I’d only met Alex once before the wedding and a few times after, but Eden’s father trusted him implicitly, which backed up the impression I had of him. I didn’t hesitate to put Eden’s life in his hands. I knew he loved her like a sister and would do everything he could to protect her. Eden grabbed my hand as I gingerly slid off of the hospital bed and stood up, holding the side rail with my other until the brief sensation of vertigo passed.
“There’s a safe house just outside the city that isn’t being used right now, completely off the grid,” Alex explained.
“I need access to a secure computer, though,” Eden insisted. Her hand was gripping mine so hard her knuckles were white. I carefully unclenched her fingers and kissed the back of each one.
“I don’t want you near this anymore, Sunshine. You promised that if you were in danger, you would back off.” I tried to keep my tone soothing, but inside, I was raging at the thought of her being further involved. Over my dead fucking body.
She turned pleading, ocean blue eyes on me and I felt a small fissure in my determination. “I’m so close, Isaac. With Alex’s help and a little more digging, I think I can find out who owns the bank account. And, I need to get my hands on a copy of the environmental report they released. The more I think about those double payments, the more I think it was a bribe.”
My instincts were a jumbled mess and I didn’t know whether to follow my head or my heart. I pulled her close and met Alex’s steady gaze over her head.
“It’s completely secure,” Alex informed me. “And, I’ll put her in touch with my best tech guy. I’m sure he can get his hands on all the reports, as well as the evidence that went into it. If they don’t match up, it will at least give us a direction to focus on. The whole process will go faster with them working together, and he can make sure that she doesn’t trip anymore fail safes.”
Eden lifted her head from my chest and gasped, clearly offended. “I didn’t leave a trace!” I heard the tiniest thread of doubt in her voice, and Alex dropped his eyes to her with a sympathetic smile.
“You are one of the most talented and intelligent people I know, kiddo. But, you’re still young and fairly new to the scene. There was a very sophisticated security measure installed on their system and once you inserted the bug, it tripped it. You didn’t leave a ghost trace behind, but all they had to do was access the banks security video. It didn’t take them long to tie it back to you.”
“Dammit,” Eden grumbled.
I sighed. “Would you stop swearing, Sunshine?”
She glared up at me. “Really? Right now?”
To my complete and utter shock, I felt my face heat just a little. I was fucking blushing. “Habit,” I mumbled.
Evie started laughing and looped her arm through Eden’s. “Come on, let’s get you two out of here.”
Alex turned towards me, but hesitated, silently asking if I needed help. I shook my head and though I wobbled for the first few steps, I eventually steadied and was able to walk out unassisted.
A black town car glided to a stop right in front of the exit and a man with a buzz cut, black suit, and an ear piece alighted from the driver’s side. Wow. They were pulling out the big guns. However, instead of the sight giving me comfort, it ratcheted up my anxiety at Eden’s connection to the situation.
The man came around and opened the back door for Eden, Evie, and I to climb inside onto the back bench seat, while Alex took the front passenger spot. “Can I use a phone?” I asked, realizing I had no access to communication.
Alex looked over his shoulder and frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I need to let my partner know I’m going to be unreachable for a while, and I especially need to speak with my co-counsel, Natalie, since she’s going to have to step up to first chair in this case, and she needs to get the court to put my client into protective custody.” When Alex still looked dubious, I steeled my tone and held his stare with a determined one of my own. “It’s not just Eden’s life or my own on the line. And, I can’t let my client down.”
Evie sat forward and laid her hand on Alex’s shoulder. Their eyes met as they silently communicated and finally, Alex sighed and tossed a phone back to me. My dexterity was a little slow, but I managed to catch it.
I placed a call to Jax first. I’d have to convince him to allow Natalie to stay on the case. I didn’t trust anyone but him to back her up, and he didn’t know the case well enough to take over. I had to do it without revealing too much, and I felt like I was walking on a very thin tightrope. With Evie’s help, I managed to prove that simply defending Mark wouldn’t put his wife in danger. Eventually, he agreed, making sure I knew I owed him “fucking big time.” Next, I called Natalie and filled her in on as much as I could as well. She told me not to worry (fat chance of that) and she would handle everything.
She asked to speak to Eden and I handed the phone over. Something Natalie said caused Eden to laugh and the sound was like coming home. Eden had always been a bright ray of sunshine, energetic, happy, full of life. As we worked on the case, she’d gotten more serious and hadn’t smiled as much. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until that moment. Fuck owing Jax, I would forever be in Natalie’s debt for bringing my sunshine to the surface again.
After hanging up, Eden handed the phone to Alex, who promptly removed the sim card and tossed it out the window. Eden frowned. “I thought you said it was a secure line?”
“It was,” he affirmed. “But, it’s likely your phones at the office have been tapped and if you call a tapped phone from an untapped...” he trailed off, making a circling motion with his hand like he was saying, etc. etc. “Better safe than sorry,” he warned.
It wasn’t long before we were pulling to the parking lot of a small, nondescript apartment building. The driver parked, then quickly exited the vehicle and jogged to the front door and typed a code into the keypad under the handle. He went inside and came back out about three minutes later, returning to his seat behind the steering wheel. “All clear,” he said gruffly.
Eden, who was sitting on my left, leaned around me to whisper to Evie on my other side. “Does the CIA specifically recruit guys who grunt and have permanently scowling expressions on their faces?”
Evie laughed. “It seems that way sometimes.” Her door opened, and Alex helped her from the car before I scooted out and did the same for Eden.
We swiftly made our way into an apartment on the third floor, the inside as bland as the outside. A computer was set up on a scratched up wooden desk in one corner of the room and Eden made a beeline straight for it. Before she could get far, I snagged her around the waist and held her back. “You need to eat and rest, Sunshine. Everything else can wait.” Her stomach backed me up when it growled loudly.
“I will, but—” she started to argue and I cut her off, splaying an open palm over her middle.
“You’re eating for two, Eden.” At those words, she stilled, coming to the same conclusion, which was conveniently punctuated by another gurgle from her belly.
I took her hand and led her over to a brown, corduroy couch. It was ugly as hell and clearly a relic from the 90’s, but it looked comfortable. “Lay down while I get you some dinner, then you can talk with Alex’s contact at the CIA and maybe, do some work on the case from here.” I wasn’t committing to anything until I talked to this Martin guy personally.
She opened her mouth, no doubt poised to debate the issue, but wisely stayed quiet and swung her feet up so she could stretch out. Alex and Evie were standing by the door, talking in hushed tones but they quieted and turned to face me when I reached them.
“Is the kitchen stocked?” I inquired.
“Yes, but we can also send an agent to grab takeout,” Evie answered. “We’ve got someone on the back and two on the front.” She wandered to the desk and pulled a stack of menus out of the top drawer, handing them to me. “I’m going to stay here with you both, but Alex is going back to check on our kids and then g
o to the office. He wants to use the SCIF room to try and run down a couple of leads.”
We put in an order for food and spoke for another couple of minutes before I crept over to check on my wife. I was sure Eden would be pissed when she woke up and realized she’d fallen asleep. But, I was extremely grateful to see her resting. Eden had suffered a few minor bruises from being thrown into the door when the blast shoved my car over. Then after the stress of worry over me, being in the hospital, and the mountains of other stress weighing her down, I could see she was dead on her feet when we arrived. She was still coming down off of the adrenalin high, and I was afraid she would burn out before she recognized the signs.
Alex wanted to head out, so I agreed to let Evie watch over the situation with Eden and Martin after she woke from her nap. Evie stepped outside to see him off, and I gently lifted Eden’s head so I could slip onto the couch and lay it back down on my lap. I brushed some of her dark hair away from her face and stared down at my Sunshine. She was so fucking beautiful and at the moment, she looked so fragile. I wanted to find the son of a bitch who was putting her life in danger and snuff the life out of him with my bare hands.
Evie came back in laden with a couple of plastic bags, clearly holding our food. She set it all on a table as worn as the rest of the furniture in the apartment. “Do you want to make a plate for her and set it aside so she can sleep?” she asked softly.
I glanced at my watch to see it was almost midnight. Fuck. I hated to do it, but I knew she hadn’t eaten since lunch. “I’d better wake her,” I groaned. I ran my fingers through her hair a few more times, then drew a line down her cheek with the tip of one. “Sunshine, I need you to wake up,” I urged softly. She didn’t stir, so I tapped her nose lightly and called to her again. This time, her eyes fluttered and then opened to stare up at me. They were cloudy with exhaustion, the blue turning almost gray.
She smiled sleepily and reached up to caress the side of my face with one hand. I instinctively turned into it and nuzzled her palm. “I need you to eat, Sunshine. You and the baby need your strength.”
Her gaze darted past me and the corners of her mouth turned down. As the remnants of her nap wore off, it dawned on her that she’d fallen asleep and her frown deepened. “You let me fall asleep,” she accused, her tone thick with irritation.
Rolling my eyes, I helped her sit up, not bothering to acknowledge her allegation. I pushed to my feet and took her hands, guiding her up beside me. The smell of Chinese food was wafting over and I laughed when Eden licked her lips, as though she was salivating over it. After getting her settled at the table with a paper plate overflowing with food, I sat beside her and demolished my own meal.
We ate almost everything, so clean up was easy, simply tossing it all into the trash. Eden disappeared into the single bedroom to use the bathroom and Evie pulled out a small black cell, subtly shaking it in the air. Her gesture and raised brow were a silent request for my permission to move forward with things. As much as I wanted to argue and force Eden to go to bed, I knew the chances of getting my way were slim to none. Reluctantly, I lifted my chin in affirmation and pulled a second chair over to the desk, so I could sit beside my wife while she worked.
Eden padded out of the back room and when she saw where I was, she eagerly made her way over. She plopped down into the chair and booted up the computer, which happened to be the only new and shiny object in the apartment. Evie joined us and leaned over Eden’s shoulder to tap a few keys, bringing up a screen with the large, round logo of the Central Intelligence Agency with a small box in the center requesting a password. Evie typed in a long, complicated string of letters, symbols, and numbers, then the screen went dark for a moment. When it came back up, not only we were looking at the CIA’s system, but there was a small frame in the bottom, right corner with a man staring back at us.
He had short brown hair, though it needed a cut and stuck up all over the place. Black-framed glasses surrounded piercing, blue eyes, and I couldn’t help laughing when I saw his wrinkled T-shirt that said, What part of 01000010 0101001 01101110 don’t you understand? This was the infamous Martin.
He whistled softly as his eyes swept over Eden and my amusement fled, leaving a burning anger that caused a growl of warning to rumble in my chest. Martin glanced at me, then looked at Evie. “Seriously, Scarlett? Another caveman? Like having to deal with Justice on a regular basis doesn’t stretch the boundaries of my patience?” Scarlet? When Evie scowled at him, it occurred to me that maybe this was her code name.
Eden snorted as she tried to hold in laughter, drawing Martin’s attention once again. This time, he smiled widely. “Beautiful, I hear you’re a fucking genius, and you have a sense of humor?” He winked at Eden. “Lucky man.”
“If you want to keep breathing, I suggest you stop admiring my wife and get to work,” I barked.
He sighed and shook his head, muttering, “No fun at all.” Out of nowhere, a hand whipped onto the screen and whacked him on the shoulder. He grinned at whoever it was and a female voice quipped, “What if he said that to me?” Martin scowled and threw me a dark look before his gaze fixed on something just above our little window, likely the rest of his computer screen, and I could hear his fingers tapping away.
For the next several hours, I sat silently at Eden’s side and poured over case law and evidence, working on a pattern of questions for Natalie to use when calling certain witnesses. I also watched over Eden as she and Martin delved into files, code, and many other things that I wouldn’t have had the first clue how to understand.
When I noticed her eyes drooping, I called a halt. “Eden needs to rest. You can pick this up after she’s slept.”
Martin peered at Eden through the computer and a sheepish expression leached onto his face. “I get lost in the work sometimes,” he admitted. “I didn’t notice how worn out she was.” I appreciated that he wasn’t the type of asshole to push her into continuing and it lessened my annoyance at him from earlier.
“WAIT!” Eden yelled, causing all of us to jump. “I found it! I fucking found it!”
Chapter 11
Eden
“Holy shit, you did!” Martin chimed in. “Damn, you’re good. Almost as good as me, in fact. We could use someone with your set of skills on the team.”
“Over my dead body,” Isaac growled. “And yours, too, for even suggesting it.”
“Sorry,” Martin mumbled. “My bad. I almost forgot about the caveman.”
“Yes, Martin. We have much better luck recruiting talented women before they find themselves married and knocked up by their very own caveman,” Evie drawled, making me giggle.
“What did you find?” Isaac asked, shifting his focus back to me.
“The owner of the Cayman bank account is none other than”—I paused for a moment when Martin tapped his fingers on his desk to make a drumroll sound—“Walter Morris, the CEO of SO&G.”
“Which explains why there are some serious discrepancies between the results the scientists noted in their files from the environmental studies and the published report. Several of the tests they ran found some scary shit, but the report gave SO&G a squeaky clean record,” Martin added.
“Because the first payment Whitney circled on the accounting sheets she brought home was a bribe,” I continued. “They must have decided he was too much of a liability and killed him to keep it from ever getting out.”
“When Whitney stumbled across the conspiracy, Morris must have put a hit out on her too,” Isaac deduced.
“There were only a few days between the second payment to the assassin’s account and her death. So the timeline definitely adds up,” I confirmed.
“That’s not all,” Martin added. “Turns out, the four other people on the research team have all ‘mysteriously’ died over the last six months. Each one coincides with another payment to the contract killer.”
Isaac scrubbed his hand over his face and shook his head. “Morris had multiple people killed to protect SO&G�
��s secrets. The last thing he cares about is sending an innocent man to prison. Framing my client was the easiest way to keep the company out of the investigation.” Isaac lifted me out of the chair and onto his lap, pulling me tightly into his arms. “And if he had his way, the body count would have been higher because you would have died in the explosion.”
“Actually, I think that might not have been Morris,” Martin interjected. “I think the assassin he hired went after her on his own because there’s no payment from Morris to him after Whitney’s death.”
“It’s entirely possible that his client told him about the intrusion on his account, and he decided to eliminate the threat for his own benefit,” Evie concluded. “It’s unusual to take on a hit without pay, but no assassin with his kind of reputation would be comfortable knowing there is a loose end which could lead the authorities straight back to him.”
Listening to Evie speak so matter-of-factly about the decisions an assassin would make was kind of surreal, considering the family lore that she’d been one herself. I wasn’t exactly sure how to process it since I was pretty sure she’d just confirmed that the gossip was true. Isaac didn’t seem to care either way, though, because he was focused on how what she’d said impacted my safety.
“Are you telling me that there’s an assassin out there who is so focused on killing my pregnant wife that he’s doing it for free?”
“And on that note, I’m going to sign off before the caveman loses his shit,” Martin muttered. “Evie, let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will do,” she answered, waving at the monitor before turning back to Isaac and me. “As dangerous as this guy is, he’s not going to find you here. And if he did, it would spook the shit out of him because he’d know Alex and I were involved.”
“Pun intended?” I giggled inappropriately. I couldn’t help it, not since spies were called spooks and I was exhausted. It was either laugh or cry, and I just didn’t have the energy for a sob fest at the moment.
For You, I Will (Sex & Vows #1) Page 7