Chapter 10
TEN
Ash added two more forty-five-pound plates to the lifting bar and stepped back with a satisfied grunt. He rolled his neck once, stepped up and lifted the steel off the rack.
The pressure settled across his shoulders. This he understood. Weight. Force. Pushing himself to muscle failure.
He dropped into the first squat. Up. Down. Up.
The burn built fast, and he let it chase out the last few days—the handoff to the FBI at the bank, the new intel, all of it.
They’d chased threads that ran into dead ends, and Con finally called the meeting when Mason snapped at Sinner for cracking his knuckles too loud.
After breaking for the night, Ash’s urge was to find Ellory and work off this wired feeling in between her thighs. But he wouldn’t use her like that. She deserved better, and hell, whatever was building between them deserved a chance.
Instead he’d hit the gym, seeking the burn that would tire his body, and with any luck, calm his mind in the process.
He shoved up hard from the bottom of the rep, jaw tight. Usually when he hit the weights, his mind settled enough to see information more clearly. He expected his brain to keep chasing the twisted pathways through Cipher’s network…but it kept snapping back to Ellory.
She hadn’t been in the war room with them, and he hadn’t seen her all day. That alone had been enough to distract the hell out of him.
He racked the bar and added more weight. The next set was slower. His thighs shook halfway through, sweat rolling down his spine as his mind swayed to Ellory again.
How she looked standing at the top of the stairs when they came in, waiting like she wanted him but didn’t know if she had a right to.
He drove up from the bottom harder than necessary. Thighs screaming, he racked the weight and took a few minutes to walk the perimeter of the gym before hitting the shower. He even finally took the time to run the clippers over his hair and rid himself of those stupid curls.
By the time he finished, his mind was in the right place. Now he could find Ellory.
She wasn’t in the spacious living room with the other ladies. As he passed a doorway, he heard bits of their conversation. From the snippets about diaper changing tables and cozy rocking chairs, he guessed they were planning Alyssa’s nursery décor.
He continued on in measured steps, but she wasn’t in the kitchen having a late dinner either. Nor in the little sitting room. She could only be in one other place.
He made a beeline for the tech lab.
When he found her, he had to grip the doorframe. The sight of her hit him square in the chest.
As he looked on, she twisted slightly in her seat to uncross her legs before crossing them the other direction.
Christ, he was starting to believe what Opal told him—Ellory was clueless about her appeal.
And of course she was working late, long after everyone else had wound down. She worked like it was personal.
He rapped once on the doorframe. When she swung her gaze to the door, the distance in her eyes faded as she realized it was him.
“Hi,” she said simply.
“You’re in here late.”
She waved at the screen. “Lots of work to do.”
People who worked long hours in close quarters bonded in ways that were hard to explain to outsiders. He and Ellory had only known each other a few days, but what he saw on her face wasn’t fatigue from too much screen time—or from him keeping her awake, gasping his name, the night before.
Something like sadness moved through her eyes before she stifled it.
He drifted in and leaned against the computer desk. She didn’t quite meet his gaze. After a moment, she turned back to the screen. “I have at least another hour before I wrap up for the night.”
He pitched his voice low. “If you’re avoiding going to bed because you don’t want to sleep with me again—”
“No.” She shook her head.
“—because if that’s the reason, I accept your decision. I won’t like it, but I’ll respect it.”
Her voice was just as quiet. “I wasn’t thinking that at all.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
He pulled a chair up next to her and dropped into it.
“Angelo, you were in the war room all day. You have to be exhausted.”
“You have to be exhausted too after staring at this stuff all day. I can help with whatever you’re doing. A second set of eyes and all that.”
“Suit yourself.” She returned to work, scrolling through line after line of business transactions and lists of expenses used as tax write-offs.
He didn’t ask her more about what was chewing at her. He was patient enough to wait until she was ready to share it.
Every few minutes, she darted a look at him. The third time it happened, he arched a brow. “Do you want to say something, Ellory?”
She spun to face him, exasperation rippling over her beautiful face. “Angelo, you don’t have to be here. You must have ten better things to do with your evening.”
He just stared at her. Waiting.
With a huff, she slammed the laptop closed.
The air between them grew charged.
“What aren’t you telling me, Ellory?”
She brushed an errant lock of hair off her cheek. “I won’t walk away from this case.”
Now they were getting to the real issue.
“You won’t walk away, or you can’t?”
Streaks of red washed up her throat, delicate fingers of color stretching over her jaw and extending to her cheeks.
Then he saw the truth.
“There’s something besides devotion to your job driving you. Isn’t there?” He kept his voice low and neutral, knowing that any strong response from him would be echoed in her.
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m only here because I was sent to that bank to investigate the explosion.”
His mind tracked what she was saying just as much as what she wasn’t. “But you have your own interest in the matter.”
She searched his eyes for only a heartbeat before pushing to her feet. He held back from going to her, even though he could see the struggle quivering in her body.
“I understand how people get so deep in ops like this,” he said.
“Do you?”
His jaw tightened, and he gave an imperceptible nod. Then he began talking.
He didn’t tell her that he once got in too deep. He didn’t tell her about Melina.
He started talking about an event that had been weighing on his mind since they arrived at that house. He told her about Apollo.
She listened to his simplified version of the tale that shook Charlie but also rippled outward to grip every Blackout team on the map.
“And it hit me too. I knew Apollo.”
She nodded. “Go on.”
He continued through the dark days where Charlie fought on, one man down. Then whispers about Apollo being spotted started to circulate.
Ellory pressed her fingers to her lips, eyes round as she listened.
“We found out the rumors were true—Apollo was alive.” After a few more minutes of explaining how he’d faked his death in order to go deeper underground and finish off a terrorist, his throat tightened.
“It was incredibly brave. Noble. And stupid as hell. Do you know why I say that, Ellory?”
“No.” She twisted her hands.
“Because without each other for support, we’re weaker.”
Some high emotion blazed in her eyes a split second before she dropped her stare to the floor. Tension stiffened her spine.
Her voice was barely a breath. “My brother…”
His gut steeled in preparation for what she was about to tell him.
She gulped and rushed on. “He was undercover, working Cipher’s network. He disappeared.”
He wanted to get up and go to her, pull her tight against his chest and make it all go away. But he remained where he was and let her tell the story on her terms.
“It’s been thir—thirteen months.” Her voice broke, then came out stronger. “Over a year of silence, Angelo. The week before I got the call to go to the bank, I learned that his handler was killed. Now…I have no way to reach him at all.” She held her palms up.
She was trying so damn hard to be strong, but her hands weren’t steady, and that killed him.
She didn’t need his compassion right now. She needed his strength.
“When was the last confirmed contact? Not assumed, confirmed.”
Ellory swallowed once before answering. “A little over thirteen months. Encrypted message through the usual channel we share. He used the phrase he always did to prove it was him.” Her jaw tightened. “After that, nothing. Just…silence.”
He continued asking the hard questions. “Who identified the handler’s body, and how solid was that ID?”
She exhaled through her nose. “Dental records. He was…burned too badly to identify any other way. But there’s no record of it I can find anywhere. Just what I heard from a person I know in the FBI. That’s what bothers me.”
“If Cipher sends messages with bodies…who benefits from your brother disappearing without one?”
That one hit her harder.
Ellory’s fingers bit into her palms, and she met his eyes. “You’re thinking my brother flipped.”
“No.” Though he didn’t tell her that was Cipher’s way—to get people to do his bidding through greed, desperation and extortion.
“My brother would go to his grave before he would flip.” The punch of anger in her voice made him see her differently. She might be The Accountant, and she didn’t have a gun or know how to use one, but her job wasn’t for the faint of heart. She was one of the toughest women he’d ever met.
Their gazes met as the statement echoed through the lab.
Ash couldn’t take it another minute—he crossed the room and took Ellory in his arms. She curled against his chest, gripping his shirt the way she did in the throes of desperate desire. He hated that right now, she was just plain desperate.
“I’ve been building a file since he disappeared,” she whispered.
Of course she had.
He should tell Con immediately.
But telling Con would get Ellory pulled from the op. Sent away.
Ash’s heart flexed.
He couldn’t lose her.
He couldn’t keep quiet either.
He didn’t speak, and neither did she, but he felt a shift in her. Studying her face, he knew she felt a change in him too.
“You just did something incredibly hard, Trouble.”