“He’s dead. That doesn’t matter right now.” Frank visibly shook. “The attack at your house, the one on the bridge, those were me. Well, I caused them by passing on information.”
Shane no longer hid the gun. It was up, and the fury pulling at his mouth and carving deep lines into his forehead suggested he planned on using it, and soon. “I’m going to kill you.”
Frank held up both hands. “I’m...no...I’m...trying to help.”
The stuttering matched the rest of his affect. The jumpiness and darting gaze made her want to sit him down and tell him to write it all out. Once and for all, let him unburden himself and then see what happened next.
“Tell me everything you know and how you found out.” Shane stood there as if daring Frank to say no.
After a brief moment of screeching silence, he nodded. “I got a contact a few days after I joined the loop.”
So he had known about it for a long time and had been a participant. She’d never been moved to violence before the past few days. Now all she wanted to do was hit people until they told the truth.
“When?” Shane asked.
Frank’s gaze shot to her, then back to Shane. “Months ago.”
It took all her willpower not to lunge at him. So much pain and needless waste of life, and all because a bunch of men didn’t like that their lies had been uncovered. The whole situation made her feel sick and achy.
She knew Connor and Cam were following along, listening through the device attached to Shane’s shirt. They were taking it all down and would investigate. They’d ferret out the truth and make Frank and the others pay. But right now, in this second, it didn’t feel like enough vengeance.
Shane somehow kept it together and continued asking questions. “Who contacted you?”
“That’s it, I’m not sure.”
“Guess,” Shane shot back before Frank could finish his comment.
“I think we both know.”
“There are a lot of suspects.”
“But only one guy in charge.” Some of Frank’s panic subsided, as if talking lifted some of his guilt. “I’m sure it’s—”
His words cut off as his body collapsed in a heap. One minute he was standing, and the next his body turned boneless and fell down, knocking against the boat and slipping into the water.
“Get down.” Shane called out the order as he slammed her against the dock with his body covering hers. He reached over and grabbed for Frank’s arm, but his body was already sliding under the surface.
She lifted her arms off her head and tried to focus on the voices. The quiet of the night hadn’t broken, but she heard yelling. Familiar voices. She leaned in and heard the yelling in Shane’s ear. Then came the footsteps. Pounding down the dock. Shane spun around, putting his body in front of hers as he sat up and aimed.
Connor stopped in midrun. “It’s me. Don’t shoot.”
“Get down.” She tried to repeat Connor’s order, but her voice barely rose above a whisper.
He must have heard, because he dropped, crawling the last few feet to where they sat, stunned. “Either of you hit?” Connor looked from Makena to Shane.
“What happened?” She still didn’t know. She hadn’t heard the bang she’d come to expect in a shooting...and how sick was it that she had any expectations?
The gentle thud of the water against the boats turned into whoosh. Cam popped up, fully outfitted with scuba gear. Next her brother would pop out somewhere.
Dizziness hit her then. She leaned against Shane, trying to absorb some of his strength. “I didn’t hear the shot.”
“Silencer,” Connor and Cam said at the same time.
A new word for her to hate. “Convenient.”
Connor frowned at her. “How so?”
Shane spoke up then. “That’s exactly what the shooter wanted to do to Frank, silence him.”
“It worked.” Her stomach wouldn’t stop flipping. Her insides were scrambled as if she rode a never-ending roller coaster.
Shane put a hand on her lower back. “We’ll make sure it doesn’t.”
For some reason, in that second, she believed him.
Chapter Sixteen
Shane had grown tired of everyone associated with the website. Really fast. He’d been close enough to get hit with blood splatter when Frank got shot. Scrubbing it off didn’t wipe the stain clean.
Good guy or bad guy didn’t matter. Frank had been young and misguided and had carried a secret that would fell most halfway decent men. Cam had connected the dots in no time. A friend of Frank’s had died in an alley after a long night of drinking. The person with him? Frank. The friend had expressed concerns about Frank’s stories before he died, and those concerns had died with him.
Shane didn’t know what had happened in that alley, but he’d bet an angry confrontation gone wildly off track. A fight that left one friend dead and the other in an alcoholic spiral and now in the morgue. Life had handed Frank one last wallop. Shane just wished Makena hadn’t been there to see it.
At least her color had come back. She sat on the couch with her legs crossed in front of her, hugging a pillow to her chest. She listened to Connor and Cam tried to make sense of it all.
“There are long periods of time when none of the men in the group are logged in to any of their electronics,” Cam explained.
She nodded and kept nodding, then asked, “What does that prove?”
“They likely have an alternative source of communicating and were using that at the time,” Connor finished, then sat there across from her. No one said anything, not even her, and he started talking again as if he felt the need to break it all down and explain it. “You can see bursts of activity before an event, like the attack at your house, then sustained inactivity during the actual attack.”
The pieces made sense to Shane. Sometimes the lack of information proved to be better evidence than something obvious. Since Frank had only provided a piece—and a small one at that, without much detail—they had to fit it all together. Connor said he had the entire team working on the problem.
Makena tightened her hold on the pillow. “This is so much work. If only they used that power for good.”
“Men like that never do.” Shane had learned that the hard way long ago. He’d hoped his father would change, ease up and actually be there. Never happened. Some men couldn’t change. Men like Jeff thought he didn’t need to.
“It’s more fun to cause trouble,” Connor said. “Speaking of which, Holt is on the way home to check on the two of you.”
“No surprise there.” She eased her grip on the pillow and tucked it next to her. “So, does all this mean we owe Tyler an apology? Can we clear him?”
Shane wasn’t ready to go there. He didn’t trust anyone involved in this case, and that only worsened with each hour. “No.”
She frowned at him. “You sound so sure.”
Shane pretended that look was about wanting more information and not about her being tied to Tyler. Shane knew she didn’t have romantic feelings for the guy, but if she possessed a sense of loyalty, that could trip her up and make investigating Tyler harder. “It looks as if he lied about his service record. We need to know why and at what cost.”
“I don’t get it. Why start the site if he had this big lie in his past?”
That part confused Shane, too. There were possible explanations, but none of them sounded especially smart. “Maybe to throw the scent off, or to get to the investigations first and keep any taint away from him.”
Shane’s money was on one of those. Tyler might just have the bloated ego to think he could be the one to successfully hide his fake past.
“This is so ridiculous.” Makena pressed her head back in the couch cushions and wiped a hand over her face. “I was just trying to help.”
The tone got to Shane. He sat down next to her and pulled her hand down. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Cam nodded. “The work is good. It’s scary that it’s necessary, bu
t it is.”
“Tell that to all the dead men scattered wherever I walk.” She slipped her fingers through his and held on tight.
He moved their joined hands to his lap. “To be fair, I killed most of them.”
Cam’s eyes widened. “That’s how you comfort her?”
Shane never broke eye contact with her. He needed her to believe the way he did. “She’s tough. She doesn’t need to be coddled.”
“Man, Shane.” Connor groaned. “This is almost hard to watch.”
“You’re not very good at this,” Cam added.
“You’re both wrong.” She lifted their hands to her lips and kissed the back of his. “He knows just what to say.”
Once again, they were on the same wavelength. People could think whatever they wanted. Maybe he should come up with the perfect line and serve it to her, but truth was, when it came to her he didn’t need to embellish. Flowery words were unnecessary. He felt what he felt. It knocked into him, punched him in the gut and had him reeling. Rather than be scared, he welcomed the sensations this time.
“Are you sure he’s good at this?” Cam asked. “Because, wow.”
“I am not weak.” The words rang out strong and loud. She said them as if the comment resonated with her, rose deep from her belly.
Connor scoffed. “Definitely not.”
From their reactions it looked as if they all knew. The important thing was she finally got it.
Shane winked at her. “No, you’re not.”
She stood up without dropping his hand. “Then let’s go find Jeff.”
There was a topic sure to wipe out his good mood. With one last squeeze, Shane let go of her hand. “That guy is mine.”
The smile that crossed her lips could only be described as blinding. “So long as you end this, you can have whatever you want.”
He didn’t care who heard or how much crap he took for this. “Sold.”
* * *
JEFF TALKED BIG. Puffed out his chest and delivered a full blowhard recitation, complete with anecdotes about how he’d been wronged. When it came to annoying displays of minimal self-awareness, this ranked right up there.
The scene went on for almost fifteen minutes. Jeff sat at the picnic table in the park that had served as the site of one of the many shootings during the past week. Shane and Makena sat across from him. She had to listen to how he’d been set up and how the charges had been blown out of proportion. She waited for him to spin out the oldie about how he’d worked in covert ops, so no one could know the truth.
Somehow he refrained, but she sensed he had that explanation in his arsenal. He just hadn’t whipped it out yet.
When he finally started to wind down, Shane leaned in and stared at him. “You almost done?”
“You asked.” Jeff looked back and forth between them with his gaze hesitating on her for an extra beat.
Just long enough for her to start shifting in her seat. The guy ticked her off. Every word he uttered sent her temperature spiking. The way he made himself the victim and tried to sell his hours logged on the gun range as proof his military story was true. His explanation was a convoluted mess, and she doubted she could hear much more.
“Tell me about the loop.” Shane held a pen and turned it end over end on the table.
“What?” But Jeff’s tone had changed. Just a hint and only for a second, but anyone listening for it would have picked it up. And everyone was listening in.
“You are the leader of a band of misfits who lied about being in the military and being heroes, and now get together to whine.” Shane laid it on thick.
She almost cheered. Jeff didn’t fear her but he might fear Shane. Or he would if he was smart.
Jeff didn’t take the insults well. His skin flushed red and a vein in his forehead popped out. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s not as well hidden as you think.” Shane passed the pen from one hand to the other. “My people found the loop and we’re going over all the transcripts now.”
“Who are your people?”
“You should be more worried about what we can do.” Shane put the pen down with a click.
Something about the smooth move had Jeff’s gaze shooting to the pen, then back to Shane’s face. “You’re bluffing.”
“Frank Jay is dead.” It hurt her to say the words. Hurt even more to realize he’d turned out to be less than the man she hoped he would be.
Jeff’s mouth opened and closed, but that was all the emotion he showed to that announcement. “That group is made up of hardworking men who had their lives turned upside down by—”
She filled in the rest of the sentence. “Their own lies.”
Jeff’s balled his hands into fists. “She—”
“Discovered your lies, but you are still the liars, and when you get together to plan violence against other people, you are also criminals.” Shane held up both hands. “It’s simple math.”
“Violence.” For the first time Jeff’s face fell. He stopped the chest puffing and all the other nonsense and sat there with a stunned, openmouthed expression. “What are you talking about?”
For a second she bought it. Got sucked into the look and the stuttering tone. Then she remembered who he was and how well he could sell a story. “You celebrated me getting attacked.”
“Someone talked about it.” He hesitated between each word. “There are hard feelings, sure, but no one on the loop had anything to do with that.”
Shane never took his focus off Jeff. It was as if he was constantly assessing and analyzing. “The evidence suggests otherwise.”
Jeff jumped to his feet. “The evidence is wrong.”
The drama was back in full force and she was even less impressed this time than she had been during the first round. “Sit down.”
“You can’t tell me what to do.” He muttered something under his breath. Sounded like a nasty name.
“Yeah, she can,” Shane said.
Jeff slowly sank until his butt hit the bench again. “I’m being set up.”
It was Shane’s turn to swear under his breath. “Is that the only excuse you know how to say?”
“You don’t understand.” Jeff’s gaze traveled between them. He threw in the gestures and facial expressions. Seemed determined to convince them of his innocence. “We blow off steam. We talk about how to put our lives back together, to find jobs. To figure out how to take down the website and erase the information that’s been spread.”
That didn’t amount to gunfire, but it had the potential to blow up into that. People could talk in code or get the wrong idea. The dangers of groupthink were especially high when the group had a single sworn enemy. In this case, her. “So you know, nothing about that sounds innocent.”
Jeff shifted in her direction. Spoke straight to her. “If something happens to you, the stories get told again. The spotlight will switch from you to us in a matter of minutes, and all the information on the website explodes all over our lives again.”
She figured that probably was an accurate description of what would happen. She refused to feel guilty about that. “So?”
“Making you a martyr would make my life hell.” Jeff glanced at Shane. “That’s the reality. I need you alive and well, and preferably quiet.”
“Or would it free you if she were gone?” Shane asked.
“You’re wrong.” Jeff’s shoulders fell. It was as if the air rushed right out of him, deflating him. “Both of you.”
With one final exhale, Jeff stood up. Slipped out from the bench and stood next to the table. He scooped his keys off the top and tucked them in his pocket. Didn’t say another word as he turned around and started to walk away.
“Where are you going?” Shane asked in a voice that carried a cool chill.
Jeff still didn’t turn around. “To find out who is setting me up. You’ll see. I’ll prove it to you.”
She watched him go. The cocky walk was toned down, but the mess he left in his wak
e remained. “He’s a bit too confident, don’t you think?”
“He’s had a lifetime of practice at lying.”
Now, that was the truth. Somewhere along the line, lying had become Jeff’s one true skill. The thought of that made her sad.
She rested her arm on the table and turned to face Shane. “So, now what?”
“Easy.” He handed her the pen. Legal or not, the one with the microphone that taped every word. “We keep digging.”
Chapter Seventeen
Tyler showed up the next day. Not at her boarded-up house or the picnic area or even at Corcoran headquarters. No, Tyler came to the safe house. Walked right up to the front porch and knocked.
Shane almost shot him through the door.
He’d tracked him as he came up the drive. Watched him ditch the car around a curve and not near the house. Normally it would have been out of the line of sight of the front door and almost impossible to see. The hidden security cameras helped fill in those shadows.
None of that changed the facts. Tyler shouldn’t be here. He couldn’t be here. The fact that he knew where to track them down, let alone that he’d left his house to travel to them, had Shane itching to fire his weapon. He fought the urge to grab the other man, drag him inside and slam him up against a wall.
He’d ducked questions and responsibility. For a man who spent his life exposing others, his secrets rose to the same level as many of the people he condemned. In Shane’s mind, that made Tyler the worst sinner.
Shane let the guy get as far as the open entryway. Didn’t invite him to sit down or have a drink. Kept him pinned by the door and within range of the gun tucked by Shane’s side. He only got that far because Shane had had warning and could hide the documents and computers before Tyler walked in.
“Why are you here?” Shane asked even though he’d never believe the answer. Not now. Tyler had managed to wave a red flag that had Shane’s back teeth grinding together.
Tyler’s gaze stayed on Makena. “We need to talk about Jeff.”
He could stare wherever he wanted. He likely thought he could win her over. That they still had a certain rapport. Truth was, she’d looked at the newest investigation documents an hour ago, and whatever loyalty she had to the man was waning.
Tamed (Corcoran Team: Bulletproof Bachelors Book 3) Page 14