Chapter Seven
I decided, for my peace of mind, I was ignoring the looks Fallon and Pete were exchanging. I was also ignoring what it felt like waking up next to Mason. I told myself I didn’t sleep next to him, I’d rested. There was a difference between sleeping and resting—right?
And I absolutely wasn’t thinking about Mason calling me sweetness. That was a full stop, do not pass go, lock up in box right next to childhood memories that were too painful to think about.
“How’d you hook up with Tom?” Pete asked.
Like he didn’t know.
Pete seemed close to Shepherd, and anyone who ran in our circles understood Shep knew all.
That knowledge made a lot of powerful men and women nervous.
Some might say his ability to find out things he shouldn’t put a bull’s-eye on his back.
Rumor had it, that was why he stayed in the shadows and moved around a lot, never staying in one place long enough to be discovered.
It was a smart play on Shep’s part. If I was an omniscient god of intelligence gathering, I’d hide too.
“Is this a test?” I asked back. “To see if Tom and I have matching stories?”
“Fair assumption, but no. I know the story he told us, but I believe less than ten percent that comes out of his mouth.”
I could only imagine the bullshit story Tom told. Likely it was one that cast him in a good light and me like the reckless vigilante.
“Did you know that my grandfather on my dad’s side cleaned money for the Irish mob?”
Pete arched an eyebrow. “Tom mentioned it but said you didn’t know anything about your father’s past.”
“I didn’t. But when my dad got sick and he knew he was going to die, he confessed.
He told me to be careful, and if I was ever approached by anyone, I was to tell Tom.
My dad also told me how he really knew Tom, and that he was an informant.
Tom didn’t know I knew all of this until . . .” I trailed off.
“Until,” Fallon prompted.
Fuck it.
In for a penny . . .
“Until last week, when Tom and I argued. He wanted me to call you.” I gestured to Pete. “I was adamant I wasn’t going to do that. Tom pushed, and I got annoyed and told him he’d paid his debt to my father and I didn’t need his protection.”
“Right. So that explains your father’s connection to Tom, but how did you get involved?”
“Does it matter?” I evaded.
“No.”
I waited for Pete to say more. To push or probe or, my favorite, manipulate me into giving more than I was willing to give.
But he didn’t, and maybe that was his tactic—silently acquiescing.
Luring me into a false position of power.
Allowing me to think he’d surrendered, knowing I’d feel comfortable to share since I now had the upper hand.
“Smart play,” I told him.
He didn’t insult me by denying his game.
“After my dad died and my mother got . . . worse, I asked Tom for help finding the man who took my sister.”
Pete nodded as if he understood, though I knew he didn’t.
He had two sisters, both of them alive and healthy.
He didn’t have a mother who was lost to her grief and didn’t bother to try and pull herself out, even though she had another daughter who needed her.
He didn’t have a father who’d done whatever he’d had to do to keep his family safe, and in the pursuit of that safety made a deal with the devil.
Now he was dead, and I’d inherited Tom.
Lucky me.
“Did he?” Fallon rejoined.
“No. He refused, so I went in search of him myself using my connections as an investigative journalist. Tom caught word of what I was doing, tracked me down, told me to stop. We had words. And I went my merry way and continued fumbling into the underbelly of society.” I paused to fight back the shiver that threatened to rack my body at the memory of being taken.
It was dumb luck Tom had been close before I was transported out of the country.
“I found trouble, and when I still refused to stop, Tom agreed to help.”
“Agreed?” Pete contested.
I had to hand it to the guy, he was smart, intuitive, and didn’t bother with bullshit. If I was in the market for friends, I could see myself liking this guy. But I didn’t do friends. I was never in one place long enough to develop anything that minutely resembled camaraderie.
“Agreed might be a gross overstatement. More like he took me under his wing and trained me under duress. Then he introduced me to Atlanta and, together, they made me who I am.”
Made me who I am?
Lord, that was lame.
“Berta respects you,” Pete told me.
Berta Lanza, my fairy godmother. I’d met her while I was investigating the atrocities happening in her country for a story I was writing.
The femicide rate in Honduras was appalling.
But there in the midst of tragedy and evil, the purest woman I’d ever met worked hard to do what she could for her people.
A woman with a golden soul, to whom I was eternally grateful.
“She’s a good human. The best the world has to offer. Tom and Atlanta trained me, they gave me the skills I needed. But Berta . . . she gave me soul, she gave me purpose. She showed me what it truly meant to be selfless.”
“No disrespect to Berta,” Fallon interjected. “She’s everything you said she is. But to some people, she’s not that.”
Fallon was correct; to those who harmed her people, to those who raped the land, who killed Honduran women just because they were women, to them, she was the Angel of Death.
“The duality of man,” Mason said, as he made his way back into the living room.
Hair still wet, a fresh black tee that molded to his chest, forearms on display, tan cargo pants, and socks on his feet, no boots. I had to remind myself he was an obnoxious asshole when he wasn’t being . . . Sweet wasn’t the right word, neither was gentle, and he’d never been kind . . .
Civil, that was the word. He was a gigantic ass when he wasn’t being civil.
But he was a damn good-looking jerk.
“Berta is both empathy and cruelty,” I added. “It’s up to the person which side of the coin they see.”
Mason’s lips twitched. “Tom almost found himself on the wrong side of that coin when he showed up in Belize while we were meeting with Berta, and she found out you’d been missing for three weeks and Tom hadn’t called her and was playing games instead of sending in someone to get you.”
That was a lot to unpack for so few words.
“Tom knew exactly where I was and what I was doing. He knew I’d planned to get taken by Carlos Quintero.
I needed intel on someone, and I knew the best way to get that was to let Carlos’s men grab me.
Now, I didn’t foresee being driven across Mexico and taken to an island to wait for my buyers to pick me up . . .”
The air in the room was suddenly icy cold, which made the heat behind Mason’s words boom across the space like a thunderclap.
“What the fuck?” Mason exploded.
Um.
I didn’t understand his question.
“What the fuck, about what?”
“Mase—”
“Let’s back up a second,” Mason went on, like Pete hadn’t called his name. “Tom knew you were in Juárez to allow a drug dealer and pimp to kidnap you?”
“Ah, yeah. That was the plan. Tom put the word out to some of his sources I was in the area. I made myself an easy target and was picked up.”
The room went from icy to a whole nother dimension of arctic.
The kind of cold that seeped into your bones and threatened frostbite.
The kind that was so cold it burned the skin.
And that freeze-out was coming solely from Mason.
His fury blanketed the suite. With every breath I took, his anger filled my lungs.
This time when Mason spoke, his words were abrasive, scratchy, and dangerously calm. “Are you fucking crazy?”
My temper flared to life. I didn’t answer to Mason or anyone. I was in charge of my life. No one told me what to do or how to run my investigations. I didn’t need permission from anyone. And I certainly didn’t ask for or need Mason’s opinion.
“I don’t know what your problem is—”
“My problem? Woman, you put yourself in unimaginable danger.”
The danger wasn’t unimaginable. Not for me and not for the men in the room. We were all well acquainted with the dangers that lurked, and we were all willing to put ourselves in front of it.
“Hi, Pot, I’m Kettle, nice to meet you,” I volleyed.
“I’m not a fan of sarcasm.”
Annoyed with his attitude. Pissed off that Tom and Atlanta had screwed me over. And now that I was saddled with this big beast of an asshole and his friends, I lost the last fray of my temper.
Wondering why I was still sitting in the small chair like a naughty child in time-out, I surged to my feet. Not that it did much by way of bringing me eye level with him, but at least he no longer had the dominant position.
“You know what I’m not a fan of?” I shot back. “You.”
Pete and Fallon were still sitting. Fallon’s gaze was happily ping-ponging between me and Mason like he was watching a tennis match. Pete didn’t look happy about anything, and he wasn’t watching the Calli and Mase show; he was staring at his feet.
“Right back at you, sweetness.”
“Look at us, that’s two things we have in common. How about we not find out if there’s a third and use this as the perfect opportunity to part ways.”
My suggestion was met with a growl.
“Sorry, I don’t speak dog. Was that your agreement?” I asked sweetly.
Fallon snorted from the couch. “As entertaining as this is, we have an op to plan and only a few hours to plan it. Someone get Mason one of the thirty-five chocolate bars he picked up at the airport, so he can concentrate.”
“You bought chocolate at the airport? It’s five hundred degrees outside. Who eats melted chocolate?”
“Mason does. He’ll lick the wrapper if he has to,” Fallon informed me.
“The op,” Pete prompted.
Pete’s reminder was the perfect segue I needed.
“You don’t need a strap, and I don’t need you. So I assume you have tonight handled all by yourselves, then you can go home, and I can get back to why I’m here.”
In Fallon’s defense, he did look a little sheepish when I reminded him he’d called me a strap. I couldn’t know if he’d meant it as an insult, insinuating I was dead weight strapped to their team, or if it was nothing more than a turn of phrase. Either way, I was no one’s burden.
“Did you get the intel you were after in Juárez?” Pete asked.
“Sure did,” I told him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have shit to do.”
“You’re not leaving.”
Was it possible to be so angry your vision hued red—actual red with blurry dark spots?
Before that moment, I would’ve said no. I would’ve said allowing yourself to get incensed to the point of hazy vision was a weakness to be snuffed out.
Rage was a symptom of loss of control. But there I was, fuming and seeing red, all because of Mason and his proclamation.
“Actually, I am.”
I skirted the table but didn’t get far when Pete stood.
“What Mason means is, you’re a smart woman,” Pete wrongly paraphrased.
He’d said I was fucking crazy, and he meant it.
“You know us being here only strengthens your cover, and we can use your help tonight. No doubt the woman we grab will be scared. She’s been living in hell for three years.
She’ll need a woman’s touch to smooth the way.
So we’re all leaving here, going to Shep’s penthouse, and planning tonight.
Like Fallon pointed out, we only have a few hours, so we best get moving. ”
My suitcase was sitting by the door. I could grab it and go. I could rid myself of the irritation and focus on what was important—meeting Amir Bakir for dinner, securing an invitation to the auction, passing the intel to Tom, and then finally avenging my sister.
All I needed to do was put one foot in front of the other and walk out.
Yet my feet stayed where they were.
“What intel was so important you’d risk your life for it?”
Anything that got me one step closer to killing the man who stole my sister from me.
“There’s a lot of intel floating around out there that would be worth risking my life to find.”
Mason tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. I didn’t need him to say a word to know I was taxing his patience.
Same, friend, same.