by J. M. Madden
Did she ever. She’d always loved this car. They’d made a lifetime of memories in that backseat. “’67 Ford Mustang Fastback. New paintjob?”
“A darker black,” he explained and wiped at some cottonwood seeds that had landed on the fender. “Like my soul.”
“You poor, misunderstood, and tortured man.” She patted his cheek and smiled sweetly.
Although he wore a stern expression, his gaze softened. One trail of kisses along that fierce jaw, one whisper in his ear of what she’d like to do to him, and his precious control would shatter. She knew the power she had over men, especially this man. Unfortunately, he had even more power over her, and better control.
His dark eyes glistened as he assessed her. He grabbed her hand and held it as he opened the door. Once he helped her in, he finally released it and shut the door. She’d missed that, having a man insist on holding doors for her. Nash had always treated her like a lady, even though she didn’t act like one most of the time. He made her want to act like one.
* * *
“Well, this is fun.” Mike blew out a breath, bored out of her mind. They’d been driving around the city in the stifling heat all day. She loved the classics, but right now, she’d love a car with air-conditioning more. The exhaust from the vehicles over-populating the streets had her ready to pass out. Then again, she hadn’t slept in nearly four days.
Now here they sat in a dead stop on I-5. At this rate, they’d never make it to the house Lee set up for her in Madison Park. “Are your days always this productive?”
“I’m not sure what you expected.” Nash stared straight ahead. Disappointment deepened the lines on his face. He had one arm hanging loosely out the window. After glancing in the rearview mirror, he switched lanes. It was the first time they’d moved in what felt like forever. There, they sat again. It was like being back in that sauna of a room during the simulation yesterday. No wind. Oppressive heat. No results.
Her lids sagged. Refusing to fall asleep on the job—literally—she forced them open wide and blew out another breath. How long could a person go without sleep before going insane? She had to be pushing the limit, especially since she debated scooting across the bench seat and leaning her head on his wide shoulder.
She’d already lost her mind.
“Not all days are a bust,” Nash ground out, clearly annoyed. “Today, however, was. Leonard is usually at the food truck on Wednesdays. He moves around a lot, pushing his wheelchair up and down the waterfront, looking for recyclables to turn into cash. We’ll look for him tomorrow.”
Great. Another day of driving around without AC, searching for people who didn’t want to be found. It was like being deployed all over again. She’d spent the better part of her days driving around the Middle East in full gear and in vehicles with no AC. It was triple digits in the shade over there.
It felt like that now.
“Are you asleep?”
The sound of his voice jolted her awake. Damn it. She glanced around and sighed. They’d barely moved. “I’m fine.”
“When was the last time you slept?”
“I said I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked. Seriously, Mike. You look exhausted. Just what do they have you doing at that agency?”
She pulled her hair out of the roll she’d spent so much time perfecting this morning. With the windows down, the wind blowing her hair around all day, the style didn’t resemble anything close to what it had.
“Why aren’t you talking?” Nash wouldn’t let up.
“When I have something to say, I’ll talk.” Within a minute, her lids slid closed. She shook her head to wake up. Maybe if he kept talking, she’d stay awake. “Why don’t you talk?”
Cool purpose shined in Nash’s eyes. “Tell me why you left.”
“Not this again. Come on, Nash.”
“What? We’re alone. We have nothing but time as we move slower than snails. You want me to talk? This is me talking.”
“I don’t have the energy to deal with this right now.” She pressed her lips together. Damn him for bringing it up. She didn’t want to talk about it. Then. And now.
“Give me something,” he said quietly, his tone sharp. “God help me, Mike. Nothing you say can be any worse than what I’ve already thought.”
Escape. How could she admit the real reason to him? The terrifying reality of what a life with him entailed if everything had worked out? She checked her watch. If they didn’t find a way to Madison Park away from the freeway, she’d miss her rendezvous with Lee. The punishment for missing an RV would be worse than telling an instructor at Gahanna to get bent. She knew firsthand the trouble she got in for the latter.
“Mike!”
She jerked awake. “What?”
“Fine. Sleep.” The tinge of regret in his voice sliced through her heart. It wasn’t fair to him, holding in all the reasons she couldn’t bear to stay. The past. The future. The life. The death.
She couldn’t face it. She couldn’t face him. So, she left.
“I’m sorry, Nash.”
He worked his jaw as he kept his attention on the road, fighting to keep his expression blank. “For?”
“Everything.”
“Bullshit.” He tightened his grip on the steering wheel before tossing her a half-angry look. “If you were, you’d tell me why you really left. It wasn’t because you lost the baby, so quit using that as a fucking excuse and be honest for a change.”
Mike stared back at him in shock. In anger and betrayal. Her breath hitched as the emotions flooded, closing her throat. He’d never said it to her face, not like that. A heavy weight settled in her chest as his expression darkened. His brow snapped into a frown. He flicked a quick glance her way. She blinked, sending the burning tears down her cheeks.
“Son of a bitch.” He whipped the car across the lanes, earning him honks and yells from other drivers, and took the exit. They didn’t talk again until he’d pulled up to the address Lee gave her as the RV point. Nash parked the car against the curb and rested his forearm on the steering wheel. Lowering his head, he glanced out the passenger window. “Nice place. They won’t spring for a car, but they’ll put you up in a mansion? You’ve got quite an agency behind you.”
“Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She stepped out and craned her neck to take it all in. This was where TREX wanted her to live for the duration of the find? Holy hell. It was huge. And beautiful. Could she keep it after they got their intel?
Nash pulled away from the curb, chirping the tires as he sped off. With a sigh she felt clear to her bones, she dragged herself up to the door and stopped. Tomorrow, she’d deal with Nash. Tonight, she’d debrief as fast as she could before she collapsed. Should she knock? What if she had the wrong house? She couldn’t just walk in.
“I’m waiting,” Lee barked from somewhere inside. She opened the door and scurried in, closing it behind her before removing her shoes. “I’m in the kitchen.”
Impersonal pictures lined the hall connecting the foyer with the rest of the house. It opened to an enormous living room with expensive furniture centered toward a giant, flat screen TV. Double glass doors on the opposite wall opened to what looked like a giant backyard. When Lee cleared his throat, she turned to the right and hurried toward the kitchen.
Spotting him, she smiled and quickly took a seat next to him at the kitchen table. “This place is huge.”
“I’ll draw you a map so you can find your way around.” He shuffled papers in front of him, searching for something. “It’s the same layout as mine next door.”
“You live next door?”
He barely moved as he lifted his gaze. That look, right there, was why she didn’t like to talk. The fear of sounding like a bumbling airhead kept her lips sealed. When she forgot to engage the brain, shit like asking him a question after he’d just answered it came out.
“How’d your first day go?”
“It went.”
Dropping the pape
rs, he gave her that look again. “Care to elaborate?”
“Not really.”
“Do it anyway.”
“We sat in traffic. A lot. Talked with some CIs. No one knows anything.”
“They know,” he corrected in a grumble and leaned back. “They’re scared. These guys aren’t going to think twice about silencing anyone and everyone causing them trouble. They’ve done it before. That’s why it’s critical we get that intel from Nash. Did you get anywhere?”
“You told me not to talk about it the first day, that I needed to get him to trust me, first.”
“We’ll never get through all these leads in time.” He shook his head. Grabbing the papers, he held them up. “That’s what all this is. Five months ago, we busted a ring using a Live Action Role Playing game as cover for smuggling in cash.”
“That’s a thing?”
“It’s called LARPing. See all the things you learn as a TREX agent?”
“I’ll be ready for Jeopardy in no time.”
Lee chuckled and shuffled the papers. “Look at all these goddamn things. We’ll never stop whatever the Order has planned if we have to hit them one at a time. That damn pain in the ass society is gearing up for something big. The leads the SBI are chasing down? Only half of them. This,” he paused and held up the stack, “is the other half. That’s why it’s so critical to get our hands on that intel. Whether he knows it or not, Nash holds the key to cutting through all the bullshit dead ends.”
“Can’t we just bring him in?” She scooped up some of the papers and glanced them over.
“He’s not TREX. It’s against protocol.”
“Fu—” she stopped herself. Weber warned her to clean up her language. She cussed more than Nash, and the man cussed for five minutes straight without repeating a single word, so that said something. “Is protocol more important than the mission?”
“Mike, choose your battles. You’re fresh from Gahanna. You don’t know the metric shit ton of trouble you’ll get in if you push this.”
“But, it’s wrong.”
“It’s life,” he snapped, his dark eyes hardening along with his expression. “Quit whining and TREX up. If you find fault with everything you come across, you’re in for a very long ride or a very short career with this agency.”
Jesus, when he put it that way, it made her look like a rookie. Then again, she was a rookie. What did he expect? She’d received minimal information at the briefing. A lot of don’ts and not a whole lot of do’s. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s it? No more argument?”
“Would it do me any good?”
“No.”
She shrugged and dropped her gaze to the papers. Redactions put it mildly. There were more blacked out than readable lines. How did TREX make sense of any of it? Then again, maybe that was where Nash came in.
“Why do you think the director assigned you to me as your handler?” His question drew her attention. She waited for him to go on. He sighed before he did. “You don’t talk much. I get people to talk. It made sense to pair us up. I have a reputation at the SPD. I can get any perp to crack. My methods of interrogation are very effective. Weber says I rival the agent in charge of TREX Team One in my success rate.”
“I’m not a perp.” She returned her attention to the papers. There had to be something in here about the intel they wanted. She needed something to go on. Approaching Nash blind would be her first mistake. Strike that. Approaching him at all was her first mistake. Tricking him into divulging his intel would be the next. She had to find a way to pull him in, with or without TREX’s support.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Loud and clear, sir.” She grabbed the next paper and read the words still showing. One name caught her attention. “Who’s Belechek?”
“Where do you see his name?” He took the paper she offered and centered in on the name. “Son of a bitch. They missed one.”
That got her attention. She perked up and leaned in. “Was his name supposed to be redacted? Who is he? Is he part of the Order?”
“That’s the most I’ve heard you talk yet,” he quipped. “Since they left the name, Weber can’t scream at me for revealing any classified intel. Belechek is the Order—or at least he’s trying to be. He’s buying up a bunch of land in Montana to build a casino as big as a city. We think it’s to reestablish the secret society. When we busted up the drug ring five years ago, it dried up their cash flow. It choked out the Order to the point several powerful men broke away from the society to create their own. They fought against each other for a while, which didn’t hurt our feelings any. When they crossed the line, we took them down. The bust TREX did earlier this year uncovered yet another plot. The society was smuggling cash into the country via freighter and trucking it to Montana to fund the project. Now that we’re watching the borders, they’ve circled back to what they know—drugs.”
“Which is where Nash comes in.” She made the logical conclusion. As an SBI agent in the narcotics unit, it made sense he’d know about the drugs. Why would he withhold intel on this or anything else? They were on the same side. Something else was going on. She knew Nash, knew how fierce he held to his beliefs. He was nothing if not committed to making the world a better place, at any cost. “What’s the Order have planned?”
“World domination.” He stood and went to the fridge, pulling out two beers. After tossing the caps into the trash, he returned and set one in front of her. “Four years ago, we almost lost one of our best TREX agents to these bastards. Ever heard of Spencer Allen? He’s the Special Agent in Charge of TREX Team Two.”
“The spec ops unit?”
“TREX has two. Team One is led by David Snyder. Allen and Snyder are Weber’s second-in-command. Snyder is more of a planning and logistics guy, whereas Allen is more an operations and action guy. With all the bullshit going on in the world, there’s talk of starting up a third and maybe even a fourth unit.”
That caught her attention. She’d love to be spec ops. There was an opening on Team Two since one of the agents transferred to a sideline division after a spine injury confined him to a wheelchair. The list was a mile long of agents in line trying for his position on the team. As a recent graduate of basic, she wasn’t even eligible until she went through the grueling field agent training. Only a handful of those were accepted into the Special Operations for Land, Air, and Sea. SOLAS training took over a year to complete. Even then, it didn’t guarantee the agent a spot on one of the spec op units. With only six per team, the chances of getting in were next to nothing with only two units. But four? Where did she sign up?
Now wasn’t the time to think about career opportunities. She had to focus on completing her first mission before jumping into something as dedicated as being a spec ops agent. “I still don’t see how Nash’s intel is the key. Sounds like TREX already knows Belechek is behind it.”
“The senator never gets his hands dirty.”
“Belecheck is a senator?” Holy shit. This just got a whole lot bigger. She grabbed her beer and took a long pull. The cold liquid felt so good going down.
“And a slippery bastard,” Lee added with a snarl and grabbed his beer, pointing the neck at her. “That’s where Nash comes in. We need to get at his CI, but he won’t tell us who it is.”
“We hit up all but one. Some guy by the name of—”
“Leonard. Already picked him up. He doesn’t know anything.”
That explained why Nash and Mike couldn’t find him today. TREX already had him in custody. “That’s all his CIs. We checked with the others today.”
Lee shook his head. “He’s hiding one. I want to know why this one is different. Get me the name of his CI, Mike. TREX will do the rest. We just need a name. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
FIVE
Nash had to hand it to himself. He didn’t think he’d be able to drive away from Mike last night. The knowledge that the giant house was probably lined with TREX agents hel
ped.
And she was one of them. He still hadn’t wrapped his brain around that one.
Standing at the coffee machine, stirring sugar into the piss water the bureau called coffee, he contemplated his next move. Having her partner with him only slowed him down. He wanted to get his hands on the ringleader and couldn’t do that without putting her in danger.
Then again, she was TREX now. They went looking for danger. That meant she’d be able to handle the pressure. He hoped. Dear God, how he hoped. If having her with him somehow got her hurt, he’d never forgive himself.
What was he thinking? She’d always been able to take on more than he could. This would be no different. They had one more CI to track down before he contemplated pulling out his secret weapon.
He knew what TREX wanted, and they wouldn’t get it. No one would. Nash would take the identity of his true confidential informant to the grave. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. Using Mike against him was a nice play. Futile, but nice.
“Mike!” Director Lawson greeted her like a damn kid would his favorite teacher, with a little too much excitement and an underlying energy a kid would never understand. Nash rolled his eyes and growled deep in the back of the throat. When the director pointed him out and stepped aside, granting Mike a direct path, Nash’s growl became more pronounced.
Today she had on a pair of snug black jeans that hugged the curve of her ass and a sleeveless, button-up shirt that had too many buttons fastened. Even with how little skin she showed, he still reacted, his slacks a little tighter. She smiled as she made her way over, but the nervousness in her pretty features cracked her façade.
He shifted just as she rounded the counter so she wouldn’t see how obvious his body responded to the sight of her. Ignoring her as she stood there waiting for him to acknowledge her, Nash added more sugar to his coffee and slowly stirred.
Instead of her getting pissed, she used her hip to bump him out of the way and grabbed a mug to pour herself a cup. Coffee sloshed all over his hand. He cussed and flicked his fingers to remove what he could before glaring at her when she handed him a napkin. “A little jumpy this morning? Maybe you should switch to decaf.”