Reveal

by Bromberg, K.

  “You want me to spell it out? How about this: you ask for immunity, and while you wait for us to get the paperwork drawn up, you try to get the best of both worlds. How much did you let Ryker buy you with, huh? Did you think we’d sign the paperwork with you before we noticed?”

  “Paperwork? Buy me out?” I feel like I’m not an active participant in this conversation, because I have no idea what in the hell is going on. “I don’t—”

  “This.” Abel slaps down a stack of papers onto my table. “Your immunity deal.”

  “Oh.” I startle at the sound but then narrow my eyes in confusion when another stack lands with a thud beside it.

  “And this.”

  I look between the two stacks, too far away to read any writing, too close to ignore that whatever they say determines my fate.

  “What are those?” I point to the second stack, my voice cautious, my hope on edge.

  “You tell me.” Abel points for me to approach and pushes the stack closer.

  I look at the top one. The company is familiar, the printed form akin to a type of statement I see every month. My name is at the top, but the balance at the bottom shows a big fat zero.

  I glance up at both of them in utter shock and then absolute fear before rifling through the rest of them. “This can’t be.” My eyes jockey between them as I see that each of my monthly statements show a zero balance due.

  Every single one of them.

  Almost $300,000 worth of expenses I incurred for my uninsured sister has been wiped clean.

  “I don’t understand.” My voice is hollow, my eyes disbelieving.

  “Looks to me like you just wished it all away, and poof, the magic money fairy paid every last cent of it. And let me guess . . . he wanted something in return for doing it that cost a lot more than a midnight booty call.”

  Goddamn it, Ryker.

  Tears threaten, and I shake my head as if I can reject what I’m seeing with my own eyes. The mix of emotions is so strong and powerful that I’m not sure which one to focus on.

  Anger at him for thinking I needed him to do this.

  Fear because even though I know they are wrong in thinking Ryker bought me off, I can see how this all looks in their eyes, and it doesn’t play in my favor.

  Why would he do this?

  Maybe I want to take care of you instead.

  Every part of me riles against this, against his generosity, with an unrivaled fierceness.

  I can take care of myself. I got myself into this mess. I can get myself out of it. I don’t need some knight to come in and save the day.

  The other part of me has tears in her eyes from a relief I never thought I’d get the chance to know.

  But he can’t do this. I won’t let him.

  It’s just money to him. Play money.

  Powerful men like to play God.

  Abel’s words come back to me as I lift my eyes to his and shake my head.

  I run to my computer and frantically punch in websites of my big creditors. Are the agents tricking me? Are they going to tell me there is no immunity, make me sign their stupid papers, and bind me to them by telling me lies?

  But the lies are true. Each website. Each balance. All zeros.

  Every single one of them.

  How do I protect Ryker right now from their assumptions? How do I protect myself? How do neither of us become collateral damage in the agents’ pursuit of Carter Preston?

  “That two-million-dollar retainer sure is going a long way,” Abel says.

  “I had nothing to do with this. I didn’t know. I didn’t want this. I . . .”

  And then the tears come because Ryker might have just risked everything for me. His good deed—a deed I am so angry at him over because I don’t need a savior, I just need him—paints a different picture depending on what angle you’re observing it from.

  And the FBI is definitely looking at it differently than I am.

  “It’s not a bribe.” I shake my head over and over. It’s the only thing I can do. “I didn’t know. I . . . this is a total surprise.”

  “If it’s not a bribe,” Noah says and pushes the first stack of paperwork across the table, where he’s remained seated, “then you’ll have no problem signing this right now. As is.”

  Feeling like I’m walking through a fog, I rise from my seat and move slowly to the table. All I want to do right now is rush to Ryker’s house and chew him out. Tell him without spelling it out what he almost just risked for me. Kiss him and hug him and hit him and yell at him for paying off my bills, all the while swearing that I will pay him back.

  Every single penny.

  How does one read all this while being stared down by special agents? If I hesitate in any way, they’ll think I’m lying. If I don’t, I’m an idiot who trusts way too much.

  “Is it all in there?” My voice is barely audible.

  “Yes.” Noah nods.

  “Immunity. Cleared of wrongdoing. Letter of recommendation for Lucy. Charges for the underage girls? Restraining and gag orders from the Prestons?”

  “Technically, we can’t promise what the senator will or will not be charged with. That’s not something we can guarantee. We can only deal with what we won’t be charging you with,” Noah explains. “But I’d find the agency hard pressed not to file charges against him once those photos got out somehow.”

  I nod, hearing what he’s saying but hating that there’s nothing concrete.

  “And what about solicitation? He won’t be charged with it, right? Because if he’s charged with it, then my name will be in there somewhere.”

  “We can’t make that promise either, about what he will or will not be charged with,” Abel reiterates.

  My head flies up to Abel when he speaks.

  “No deal,” I say.

  “Told you this was all bullshit,” Abel says in disgust.

  “You add solicitation, then my name will be publicized. It won’t matter if I have immunity or not—my name will be out. Ruined. Slung through the mud so that every reporter from here to kingdom come will dig into my past, uncover ghosts I’d rather remain buried. It won’t matter what’s true or not—they’ll report it all as fact.” My breath hitches, and my fists clench. “My chances to adopt Lucy will be taken away. I did all of this for that. All this risk. All this bullshit. All this . . . everything,” I yell, tears on my cheeks and fury in my voice, “I did for that little girl.”

  I push away from the table and walk to the window. To the view of the boys playing their daily game of baseball. To the here, batter batter I can all but hear through the closed window when I see their lips move. My shoulders shake; my chest burns.

  This was all for nothing.

  All of it.

  I’m going to lose her anyway.

  “If you charge him with solicitation, the deal is off the table.” I turn to look at both of them.

  “Do you have the proof?” Noah asks, and I nod. “Here? In the house?”

  “Does the solicitation charge still stand?” I ask.

  Noah looks at Abel, and I can’t decipher what the look says. “Answer the question,” Abel demands.

  “You answer the question,” I repeat.

  “You’re maddening,” Abel says in a huff, but that term almost makes me smile as Ryker’s voice saying it ghosts through my ears.

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Christ,” Abel mutters and grabs the paperwork from the table. I move forward to watch him take a pen and X out a paragraph of the document. He initials the change and hands the pen to Noah, who does the same, before holding the pen out to me.

  With my eyes locked on his, I take the pen, scan the paragraph that has been crossed out, and initial beside theirs and add a date beside it.

  From there I proceed to take a seat and go word for word through the deal. I skip the standard boilerplate and focus on the specifics, despite their grumbling that it’s all there.

  When I’m satisfied, I take a deep breath and thr
ow up a silent prayer that I’m doing the right thing here, that I’m not missing some huge loophole that’s going to land me in jail, and sign my name.

  I slide it back across the table with shaky hands.

  “Now it’s your turn,” Abel says with an edge of impatience and a lift of his eyebrows.

  I walk to my office, grab my own stack of papers from the top drawer of my desk, and return to the two agents sitting at my kitchen table.

  “That’s the proof?” Abel asks with skepticism.

  “Yes.” I push the call log across the table. The one I was originally given without any of my notes on it.

  “What’s this?” He dismisses it immediately.

  “It’s a call log.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. Do you care to expand here?”

  “That log was given to me some time ago. I didn’t know what it was, what secrets it held . . . just that it pertained to Carter Preston and that he’d be in a world of hurt if this fell into the right hands.”

  “So you lied to us then about having something else on him?” Abel questions.

  “Do you want me to continue, or do you want to argue semantics?” I defer, hoping he’ll let that tiny detail go.

  “Where did you get it from?” Noah asks, and I breathe a cautious sigh of relief.

  “A generic email account sent from an IP address located at a New York public library. I can get my PI to turn over to you the details of it, as I’m sure your reach is much farther than ours was.”

  Noah and Abel exchange a glance and look back down at the log. “I don’t understand—”

  I cut Noah’s words off when I slide across the table a different version of the same call log. This time it’s covered with my notes.

  I find immense pleasure in watching their eyes widen as it dawns on them just what this is . . . and intense satisfaction knowing I’ll be the one who put Carter Preston in his rightful place: behind bars.

  “So this is—how did—I don’t have . . .”

  I step around the side of the table. “I researched when the vote was. I noticed all these calls going back and forth took place in the weeks leading up to it followed by a flurry the day of.”

  “Okay . . . ,” Noah says.

  “That number right there is the CEO of Alpha Pharm.” I point to one and then to the second. “His private encrypted cell phone, actually. He might have used the services of a rival escort service before. I made a couple of calls, had to make a few promises, but this here is his number. There’s proof in that stack over there”—I point to a pile of papers—“that ties this cell phone number to his credit card.”

  “That’s fine and all, but none of these are Carter Preston’s number,” Abel says, pointing to the other cell numbers on the sheet.

  “Yes, actually, they are. At least they’re the one he uses from his burner phones to call and schedule dates with a certain escort service.” I meet both of their eyes. “I can trace these numbers to calls placed on my cell phones. Ones you probably recorded him using since you were tracking our calls. And if that’s not good enough, I have a few voice mails with his voice on two of those numbers.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Noah mutters.

  “A goddamn burner,” Abel says.

  “It’s smart. He’s a senator who doesn’t want escorts or . . . I guess bribes able to be connected to his name.”

  Noah runs his finger under every call as if he’s remembering some invisible timeline to compare them against.

  “Where did you get this?” Abel demands. “How did someone know to email it to you?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. That’s the only question I can’t answer. Maybe because my PI was asking questions about him? I don’t know.”

  “Almost too convenient,” Noah says to Abel with a snort.

  “That’s what I thought . . . but it is Washington, and I’m sure Carter has burned a lot of bridges. Another woman scorned, perhaps? The ex-wife of Alpha Pharm’s CEO? Maybe it’s her way of getting back at her husband? Or maybe even someone who works at the cell phone company whose family member will be affected by the veto of this bill? I don’t have answers for you. I just know I’ve had this, and it took me some time to connect the dots.”

  “This is enough to nail him right now. There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered, but we finally have something connecting the two men. We pull up a warrant, we—”

  Noah holds his hand up to stop Abel and slides a look my way as if to say, Not in front of the non–special agent people. “We need to get our ducks in a row first. He’s slipped through our fingers before,” he says, his words surprising me. “I don’t want to let it happen again.”

  “It seems to me you won’t need me to confront him,” I say, more than relieved at the thought.

  Noah looks at Abel and heads toward the front door, his cell already in his hand. “I’ll find a judge who’ll sign this warrant and—” The front door shuts behind him, and I am left to look at Abel with raised eyebrows.

  “We’ll leave the confrontation on the table. We need to see what happens first. Judges are fickle creatures sometimes.”

  So are agents, it seems.

  I nod, all the while biting my tongue to keep from pointing out that Ryker’s phone numbers can’t be found anywhere on that month-long call log. It’s nowhere.

  But I don’t.

  And just as if fate is giving me a different way to prove his innocence and eradicate all doubt I should feel guilty for even thinking, I point to the stack of papers. “Let me see those again.”

  The smirk on Abel’s face says so much more than any words can. He’s a hunter, and his prey is so close within reach he can smell him.

  But I’m about to remove one less person for him to go after.

  I thumb through the papers again. I look past the sticker shock of the cover sheets that show the return address, my name, the balance due . . . and look at the pages after. The payments applied. The interest charged.

  “There,” I all but shout when I see the date of the balance payoff.

  “What?” He fights the smile on his lips, his tone feigning innocence.

  “You knew all along, didn’t you? You knew these balances were settled before you guys even approached me. That Ryker didn’t pay me off to keep me quiet.” I sit down in the chair. “Son of a bitch!”

  His laugh rings out through the house. I wasn’t sure he was even capable of having one. “We all have to play games sometimes to get what we want.”

  I stare at him, blinking, slack-jawed. “So he’s in the clear?”

  Abel twists his lips as he weighs how much to tell me. “Not exactly. But that’s a start.”

  Two hours later—after we’ve gone through everything I have, including my own phone records showing calls from that same number of Carter’s, saved voice mails recorded from one of his burner cell numbers—I’m finally all alone in my house.

  By then, the desire I have to chew Ryker out has dissipated.

  It’s still there all right . . . but it’s being stifled by some major exhaustion and the elation that I just might have gotten myself out of being bait for the FBI to use to lure Carter Preston.

  I refuse to be collateral damage.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Ryker

  “Where are you?” I jolt at the sound of her voice. Guilt springs up at being here without her knowing.

  “I’m out of town. A quick business trip. Why? Are you okay? Do you—”

  “We need to talk when you get back.” The high of hearing her voice crashes down when she says the words every man dreads being told.

  Especially after the odd week between us that sewed doubts into every part of me, no matter how hard I wanted to grab her shoulders, shake her, and beg her to tell me what was wrong so I could fix it.

  Or at least try to.

  But the one thing I know for certain is that she’s not bored with me. That she hasn’t written me off. I felt the exact opposite from her t
he other night when I told her I loved her. I know she feels the same way, even though she never uttered the words.

  And while that might seem simple to most, that’s huge to me.

  “Okay. What about?” I ask, trying to keep my thoughts and voice upbeat.

  Her lack of an answer—rather just a sound—only adds more uncertainty to whatever’s going on with her.

  “You’re okay, though, right?”

  “You paid off my debts.” The sudden chill to her voice makes me smile. Now this? Her anger and defiance and independence? This I can handle. This I was expecting at some point.

  I had it all planned out, what I was going to say when she realized it. Reasons and explanations and how now she’s free and clear with nothing standing in her way to keep Priscilla from giving her Lucy.

  I wanted to take care of you.

  I wanted to help fix the screwups I seem to keep making that continually put your getting Lucy at risk.

  I wanted to see your face without the lines of stress etched into it, without the fear in your eyes, without the constant pressure to right your sister’s wrongs.

  But I know better than to say any of those things. I know better than to assert the you’re vulnerable bullshit she’ll buck back against.

  Instead, I take the path of least resistance.

  “I did? Hmm. I guess I must have had my accountant pay the wrong bills.”

  “Ryker, this isn’t funny. It’s crap. I can’t accept this. I can’t—”

  “It’s not like you can tell them you made an oops! Guess it will have to stay as is.”

  “You looked into me. You snooped through my finances to know where my debt lay. You invaded my privacy—”

  “You’re right. I did. I’m sorry.” Well, shit, that was easier to admit than I thought it would be. But now it’s the silence that follows as she digests what I did that unnerves me.

  “I’m not okay with that.”

  “Understandably,” I say. “When I get back to town, I’ll open all of my finances for you to look at if that makes you feel better. That way we’re both on the same page.”

  “Ryker . . . that’s not what I’m asking. That’s not—I am not a kept woman. I will not be a kept woman.” I can hear the fury in her voice, and my smile widens.