Chapter Two
Callum stepped into Vivian Maddox’s office in the Victorian mansion of polished wood panels and stained glass that Titan Protectors, the new personal security division of Titan Group, had converted into their headquarters.
He didn’t know why he’d been called into a meeting when no one else, except for their lead tech analyst, was on site.
A few months new to this team, he hadn’t been there before when it was so quiet.
With its soaring ceilings and oversized solid wood doors, the place felt more like a gothic horror movie set than anywhere he’d worked while in the Army.
Those days were gone. He’d been burned and didn’t want to look back.
A slight perfume hung in the cold office air. The woman behind the fancy desk, with long red nails and bright lipstick, watched him with a stillness that set his instincts on edge.
“Hey, Boss.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Hale.”
He’d returned from an assignment late the night before and hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in his crappy apartment. Exhaustion gnawed despite the coffee he’d slugged back after he read the message to report in immediately.
Vivian tapped her fingers three times. Something else was amiss.
Callum sat across from her, not liking the scrutiny. “What’s going on, Viv?”
“How’s the transition back to civilian life?”
Meaning, had he gotten over the backstabbing shitstorm that had fucked his world? No. But in an effort to act casual, he crossed his arms, leaned back, and raised his shoulders. “Yeah. Sure.”
She snorted. “I bet.”
Viv double-clicked her computer awake. After a few keystrokes, the flat-screen wall display lit up with their assignment portal. “I have a job for you.”
What kind of assignment came when most of his colleagues were out of the office? A foreboding hummed in the air.
She continued to click through their database until her cursor blinked over the assignment file. Then she waited, finger hovering over her mouse, and eyed him one more time. “I have a special request for you, and I need to make sure you’re okay with it before you take the job.”
His eyebrows arched. “Me? Yeah. Fine. I’ll let you know if I can’t pull off a gig.”
Though he couldn’t think of a single assignment that might come across her desk that he couldn’t handle, unless it was something technical like comms interception or interpretation.
She wouldn’t give him that, though, and no one would ask for him by name.
Callum understood his role. He was strategic muscle and tactical ops. Not intel analysis.
The screen lit up with the photograph of a woman he hadn’t seen in years, and his heart stopped. “Grace Willoughby.”
“Grace Willoughby,” Vivian confirmed. “What do you know about her?”
Everything. Callum had spent the better part of his life pretending he hadn’t fallen for his best friend’s younger sister. Grace was as off-limits as a woman could get for two reasons.
The first was simple and deemed her completely and entirely untouchable: bro code. That unspoken rule that had sealed his mouth shut and glued his hands by his sides had seemed like the most important rule of his twenties.
The second reason was the one that had shown him how stupid his first rule had been. Grace was dead. Losing her shattered him and fundamentally remade him into a different person.
“She died about five years ago during her ex-husband’s trial.” His throat dried. Anything else he might say simply vanished.
Unless he stepped into the Willoughbys’ house, Callum never saw any pictures of her.
The photograph on the screen wasn’t the way he remembered her.
That Grace with vacant eyes and photo-shoot-ready makeup was the woman who had married a very wealthy, criminal-as-fuck piece of shit.
His Grace was bold with a smile that could power a nuclear generator.
Once, he thought he hated Grace. She had married Dominic Marino and had transformed into something unfamiliar, with fake long lashes and rouged cheeks that served as a billboard for the man she’d married. Then Callum realized he hated himself for not taking a chance.
Once Hayden told him she’d filed for divorce, a spring of possibilities surfaced in his mind—only for her to die in a fire. They rarely spoke of her again, and Hayden and their parents acted as if mentioning Grace would unearth a pain that their family couldn’t process.
The world sucked.
It took more and more and more, and whenever Callum thought it had taken all that it could, it took again. He cleared his throat and could not fathom why Grace’s photo was on Vivian’s screen. “What’s going on?”
“To be totally honest, a lot.”
“If there was a problem with her family, her brother would have reached out to me.” He jerked back. “Something happened to Hayden?”
“He’s fine, and he did.”
“What? No.” But Callum hadn’t had his personal phone on him while on assignment and had dropped into bed the moment he returned home. The ringer was likely off, and he didn’t bother to check his personal phone that morning. “Viv, what the hell is going on?”
“Hayden contacted Titan Group—Jared Westin—” she gave him a sharp look, “when he couldn’t get you.”
Jared Westin owned Titan Group and was the tip-top tier of the Titan hierarchy. Dread settled on his shoulders. “Why?”
She tapped her red nails against the polished wood three times, as if carefully constructing what she might say next. “Hayden connected with Jared, Jared with me. I have already spoken with Dean, and now you and I are talking.”
His heartbeat thumped in his ears.
“This has been like a complicated game of telephone, and what I’m about to tell you will hurt.”
“Vivian. What?”
“Grace Willoughby was supposed to be in witness protection. She was asked to testify against Marino.”
The news hit him like a lead pipe. Grace had filed for divorce after Marino had been arrested.
Marino’s trial had been in the news and prosecutors never seemed to lack witnesses, even as some backed out for fear of retribution.
Dominic Marino was nothing if not a wealthy narcissist who never thought he would be prosecuted.
The so-called Crypto King didn’t bother to hide his tracks.
“She’s in witness protection?” Callum asked, unsteady as possibilities he couldn’t fathom raced in his head.
“No.” Vivian clasped her hands and rested them on her desk.
The uncertain cloud still hung over her expression but was tinged with concern.
“She was supposed to testify. Another witness died—they were murdered, if we’re being blunt—and she called it off.
She was scared. Scared of testifying. Scared of living as Marino’s ex-wife.
Scared. Grace slipped from contact with the federal marshals and vanished. Then there was the fire.”
None of this made sense. He blinked, as though he might be able to refocus the conversation. “What are you telling me? Is she alive?”
“Hale—Callum, look, she’s not dead. And she’s in trouble. She needs help.”
His thoughts turned to putty. Pain squeezed the back of his throat, and he could hear his heartbeat thundering behind his sternum. “I don’t understand.”
Vivian pressed her lips together and waited until he steadied his breathing. She met his gaze. “Her dad, stepmom, and Hayden have always known she’s alive.”
His confusion about Grace faltered as the situation reorganized in his head. Hayden called. Hayden knew. Callum couldn’t form words, and Vivian grimaced as though understanding the profound betrayal.
“I understand you are close to the family.”
His pulse picked up. His body tensed. He would take a swing at Hayden if the man walked into the room.
Callum pushed out of his chair and paced the space in front of Vivian’s desk.
He replayed every conversation. Every emotion.
Every lie Hayden had told him. Callum wanted to beat his fist against his chest to lessen the pain filling his lungs.
Instead, he ran a hand over his face. “Yeah. Thought I was.”
Vivian waited until he stopped pacing. He stopped behind a chair and gripped its back until he might rip through the fabric. She waited until he remembered to breathe and let go of the chair. “You want some water?”
Callum shook his head and collapsed into the chair again. “I’m good.”
“Hayden wanted to talk to you himself, but you know how it goes. He’s off the grid and has a time-sensitive problem that couldn’t wait for him to talk to you about it.”
“What is the damn problem?”
“Hayden received a voicemail from Grace.”
“She’s alive and leaving voicemails. Got it.”
“Rein it in, Hale. Now.”
His molars ground. “I’m calm.”
“Yeah, clearly.” She let out a breath, shoulders dropping. “It’s fucked. I agree. But that’s the situation, and you’ve got to pull it together.”
Callum ran a hand over the back of his neck. His heartbeat still raced. “All right. Grace left a voicemail. What’d it say?”
“She saw her ex-husband.”
“He’s out of prison?” Callum calculated how long it had been. “That’s not right.”
“Seems as though a few federal witnesses recanted their testimony, and poof!” Vivian lifted her fist and splayed her fingers. “An appeals court had no choice but to release him.”
“Then they should find new witnesses.”
“Double jeopardy? I don’t know. Maybe they are. But I’m not an attorney, and that’s not the point.”
The point, the point… “A dead woman sees her recently released ex-husband who she’s been hiding from.”
“Yeah.”
Grace was alive, and her nightmare of an ex-husband was also aware. “Even if Marino is out of prison and knows Grace is alive, that doesn’t constitute a call to Titan Group.” He lifted his shoulders. “What else?”
“No one can find her.”
“She lives in hiding. Of course no one can find her.” He lifted his eyebrows. “She went into hiding to keep from Marino once before. She probably did it again.”