Chapter 25
25
ETHAN
“I’m out.”
Mila followed me across the parking lot to the SUV. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Means I’m calling Brody from the fucking car and telling him to send someone else to be your partner.”
“Why?”
I hit unlock on my key fob and yanked open the door, but when she didn’t move to the other side of the vehicle, I shifted slightly to face her.
I was angry, so angry that I shouldn’t have this conversation with her, but I was past the point of caring. “You were ready to put us both in a situation that we may not have gotten out of.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Ethan, it’s all part of the game. You have to trust me.”
“I did,” I admitted, “until you pulled that shit.”
Getting in the SUV, I slammed the door and waited for her to jog around to her side. Once she was inside, I started the engine and pulled out of the parking space while she talked.
“I knew what I was doing,” she explained. “We need in the back room, and agreeing to dance is the only way that’s going to happen.”
I turned out of the parking lot onto the road that would take us back to the hotel, hoping like hell that I’d be driving out of this town by tomorrow.
“Ethan.” She laid her hand on my arm. “You know as well as I do that something big is happening in that place, and Samson is involved. If we get him for this, we'll hopefully be able to find out why he wants Beth.”
“At what cost?” I narrowed my eyes and briefly glanced at her. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened to you in there without backup?”
“I was prepared for that.”
“Prepared to be raped?” I raised my voice. “Prepared to be drugged or beaten while I was on the other side of the door, not able to help you?”
When she didn’t reply, I glanced at her again and noticed she stared out the windshield. Something occurred to me at that moment. “Has that happened to you?”
“I wasn’t raped,” she answered quietly. “But I was in a situation where I was assaulted for saying no to one of the MC members.”
“What kind of assault?”
“He gave me a black eye after I kicked him in the nuts for groping me. Honestly, I was lucky the president of that club didn’t throw me out right then.”
“Where the fuck was Nick?”
“This happened right after I was brought in. I’d only just ‘met’ Nick.” She used her fingers to make air quotes. “We weren’t dating yet.”
“What the hell did Nick do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing!” I yelled.
She sighed. “Ethan, you don’t understand undercover work. He couldn’t have done anything about it. He would’ve blown his cover so I didn’t tell him. I told my handler who called Nick with orders that we were to start dating.”
“Did he explain why?”
“Yeah, but I’d told him not to. I didn’t want anything to ruin the case Nick was building.” She shifted in her seat to face me. “Look, I was trained for this. We all are. Every agent knows the danger we put ourselves in, and we accept it so we can catch the scumbags we’re hunting.”
“Why the hell would you want that job?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “To prove to my father that I was capable, I guess.”
“Did you tell him what happened?”
“Yeah,” she answered quietly.
“What did he say?”
“He said it's part of the job, and if I couldn’t handle it, then I needed to turn in my resignation.”
I shook my head in disbelief over the shit I was hearing. Her own fucking father refused to protect her.
“We’re so close to getting him, Ethan, we can’t give up now.”
I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel and parked the SUV before turning off the engine and shifting to face her. “I’m done, Mila. I wasn’t just saying that because I was pissed. I won’t stand by and watch you put yourself in those situations. It’s not who I am. I’m never going to let you go into that room alone. If you try, I’ll blow our cover, so I’ll call Brody and tell him to send you someone else.”
Her shoulders dropped while I talked. “I don’t want a different partner.”
“You can work that out with Brody.”
“Don’t you want to get him?”
“Not at the risk of something happening to you,” I admitted. “That’s too high of a price to pay.”
She studied me closely, and I waited for the question I’d been dreading. She was too smart not to know this was about more than our situation, and I wouldn’t lie to her if she asked. “Is that the only reason you don’t want to work with me anymore?”
“Honestly?” She nodded, and I continued. “No, that’s not the only reason.”
“It’s because I lied about not being interested in men.” When I only continued to stare at her, she kept talking. “You don’t understand what it’s like being a woman in this field, to be taken seriously for your work. I learned early in my career that if I lied about my sexuality, I could avoid unwanted attention but also get them to focus on my work.” She gestured toward the window. “You were there. You saw how Striker was ready to dismiss me. You heard what he said about how it affects an all-male team when a female joins. The worst part is, he’s right. I have to work twice as hard to prove myself, and that doesn’t mean it will change the fact that the men on the team will still feel some type of competition.” She paused and lowered her voice. “I’m not proud of it, Ethan, but it works.”
I narrowed my eyes. “It didn’t work for me.” When she dropped her eyes, it was obvious she knew all along. “You knew how I felt?”
“Not at first.”
“When we got here?” When she nodded, I continued. “You could've told me. We had plenty of time to talk while waiting around.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “Maybe I should have, but it could’ve made things harder for us. We were both already attracted to each other. Working together would’ve been really distracting if you knew the truth.”
I ran my hand through my hair. I had no idea she was attracted to me. I was blinded by my own feelings, guilt, and frustration to even notice if she gave me any signs that she felt that same pull.
What we did tonight flashed through my mind, and I shook my head. “Do you have any idea how much I hate that we basically had an audience tonight? An audience to something I’ve wanted since the minute we met, but not like that. Never like that.”
“So you’re not into voyeurism, then?” she teased, but I wasn’t in the mood.
I threw open my door. “Nope.”
“Ethan.” She pushed open her door and came around the front of the SUV to meet me. When she laid her hands on my chest, I stopped walking. I wasn’t even sure who I was angrier with. Her for telling me the truth when I was past the point of control, or myself for losing control. “I’m sorry. I really am. I’m used to working with a group where I have to be on the defense all the time. I’m not used to this team. I’m not used to feeling accepted and valued, so I did what I always did and pretended to be something I wasn’t, but that wasn’t fair to anyone. Especially you.”
“Were you pretending in the club?”
“It would be easier if I was,” she answered honestly. “But no, I wasn’t pretending.”
I closed my eyes and looked over her head across the parking lot. The first woman in years I’d been interested in, and I couldn’t do anything about it even after she admitted wanting me too.
Looking back at Mila, I frowned. “I told Brody I could keep them in check, and I failed.”
“Keep them in check?” Her eyebrows drew together. “What does that mean?”
“My feelings for you,” I admitted. “I told him I could handle this and promised it wouldn’t affect my concentration when I was working with you.”
“It wasn’t only you,” she reiterated. “Look, we’ll just keep this between us. No one needs to know we slipped up.” I started shaking my head, but she kept talking. “We’ve made it this long and have been able to ignore our attraction. We can do it a little longer. It’s not like we’re starting a relationship. We’re attracted to each other and got caught up in the heat of the moment.” She tilted her head to the side. “That’s all it was.”
That’s all it was . Those words played on repeat in my mind. Maybe that was true for her, but that wasn’t true for me.
“We just put it aside for now. We’ll figure it out after the case is over and we return to New Hope.”
When she mentioned the case, I decided to go back to talking about that. It was safe. It didn’t make me have to think about why it felt as if I just lost something. Something I never actually had. “We don’t have any more leads in this case. We’re at a dead end. It’s time to do something else or go home.”
“Let’s go to the bar one more time,” she suggested, talking fast, knowing I would refuse it. “Samson invited me in, and I think he liked your refusal. I’m not sure why, but it seemed that way. He told us to reconsider and come back tonight. If we go back and nothing happens, then we’ll throw in the towel.”
I ran my hand around the back of my neck. “I don’t know...”
“We’ll go inside and call Brody. Tell him we need one more night and if we get nothing, then we’ll call it a dead end.”
“Mila—”
“I’m making a promise to you, Ethan.” She cut me off. “I won’t do anything to put myself in danger. But something is there, and we’ve essentially gotten past the guards. No one else in our group will get that far. We've already built a rapport with these people. We had a conversation with Samson. That’s a hell of a lot of progress to just ignore.”
She was right. I hated it, but she was right, and like her, I wanted to finish what we started. I just wasn’t willing to compromise her safety or mine to do that. “We have to be smarter this time.”
“I agree.”
She would obviously agree to anything I said if it looked like I was leaning her way, but she was making good points. Now that I’d calmed down, I could see the value in getting back into that club, but I had to have limits set. “We have to get the hell out when it feels dangerous.”
She smiled. “Deal.”
Nodding slowly, I gestured to the hotel. “Let’s go call Brody.”
She slid her hands off my chest but reached down and wrapped one around mine. “We’re a couple, remember? Just in case anyone’s watching.”
No one was watching. It was two in the morning, but her hand felt good in mine, and I wasn’t willing to let go. I laced my fingers with hers, and we started across the parking lot. Pulling open the door, we walked through and went straight to the elevators. We were upstairs in our room, without saying a word, in less than a minute.
I reluctantly dropped her hand and reached into my pocket for my phone but frowned at the time. “Wonder if we should call this late?”
“Maybe text him first. It’s around one in the morning there.”
Nodding in agreement, I typed out a quick text, smirking when my phone rang almost instantly.
“Not surprised.” Mila laughed.
I answered and put him on speaker. “We wake you up?”
Brody snorted and answered quietly. “That would imply I sleep.” We heard a door close and his voice level rose. “What do you have?”
“A fucking shit show,” I answered honestly.
“Not surprised from what you’ve told me already.”
“Got to a lower level and finally saw Samson,” I told him immediately, knowing that was the information he wanted.
“What was he doing?”
“Nothing,” Mila replied. “Except hanging around outside a door that led to another room, but it was clearly invitation only, and I don’t think we were going in there just because we made friends with someone. Not like we did with the lower-level invite.”
“Who was going in there?”
“Mostly men,” Mila continued. “Some women, all young. We watched for a while. The men came back out, but the women didn’t.” She paused. “Something more is going on in there. At one point, Samson gestured for us to go to him. We talked briefly. He already knew I was a dancer and invited me in, but Ethan refused to let me go in without him.”
I looked down at her, surprised she told him, but she was staring at the phone in my hand.
“Good,” Brody replied.
“I understand why he did, and I agree,” Mila continued, “but you have to admit we can’t ignore whatever’s going on behind that door.”
Brody paused for a moment before he spoke again. “Mila, why do you think I sent Ethan with you?”
Mila and I glanced at each other, both confused by the change of direction in the conversation. That wasn’t typical of Brody. He was a straight shooter and liked to stay focused on the task at hand.
“Because we had no real public connection to Elite, and you needed us to look like a couple to blend in.”
“Partly,” he agreed. “The other part of that was that you’re used to taking chances that put you in situations where you got hurt. We didn’t want a repeat of that, so we sent someone with you who could be objective and keep you safe.”
She swallowed hard. “It sounds like you’re implying I’m a loose cannon?”
“Not implying anything,” he answered honestly. “You’re used to working undercover and taking risks you were forced to take. We don’t operate that way, and I knew Ethan would shut it down if it was dangerous.”
The look on her face made it easy to see that she took his comments personally. I knew Brody well enough to know that wasn’t what he wanted, but she didn’t know him like I did.
“We talked about it and agreed it was a bad idea after the fact. I get why she wanted to, though, Brody. Something is definitely going on, and it’s being very well guarded. Women are going into that room and not coming out,” I reiterated.
“What’s your game plan?” he asked.
“Go back,” I replied. “See if we can get any information from the women milling around. If we can’t, then I think we file a police report. At least they can open an investigation.”
“Do you think anyone’s suspicious of you?”
“It doesn’t seem like they are.” Mila finally spoke again. “Samson invited us back after I persuaded him.”
“How did Samson react when you didn’t take him up on his invitation?”
“He didn’t react much. He’d told me I could make about a thousand bucks in one night dancing for him, so I played on that and acted like I needed to convince Ethan. It seemed like he bought it.”
“You ever make a thousand bucks dancing while undercover?”
She snorted. “No, and I never heard of any club paying out like that, even with tips included, but that was North Carolina. Maybe it’s different here.”
“If you go back tonight, we need a clear exit plan. You also need a man on the outside who can get in there if shit goes sideways.”
Ethan’s eyebrows drew together. “You sending us Landon?”
“Hell no.” Brody answered immediately, and I grinned. “He’s way too impulsive for this assignment.”
“You’re sending us Nick,” Mila stated.
“I am,” Brody acknowledged. “He has the ability to stay in the shadows, and that’s what you need. He’ll be your eyes and ears on the outside, but he has the training to infiltrate if necessary. I’ll have Kyle get him on the next flight out. Call me once he’s there, and we’ll go over the plan.”
“Won’t Samson recognize him?” I asked. “He was a part of the FBI when they took down Sullivan.”
“Samson will never see him. Nick’s road name in the motorcycle club was Smoke for a reason. He can be there and gone so damn fast you’ll second-guess you ever saw him. That’s how he was so effective undercover.”
“Okay. As long as we have someone who can get Mila out if shit goes south, I’m on board,” I agreed.
I felt the heat of Mila’s stare on the side of my face and looked down. There was something in her eyes I didn’t recognize. Maybe it was appreciation, maybe something more, but whatever it was, it caused an ache in my chest that I hadn’t experienced before.
“I appreciate the effort you’re putting in on this case.” We both looked back at the phone when Brody spoke again. “We wouldn’t have gotten this far without it.” He paused, and we both stared at the phone, waiting to hear what he had to say next. “Mila, this job, just like your last job, requires you to have a partner who can keep you safe. We brought you on because of your talent. Our job is to keep you alive while you do what you do best.”
“Thanks, Brody,” she answered quietly with a small smile.
“Talk to you in a few hours,” he replied before the line went dead.
When I saw she was blinking her eyes, I moved across the room to give her a minute. “I’m gonna grab a shower and get some sleep.”
She nodded but didn’t meet my stare, so I grabbed some clothes and moved past her, closing the door to give us both the breather we needed.