I pushed past him and whirled on the three of them when Jess called my name. “I’m done. I’m done having you all rip the floor out from under me. I’m done having my world twisted into something I don’t even recognize with each new bomb you drop.” A frantic, breathless laugh bubbled up my throat, and I reached for my head. “I feel like I’m going crazy because I don’t know what actually happened, what’s real, what to believe.”
I stumbled to the side and hurried for the bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind me.
A cry ripped from me when I saw Lexi sitting on the middle of the bed, hands pressed tightly to her ears as she sang to herself.
Crayons and papers and coloring books littered the bed, but I just climbed on top of them and pulled her hands down.
Her wide, hazel eyes opened. “Mr. Conor told me to sing so I could only hear myself, but I could still hear you yelling. I didn’t know if it was because you were mad or sad or scared.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I wish you hadn’t heard anything at all.”
“Are you okay?”
I nodded and shifted so we were lying on the bed facing each other, her hands held protectively in my own. “I will be.”
The lie had never felt so thick on my tongue.
Conor
Sutton hadn’t said a word to me for the rest of the day.
I’d seen her.
She’d come out of the room with Lexi and their bags of laundry around lunchtime. Not that she’d eaten anything.
Other than calling to have someone come get their clothes, she’d been silent. Sticking close to Lexi and staring off to the side or out the windows.
It had been like the day after she’d read the files all over again.
I hadn’t pushed—I knew better than to try. I also knew this was probably for the better. To end it before it could begin, only it had begun.
And every time I stole a glance at her, last night was all I could see.
Her wrapped in my arms. Her bright eyes and satisfied smile. How it looked when she was free of any of the weight that had been pressing down on her. The way she’d whispered my name and fit against me—around me.
“She’s it, or she isn’t.”
I knew . . . I knew that, no matter how much my heart rebelled against the thought, I had to make sure she wasn’t.
Because there was already too much mistrust and pain between us, and it was only bound to get worse.
A groan built in my chest, and I dragged my hands over my face just as my phone rang.
I glanced at the screen, confusion tugged at me before fear filled my veins when I saw Maverick’s name on the screen. “What happened?” I said in way of a greeting.
“Wanted to make sure you were awake.”
I looked around the darkened suite. “Am I not allowed to sleep?”
The second a knock sounded on the door, I was off the couch, my body tense. I started to ask Maverick if he’d had anything to do with it, but the call dropped.
I grabbed my gun from the coffee table and hurried to the door, listening for anything that could give me a hint as to what waited on the other side.
“The fuck,” I mumbled when I heard a familiar voice complaining in the hall. I didn’t even bother looking out of the peephole. Just unlocked the door and threw it open to reveal Maverick, his identical twin Diggs, and . . . “Einstein. The hell are you doing in Tennessee?”
She huffed and pushed past the twins and me to get into the suite. “I like how you all keep asking me this like you could keep me away.”
“Clearly, we can’t,” Maverick said in a tone that let me know he didn’t agree with her being here either.
“Oh, oh,” Diggs called out as he walked in, flipping on lights as he went. “If this is what all your cases are like, sign me up for the next one.”
“It isn’t.”
“I’ve told him that three times already,” Einstein said with a roll of her eyes as she set her bags down and then looked pointedly at the guys. “Get the rest while I find us a room.”
“How long did you pack for if there’s more?”
“Weapons,” Einstein and Maverick answered at the same time.
I nodded in understanding.
Diggs sighed dramatically. “I’m dying of starvation.”
“You just ate two burgers,” Einstein argued, already pulling out her laptop.
Maverick shoved Diggs toward the door and then pulled Einstein close, pressing his forehead to hers and whispering shit I kind of wished I couldn’t hear.
Still bothered me to see them together.
Still hurt.
But it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. The girl locked away in the suite was the reason for that.
When the door slammed shut behind the guys, I stalked over to where Einstein was setting her computer on the coffee table. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“You keep saying that like maybe it will sting a little less the next time you do.” Her lips were twisted in a smirk, her fingers flying over the keys, her eyes fixated on the screen.
“I’m serious.”
“Oh no, Conor’s serious.”
I dropped onto the couch next to her. “Einstein.”
She looked away from the screen, her tone both mocking and amused. “Conor.”
“After what happened to you, you shouldn’t be anywhere near where Zachary is.”
Her expression fell as something haunting filled her eyes, but she didn’t respond.
“You aren’t ready for this. You aren’t ready if you see him. And if he sees you? Einstein, he knows you. He’s seen Maverick and Diggs. None of you should’ve come. It risks too much.”
I looked up when I heard a door open and shut, and cursed the way my body and heart and mind reacted the instant I saw her standing there.
Barely there shorts.
Threadbare shirt.
Fucking beautiful.
Instead of acknowledging Sutton, Einstein whispered, “We’ve never had a case like this. We’ve never had it mean something to us too. This is personal. The twins were giving Kieran and Jess a week to find Zachary and Garret. That week came and went, and I couldn’t keep them away any longer. There was no way Maverick was coming without me.”
I pulled my attention away from Sutton to say, “He should’ve known to keep you away.”
Einstein smirked. “He tried. When has that ever worked for any of you?”
“This is dangerous.”
A cold kind of ruthlessness settled over her features. “He got me once. He’ll never get the opportunity again.”
I stood, let out a frustrated sigh, and took a step in Sutton’s direction. Her brows were pulled low as her stare bounced between Einstein and me, as though she were trying to piece something together.
“Sutton, this is Einstein.”
Her expression shifted slowly until she was watching Einstein blankly. As if her mind was already so overwhelmed with everything else that she needed time to process what I’d said.
“Done,” Einstein said and then came to stand beside me. “Well, I would say it’s good to meet you, but that feels wrong in this situation. I’m glad to see you alive.”
Sutton’s head just moved in some combination of a nod and shake for a moment. “Yeah. Yes, I should say the same to you. I’m sorry. When I heard what happened . . .”
“It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about that.”
I wasn’t looking at Einstein, but I could hear the subtle change in her voice. She was trying to seem unaffected by what had happened when it was still too soon for her to be anything but.
“Sorry for the late-night intrusion, and if we woke you,” she said, changing the subject. “There was a lot of slamming and groaning.”
Sutton’s sharp stare flashed to me. Pain, hurt, and betrayal swirled in her eyes.
“He’s kind of uncontrollable when he’s hungry,” Einstein continued, “really, all the time.”
“She’s talking
about Diggs,” I said quickly, reaching for Sutton even though she was too far away.
She still took half a step back.
“Diggs,” I said again. “He’s one of the twins. That’s who Einstein’s talking about.”
“Yeah, who else would I be talking about?” Einstein asked.
“Me.” That one word held so much meaning, all of which went right over Einstein’s head.
She couldn’t see Sutton’s hurt.
She couldn’t hear how I was trying to protect Sutton.
She was the smartest person I knew, but she didn’t see relationship cues until they smacked her in the face.
Einstein’s shoulders bunched up. “You aren’t the one we have to take care of like a gremlin.”
“Sutton doesn’t know that,” I reminded her. “She also doesn’t know the twins are here.”
“Well, she should be inside my head.” She blew out a slow breath and faced Sutton again. “So, the twins are here . . . literally,” she added when there was a knock on the door.
When Einstein turned to let them in, I reached for Sutton again and then tried to contain my own hurt when she took another step away.
I had to remember this was necessary.
It was for the best.
“They just showed up,” I explained. “I didn’t know they were coming.”
“Your friends seem to do that.” Her voice was all bitter indifference, but I could hear the pain behind it. Knew it was just a front to protect herself.
“We’ve never had a case like this.”
Sutton’s eyes followed Einstein until she must have gone out of sight.
When her stare fell to the floor, her entire body seemed to crumple. “I can’t . . . I can’t do this.” She started to turn and ignored when I called her name, but stilled when Diggs entered, already yelling.
“Oh, oh . . . oh,” he said smoothly. “Hello, sweetheart.”
I slowly looked over my shoulder, my eyes already set in a glare.
“I wouldn’t have kept you waiting had I’d known you were what we were coming for.” His mouth twitched into a cocky smirk. “What do you say we find a room and I introduce myself?”
I felt the way Sutton shifted closer to me, even though Diggs was still halfway across the suite.
“That’s Diggs,” I said through gritted teeth.
Maverick smacked his brother over the back of the head as he passed him and hissed, “Control yourself.” He stopped a foot from me and nodded to Sutton. “Maverick, that’s Diggs. I’m gonna apologize now for anything he says to you. He’s been like this our entire lives and will never change. It’s worse when he’s hungry, which he currently is. But I promise, he’s harmless.”
Diggs was holding his arms out wide when Maverick walked back toward Einstein. “Love blockers. All of you.”
“He is harmless,” I said to Sutton, even though I still wanted to punch Diggs for setting his sights on her for even a second. “He’d hit on a tree if he was hungry enough.”
Diggs’s smile widened, still aimed at Sutton. “I’ll show you what I’ve got in common with a tree.”
A couch pillow smacked against the side of his head before I could take a step toward him. “Fucking eat something,” Maverick said from where he was pressed close to Einstein’s side.
Sutton let me pull her behind me when Diggs sauntered into the kitchen, winking at her as he passed. Once he was out of sight, she moved away from me again.
“What?” Diggs shouted. “There’s no food in this kitchen.”
“My daughter is asleep,” Sutton snapped in a harsh whisper. “Would you please stop yelling?”
Diggs came out of the kitchen slower than he’d gone into it, confusion splashed across his face. “We have a baby mini in here?”
“Oh my God,” Maverick said on a groan. “Dude, how many times did we tell you that she had a little girl?”
“Yeah, I don’t think I was paying attention.”
Sutton came to my side and lowered her voice. “Are they staying here?”
“In the resort, not with us.” I curled my hands into fists and crossed my arms over my chest so I wouldn’t be tempted to do something stupid.
Like reach for her again.
“That was what Einstein was doing when you came out here,” I said. “Finding a room for them.”
“Well, when—”
“Conor, you left without packing the essentials,” Maverick called out from where he’d moved to the floor, and opened a large bag full of weapons. “What do you want or need?”
An uneven breath punched from Sutton’s lungs. “Oh God.”
“No—fuck, man. Can we not do this right now?”
Maverick’s eyes darted from me to Sutton and then back again. The questions on his face were clear as fucking day, but I refused to answer when Sutton was beside me.
He wondered if Sutton knew who we really were, what we did.
If she knew what we planned to do when we found Zachary.
And, if the answers were no, if I was going to be the one to tell her.
“Why does he have that bag, and when are they leaving?” Sutton asked, her words strained.
“I have a fake feed ready to go,” Einstein said in response without looking up from her laptop. “But we need to talk with Conor first, and it’s easier to do in person since we’re here now. It also might be better if you aren’t in here.”
“Einstein,” I said in a low, warning tone.
“I have a feeling this isn’t the kind of conversation you’d want others around to hear.” Her stare slowly lifted from the screen to pierce me with an accusing look.
Fuck, if I didn’t know with that one look that she’d found out about Sutton and me.
And I didn’t know how to respond or feel about it.
We’d already imploded on the first day.
I nodded and looked to Sutton. “She might be right.”
When Sutton opened her mouth to argue, I gave her a small shake of my head.
“I’ll explain what I can in the morning.”
“What you can,” she said with a forced smile. “Which will be nothing.”
“Sutton.” I reached for her arm, and felt my body exhale in relief when I finally had her in my grasp. “You don’t understand.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” Her chin trembled even though she tried to steel her jaw. “I don’t understand anything that’s happening in my life anymore. But you can’t expect me not to worry about all these people who keep showing up. It isn’t just me they’re coming around, it’s my daughter.”
“I know, and I’m sorry it keeps happening this way, but I didn’t know they were coming.”
“Why is that?” she asked, desperation weaving through her tone. “If you’re supposed to work together and be this family, why do they keep surprising you like this?”
I debated what to tell her for only a second before going with the truth. “After the first day on a job, we only talk when we have to, and when we do, we keep it to things that aren’t identifying. Kieran and Jess show up without letting me know, they showed up without letting me know, because none of us trusts anything that Zachary could get into.” I gestured to the living room with my free arm. “But you can trust them.”
“Trust them, trust Kieran and Jess. Trust you,” she said through clenched teeth, reminding me of how much I’d already hurt her. “I can’t even trust my own life, and you want me to blindly trust people who show up with massive duffle bags full of guns. Why are they even here?”
“’Cause I’m a motherfucking bloodhound, baby,” Diggs said with a clap. “And I’ve got hunting to do.”
Sutton stared at him in bewilderment before turning for the bedroom.
“Everything,” I promised, pulling her back to me. “I’ll tell you everything in the morning.”
A disbelieving laugh fell from her lips before she slipped from my grasp and left.
“Speaking of identifying,” Einstein said onc
e the bedroom door was closed. “I just got a message from Kieran. I let him know, without exactly letting him know, that we’re here. Do you want to know what he said?”
“At this point, there’s a lot he could’ve told you.”
“Women ask for our help for a reason, Conor,” she said, skipping whatever Kieran had said. “Not for you to take advantage of their emotional states and vulnerability and sleep with them.”
Maverick sent me a wary look.
He wasn’t surprised.
He’d known.
He could see.
Diggs just snorted before choking on a cough when Einstein shot him a glare.
“It isn’t like that.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think it’s like, you don’t know what’s going on in her head,” she argued. “Some women need emotional and physical comfort in these situations, and they shouldn’t be getting it from you. Jesus, Conor, they aren’t even my rules—they’re yours. I shouldn’t be the one enforcing them. What the hell were you thinking?”
I ground my jaw to keep the words gathering on my tongue from slipping free.
“You aren’t gonna say anything?”
I was struggling not to come back at her with something I knew would be painful.
My head moved in subtle shakes as I said, “I told you that it isn’t like that, and it isn’t. That’s all you need to know.”
“No, all we need to know is that you’re going to end this. Immediately.”
“Einstein, you know me, you know this isn’t me. So, if I’ve put myself in this position, then you know it’s because she means something.”
“But she can’t. She’s a client—one whose sort-of-not-really husband is a manipulative sociopath. We don’t even know if we can trust her.”
“Avery,” Maverick whispered her real name on a sigh.
She kept right on going. “Conor, I adore you. I do. I want you to find someone. Someone who isn’t a client or in this fragile state and will regret whatever you do later.”
“You have no fucking room to talk,” I said, the words slow, my voice already filled with the pain I knew she was about to feel. “For you to tell me that I’m taking advantage of her in this situation means Maverick was taking advantage of you when you were with Johnny and after he died.”
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