by Wade, Maddie
“Difficult to tell. We should know more with the next blood count, but we try not to speculate and live every day to the fullest.”
“Yeah, I get that. If we can do anything, please let us know. We should probably get out of the way. Your mum has enough going on.”
Reid shook his head. “No, she’s loving the distraction of having everyone here.”
Blake nodded. “Well, let us know if you change your mind. Does Jack know?”
“Nah. Didn’t want to cause a fuss, and anyway, I can’t do a lot.”
“Well, we’ll call when we finish with Sally. Did you get hold of Waggs?”
“Yeah, he has it handled so I’m going to help Lopez with the background checks.”
Blake lifted his chin. “Good idea. Call if anything comes up.”
Reid lifted his hand in salute. “Of course.” He looked at Pax. “See you later, Pax.”
“Yeah, see you later, Reid.”
Pax followed Blake to the car and got in fastening her seat belt. She felt sad that Reid was shouldering things alone. So many good people around and yet hers were mostly bad. But she was lucky in some ways and seeing Nessa Reid and her stunning smile had given her a kick up the ass.
She spent way too much time feeling sorry for herself and that was going to stop right now.
Chapter Twenty-One
Deep in thought Blake took the exit towards Loma Linda, the revelation about Nessa Reid worrying for more than one reason. He was gutted for Reid and he couldn’t imagine how he would feel if it was one of his sisters. That aside, it also put Reid in the perfect position to be blackmailed.
As one of the names on the list, he had been watching Reid and had realised that on the mission where he had been injured, Reid hadn’t been accounted for. Now with Nessa being ill he wondered if Reid had a weakness that someone was exploiting. He refused to believe that Reid had just gone bad.
The man loved his family though, and Blake wasn’t sure there was anything he wouldn’t do for them. He couldn’t blame him as he would do anything for his. What he couldn’t figure out was if Reid was the mole, why he hadn’t gone to Jack. It also didn’t explain the motive behind the attacks on Eidolon.
He felt Pax’s hand on his thigh. “Blake?”
Blake tilted his head towards her. “Yes?”
“Are you all right?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, just thinking about Reid.” He didn’t add that he wasn’t thinking about Reid’s situation—well, not only that.
“Are things okay between you and Reid? You two seem…” She paused as if seeking the right word. “Tense.”
He nodded tightly. “Yes, all good.”
He looked at her and saw the hurt cross her face. She knew he had just lied to her. He wanted to take it back and tell her what was going on with Eidolon and the mole, but he’d made a promise to Jack and he took that seriously. He kept quiet and slanted a glance at Pax who was watching the cars on the opposite side of the highway. Her jaw clenched, head tilted up with pride, he could practically feel the pissed off vibe fill the vehicle.
Blake sighed. “Listen, Grace,” he started but she interrupted him holding up her hand.
“You don’t have to explain it to me. I get it. We’re not in that place yet. I am, but you obviously need more time.” Her words were short and clipped with an underlying cadence of hurt.
He wanted to kick himself for that. “I am there.” He took her hand firmly as she tried to resist. “Gracie, I am there but I can’t tell you. It’s Eidolon business and I made a promise.”
Blake glanced at her as she turned slightly towards him, her posture less tense as he spoke. “If and when I can, I’ll share but until then I ask you to give me this without reading something into it.” He kissed her knuckles. “I love that you feel we’re at the point where we share things like that. I’m definitely in that place. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to build a life with you and that includes confidences, but I can’t break this one. Even for you.”
“I understand, Blake. I guess this is new for me and I already feel so vulnerable with my family that I reacted like a shrew.”
“I would never hurt you deliberately, Grace.”
“I know.” She smiled but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
They remained silent as he drove the last five kilometres to Sally Nixon’s home. He pulled up and parked on the road beside a single storey home with an attached garage and perfectly landscaped gardens. A new Lexus was parked in the drive. He knew from the information Lopez had sent him that it was Sally Nixon’s car. He got out and moved to Pax who was already on the sidewalk.
The front door was open as they approached. Instantly, he got a bad feeling in his gut. He turned to Pax to tell her to go back to the car but that would also leave her exposed. “Stay behind me,” he said voice low as he drew his weapon and watched as she did the same.
Pax was not a marksman, but she could handle a gun well enough. Nodding, she followed as he entered. The house was eerily silent—the type of quiet that was unsettling as if all signs of life were gone from the home. It caused a shiver to snake down his spine. On soundless feet he moved down the tiled floor of the hallway, past an empty study on the right, and towards the kitchen.
He entered and his eyes found the body of a woman. A low gasp behind him confirmed his fear. It was Sally Nixon, blood pooling around her from a bullet wound to the chest and one to the head. Eyes closed in death, her face a relaxed mask.
“I need to clear the rest of the house.”
Blake felt Pax behind him as he moved from the kitchen to the bedroom wing of the property. The first two bedrooms were clear, both looked like they belonged to her younger sons. In the last bedroom he found the body of a man. He was around the same age as Sally Nixon and he presumed it was her husband.
“Marvin Nixon,” Pax whispered into the quiet of the room.
Once he had finished clearing the rooms, Blake returned to the kitchen with Pax. He knelt down close to Sally to try and get a closer look for a clue of some sort but found nothing visible.
“We need to call the police, but we should try and keep you out of this.”
Pax looked at him her head tilted in question. “Why?”
Blake stood and moved closer, until he was in her space. “If the press gets hold of this you won’t be able to move.”
He saw her think it over before she answered. “Maybe, but I owe it to Benny not to abandon his mom. I want to stay.”
“Okay, Pax,” he answered with a kiss to her forehead. “Let me have a quick look around for clues before you put in the call.”
Pax nodded and again followed him as he moved through the rooms looking for anything that could tip them off as to who’d killed the Nixons. He felt an ache in his chest as he looked at the boy’s rooms. Their lives were about to be ripped apart. He vowed to find out who killed Sally and Marvin Nixon if it was the last thing he did. Deciding there was nothing to be found without disturbing any evidence he and Pax walked back to the car and made the call to the LAPD.
It was a long three hours later after having given their statements to the homicide detective including his history in brief and Pax’s reason for being there, that they got in the car and headed back to Reid’s mom’s. He glanced across at her as she gazed out the window. She looked tired. There was a sadness surrounding her that he wanted to take away.
Reaching out, he took her hand in his and rested them both on his thigh. She looked over and offered him a smile that filled his heart with so much feeling he didn’t know where to put it all. His throat felt clogged as he tried to control his emotional response to the woman next to him. “How you doing?”
Pax shrugged. “I’m okay. I just feel sad that this has left those boys without parents and I can’t help feeling responsible. This is tied to my family and Sana in some way. I just know it is, but I can’t figure out how.”
“This is in no way your fault, Gracie.”
“I know, but
it doesn’t stop me feeling like I could have done more somehow.”
Blake was quiet for a moment before he spoke. “When I was working as a PPO I worked for the royal family. My main duty was offering personal protection for Queen Lydia and her eldest daughter Penelope. What I’m about to tell you is something I’ve never told another living soul.” He looked at her and she nodded, her attention focused on him as he spoke.
“Penelope was the first woman I ever loved.” He heard a sharp inhale and kept his eyes on the road. “We had an affair. We were both young and single, and in hindsight I was very naive to think it would ever be anything else. I fell for her hook, line, and sinker, but she thought I was fun before she settled into life as a working royal. She was due to attend an opening at a new children’s hospital and because my mind was so busy with her and not on what I was doing, the job I was paid for, I nearly missed a dangerous threat to her safety in the form of a small explosive device near the entrance.” His heart pounded as he remembered finding it and realising how close he had come to getting her killed.
“Anyway, I broke it off and I was heartbroken. Completely blamed myself. I was ready to give up there and then. Then I got a call that Her Majesty wanted to see me. I thought for sure I was fired or worse, but do you know what? She was the one person who didn’t blame me for what had nearly happened.” Blake squeezed her hand gently as he slipped onto the highway.
“What did she say?”
Blake grinned at that. “She told me that I was young and stupid, and she knew I had learned a valuable lesson. She had known about Penelope and me and in another life, would have been honoured to have me as her son-in-law but that was not the life she and her family led. I was transferred to her personal protection duty that week and served as her PPO until I left. She trusted me with her life even when I didn’t trust myself. She gave me back what I thought I had lost—my self-worth.
“So, you see, Gracie, we all do things we wish we could take back or have situations that change us but there is always someone there to show us we’re not the sum of our mistakes. We are how we handle those mistakes.”
“Why did you leave the service? It sounds like you loved it,” Pax asked as she angled more in her seat to look at him.
“The powers that be decided they wanted to mix it up, so the PPO assigned changed regularly and I vehemently disagreed. I quit and my then boss, Commander Helen Pope put me onto Jack.” The car was silent for a few minutes as Pax processed what he had said.
“Did you love her a lot?”
He could hear the slight tone of jealousy in her voice and his lips twitched as he tried to hide his joy at that. He looked at her and smiled. “I thought I did, then I met you and realised I had no clue what love was before a red headed goddess stole my heart from my chest and placed it in her own.”
The smile that moved over her face was like the sunshine after a storm it was so pure and beautiful.
He watched her open her mouth, but the words were stolen as the windshield on the car splintered into a thousand pieces as a bullet flew past his ear.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A scream erupted from her mouth as the car swerved dangerously close to the central reservation before Blake righted it.
“Get down, Grace,” he demanded on a bellow as another shot hit the hood of the car.
Pax did as she was told unclipping her seatbelt and sliding low knowing she wouldn’t be of any help to him. Her ability with a handgun was passable on a stationary object but a moving one was impossible.
She watched with her body ducked low behind the dashboard as Blake returned fire. Peeking in the direction he’d fired she saw a black Ford truck speeding away from them like the hounds of hell were following.
They fell back as Blake slowed the car and she watched as the person driving the truck took the exit. She expected Blake to follow but was surprised when he pulled over to the side of the road. Putting the vehicle in park, he turned to her and hauled her to him. His hands ran over her face and body as he looked for an injury that wasn’t there.
His movements were frantic and panicked until she cupped his face. “I’m okay, Cal.” Her gentle tone seemed to get through to him as she saw a visible shudder of relief go through him.
He took her face in his hands and dropped his mouth to hers in a soft soul-crushingly tender kiss that made the breath leave her body. It felt as if he was pouring every ounce of his feelings into her body in that second.
His head lifted and she witnessed the anguish and residual fear in his eyes. “Don’t know what I would do if something happened to you, Gracie.”
Pulse-pounding in her ears she echoed the sentiment in her mind. This man was everything to her. “I love you, Cal. You can’t get rid of me that easy.” She offered a small grin with her words.
He was still holding her face in his hands as she rested hers against them, holding his wrists and feeling the pounding of his heart in his veins. This cool-under-fire man was shaken because she had been there when they were shot at—again. “You love me, huh?” His smirk was cheeky and sexy as hell as she rolled her eyes at him.
“Okay don’t let it go to your head, stud.”
“You love me and I’m a stud. Not sure there isn’t an upside to being shot at.”
Pax scowled at him but felt it fall when she saw the trickle of blood from his neck. “You’re hurt,” she said wiping the blood with her thumb.
He rubbed his neck and shrugged at the small cut. “It’s nothing.”
He pulled away after dropping a kiss on her lips that shot straight to her core. Pax re-clipped her seat belt as Blake put the car in gear. He hadn’t returned her declaration of love per se, but she knew he cared for her. He had called her a red-haired goddess and said she’d stolen his heart so that was more than enough. She didn’t need the actual words. He had poured his heart out to her and revealed things nobody else knew. If that wasn’t an indication of how he felt, then what was?
“We need to get back and find out who the fuck is trying to kill us,” he growled as he drove towards Reid’s home.
“Us?”
“Well, those shots weren’t actually aimed at the passenger side, babe.”
Pax picked at her cuticle as he drove and mulled over what had happened in the last few hours. Finding Sally and Marvin dead would haunt her for the rest of her life. Not because seeing their dead bodies weren’t horrific because it was, but it was the feeling of loss that she couldn’t shake. The detective had called Marvin’s family and CPS to deal with the boys and her heart broke for those kids. The young lives they had led were over and they had no support from the two people they needed most.
Getting shot at in the car was also playing on her mind as they drove. Something didn’t fit and she couldn’t figure out what it was.
Glancing at Blake she saw his jaw was tense and knew he was probably running all the scenarios in his head like she was. “Do you think this is all connected? I mean it must be, right? But I don’t know.”
He glanced over and his eyes were dark with buried anger. “What don’t you know, Pax?”
Pax blew out a breath. “I not sure. In part I feel it all must be linked but something feels off. I can’t help thinking the shots fired on the car weren’t about Sana and my father. If whoever killed Sally and Marvin shot at us in the car and on the balcony, why did they miss?” She angled towards him as she spoke her voice becoming more animated. “I mean, they proved they’re willing to kill so why only fire warning shots at us? That truck could easily have taken us off the road and killed us so why drive off…” Her voice trailed off as her brain whirred.
“Go on?” Blake prompted.
“I think they are separate incidents and whoever is shooting at us is just warning us.”
“I agree.”
Pax noticed the knuckles on his hands go white as he gripped the steering wheel. “Shit. So who and why?”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question and one I’m goin
g to find the answer to,” he declared as they pulled into the drive of Mrs Reid’s home.
“Reid must be out,” she said noticing his car was gone.
Blake didn’t reply, just mumbled something under his breath she didn’t quite catch.
They approached the house and Waggs came out to meet them, his face grave. “Sorry about the Nixons,” he said to Pax who nodded. He listened in silence as Blake updated him on the shots fired on them as they drove home. Waggs’ look was hard as stone as his jaw seemed to seesaw in anger. “We’re missing something.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Blake replied. “I have to make a call to Jack. Let me catch up with you in a sec.”
Waggs nodded, and Blake moved into her body as they headed upstairs to the room they were using.
Pax sank her ass on the bed and Blake sat beside her. “Now what?” she asked as he turned into her body lifting his cocked knee to the mattress. Her head tilted slightly as his hand came up and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“Now I make some calls and see if I can figure out what the fuck is going on.”
She could feel the heat from his gaze as his eyes wandered over her mouth.
“What can I do to help?” Her voice was husky as his hand moved to the galloping heartbeat in her neck.
“You’re doing it,” he said softly as he traced the soft skin the heat from him making butterflies take flight in her tummy.
“I want to do more,” she implored wanting to be his partner in every way she could and wipe the worry from his face.
“I know and when there is something, I’ll ask. But for now, why don’t you catch up with the hospital and check in with your mom?”
“Okay, honey,” she replied wanting to give him what he needed. She tilted her head as he dropped a kiss in the spot where her shoulder met her neck.
She felt his lips pull into a smile at her words. “Like it when you call me that,” he muttered.