Chapter 7 Ultimate Dick-Deflater
Waverly
“Sons of Adam? As in Adam and Eve from the Bible?”
My entire team, plus Shayne, were at the office when we arrived at ten on the nose.
I hated being late and, to me, being on time was tantamount to the same thing.
Nelson hurried his steps to keep up with me as I made a beeline for the coffeepot.
If the pounding in my head was anything to go by, my caffeine levels were dangerously low.
And it was all Finn’s fault. Or rather it was his dick’s fault.
You’d think between bullets flying and broken sleep, my sex drive would’ve gone into hibernation.
But you’d have thought wrong. When I rolled out of bed in search of Finn, I found him in the shower, stroking himself fast and furious.
I joined him, and let’s just say by the time we finished, we had to rush through getting dressed.
So, yeah, I was blaming my lack of liquid gold on Finn’s enormous… loofah.
“Yes.” Shit. I forgot about Nelson. “Well, sort of. They’re not affiliated with any religious groups from what I’ve gathered.”
Shayne handed me a mug, then wisely moved out of my way. “Then who are they affiliated with?” she asked while I dropped a pod into the machine.
“They’re an anti-militia group mostly.”
“Lovely,” Lanie voiced what I was thinking.
“That makes no sense,” Noah spoke up. “Why would they give a damn about a company making prosthetic limbs? No offense, Finn.”
“None taken.” He moved to my side, grabbing his own mug from the cabinet.
“They don’t.”
“Nelson, dude.” Koen shook his head. “You’re giving me whiplash.”
“Sorry, sorry.” He held up his hands. “Let me explain. Sons of Adam was started by a guy named Cain Lewis after he was medically discharged from the Army.”
“Let me guess,” Duncan interrupted, “Cain lost a limb in battle?”
“You got it in one.” Nelson grinned. “He later accused the military, and by default, the government, of purposefully sending him into a hot zone in order to kill him.”
“It must be nice to live in a land of delusions,” Shayne scoffed.
“What does any of that have to do with me?” Finn asked, taking a sip from his cup.
“After going through an extensive background check, which included a psychiatric evaluation, Cain Lewis was turned down as a potential candidate to receive a prosthetic limb from none other than Lachlan Industries.”
“Well, shit. That’s a damn good motive.”
I had to agree with our resident profiler. “Indeed it is, Noah.”
“Where is Lewis now?”
All heads turned to Nelson at Lanie’s question.
He swallowed thickly, keeping his eyes on the floor as he mumbled, “Shadow’s Edge.”
“Fuck.” My headache just became a massive migraine.
“Oh, this is gonna be fun.” Shayne laughed. “Please let me come with you.”
“What am I missing here?” Finn cocked his head in my direction.
“My ex lives in Shadow’s Edge,” I shrugged, trying to appear more casual about the newest clusterfuck than I felt.
“Her ex, as in the chief of police in Shadow’s Edge.”
“You’re a shit-stirrer, Shayne.” I scowled. The urge to stick my tongue out at her was riding me harder than Finn had last night.
“So…road trip?”
“Not for you, Detective Black.”
“Killjoy.”
“Not for you either, Special Agent Mitchell.” Duncan earned the right side of my bad attitude with that statement.
But before I had the chance to tell him all the ways he was wrong, he cut me to the quick by making perfectly good sense.
Damn him. “You’re too close to the situation. I’ll take Keaton with me.”
“Tell Mac we said hi.” Someone needed to get control of Shayne before she stuck her foot in her mouth. “Don’t worry, Finn. I’m sure you would’ve won the dick measuring contest.”
Too late.
“Jesus,” I groaned. “Don’t you have a job to get to?”
“Nope.” She popped the P. “I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
Lucky me.
Turning my back on her antics, I readdressed my second-in-command. “It’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive. Wouldn’t it be easier if I called him? Get his officers to do a little recon? We aren’t even sure if Nelson’s theory has merit.”
“Of course it has merit. Jett and I found all the information on the dark web.”
“Oh shit,” Lanie groaned, followed by a chorus of “Fucks” from everyone else.
Jett was Koen’s seventeen-year-old brother-in-law. The kid was a damn genius and we’d put his computer skills to good use after he’d gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd.
“What?” Nelson frowned.
Koen clapped him on the shoulder, a touch harder than necessary. “Please––for the love of all things holy––do not tell me you got Jade’s baby brother involved in this shit.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
“Dammit.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I better not end up sleeping on the couch because of you.”
“All right. Can we get back on track?” Duncan pushed off the wall he was leaning against. Turning to me, he said, “It pains me to say this, but Mac may take the call better coming from you, Way. See if his boys can rattle some cages. In the meantime, we’ll keep searching as if we don’t have any suspects.
For all we know, Cain Lewis is an innocent man. ”
Everyone scattered, going back to their desks to dive into whatever they’d been working on, while I dragged my feet to get to mine.
It would be the second time in a few months I’d had to make this particular call.
We were friends, and while I held no romantic feelings toward Mac, we’d still seen each other naked; multiple times.
The fact I was calling him about a case surrounding a man I was currently involved with could be messy as hell.
“Do you want me to wait in the hallway?”
I should’ve known Finn would pick up on my distress. He read me fairly easily, not that I was trying to hide anything from him.
“No, it’s okay. You can come in.”
“Should I be worried about this Mac guy?”
Closing the door behind us, I motioned for him to have a seat in one of the wingback chairs in front of my desk.
I took the other, not wanting to be far away.
This wasn’t exactly the way I envisioned broaching the subject of our exes, however, circumstances being what they were, there was no time like the present.
“Mac and I were over before we ever really began, if I’m being honest. He’s not a bad guy, he just wasn’t the guy for me. Our lives were too different for us to be anything more than friends.”
“Was he the last relationship you had?”
“If you can call it that, then yes. It ended two years ago.”
“No one since then?”
“Not a soul. How about you? How many exes are in your closet, Mr. O’Lachlan?”
Finn closed his eyes. I’d meant it to be funny––a little mood lightener if you will.
It seemed the joke was on me though. The coffee I drank earlier threatened to make a repeat appearance.
Normally, I wouldn’t give a shit about someone’s past. It was irrelevant in terms of the future.
But everything, it seemed, was different with Finn.
I cared, dammit. Even though I’d fought like hell against it, this beautiful man had wormed his way into my heart.
Finally, he broke the silence, piercing me with his ocean blues. “It’s been closer to three years for me, maybe longer.”
“What? How?”
“Money changes people. More to the point, they act differently when you have it and they want it. It was much less disappointing to be alone. Besides, I didn’t want to introduce anyone to the twins who wasn’t with me for me.”
“You’ve never mentioned their father. Where is he?”
“I have no idea.” He soldiered on before I had a chance to question his evasiveness. “I’m not trying to blow smoke up your arse, I really don’t know. Sloane was and is very tight-lipped about anything having to do with their conception.”
“So big brother never got to vet the guy?”
“No. Sloane was in Dublin for about six months, performing an internal audit on our offices there. I could tell by the change in her demeanor that she’d met someone. She was happy––correction––she was in love.”
“Then what happened?”
“I was in London when I got word she’d been involved in a serious car accident.
From the pictures the police showed me, I’m not sure how she survived.
Actually, according to the doctors, she didn’t have a pulse when the medics arrived.
They placed her in a medically induced coma for two weeks, until the swelling around her brain resolved.
They told me she was pregnant while I kept vigil at her bedside. ”
“Oh my God, Finn. That’s horrible.”
Knowing how close the two of them were, I couldn’t imagine what he went through during that time. He had to have been going out of his mind with worry.
“The worst part was when she woke up. The devastation in her eyes when she asked what happened to the man she’d been with in the car…
it gutted me. It was the one and only time she ever spoke his name.
Rogan. Her memory of the accident was hazy, but she remembered a loud popping noise, then a flash of light before the car went off the road. ”
“Wait, Rogan? She named her son after him?”
“The guy leaves her for dead and she honors him? How feckin’ twisted is that?”
“Finn.” My heart broke for him…and her. Laying my hand on top of his, I squeezed. “There’s obviously more to the story than we know.”
“Yeah, well, Sloane won’t talk about it.”
“She’s grieving.”
“She needs to get over it,” he grumbled like a petulant child. “You don’t have to say it. I know I’m being irrational.”
“So long as you’re aware,” I deadpanned.
Exhaling heavily, he slapped his hands on his knees. “You should probably make that call.”
“Can’t we just stay in our bubble a little bit longer?”
“Now who’s the irrational one?”
“Asshole.” I rolled my eyes.
“Thanks, Mac.”
“Anything for you, Waverly.”