Chapter 29 Sloane
Sloane
When Joss pulled up in front of Bridgewater Security, Lee was standing outside with our welcome wagon.
Kolton jumped from the front seat before the vehicle had even stopped, yanked open my door and pulled me out.
He tucked me under his arm and rushed me inside so fast, I didn’t get a chance to see who was there.
Inside, he didn’t let me go. Not when Joss rushed in. Not when another woman and two men stepped in shortly after. All eyes were on the street outside the window…
Until they were not.
Joss nudged the woman at her side, who glanced over her shoulder at me.
I couldn’t hear what either of them were saying, but by the way they were peeking back at me, I didn’t need to.
When Joss elbowed the woman hard enough to knock her sideways, I let out a little giggle that had everyone turning around.
Kolton looked down at me, his arms automatically squeezing me before he seemed to realize he was still hugging me to his side. His grip loosened, and I kind of wanted it back.
“You all right, Diva?”
I gave him a smile in place of the kiss I really wanted to give him. “I’m okay.” I tilted my head to the gawking crowd. “You going to introduce me?”
The sweet grin that tugged at his lips reminded me of how he looked when we first met—so damn cute. “Yeah. Sure.” His grip around me fell, and I hated that loss. But he kept a hand on my back as he turned to his co-workers. “Everyone, this is Sloane Rivera. Sloane, this is… everyone.”
Joss groaned and rolled her eyes, then shoved the woman beside her forward.
“Drea Hernandez.” Kolton bent at the waist, putting his face a little closer to mine. “Former FBI agent and complete badass. She’s the one I told you about, the one who—”
“The one who saved your asses?” I interrupted, grinning up at him and momentarily getting lost in the sparkle in his chocolate brown eyes.
“That’s right.” He squeezed my hip before blinking and turning back to Drea.
He’d met her just once—a night after we’d come home from Georgia.
I’d overheard him on the phone telling his friends he’d love to hang out but couldn’t because he was with me.
He’d sounded so forlorn that I’d called Olivia with tears prickling my eyes.
She’d convinced me to stay the night at my mom’s to allow him a night off.
I’d barely been able to convince him to go, and I’d regretted it when he came back the next morning with a bounce in his step so big it was like he was walking on the moon. He’d been buzzing with happiness, and I’d been jealous as hell, even if I couldn’t admit it to myself.
Now, Drea stepped forward awkwardly, and I remembered what he’d told me about her last week while we were holed up in our hotel room—Miss Hernandez was a huge fan.
I stepped forward too, but instead of extending my hand to shake hers, I raised both arms and smiled. Her eyes went wide as I leaned in, and her back was rigid as I gave her a hug—but the “Oh my god, oh my god” she muttered under her breath made me think it was from shock, not disgust.
“It’s nice to meet you, Drea,” I told her as I let go of her and stepped back.
She clamped her lips together and gave a jittery nod. “Yeah. Um. Same.”
Joss stepped up to her side and nudged her with her hip before tossing her thumb over her shoulder at the two men standing closer to the door.
“The guy by the door with the cane is my husband, Rylan Dennis”—he raised his hand in a brief wave—“and this guy is our newest recruit. Former FBI special agent Ethan McCarthy, recruited here by our lovely Drea.”
Ethan stepped forward and offered his hand and a smile. “Good to meet you, Ms. Rivera.”
“Please, call me Sloane.”
He turned and shook hands with Kolton, and by the time they’d finished their introductions, two more men stepped through the front door.
I stiffened briefly, but relaxed once I realized no one else was worried.
One of them came right over to Drea and hung his arm around her shoulder before he turned his dark eyes on me.
“So you’re the famous singer Kolton’s been gaga over for years.”
“Van!” both Drea and Joss yelled, each of them slapping him as he just stood there and smirked.
“What did I tell you about being an asshole?” Drea asked.
He turned that smirk down to her, and something about it sent a flash of warmth through me and had me shifting where I stood. “You mean that I am one? Or is it that other thing we talked about?”
Drea’s eyes flared before she shoved him away. Only he grabbed her by the back of the neck and yanked her with him, burying her face in his gut as he did.
“Van, stop being such a jerk.” Joss tried to pry the two apart, and Kolton took my arm and pulled me closer to him, out of their way.
“That asshole,” he said with laughter in his voice as he pointed toward the fray, “is Van Thaylor. He really is as bad as he seems.”
Looking over the tops of Joss and Drea’s heads, Van glared at Kolton. “And here I thought you were the nice one.”
“Haven’t you learned by now,” the other man who came in said, “that title goes to me.” He was all wicked smiles and the kind of gorgeous my grandma used to warn me about.
Dangerous.
I gulped as he looked at me and was glad I had Kolton by my side.
“I’m Weston Abrams.” He reached for my hand and held on once I placed mine in his. “I swear to god, my daughter is going to be so jealous when I tell her I met you. She’s your biggest little fan in the entire universe.”
I blinked and glanced at Kolton. “Your daughter?”
Whatever wickedness I saw in him was swept away as he ducked his chin. “Zalea. She’s five going on twenty next week.” He looked up, his lopsided smile turning his dangerous look into something almost comical. “Talks about you almost as much as this loser does.”
“Hey!” Kolton and Joss both said at the same time.
Joss continued, “You call that nice?”
Weston grinned before clapping this hand on Kolton’s shoulder. “You know I’m kidding, man. Zalea doesn’t talk about her anywhere near as much as you.”
Kolton’s pink cheeks were the cutest things ever.
He peeked up at me and my heart felt like it skipped a beat.
Everything in me wanted to reach for him.
To hold him and tell him I loved his adoration as much as I loved everything else about him.
I wrapped my fingers around his bicep and stepped closer, drawing him near.
“Kolton’s my biggest fan,” I told them, wanting them to know I saw no issue with his admiration of me. In fact, I was beginning to crave it. Having him near wasn’t enough sometimes, and it was a chore now not to take his pink cheeks in my hands and press my lips to his.
Perhaps luckily, the door swung open. My attention whipped from Kolton’s lips to the big man stepping through into the building. Lee’s brows were furrowed, his eyes just slits as his gaze zeroed in on Kolton.
“Anyone there, boss?” Van asked, stepping toward Lee and taking the attention off me and Kolton. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, then loosened my grip on Kolton’s arm.
Lee turned his attention to Van and shook his head. “Nothing. Joss? Let me see your phone.”
As she rushed forward, unlocking her phone and handing it over, drawing all the men in the room toward them, Drea stepped toward me. She looked ill-at-ease, her mouth tight as her lips turned up, like she was unused to smiling.
“Why don’t we move to the breakroom,” she said, her hand hovering close to me but not touching. “Can I get you anything to drink? A snack? We have an ice cream machine and all the fixings to go with it.”
I smiled as the memory of Kolton telling me about the machine flickered through my head. I’d been craving sweets, and he made it worse by describing his favorite ice cream sundae—caramel and chocolate sauce drizzled over warm brownies. That craving hadn’t gone away.
“I’d love one.” Turning, I walked with Drea down the hallway, going deeper into the building.
There were conference rooms on one side and offices on the other.
She directed me into a wide-open room that smelled of fresh brewed coffee.
One wall was covered with machines and cabinets full of supplies, including the ice cream machine and fixings bar.
“Help yourself,” Drea said, her hands clasped behind her back and her feet shoulder-width apart. With her stiff back and upward thrust of her chin, she reminded me of someone in the military, standing at attention.
I tried giving her a smile to put her at ease, then moved toward the soft serve ice cream machine. “Kolton tells me you and Van are together?”
When I peered back over my shoulder, I caught her wide-eyed gaze before she ducked her head and looked away. With her hands moving to the thick black braid that had hung down her back, her cheeks darkened.
“Uh, yeah.” She twisted her braid. “Sorry he’s such an ass.”
“No need to apologize. It’s refreshing to find someone so unapologetically himself. He’s a rare breed.”
A smirk so similar to Van’s tugged at her lips for a brief moment before she looked back at me, her gaze zipping downward like she was judging me. Before I could move to cover myself to fend off any accusations, she shrugged, her lips curling up. “You’ll find a lot of that around here.”
“That’s good.” I drizzled a bit of chocolate over the top of my ice cream and turned back to her. “I take it you like working here then?”
As she nodded, she shifted toward the door. I took a spoonful of my treat then followed after her. “Leaving the Bureau was difficult but necessary. And while this place is different—both from the Bureau and what I expected from my life—I wouldn’t take back my decision. Lee is a good man.”
Drea’s phone chimed in her pocket as we neared the middle of the hallway. In the front lobby, Lee was still bent over the counter while Joss, Kolton, and Rylan hovered at his shoulders. But they all looked up as Drea muttered, “What the hell?”
“What is it?” Van dashed down the hall toward us. I stepped back, pressing myself against the wall as he snagged her phone from her hand. They looked at each other, then, slowly, they dragged their attention to me. “Hey boss? We got a problem.”
Lee barreled toward us with Kolton and the rest right behind him. Van turned Drea’s phone screen so we all could see.
GeoDot has been found following you.
I vaguely recognized the message box on the screen. Yes, Kolton had said those exact words in the car after Joss’s phone had chimed, but something in the back of my brain lit up, a memory just out of reach. It was brushed away when Kolton’s fingers wrapped around my hip.
“What is it?” My voice shook as I asked the question, and Kolton’s presence beside me did nothing to relieve my growing sense of dread.
Drea’s eyes darted down my side, down to where Kolton’s hand was settled, before she licked her lips.
“GeoDots are those little discs people can use to find their purses or luggage if it gets lost or stolen. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous people have used them to track or stalk people. Cellphone companies have added alerts to their operating systems to notify people when they’re being followed, in case the Dots found moving with you aren’t legitimate. ”
“Oh shit.” Kolton removed his hand from my side. “I turned those notifications off a couple years ago because of—”
He didn’t finish, though it didn’t appear Lee needed him to. His boss groaned and wiped a hand down his face. “Your sister.”
Kolton nodded, then looked down at me. I swallowed hard as he hooked his fingers around the strap on my purse and pulled it off my shoulder. “Did Beckett ever mess with your phone?”
I shook my head. “Not really. But…” My eyes started to burn as Kolton opened my purse and glanced inside. Then my face caught fire, because I felt like the biggest fool in the world.
Kolton ducked into the conference room behind him and upturned my purse, dumping the contents onto the table.
The remains of the little kit Joss had put together for me tumbled out, alongside my phone, my lipstick, and my birth control and migraine pills.
With a final shake, a little white disk rolled out and clattered ominously against the wood.
He set aside my purse and picked up the GeoDot, running it between his fingers like a coin. He turned his chocolate gaze to me before looking over his shoulder at his boss. “Don’t suppose you could give Vinny a call?”