“I pulled Donovan off surveillance once we had a solid plan.”
“You should have left someone here.”
“We needed as many hands on-deck as possible. And I didn’t think they’d take off in such a short window of time.”
“They would if someone told them we were coming,” Ryan said.
The room fell silent. It was obviously what we were all thinking, but only Ryan had had the balls to say.
We had a mole. And that mole was obviously still active.
I let Ryan go and crossed to the tall windows, staring down over the vast stretch of land that spread out in front of the house. I could clearly see cars passing on the road, could see the rest of our team walking the property, looking for clues to where the Mahoneys had gone. They wouldn’t find anything. It was clear that this enemy was far too smart to leave anything behind that would tell us where to go next. We were in over our heads. And this mole wasn’t making things any easier.
Who knew about this operation? Kirkland. David. Me. Steve. My people. Kirkland’s people. Steve’s people. There were three dozen people, maybe. Every one of them was involved in the previous operation, with the exception of Joss. She hadn’t arrived until after Ash went missing. But what did I know about her? What did I know about any of them?
Any of them could be the mole.
The only person I knew without a doubt I could trust was myself.
I realized then there was another person I could trust. On the window sill, there were faint scratch marks. A line of initials. M.K.S.K.K.M. I knew those. Mitchell Knight. Sutherland Knight. Kipling McKay. Those were circled, a plus sign beside the circle. Next to it was another set of initials. C.M.J.M.K.P. Those were also circled, but there was a line through the circle. I was sure I knew the last set of initials was Kirkland Parish. I thought maybe the J.M. was Joss. But I didn’t know the first set.
It was Ash. Was he trying to tell us something? Did he know something we didn’t? Was this a clue to where he was? I didn’t know. But if it was a clue for us, a clue to how to save him, I wasn’t about to let anyone else see it. I scratched it out with my thumb nail, making the initials unreadable.
Chapter 8
At the Ranch
Joss wandered away from the others and ducked into a room that was set up like a home office. There wasn’t much there, just a desk, a sofa, and a lot of empty shelves. She wandered to the back of the room and looked out the window as she held her cellphone to her ear. It rang for a long few minutes and then the familiar sound of Carrington’s voice filled her ear, the empty message she’d been getting for the last twenty-four hours.
This knot had settled in the pit of her stomach. She was trying to ignore it, but it was growing increasingly difficult.
Something was wrong.
She scrolled through her list of contacts after disconnecting the phone, thinking about the last year, the things that had been going on in her marriage, in her life. She’d left Gray Wolf not long after Aidan was born, determined to be a stay at home mom. A little less than a year ago, she went back. Kirkland had tried to leave, too, tried to make a living as a cop. But she guessed they both concluded that they belonged with Gray Wolf.
It didn’t help that she’d had her heart set on having another child. She wanted to give Carrington a son. They tried, for months they tried. They even had a battery of tests, talked to three different fertility doctors. Even though she’d gotten pregnant quite easily—quite unexpectedly—with her two previous pregnancies, her body had decided it was time to pull up the rug and call it good.
Carrington was disappointed. He tried not to show it, but he was. And she felt like she’d let him down, like she’d let their entire family down. McKelty was old enough to see what was happening, to understand their disappointment. For Aidan, it was more of a mood she recognized but didn’t really understand. Yet, it still felt like Joss had let them all down somehow.
She thought that’s when things began to go downhill in her marriage. She thought that Carrington was more than just disappointed. She thought he began to resent her, to resent his choice in being with her. It wasn’t like they had some great romance that ended in the perfect marriage. They met because the Bazarovs were threatening McKelty. He hired Gray Wolf to protect her and Ash chose her—the woman who wasn’t speaking because of the loss of her husband and child—to guard the child. And she did. She took out old man Bazarov and saw his son go to prison. And walked away, still broken despite the passion that had somehow developed between Carrington and her. He came after her, came and asked her to be with him. But he didn’t know until then that she was pregnant. Maybe if she hadn’t been, maybe things would have gone differently.
Ironic that a pregnancy had trapped him into marriage while the lack of a pregnancy was ruining it.
He’d grown distant. He was in dark moods when he was home, but he was so rarely home anymore. He was…he wasn’t answering his damn phone! She found the number for Carrington’s office assistant and dialed that. The woman was back in Santa Monica, but maybe she’d know more about his whereabouts than Joss did. He had to stay in contact with her to efficiently run his business.
“Carol? It’s Joss Matthews.”
“Mrs. Matthews,” she said politely, but with a hesitation in her voice that hadn’t been there in her greeting. “How can I help you?”
“I was wondering when you last spoke to Carrington.”
“A few hours ago. He called to check in on the shipment from Singapore.”
“Do you know when he’ll call again?”
There was a pause. “Well, he normally checks in about five o’clock every day.”
“Could you tell him to call me? I seem to be having trouble getting through on his cellphone.”
Another pause. “Of course.”
Joss turned away from the window where she’d been standing and ran her fingers over the top of the expensive desk that was one of the few pieces of furniture in this room. It was nice, a heavy cherry wood. There were four drawers on either side of the leg space, and a long drawer in the center designed to hold pens and thin sheaves of paper. She pulled it open almost absently, spotting something immediately that she wished she hadn’t.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Matthews?”
Joss picked it up and lay it out flat on the top of the desk.
It was a photograph of her children that she’d taken herself. A photograph that she’d printed out on her own printer. A photograph that she’d trimmed at her own desk and placed into her husband’s wallet, telling him she was putting it there so he wouldn’t forget what he had waiting at home for him. He’d come up behind her and whispered against her ear, “Then it should be a picture of you.”
It was wrinkled, torn at the edge, like someone had held it a lot.
“Has Carrington ever been to Wyoming?”
“Not that I’m aware.” Then what was this doing in this desk, in this place?
That knot in Joss’ stomach grew exponentially. What had Carrington gotten himself into?
Chapter 9
Bodhi
A good glass of brandy could always bring things into perspective. Or make them fuzzy enough that it seemed like everything was going to be okay even if the spotlight of the morning sun proved otherwise. I didn’t think I was much of a drinking man, but I liked to have my glass of brandy each night.
Tonight, I sat on the front porch of the ranch house, staring up at the clear midnight sky, counting stars that I couldn’t see from the balcony of my condo in Los Angeles. Sometimes I thought if I could back in time and tell my seventeen-year-old self that being a Hollywood star was not all it was cracked up to be, that it would have been better to remain on the family homestead in New Zealand, that I might have saved myself a lot of trouble. Not that I didn’t enjoy making movies. Who didn’t want to be someone else twelve hours a day, six days a week? Especially when that someone else was a bad ass? I even enjoyed the fame, to a certain extent. I
didn’t love the paparazzi and the intrusions into my personal life, but I loved the excitement I could bring into a fans life just by existing.
I had an ego just like any other man.
And I loved the money. It was so much better than I’d ever imagined buying my adopted parents a new house when the old homestead was sold. And it was great being able to invest in my adopted sister’s new fashion line. And this, this horse farm. I was glad to be able to give Jonah work to keep him out of trouble.
But there were other things that came with fame that made life complicated. I hated complicated.
I sat back and took a sip of the cool, amber liquid, enjoying the burn as it ran down my throat and spread in my chest. From here I could see just a vague outline of the buildings on MidKnight Ranch. There were lights in windows, but I couldn’t tell if they were on in the main house or if I was seeing the upstairs rooms of the bunkhouse.
There was a complication. Sutherland Knight. I hadn’t expected to feel the way I did about her. I hadn’t expected this final play to become something more than it should have been. I was an actor. I was supposed to act. I was supposed to distract her, supposed to play a game that would end in my freedom. It didn’t matter what happened to her.
Yet, it did.
He hadn’t told me she had a kid. He hadn’t told me she was beautiful and kind and generous and that the simple act of looking into her eyes would change the way I looked at everything. He never told me that she was the same as me, broken by a past she didn’t fully understand. He laid a picture on a table, handed me the deed to a foreclosed ranch, and told me what I was to do. It never occurred to him that she was a human being who might have the power to get under my skin.
But she had. And I didn’t know what to do about it.
I needed this to end. I needed to get out from under his thumb. This was supposed to be the last job. I was supposed to walk away from this a little richer, to walk away with a vacation home, a ranch for my brother to work, a life outside of Hollywood, outside of the blackmail he’d held over my head all these years. But I knew the moment I set eyes on her that it wouldn’t be that easy.
I came to America when I was seventeen, against the wishes of my parents, intent on making a living with my looks. I didn’t care if I became a model or an actor as long as it paid the bills. I was tired of watching the people who so selflessly took me in struggle. I wanted to make everything right for them. It wasn’t as easy as I’d thought it would be. I did things I wasn’t proud of. I got myself caught up with the wrong people.
I learned long ago not to trust anyone. Don’t let anyone in and they can’t hurt you. That was my mantra for a very long time and for good reason. The few people I did let in owned my soul and they were making me pay with blood.
I shouldn’t have let Sutherland in. I thought I had it under control, thought I could keep her at arm’s length the way I had done every other woman I’d met since the day I set foot in New York. But she was different. She was half of me, I could feel it the first moment our lips touched. I’d always scoffed at people who said stupid things like that, but it was true. She did things to my soul whenever we were together. It was impossible to put into words. It was a feeling. A knowledge that I shouldn’t have had, but I did. And I—
I threw my glass, watched as it shattered against a pillar that held up the second-floor balcony. I'd gone insane is what it was. I was days from getting out from under these people and I was scared so I was holding on to the nearest life line. That’s all.
I got up and started for the door, thinking a good night’s sleep would clear my head. Headlights flashed across the porch just as I reached for the doorknob. I thought, briefly, that I should just keep going. The message didn’t get through quick enough.
Sutherland stumbled out of the driver’s door of her old pickup truck, her step unsteady as she raised a hesitant hand in greeting.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” she said.
As beautiful as she was, she looked like ten miles of hard road. I swung her up into my arms and she gave out this little surprised cry, but then she wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face against my shoulder.
“When’s the last time you slept?”
She laughed. “Sleep? What’s that?”
I carried her into the house, warning bells going off in the back of my head. The more time I spent with her, the more dangerous she was for me. But I couldn’t seem to help myself.
The front hall was crowded with construction debris, dry wall and tools and paint cans and God knows what else stacked against the walls. I carefully navigated around it and carried her up to the master bedroom, not bothering to stop at the bed. As polite as I wanted to be, the woman smelled as though she hadn’t had a shower in days. Besides, a hot bath had the power to help just about anyone sleep better.
She didn’t fight me as I carefully undressed her, making note of the strange marks on her chest and arms, marks that suggested she’d been wearing more than a sweaty white t-shirt most of the day. I didn’t ask and she didn’t volunteer anything. In fact, she was basically a walking shell of a human being, simply standing still as I reached around her body and released the hooks on her bra.
I went with her into the shower, a little afraid she would fall over if I wasn’t there to hold her up. Like a child, she leaned back into me as the water rushed over us, washing away the day’s crap and replacing it with the sweet smells of well-water and my insanely expensive soap. She closed her eyes and sighed as I dumped more than a little shampoo on her hair and ran my fingers through it, scrubbing at her scalp as she leaned forward, mewling like a cat.
It turned me on, touching her even in this somewhat antiseptic way. I wrapped her in a warm towel and carried her out of the shower, my own body dripping wet. I scrubbed at her skin, drying her as she leaned back against the counter, watching me from heavily hooded eyes.
“You’re too good to me,” she said softly.
“There are benefits to it.”
A blush touched her cheeks even as her eyes moved over the length of my body.
“I don’t know why you keep coming back to me. You could have any woman you wanted.”
“Maybe I don’t want any other women.”
“Then you’re completely insane because my life is a real mess right now.”
“Don’t you know I thrive on drama?” I used the same towel I’d used on her to dry myself. “It’s kind of what I do for a living.”
She bit her lower lip because it had begun to tremble. “You have no idea.”
“Try me.”
She shook her head, pushing away from the counter, and nearly stumbled as she tried to make her way across the room. I snagged her around the waist and swung her up into my arms again.
“Let me take care of you tonight.”
She buried her head against the side of my neck and nodded. I carried her to the bed and lay her down, stretching out beside her. She snuggled back into the angles of my body and I slid my arm around her, holding her close as I gently stroked her hair.
“Go to sleep,” I said against her ear. “Let it go for now.”
There was a slight movement of her head as if she was trying to agree with me. But then her breathing changed and she was already slipping into a deep sleep. I held her for a long time, unable to keep my hands still. I touched her, ran my hands over her hips, her belly, telling myself I shouldn’t enjoy the feel of her so much, that I shouldn’t get used to the feel of her body against mine. But the head can scream as loud as it wants, yet it was the heart that made those final decisions.
*****
I woke with a start, the subtle buzz of my cellphone vibrating against the nightstand startling me. I reached over and snatched it up, glancing at the screen barely long enough to register that it was my agent trying to get through to me. He was trying to talk me into doing some new horror flick, but I wasn’t quite ready to get back to work. The sci-fi series I’d been working on for the l
ast five years had just finished, so I was ready for something different. I just wasn’t ready quite yet.
I dropped the phone on the carpeted floor and rolled over, content that I wouldn’t hear it when it next vibrated. Sutherland was lying with her back toward me, a soft whistle escaping her delicate little nose, telling me she was still caught in a deep sleep. I leaned forward and kissed her shoulder, sliding my hand slowly down over her side until it rested on the curve of her hip. She sighed in her sleep, but that whistle came right back, telling me she was too deep in her dreams for my subtlety to wake her.
That was okay. I was content to just lie there and watch her sleep.
After a quick trip to the bathroom.
I washed my hands and wandered over to the balcony door, throwing it open to allow some fresh air into the room. There was a line of trucks out in the front yard, suggesting Jonah and his crew were already hard at work on the renovations here in the house. Thank goodness for door locks and thick, soundproof walls!
“What time is it?”
I turned just in time to watch the sheets fall from Sutherland’s naked chest, exposing her beautiful, full breasts. I bit back a smile as I made a show of checking the clock that sat closer to her than me on the nightstand.
“A little after ten.”
She dragged her fingers through her hair, tugging at the knots that had come to live there.
“I should go,” she said, but instead of untangling herself from the sheets, she fell back against the pillows again. “I have so much I need to do.”
“You need to start taking better care of yourself.”
She glanced at me, her eyes lingering as they wandered down to nether regions, a slow smile stretching out those gorgeous, full lips. But then she shook herself, covering her face with her hands.
“I have too much to do. I have to…” She stopped as though she realized she was about to say something she shouldn’t. She glanced at me again, but her eyes remained on my face this time. “I should go.”
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