Chapter 26
The gravity of what I’m about to have to do is a crushing weight on my shoulders.
No. Not my shoulders. My soul.
I want to shield her from the fact that Trevor Holt is being interrogated—and not politely—in a bunker no more than a hundred yards from where she was sleeping.
Too damned close. The prick being on the other side of the earth isn’t far enough away.
“Good,” she replies to my remark that we need to talk privately, her response quiet, for my ears only. “I want to talk to you because I’m worried about you.”
Every time she proves she cares about me, it cranks another bolt inside of me.
She leans into me when I hook my arm around her neck, drawing her close.
“Need you safe behind those locked doors.”
When we hit the steps, and I force myself to loosen my hold, but I don’t let her go completely. My hand settles at her lower back instead. Needing that connection. Knowing things are about to get hard.
As if it hasn’t been hard enough.
Scout’s in the kitchen when we pass. “You going to be close?” I ask him.
“I’ll be right here. Whatever you need.”
Backup is what I need in case this goes wrong.
With my stomach shoving up against my ribcage, I keep her moving down the hall to a place we can talk. No ears. Not the bedroom we’re sharing. That’s our sacred space where none of this shit comes past the door.
“The library’s this way,” I tell her. “We’ll have some privacy.”
June’s nails click on the polished wood floor as she hangs right with us. Voices spill out into the hall from the conference room.
As we’re walking past the team meeting, I almost grab the door and close it, but don’t.
A voice rises up above the hum. “What’s your connection to Jade’s father?”
“Paid me to take care of his daughter.”
“With your fucking fists?” The interrogator asks loudly on the recording.
“She never cried. Not one time.”
Oh shit. No. No! No!
“Close that fucking door!” I bellow, but it’s too late.
“You piece of garbage,” Thane seethes on the recording before I can shield her. Then the sounds of physical torture fill the hallway.
Thuds. Grunts. Wheezing.
Jade’s shocked silent when I grab her, arm locked around her waist, lifting her off the floor as I charge into the library with the force of a freight train.
Goddammit. She can’t hear that.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I chant, over and over, fire in my lungs, ice in my veins.
Twisting out of my arms, Jade stares at me, pain and shock contorting her features.
“Who… what was that?”
“It was a recording of Trevor being interrogated.”
“How?”
“My team grabbed him when they flew back to the mountain. Apparently, he had come on scene when they couldn’t find us.”
With her mouth hinged open, she makes a heart-wrenching sound. Before I realize what she’s doing, Jade whirls and strides to the window, tearing the drape back until the garage is in clear sight.
“Is he there?”
“Please don’t—”
“Is he?” She spins back around, and the hurt in her eyes morphs to a sharp, cold anger. Something I recognize because I’ve seen it in the mirror.
“Is he there, Ryker? In that building? On this property?”
I would give a million dollars to tell her that he’s not.
“Yes,” I choke out.
Jolting like she’s been slapped, Jade shakes her head. “You didn’t tell me.”
What can I say. It all feels wrong.
“It seemed like the best thing so you could feel safe.”
“So I could find out this way? When I saw you arguing out there, I knew something was wrong. Was it about him?”
“Yes. Axle blocked me from going in there when I heard what you just heard.”
She burns me with her stare for a long moment, jaw tight, chest rising and falling too fast.
“I wanted to shield you—”
“I deserved to know.”
Every word impacts me exactly where she intends it to.
June whimpers, circling Jade’s legs until Jade drops her hand into the fur, grounding herself. She stares at the floor for a moment. When she looks back up, some of the heat has shifted.
“Jade, I wanted to kill him. I would have done it in an instant, for you, for revenge for everything he did to you. But we need all of the information we can get out of him. Keeping him here gives us that access.”
The crease in her brow softens. A fraction. Still tight with worry.
“I’m not going to fight with you about it right now,” she says, causing me to choke out a relieved breath.
“But we’re going to talk about that later.”
“We can do that.”
She turns back toward the window, arms crossed over her chest. “Is he still being interrogated?”
“Yes. That was a recording from earlier. It’s ongoing.”
A beat of silence while I watch her trying to read the subtle cues in her body language, then she rushes out. “I want to listen.”
My whole chest locks up. So much for relieved.
“No.”
She turns to face me, and what I see in her eyes stops me cold.
“I don’t want to be in the room. I want to listen.”
That should make me feel better.
My worst fear was Jade would demand to confront Trevor. This doesn’t seem that different when it comes to how protective I feel over this woman.
“Jade—”
“He was paid to hurt me, Ryker.” There’s a hitch in her swallow, but she goes on. “That man was paid by my own father. I deserve to know what he’s telling you. All of it.”
I drag a hand down my face, a sharp sound building deep inside of my body.
“This is not just about me,” she says quietly. “Think of all the people they’ve done this to. How many more there will be if one important detail is missed. I know things you don’t. It could be helpful for me to contribute.”
She lifts her chin and I get a flash of the strength I saw in the forest, the steel in her spine that always amazes me.
“I want to do this because it matters.”
Those words strike my stomach like punches.
The same reason I became a SEAL.
Because it mattered.
Not for ego or some cult worship. I did it because it mattered to the people we were saving and keeping safe.
I still want to keep her from listening to the interrogation.
Every protective instinct I own is screaming, no.
“I will be safe in the house, here.”
Oh god. I’m torn right down the middle. She’s not asking to walk into fire. She’s asking to stand at the edge of it. Where I can keep her from getting burned.
She steps toward me. “You can keep me safe and still let me do this.”
The way she says it tugs at a cord.
I grunt, close my eyes, and pull her against my chest. “For the record, I don’t want you to do this.”
“I know.” Carefully, she wraps her arms around me.
As I brush my hand over her hair and cradle her to my shoulder, I start locking myself down. No more fucking hothead moves. Can’t strangle the bastard when it gets ugly.
And it will get ugly.
“Let me make the arrangements. Stay here.”
Jade pulls back and looks up at me with a tender expression that leaves me winded.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” I press a kiss to her forehead, holding it a second longer than I might normally. “It’s going to be hard to hear.”
“I’m fully aware of that.”
“The next time he gets questioned, I’ll let you watch the feed. I’ll get the other recordings together on a secure server location for you.”
I take a step toward the door, not wanting to leave. As she curls into the armchair by the fireplace, June immediately takes up her post. On duty.
I stand there for one more second, burning this image into my memory. Her. My girl. Brave as any of the men in that conference room.
Then I step into the hallway, close the door, and lean my head against the wall.
Fucking. Fuck.
Trevor needs to be gone.
With a curse and a shove against the wall, I stride into the meeting room and all eyes swing my way.
“Jade heard the interrogation recording.”
There’s a collective grimace.
“I’m the one who left the door open,” Colt says. “I take full responsibility.”
With a shake of my head I drop into a chair at the conference table. “Doesn’t matter. It’s done. Now she wants to…”
I clear my throat a few times.
“She wants to listen in. Not confront, thank fuck. Because I wasn’t going to let that happen and the way she looked at me told me that I might be signing the death certificate on a future with her. So it’s settled. She wants to hear what he’s telling us.”
Five experienced operators look back at me. Most sympathetically.
Thane speaks first. “She could help with the case.”
“You’re not wrong.” I blow out a breath dropping my head back against the chair, the cut on my face stinging, reminding me that Axle and I were throwing punches not more than 30 minutes ago.
I look at him. “You’re not going to like this, but I’m going in on the next interview.”
“Don’t give a fuck if you do as long as you don’t kill him yet. Which is exactly what you were thinking when I blocked you from going in that garage.”
I can’t deny it. “She’ll be watching this time.”
“And?” he asks, staring at me through narrowed eyes.
“She deserves more than me losing my head. I want us to get every scrap of information out of Trevor we can so we can bring all these bastards down.”
He nods once. Approving.
I glance around the room. “Who can set up a server with the recordings so she can review them?”
Ranger tips his chin. “Done. She can listen in to the future interrogations.”
Someone whistles. “That’s gonna hit hard.”
“I know,” I grumble. “But we’ve got to remember what she’s been through. This isn’t new to her.”
“Except the torture part?” Thane asks.
“She was the victim of this bastard.”
“And she did watch you exterminating people on that mountain,” Colt adds.
Silence settles around the table.
Axle studies me as he pulls a toothpick from the corner of his mouth. “When we doing this?”
“The sooner the better.”
Colt closes his laptop and puts it into a tactical case. “We’ll do whatever you need. Audio only for this, or camera?”
“Camera.”
“On it,” Colt says. “Give us ten minutes.”
They rise from the table. All five of them. Thane, Colt, Axle, Jake, and Ranger. Without any further instruction they get to work.
But Colt’s standing in the doorway when I push back from the table. “You good?”
“Fuck no.”