Chapter 24
24
“Who are you?” Lainey asked as soon as her bedroom door was shut behind them.
Matt didn’t immediately respond.
Lainey stalked to the middle of the room and turned around, her eyes blazing as she stared at the man she loved, a man she thought she knew. “Let’s make this easier. I’ll tell you what I know, and you tell me when I’m wrong.”
“My name is?—”
“Uh-nuh. Not your turn. Your name is Mateo Aranda, and you’re in the Navy. That’s courtesy of Captain Hale. Should have known you weren’t a scientist when I saw your watch was set to military time and the minute you said you were going to rip off someone’s head and shit down their neck.”
“Lainey, you know you don’t want to be swearing,” Matt protested.
She started to tremble, so she crossed her arms over her chest. “Stop right there. You have no right. No right whatsoever to pretend to know what I want or don’t want. You’ve been playing me since the beginning. You’re a liar.”
“Stop right there. Just stop.” Matt rushed forward and settled his hands on her shoulders.
She threw them off.
“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare touch me. Matt Agular the scientist can touch me. He’s the man I fell in love with. Not some liar.”
“I’m the same man,” Matt insisted.
“I’m right, aren’t I? Mateo Aranda is your real name, isn’t it?” She hissed the question into his face.
“Yes.”
“You’re in the Navy?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do for the Navy?”
“I’m a Navy SEAL.”
“Why would someone special forces need to pretend to be someone else and get to know me? Why would—?” Her eyes got wide as saucers. “You did something to make my tire go flat, didn’t you? You actually did that. You were lying to me from the first word you ever spoke.”
“I had to. We needed to find out if you were working with the Kraken.”
Her eyes were still huge as she stared at him. “The who? What are you talking about?”
Matt looked devastated. “We had evidence that pointed to you being involved with a terrorist organization and we needed to find out if that was true, so someone needed to find out. I volunteered. To begin with, I thought MacLaine was a man. When you were a woman, I had to change tactics.”
“Those tactics included sleeping with me?”
She could feel the burn of tears at the back of her eyes. She couldn’t handle this conversation much longer without falling to the floor and sobbing. And what was worse? She wanted Matt to be the one to pick her up, hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right.
“I need you to leave the room while I pack,” she whispered.
“I can’t do that, Lainey. I can’t let you go thinking that everything I’ve said, everything I’ve done, is a lie. Because it wasn’t. I love you. I’ve meant every word I’ve said to you. Yeah, finding out things about you started out as a mission, but falling in love with you brought me back to life. It wasn’t a lie; I swear to you.”
She shook her head sadly. “But it was the fruit from the poisonous tree, wasn’t it? It doesn’t matter how it ended up. It started from lies, so it has a foundation that’s rotten to the core. It would never work. I should have known this was too good to be true. Things like this never happen to me.”
“You’re looking at this all wrong,” Matt said desperately.
“I’m begging you, Matt. Not as the man who professes to love me, but as the man who took an oath to our country. Just leave me alone for an hour so I can pack and call an Uber and leave.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“Somehow, I’m going to get a flight out of South Carolina and go home. Then I’m going to get Xena out of doggie jail and she and I will talk about how all men are crud-buckets. So, will you leave? Please?”
Matt nodded. He lifted his hand as if to touch her cheek and then dropped it. “This isn’t the end, Lainey.”
“Yes, it is,” she disagreed.
He walked to the bedroom door and opened it. “In your heart, you know it can’t be the end. I’ll give you this time, for now. But what we have together is too good to be thrown away. I love you, mi Corazón.”
She looked at the closed door for long minutes after Matt walked out. It was only fitting that he called her his heart, since he was taking her heart with him.
Matt got his car from the valet after tipping him fifty bucks to set it aside in the shadows so he could easily follow Lainey’s Uber when it showed up. He followed her all the way to the Holiday Inn next to the airport, and from his vantage point could see her check in and head toward the elevators. After that, he parked his rental in the hotel lot and called Kostya.
“Mateo, a heads-up would have been nice,” his lieutenant growled.
“I was trying to fix things with Lainey.”
Mateo was met with silence. Damn it, he hated it when Kostya did that. He always won.
“She said she can never forgive me.”
“You ended up falling for her, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Goddammit, Brax sure called that one.”
“He told you?”
Kostya sighed. “Yeah, he did. He told Gideon and me, it was a bad idea for you to be the one to be assigned to MacLaine as soon as we found out she was a Lainey who adopted a three-legged rescue dog.”
“Well, you all were wrong. Meeting her was the best thing that ever happened in my life.”
“And Captain Hale blew your cover by calling you Aranda, right?”
“That about sums it up.”
“Mateo, we still can’t be a hundred percent positive that she isn’t working for the Kraken. There is still the problem with the?—”
“I know how she got the gold. Her grandmother left her the contents of her safe deposit box. It contained jewels and gold. Because it was a safe deposit box, which her grandmother had her co-sign on when she was eighteen, there was nothing mentioned in a will. I found out about that yesterday when she was wearing her grandmother’s earrings and her mother went apeshit.”
He heard Kostya sigh. “And the transfer?”
“I don’t know. But I’m thinking whoever was handed that paperwork would’ve had to have made the transfer. It was just Lainey’s unlucky day to do it. Kostya, she’s not part of the Kraken.”
Mateo could hear the desolation in his own voice, and apparently Kostya could, too.
“I believe you, Mateo. Linc is working the Ivan lead, and Brax says he’ll have something to report tomorrow about Amanda. I’ll need you here tomorrow night.”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
Xena whined as she nosed her way under Lainey’s arm.
“Not now, baby.”
The dog licked her hand.
“Xena, I just took you for a walk and you have food and water in your bowls. Mommy needs to be left alone, okay?” Her voice was rough and raspy from all the crying she had done over the past week. It had been easy for Mr. Pine to believe her when she said she was sick. But she hadn’t been lying. She really was sick. She never wanted to leave the comfort of her couch ever again.
Woof.
Woof.
Woof.
“No, Xena. No barking. I’m begging you.”
She’d been doing that every time Lainey’s phone would ring. She couldn’t turn it off in case it was work calling, but instead it was always Mateo Aranda calling.
She should just block him. She should.
“I should.”
She picked up her phone and watched as the last two rings stopped. The call clicked over to voicemail. She waited another minute, and then she saw Mateo text her. She didn’t read the text. It was bad enough that she still had a picture of him on her phone that came up every time he called or texted.
She’d called in sick all week. Penny offered to come over tonight, but she still needed the whole weekend to get herself together. Maybe she could shower tomorrow morning. Then on Sunday she could go to the grocery store, instead of just having ice cream delivered.
There was a knock at her door. It couldn’t be Mateo, since he’d just called and texted. Lainey looked down at her ratty Bettie Boop t-shirt and red heart leggings. She frowned. Why was she wearing leggings with hearts on them?
The doorbell rang.
Woof.
Woof.
Woof.
“Xena, be good. Go to your doggy bed,” Lainey said as she slowly hoisted herself off the couch. Xena stood in the middle of the living room looking at her and then turning and looking down the hall. “Go. Go to your doggy bed. I’ll see who’s at the door.”
The doorbell rang a second time, and Xena headed down the hall.
Lainey looked through her peephole and saw a blonde girl with a ponytail holding a big bouquet of flowers.
Lainey unlocked her door and opened it, leaving the security chain on. She saw the delivery girl was a little older than she originally thought. “I don’t want any flowers.”
“Okay, but I’ll need a signature saying you refused them,” the woman said.
Lainey looked at the oversized bouquet. It had daisies and sunflowers. She bit her lip and tried not to cry. She closed her door and thanked God she at least had a sleep bra on, then unhooked the chain and opened the door.
“Thanks, Miss Simpson. Can you hold them while I get my clipboard?”
Lainey nodded and took the bouquet. She took a deep breath, taking in the glorious scent.
“Darn it, I can’t find my pen,” the woman said.
“Come on in and I’ll use one of mine.”
Lainey turned around. She felt something press against the side of her neck, and then she was catapulted into a world of agony.
She tried to scream but couldn’t, not even when she heard the vase shatter when it hit her hardwood floor. She couldn’t even scream when the glass dug into her arms, shoulders, neck, and chest as she fell into a trembling heap.
“Quick!”
Woof!
Woof!
“Fuck. A dog. Get it!” It was a man’s voice.
Woooooofffff!
Another jolt of excruciating pain coursed through her as she heard her baby cry, then everything went black.