Chapter Fourteen
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“T argets? Targets for what? Who?” Bristol’s voice had a shrill edge to it as TJ ushered her inside the back door and locked up behind them.
Ignoring her for the moment, he immediately moved around the house, pulling all the blinds down on the windows, then retrieved the hidden phone from his bedroom. His day had just gone off a cliff in the most spectacular way imaginable and taken him and Bristol along with it.
It wasn’t her fault, but they were both in danger now, and he didn’t know how much to tell her. For her own good. Goddammit, why couldn’t she ever seem to leave him alone?
He typed out a quick message to his contact as he returned to the main living area of the house. Bristol was still standing where he’d left her.
She had wrapped her arms around her body, a subconscious attempt to comfort herself. “TJ, say something. You’re scaring me.”
He suppressed a sigh. Yeah, she should be scared. But not for the reasons she thought.
When he didn’t answer right away, her expression shifted from worried to annoyed. Her fists slid down to plant on her hips, her chin coming up. “Were you selling or buying from Mark?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. She had no idea that she’d just blown a critical meeting that had been more than a year in the making, and he didn’t know what protocol to follow now. “Neither.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me. Not now.”
“I’m not.”
She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe him. “Then what did I see? You guys were just catching up, having a little chat in the shadows of the hospital parking lot? I saw him give you something, and you put it in your pocket. Was it drugs?”
Yep.
He gestured to the living room couch under the long, now-covered window at the front of the house. “Sit.”
“I’ll stand, thanks.”
“Fine, then I’ll sit.” He dropped onto the couch, let out a deep breath. “I’m not an addict or a dealer.”
Her posture didn’t change, and he could tell she still thought he was full of shit. Which made sense, considering what had happened with her brother. Addicts were consummate liars. “Then what just happened?”
“You blew my cover.”
Shock filled her eyes. “Cover?”
“Yes, and the entire op with it. So now we’re both in danger.”
She stared at him, her face going slack with surprise. “Op? Cover?” she repeated.
He nodded once, jaw flexing. “I’m undercover DEA. Or was, until about twenty minutes ago.” What an epic clusterfuck. Everything he’d done up until now, everything the agency had put in place to get him to this point, had been destroyed the moment she’d stumbled upon that meeting.
Her face went a little pale, and her arms fell to her sides. “Maybe I will sit down,” she said quietly, and walked over to sink onto the wide easy chair off to one side of the room. “DEA,” she said after a minute, staring at him in disbelief.
“Yeah.”
“So you were...just posing as an unhoused person?”
“Yes.” It had been way rougher than he’d expected. He couldn’t even think about all that time and all the hardships being a total waste. The agency had to get the intel they needed from the evidence he’d gathered tonight. Otherwise, everything he’d sacrificed had been for nothing.
“Why?” she asked, sounding aghast.
He understood her confusion. “Best way to see what’s really going on in the drug scene at the street level is to live on them and stay under the radar.”
“And why were you meeting with Mark? How is he involved?”
“He’s a confidential informant who’s been giving us insider intel for the past eight months.” A growl of frustration built in his chest. They’d worked so hard to win his trust.
They’d been so close to getting in contact with the critical asset Mark had access to. Been within weeks of having enough intel to execute a raid on the main facility the drugs were shipped through after reaching this part of the coast. It would have put a major dent in the cartel’s operations in the region and stopped hundreds of millions of dollars of potentially lethal drugs from hitting the streets of American cities and towns.
It would have saved thousands of lives.
“So he runs drugs through the hospital? For the cartel?” Bristol asked.
She looked and sounded so disappointed. “Yes.”
Before she could ask anything else, his burner phone rang. “Yeah,” he answered, not bothering to get up and have this conversation in another room. Like it or not, Bristol was part of this now, and at least temporarily his responsibility.
“What happened?” his handler, Diana, asked. She was one of only a handful of agents he reported to. His team was small because of a suspected leak in the DEA chain. Someone on the inside might be feeding intel to the cartel working this part of the coast.
“An acquaintance saw me meeting with the CI.” He was acutely aware of Bristol watching him, hanging on his every word.
“And your cover?” Diana asked.
“Burned.” To fucking ash.
“That’s unfortunate. The timing especially.”
He smothered a snort. “Yeah.”
“Anything else I need to know?”
“Two guys working with the CI chased us in a pickup. They crashed west of the 101 near Crimson Point, with minor injuries. I secured them and called the cops.” He reached into his back pocket to extract the IDs he’d found in their wallets, gave their names and listed addresses. Though chances were good they were all fake. “I’ve also got their phones. I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.”
“Good. I’ll send someone over to collect them. Where are you now?”
“Home.” It still felt weird to say that. Not that it would be home after tonight. His entire world had just been upended again.
“And this acquaintance? How much does he or she know?” Diana asked.
“She knows I’m DEA. She’s here, by the way.”
A startled pause answered him. “You took her home with you?”
“Couldn’t be helped under the circumstances.” There was no way he would have left her to fend for herself in the parking lot or ditch her after the crash. Mark was still out there somewhere. If he’d reported what happened to his contact in the cartel, there could be others after them right now.
“Are you secure?”
“Secure enough for the moment.”
“All right. Sit tight while I pass this intel along. I’ll contact you with further instructions.” She ended the call without a goodbye. Diana was always all business.
He lowered the phone to his lap, meeting Bristol’s gaze. Anxiety radiated off her like a forcefield, and he couldn’t blame her. He tried to think of something he could say to reassure her, but he couldn’t do that without lying, and he’d already done enough of that. To keep her safe, he needed her to trust him.
“What did they say?” she asked.
Having her in his personal space felt strange. And it didn’t help that his every sense was attuned to her, from the visual picture she presented to the slightly husky edge to her voice to her subtle, sweet scent permeating the air between them. Her presence seemed to fill the entire room, infusing it with her essence until there was no escape.
“They’re looking into our situation. But for the meantime, we’re stuck together.” In this tiny house with only one bed. Though if he had to sleep before she was cleared to leave, he was definitely bunking on the couch. He was way too keyed up to trust himself to be near a bed with her.
She rubbed her hands up and down her thighs, and he could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. “For how long?”
“Not sure.” Staying here together wasn’t a long-term solution. This place wasn’t even remotely what he would consider secure. But for the moment the cartel network didn’t know where they were. That was a point in their favor. How long that flimsy illusion of safety lasted, he didn’t know. Probably not long. Days, not weeks. If that.
“How bad is this?” she said softly after a long beat of silence. “Our situation.”
He felt a twinge of sympathy. He’d never dreamed of being in this predicament, and hated that she was tangled up in it with him. She was innocent, should never have wound up in this kind of danger.
And she was also a huge potential distraction when he couldn’t afford to be distracted.
“You want me to be honest?”
She nodded, eyes grave behind her glasses, face pinched. He had the strongest, dangerous urge to go to her, gather her up on his lap, and hold her until she felt safe.
“About as bad as it gets,” he answered instead, seeing no way around it. She was too intelligent not to piece everything together on her own, and he wouldn’t insult that intellect or whatever shaky trust she had left in him by lying.
Her eyes flinched slightly. “So you mean we... Our lives are still in danger?”
He wished to hell he could say no. But looking into those sharp blue-gray eyes, he had no choice but to tell her the truth. “Yes.”
She blanched a little and leaned back into the cushion behind her. “Oh, God.”
Yeah. “We’re safe here for now,” he said, wanting to reassure her as much as possible. “The agency knows where we are and will work out another location for us if necessary until they can confirm we’re in the clear.” He leaned forward, stretched out a hand across the coffee table. “I’m gonna need your phone.”
She shrank away from him slightly. “I need to call Cassie and let her know I’m okay.”
He thought it over. Decided this once would be fine. “One call, then you give me your phone. And you can’t tell her anything about what happened today, understand?”
Bristol nodded, but he shook his head, made sure he had her full attention before continuing. “Just tell her you’re okay and ask her to get a bag of clothes and whatever else together for you. I’ll have Beckett pick it up and bring it over.”
“Why Beckett?”
“Because he was an A-Team leader, I know him personally, and I trust him.” TJ would have to call him and explain everything. If anything went down, Beckett could more than handle himself and would make sure he wasn’t followed on the way over.
“Cassie’s a professional bodyguard and a former cop. I trust her. Couldn’t I go stay with her?”
He felt even sorrier for her that she was stuck in this mess because of him. All because she’d tried to help someone she’d thought was a homeless friend of her brother’s. “No. You can’t involve her. Your buddy Mark knows you two are related, and after tonight the cartel will be pumping him for everything he knows. You won’t be safe there, and neither would she.” He didn’t like it either, but Bristol was far safer being here with him.
She absorbed it all with a sober nod, then made her call. “Hi, Cas. Listen, I’m okay, and I don’t want you to worry, but there’s been a bit of a situation, and I need a favor.” To her credit, her voice only wobbled a little. “No, I’m with TJ. But I think I’m going to have to go dark for a while now,” she said, looking at him for confirmation. Or maybe reassurance.
When he nodded, she continued, rubbing the center of her forehead with her fingertips as if she had a headache. “Can you pack a bag for me for a few days? Beckett will pick it up and bring it to me. Oh, and make sure he brings my bat.”
Her bat? He could tell the conversation wasn’t easy for her, could hear Cassie demanding more answers in the background. Not wanting to eavesdrop, he busied himself sending a message to Beckett to arrange delivery of the bag and bat.
“I can’t give you my location, but I promise I’ll tell you more when I can, okay? I’m all right, I swear.” Bristol met his gaze from across the room. “TJ’s got me.”
Those words resonated deep in his gut, the impact of that stare cutting right through him. He heard the unspoken trust there. Felt them as both a deep connection and a solemn vow. She believed he would look out for her.
Knowing that ripped through all his emotional defenses like an armor-piercing bullet.
Yeah, he had her. Whether either of them wanted this or not. And it wasn’t simply because she was Eric’s sister. He had gotten her into this, and it was his responsibility to protect her.
But more than that, he wouldn’t let anything happen to her because he cared about her on a deeply personal level that came with its own dangers.
He signaled at her to wrap it up. If Mark had reported her presence to his cartel contacts, it was possible they might track her phone to try and get a location.
“I gotta go now, Cass. I’ll call you again as soon as I can. Love you.” She ended the call, blew out a hard breath and handed over her phone.
TJ took it, shut it down and removed the battery before setting it on the coffee table with a quiet thud that sounded loud in the stillness, then looked back up at her. “You all right?”
She was still pale. Yet still so ridiculously hot, even in her scrubs. The naughty librarian vibe of those glasses was crazy sexy on her.
“I mean...” She gave a humorless chuckle and shrugged. “I guess?”
The urge to protect her beat at him, to protect her even from her fear. “You’ll be fine. I’m here, and this’ll be over before you know it.” He hoped.
She shook her head slowly, staring at him like she’d never seen him before.
“What?”
“Wow, you’re like, really good at the whole undercover thing.”
He would not laugh. Would not. But his lips quirked in spite of himself. She was so damned witty and sweet and unexpected.
He stood, heading for the kitchen. “You must be hungry after working so late. I’ll see what I can make us to eat. Any allergies or aversions?”
“Organ meat, but unless you love liver and onions, that’s probably one thing I can remove from my list of things to worry about.”
He enjoyed her dry humor, especially in the face of all this. “I’m fresh out of organs.”
“Good. Can I help?”
“No, I’ve got it. Feel free to watch some TV, try to relax.”
As if either of them would be able to relax while they were sharing a roof and being hunted.
TJ busied himself in the kitchen, listening for any suspicious sounds, or for that telltale tingling in his gut that came from survival instinct. The comforting weight of his pistol pressed against his lower back as he worked, but the whole time he was acutely aware of the woman sitting just twenty feet away in the other room.
Through everything that had happened in his life, he’d never been tempted by drugs. Not once. But he was tempted by Bristol. More tempted than with any other woman he’d ever met.
Even though she was Eric’s sister.
Even though he knew he would never be good enough for her.
Even though he could never deserve someone like her.
Three excellent reasons why he needed to get any intimate thoughts of her out of his damned head. Especially since they were going to be alone together in this small house until further notice.