Chapter Thirty-Six
Creed
The tube Katie holds fills with my blood, the color red and normal when I almost expect it to be some crazy shade that declares me the freak of nature that I am.
With Caleb and Jensen sitting a few feet away in quiet conversation, I lower my voice to a murmur. “What did you tell Addie?”
Katie’s lashes lift, her green eyes alight with a knowing look that confirms she’d already seen something in my testing that I wasn’t going to like. “Nothing yet ,” she replies, a clear warning in her voice. “Come see me when you get done here to talk about your test results.”
My results.
Not Addie’s.
A tight ball of dread knots in my gut.
I’d been selfish to touch Addie last night without those results.
Katie finishes up and pushes to her feet. “See you gentlemen later.” She glances at me. “See you soon.” She hurries to the door, disappearing outside.
Jensen gets right to business. “I checked out both hard drives, Brock’s and your mother’s. Not a single reference to Red Dart. And I can’t get into Taylor’s servers without you getting me into the facility.”
“We might as well take a full team in and be ready to sweep the place then,” I say. “The sooner, the better.”
“Tonight,” Caleb agrees.
“Today,” I counter. “My mother’s presently trying to remove the evidence.”
“That’s a risk without the cover of night,” Caleb counters.
“Something you should know,” Jensen adds. “I’ve already shared this with Caleb, but West manipulated and rerouted outgoing weapons shipments from the base to include Green Hornets, and those shipments never made it to their destination. I see no evidence that your mother sold them to Julian. Your mother may well be innocent. I think Brock might be the problem.”
“Which means any probe of Taylor Industries should include discretion,” Caleb injects. “And under the cover of night.”
I sit there a moment, allowing that to digest, a bark of bitter laughter escaping my lips. “Holy shit.” I scrub my clean-shaven jaw and let out a rough second cackle of laughter. They’ve been acting on edge and secretive this morning, and I thought it was over Addie. Now I know better. “This is what you two are walking on eggshells over? You think I’m going to have some emotional seizure over my mother, and you think I need my hand held? My mother is not innocent. If she’s not helping Julian, she’s helping Lawrence.”
“Maybe you were mistaken when you thought Lawrence was there last night,” Caleb suggests.
“I was not mistaken,” I bite out, “and you should know me well enough to know that as well.”
“There’s nothing wrong with selling weapons to the U.S. government for national security,” Caleb reminds me. “We have no proof she believes she is doing anything but that.”
He’s trying to protect me by protecting her. It’s so very Caleb of him. “Stop trying to save me,” I snap. “I don’t need saving. She is what she is, and I know better than anyone what that is. And if you want proof, I’ll give it to you. We have a stock of Green Hornets now. Leave Lawrence’s supply where it is and hook a satellite to the location. I guarantee you, now that my mother knows I know about them, they’ll be moved because she’s doing more than selling to Lawrence. She’s in bed with him in every possible way.”
Caleb’s cellphone rings, and he grimaces. “I need to take this.” He pushes to his feet and walks toward the door.
I turn my attention to Jensen. “Stop trying to save my mother. Look for ways she’s helping Lawrence and hurting us.”
The bathroom door swings open, and Addie appears in the crest of fluorescent light, her skin pale against the black T-shirt she wears with loose-fitted black jeans. Her face scrubbed clean of make-up, her eyes still black and shining like opals. Her hair damp.
Possessiveness rushes through me, arousing me with an unexpected jolt of pure, white-hot lust. How the fuck had I survived our time apart?
“I heard you talking through the door,” she announces before hesitating and then casting me a tormented look, the rest of the room fading as she speaks to me and me alone. “If my father has involved your mother in this, he’s manipulating her.” She folds her arms in front of her chest, and it’s then that Caleb steps back in the room, but she stays focused on me. “He knows everything about every soldier he involved in Project Zodius. He certainly knows everything about you. Your family owns a weapons manufacturing company that supplies the government. Of course, he knew that when he recruited you. And he knew who your mother was then, and certainly now. There is no coincidence here. I have no doubt that being with your mother is the icing on the cake—a message. You were in his world, with his daughter, holding a blade at his throat. Now, he’s holding a proverbial blade at your throat. He has your world in his hands. He has control, not you.” She swallows hard and deep. “I’m done convincing myself he’s not the man who would do such a thing. I’ve tried to justify all of his actions, and I won’t do it anymore. And I’m sorry for what he is doing to you and your mother.”
“Do not apologize for either your father or my mother,” I order softly, pushing to my feet to face her. And it is an order. A fierce, guttural command. I won’t let her destroy herself over them. And I will not allow my mother an out. “We need to operate on the assumption that there is no manipulation of my mother. She knows what she is involved with.”
“You can’t know that, Creed,” Addie insists, closing the distance between us and stopping directly in front of me. “Why is the fact that your mother is selling Green Hornets to the government any different than selling them any other weapon?”
“She knows those bullets are being used to kill Renegades, me included,” I assure her. “Your father was with her last night. They’re fucking, Addie.”
She pales with my words that hold implications for us both, perhaps for our relationship.
“Do you have any idea where your father’s PMI lab is, Addie?” Caleb asks, sitting to our right.
She laughs a bitter, humorless laugh, and I step to her side to allow her to speak to the room. “He kept that from me ‘for my own protection.’”
Caleb curses and runs a hand over the back of his neck. “We need that location. We’re chasing our tails here.”
“I’ll find the lab,” Addie vows. “I’ll get into his hard drive and dig around his personal space, his office, and his house.”
“No,” I say, my tone implacable. “Even if I’d let you attempt such a thing, which I won’t, it’s too dangerous.”
She stiffens, throwing a fiery glare in my direction, as I add, “He has cameras everywhere, Addie. He’ll know what you did.”
“And he knows I’m nosey,” she argues. “If I get busted, I’ll suck up and make up a lie. I can get by him. And it’s not like you have a long list of options here.”
“We’ll start with my mother’s place,” I say. “Search it fully. Look for proof that Taylor is involved in Red Dart.”
“Whatever we do,” Addie says, “I need to call my father. It’s getting late. He’ll be suspicious if I’m not at work without a phone call.”
Jensen snatches up the portable phone sitting on the table and passes it to me to hand to Addie. “It’ll look as if you’re calling from your cellphone.”
She gives a nod and draws in a heavy breath, nerves fluttering in her stomach. “It’s ringing,” she tells me. “I’ve never been so nervous calling my father in my life.” A moment later, she says, “Morning, General,” into the phone. Everyone knows he hates when she calls him General, and thus she teasingly does it often. “Reporting in sick.” She listens a minute. “You know how these headaches linger.” A pause, and then, “Yes. Really. I’m fine. I just need to sleep off the haze, so I’m going to turn off my phone. I…” She listens again. “Yes, just like mom. I should be in tomorrow.”
I capture her hand and mouth, no you will not.
Defiance flashes in her eyes as she adds. “Maybe we could have dinner tomorrow night? I feel like we’re disconnected.”
I glare at her, and she glares right back, saying a few more words to her father before hanging up. “What the hell was that, Addie?” I demand.
“Smart,” she proclaims firmly, her spine stiff and her resolve steady. “That was smart. No one is closer to my father than me. He’ll make time for me. That means he won’t be at your mother’s house. That means I’ll go to his house after dinner for coffee. I can get his hard drive, and you can do whatever you need to do, too, while he’s distracted.”
“Your eyes are black.”
“That’s why they make colored contacts,” she counters. “I can manipulate those shipments of bullets the same way Brock did. I can get you your ammunition. I’m all you have.”
“Your eyes will not look the same in contacts,” I assure her.
Sharp-witted as she is, she says, “He’ll blame the migraine if they look funny.”
“Julian knows you are with me, which means Brock will know.”
“All the more reason to do this sooner rather than later,” she argues.
“We should have talked about this first.”
“There is no talking to you,” she snaps back. “You simply blast orders.”
“No, Addie,” I say firmly. “No.”
“You don’t get to decide for me, Creed.” She cuts a look at Caleb. “Does it make sense to use me to help?”
“I am your lifebond,” I state flatly. “I don’t give two fucks what Caleb says on this.”
Her eyes rocket back to me, Caleb forgotten. “No, you’re not,” she corrects. “Not yet. And I can promise you that some biological or physical connection does not give you a license to make my decisions.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
Caleb and Jensen stand up and head for the door, clearly getting the idea they’re intruding. Neither me nor Addie pay them any mind. “You cannot come in and out of my life,” Addie ground out, “and then snap your fingers and expect me to obey. You don’t scare me, Creed. You’ve never scared me.”
The door opens and shuts.
I grab her, and before she knows my intent, she’s flat on the bed, spread wide, with me between her thighs and on top of her. “You should be scared, Addie.”
Her chin lifts, her full lips close, inviting, all but begging for mine. “This solves nothing.”
I kiss her with a deep slide of my tongue.
She moans into my mouth, her arms wrapping around my neck, her body arching into mine. One of my hands travels possessively over her slender rib cage and roughly caresses the high, full mounds of her breasts.
Another of her soft moans is my reward, and it’s a damn delicious one that all but destroys what little restraint I have left. I tear my mouth from hers, clinging to a thread of control. “You will not endanger yourself.”
“If I am in your life, I am a part of this war. If I’m not in your life, I am still a part of this war. Nothing you do can change that.”
“Addie—”
She presses her fingers to my lips. “Your bossiness is sexy when you’re inside me,” she warns, her voice laced with a heady mixture of anger and arousal. She’s hanging on the same thread as me.
“When I’m naked and buried inside you, Addie,” I declare, “the answer is still no.”
A sly smile curves her lips. “We’ll see about that.”