate question. She pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t say, Please, please, tell me he’s lying. Please tell me that you haven’t been playing me all along.
But Chase didn’t say that Dex was lying. Instead, he just said, “I’m sorry.”
Vivian’s shaking fingers lifted to smooth over her left eyebrow.
“Ahem.” Dex’s throat clearing was overly loud and obviously designed to get her attention again. But she didn’t look his way. She kept staring at Chase even as her hand slowly lowered.
I’m sorry. That rough apology echoed in her ears.
“Eric sent in his best undercover agent, and Chase’s basic job was to find enough evidence so that I could lock you away for the rest of your life,” Dex concluded. “But, hey, looks like instead of handling that particular order of business, he managed to save your life. So, again, I’ll go back to my previous statement of…this is a win.” He paused. “Now that we’re caught up on everything, are we all good?”
Good? “Not even close,” she managed. She kept staring at Chase. He was gazing at her with his golden eyes, so intent and focused, and an emotionless mask had slipped over his face. “Say something.”
“I did,” Dex pointed out. “I just told you the important pieces, and now we should really go someplace private so that you can tell me more about this intriguing scramble of yours. The others in this office don’t quite have the clearance to hear what you’ve got to tell me so we need to separate from them.” He put his hand on her shoulder.
She stiffened.
“Remove the damn hand,” Chase gritted out.
“Oh, sorry, did you not get the memo?” Dex asked, all fake polite. He didn’t remove his hand. “I don’t need your services any longer. I can take over from here on out.”
Ice poured through her veins. She’d thought Chase was perfect. One of the good guys. She should have known those didn’t exist, at least, not for her. In some ways, she was too much like her mother. “You lied to me?”
A muscle flexed along Chase’s jaw. “Let me explain.”
“Yes or no.” It was simple.
“I was doing my job.”
His job. His job had been to find evidence against her. His job had been to lock her up.
Her gaze darted to the others in the room. They were all studying her with different expressions. Suspicion. Wariness. And the detective—that was sympathy in her eyes.
The sympathy hurt most of all because it told Vivian that this woman—this stranger she’d just met—felt sorry for her. The whole tangled mess was true. Chase wasn’t the sexy neighbor who liked her, who wanted to date her, who was charming and easy going. He wasn’t there to help. Or to protect.
He’d been sent to destroy her, and she’d been so desperate that she’d fallen right into his hands.
“We need to talk,” Chase told her. “Alone.”
Vivian shook her head. “No.” He couldn’t give yes or no answers, but she could.
“Yes.” A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I thought you were innocent. Hell, pretty much from the first moment I met you, I thought that. I didn’t want to lock you up. I did want to help you.”
“Ah, yeah…” For the first time, Merik spoke up.
Her head turned toward him. The friend who’d helped Chase move into his place, except he wasn’t just a friend, was he? “You’re another Wilde operative?”
“Guilty.” A wince. “But, I swear, Chase has been spouting off about you being innocent. I could tell he didn’t like the mission, but it had to be done. He didn’t want to scare you, but he had a job to do.”
Scare you. “What do you mean?”
“Uh…” Merik’s stare snapped to Chase. “I’m talking about when he had to break the lock on your door that first day. It was just a trick, you know, to make you think that someone had been trying to get inside. The order came from—”
“Me,” Dex cut in. “I make no apologies. You needed to know that you were in danger, and the broken lock clearly showed that—”
The last bit of hope that she’d been holding onto faded away. Once more, she found herself staring at the stranger called Chase. “You broke into my apartment.”
His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “I broke the lock, but—”
She couldn’t take any more. Pain was knifing through her. She could barely breathe. And the betrayal, God, it hurt. She broke away from Dex—he’d still had his hand wrapped around her shoulder—and she ran out of the office. She didn’t know where she was going. She just could not stand there another moment.
She didn’t want Chase to see her cry.
***
There had been tears in Vivian’s eyes. Tears. “Vivian!” Chase lunged after her.
But Dex grabbed him. “Yeah, that’s gonna be a no.” He shook his head. “Told you—quite clearly—you are off the case now. I’ll go after her and—”
“I’ll go after her,” Layla Lopez shoved past them. “You idiots have done more than enough already.”
But she’d had tears in her eyes. “Layla—”
She paused in the open doorway. “You hurt her. I get that you were doing your job. Trust me, I’ve been there myself. But she felt something for you. You might have been playing her, but to that woman, it was real. Now her pain is real. She doesn’t want to talk to you right now. I can help.”
You hurt her.
Layla hurried out of the office.
Chase stood there and felt like his own heart had been ripped right out of his chest. It should have been a job. It should have been easy.
Nothing had been easy. Not since he’d looked into a pair of deep green eyes and the whole world had seemed to stop spinning.
You might have been playing her, but to that woman, it was real. “No,” he snapped.
“Uh, no what?” Dex wanted to know. “No to you being off the case? Because that’s pretty much a non-negotiable point with me.”
Chase’s gaze cut to him. Dex. When the jerk had finally revealed his name, things had clicked for Chase. He knew he was dealing with Dexter Ryan, the guy Eric had told him about before. Only Eric forgot to tell me what a giant asshat the man is. “I’m not off the case.”
Dex shrugged. “It’s nothing personal, truly. If you must know, I recently had to deal with another guy who went off the deep end for a woman, and I’ve got to say, it was a very eye-opening experience for me.” He wiggled his brows. “Hate to say it, but I’m seeing all kinds of warning signs with you. FYI, I am not here to pull you out when you decide to jump in that deep end.”
Chase glared at the SOB. “You don’t know me.”
“Actually, I have extensively read your file.” Dex crossed his arms over his chest. Nodded all sage-like. “When my bro Eric came up with the idea of using you, I had to make sure you were the right man for the job.”
Eric coughed. “I am not your bro. We are barely friends.”
“What?” Dex appeared offended. “Have you forgotten what I did for you? How I saved you?”
“I saved you.”
A nod. “Because we’re friends.” The words were light, but his gray eyes were hard on Chase. “You’re good at undercover work. Got a long history of success. I knew I could count on you to get close to Vivian, and apparently, you did.”
“I’ll agree to that,” Merik mumb
led.
Chase’s fury sparked on him. “You didn’t help anything tonight.”
Merik’s hands flew into the air. “I was trying to help! Look, the woman has to see that you were just doing your job. I told her that you didn’t think she was guilty. You put your eyes on her, you tasted her brownies—”
“He tasted her what?” Dex asked.
“And you fell hard,” Merik continued heatedly. “So hard that I was afraid you weren’t seeing clearly. I thought she was tricking you. But then you made me start to wonder. Hell, maybe she is as good as she seems.”
She is. Only I’m not good. I’m a bastard straight to my core.
“Let’s all take a breath here,” Dex said as he closed the door. Then put his back against it. His mocking mask had faded, and he suddenly seemed dead serious. “First, let’s get this particular stuff straight. Vivian Wayne is not one hundred percent in the clear. I’d say it’s looking more like sixty percent she’s not guilty.”
“Are you shitting me?” Chase snarled.
“I shit you not.”
“She was almost killed tonight! Someone broke into her place—”
Dex pointed at him. “I thought that was you—”
“It damn well was not! I jacked up her lock, yes, but that same night, someone else came back. The only reason the joker didn’t get inside was because I’d changed the lock. He had a key to her old lock. I chased him off.”
“Chased him, but didn’t catch him?”
“No,” Chase barked. “I didn’t.” He huffed out a hard breath. “Then there was the elevator. It stopped when she was in it.”
Merik moved closer. “It’s an old elevator. Building manager said it needed updates. That incident could have been just chance. We don’t know that was a deliberate attack on her.”
Eric had closed in, too. His brows rose as he assessed Chase. “You think the elevator was deliberate, though.”
“Damn straight, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because it was what she feared.” His hands had fisted.
“I don’t follow,” Eric said.
“She’s afraid of the dark and of tight, enclosed spaces. That’s not the kind of shit you find in a file. It’s something you discover when you know someone personally.” That was what made him so damn nervous. “The perp setting her up? I think he has to be someone she’s personally involved with now—or someone she was involved with in the past. Someone who would have a key to her place. Someone who would know her secret fears. Someone who was fucking cold-blooded enough to use her fear against her.”
“I’m that cold-blooded.” Dex’s lips pulled down. “So thanks for the intel. If it becomes necessary, I can put her in a situation where she will be—”
Chase lunged for him. He grabbed Dex’s shirt and hauled him forward. “You will not fucking put her in any situation like that! You don’t hurt her. You don’t scare her. You don’t do a damn thing to her, you understand me?”
Dex just stared back at him.
“You aren’t hurting her,” Chase growled.
Dex smiled. “I don’t think you understand just who I am.”
“Sure I do.” Chase didn’t let him go. “You’re a prick who threatened Vivian. My Vivian. That shit won’t happen. You won’t hurt her. No one will hurt her, do you understand? Anyone who wants to go after her will have to deal with me.”
“That’s good to know,” Dex informed him. “Thanks so much for updating me.”
“You are a dick.” Chase shoved him away.
Dex casually straightened his shirt. “You might be surprised to hear this, but I get that a lot.”
Chapter Ten
“When a woman heads to the bathroom in an angry run, it’s typically because she wants to be alone.” Vivian gripped the edges of the sink and stared at her reflection, but she could still see Layla edging up behind her. “Do you know how many guards I had to pass to get in here?”
“Well, two guards are standing outside of the door,” Layla replied. “So I’m guessing…more than two? Because I did catch sight of a third attempting to hide near the potted plant.”
“I’m not going to try and escape from the building. I just want a few minutes of privacy.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I’m not an idiot. I know I’m not safe on my own. And if I ran from this place, I’d probably either be killed by whoever is setting me up or I’d suddenly look guilty to that Dex jerk, and then he’d send his dogs after me.”
Apparently, Chase was one of Dex’s attack dogs.
“Who, exactly, is Dex?” Layla asked her. “When I was introduced to him—which happened just a few minutes before you arrived—I got some big spiel about mystery and clearance and he flashed an ID at me so fast I couldn’t decipher anything about it.”
“I think Dex is a man with a lot of power.” The kind of power that could make people vanish.
“Yes, I do, too. And he must be legit because Eric swears that he’s known the man for years. He told me that I could trust Dex.”
Vivian met the other woman’s gaze in the mirror. “I thought I could trust Chase.”
“Yes.” Soft. “I saw that. You still have tear tracks on your cheeks, by the way. You missed some on the left side.”
She scrubbed at the left side of her face.
Layla smiled at her. “All gone.”
Vivian slowly turned to face her. “Why are you here?”
“Because the women’s restroom is a sacred environment and you didn’t want some jerk following you in this place?”
Vivian swallowed.
“Or maybe I’m here because you looked like you could use a shoulder or a hand or, you know, just someone to hear you say that Chase Durant is an unbelievable asshole.”
“Chase Durant is an unbelievable asshole.”
Layla cocked her head. “You didn’t say it like you meant it. Want to try again?”
It hurt to even say his name. “I trusted him.”
“I could see that. It might have even been more, right? That was in your eyes. In your body language. When you first came into Eric’s office, you were holding Chase’s hand as if you’d never let go. Then, whenever you felt nervous or threatened, you moved closer to him.” She blew out a long sigh. “Until you realized that he was one of the threats.”
“I was a job.”
“Yes.”
Vivian’s chest rose and fell with quick, jerky motions. “You’re a police detective.”
“Homicide. I’m the lead homicide detective in the area.”
Her eyes flared. “I haven’t killed anyone!”
“That is excellent to know, but I’m not at Wilde tonight because I think you killed someone. I’m here because Eric wanted someone he could trust to coordinate with the local authorities, and when word hit the radio about your car bomb in Marietta, he knew the PD had to be brought into the loop. If bombs were going to be exploding, if the case was that dangerous and lives were in jeopardy, cops needed to know.” A shrug of one shoulder. “I have connections in Marietta. He wanted me to smooth things over.”
Vivian wasn’t sure that she should ask exactly what those connections were.
“But smoothing things over is very different from protecting civilians. If attacks on you are going to continue, and sorry, but we all suspect they will, then you have to be moved out of the area. Staying in a busy city isn’t an option. That would put innocent lives at risk.”
“I don’t want anyone hurt because of me,” Vivian told her quietly.
“I suspected as much. The plan is to relocate you, both for your protection and for the protection of any innocents who might get caught up in this madness and become collateral damage.” Layla’s gaze turned distant. “I’ve seen that too much. I’m done with innocents dying.”
“I don’t want anyone dying because of me. That’s the last thing I want.”
“Yes, I believe that’s true, and that’s why you’ll agree to go to the safe house location, won’t you? Because y
ou want this matter sorted out. You want the perps caught. You want to clear your name. And you want to make sure that no one is caught in the crossfire.”
Vivian’s lashes flickered. “Do you think I’m innocent?”
“Honestly, I don’t know enough to say. I do know that you have to be relocated immediately. You have to be secured.”
“Secured.” Vivian considered the word. “Is that your way of saying I have to be under guard?”
“It will be for your protection.”
And it would be to make sure she didn’t betray her country.
“If you’re worried that you’ll be forced to be with Chase again, don’t be. Forget that concern. I’m sure Eric has other agents that he will assign for your protection. Dex has indicated that he wants you away from operatives at the CIA, so you will not be near any of them until this situation is contained. You’ll be protected by Wilde.”
By Wilde, but… “I…won’t be with Chase?” Vivian’s question slipped out.
Layla’s gaze sharpened. “Do you want to be with him?”
“It wasn’t real.” She had to look past the pain that pierced her. Chase had lied. Yes. The betrayal cut deep. Everything I was feeling…none of it was real. Or, at least, it hadn’t been real to him. “It’s all chemicals. High levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. They’re released when you’re attracted to someone. They make you feel happy, and dopamine in particular is tricky because it’s linked to our mate selection choices. You think it’s emotion driving you, but it’s not. It’s all chemical—”
Layla lifted her hand. “This is an interesting walk that we’re taking, but where are we going?”
Vivian pressed her lips together. Now wasn’t the time to ramble, but, God, she was so nervous. And scared. Chase would understand her spouting about dopamine. He would—
She turned back to the mirror. Stared at her reflection.
Layla watched her, then said, “If you don’t want Chase any longer, then consider your relationship with him over.”
***
“You are in my fucking way,” Chase snapped.
“Yeah, because I’m trying to stop you from running after the woman who was my chief suspect until about…oh…” Dex looked at his wrist. He wasn’t even wearing a damn watch. “An hour ago.”