Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
KENSINGTON, TEXAS
Be still my mourning heart.
DJ Kensington and Amanda Reidel, part of semi-retired Small Town Nights, are officially going to collaborate on an entire album, according to a press release from Wildcard Entertainment.
According to Paula Stone, “The as yet untitled album will drop sometime next year.”
If there’s a tour, I’m not above using some inside connections for tickets.
—StellaNova
I’ve been avoiding Fallon for days, limiting my response in texts to one or two words. Every time I see her beaming face from the photos I took at her graduation on my phone screen, every time a new text pops up, I want to do nothing more than hurl the offending device across the room into the nearest wall, shattering it into a million pieces.
It’s close to how my heart’s felt since I realized she’s working for the cesspool, Devil’s Lair.
My original intent when hunting with Sam and Leanne was to help protect Leanne and her unborn baby. “Sam, there are whispers of Devil’s Lair’s calls leading the child traffickers. I’m hunting back to this phone sex operation.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“That’s not why I’m calling.”
“Then what is?”
“Hudson Investigations’ name is everywhere.” I scan the screens in front of me. “If it wasn’t for the firewalls Leanne put in place after we ran our initial test, you’d be under a brute force attack by some people who want very sensitive information about your company.”
Then I hit pay dirt—or mud splattered in my face, depending on how you look at it—the night when “Filia” described a scene I’d only told Fallon about. How I wanted to bend her over and fuck her the night of her high school graduation.
How, after she described every last detail of Fallon’s new lingerie down to a T , the insidious thought exploded into something much worse.
Betrayal.
Without hesitation, I used Sam’s window into Devil’s Lair and entered their HR files long enough to confirm my suspicions. That’s when it took everything in me to not throw up the highball of amber liquid I’d just consumed. My heart, which I was so ready to lay at Fallon’s feet, shriveled up and died in my chest. Then again, despite what my brain was telling it, it was still beating. The damn organ refused to accept what my eyes were seeing—the employment of one Ms. Fallon Brookes. Reading her file, I almost passed out, realizing this had been going on for almost the entire time we’d been dating.
All I can keep asking myself is, when did I let myself get soft? Should I have known better? Resisting the honeypots was part of my indoctrination when I trained for the Agency. Now, a girl barely out of the school room managed to slip past my defenses like I was groomed to be hers.
What if I’d really let her into my life? What other kind of traps could she have laid?
Scrubbing my fingers through my hair, I growl again, “I don’t get it. Why would she be involved in something as heinous as this?”
Thorn reminds me, “You’re making some pretty huge assumptions, Ethan. Have you questioned her? Asked why? There are always reasons.”
“Don’t give me this innocent until proven guilty crap, Thorn.” That was my woman in there—the goddamn bitch. I want to wrap my fingers around her neck and squeeze until she gives me the answers I want.
“Which means your objectivity is shot,” Thorn fires back. “You’re basing your assumption Fallon is involved on the fact you have feelings for her. You have no evidence to prove it conclusively, do you?”
No, I have nothing to prove Fallon’s one of the people after Leanne Miles, but there are far too many coincidences. My sister. Them meeting at a club in New York City. Fallon working at Devil’s Lair. My voice is blistering when I fire back, “Fuck you, Thorn.”
“Let my people work on a plan before you do something stupid.” His voice is placating, which sparks my fury even further.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to operate on US soil, which is how I keep getting dragged into your shit.” I mimic his baritone and a famous Bruce Willis movie. “Come work for the Agency, you said. It will be fun, you said.”
“Get your shit in check,” Thorn orders me.
“You have a day. Then I’m going out there.”
“That’s a dumb fucking move.”
“Why?”
“Because Sam and Q?za are putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Something doesn’t add up.”
I frown at Thorn’s words. “You don’t believe the evidence. It seems pretty clear cut to me.”
“There’s something off. Q?za’s looking into Fallon Brookes specifically, Sam into Devil’s Lair’s employees.”
“Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. Who the hell cares?”
His fist hits the desk. “I do! This isn’t about you, Ethan. It’s about so much more than just your broken heart—if that’s even the case.”
“You have doubts.”
“I think there are explanations,” he mediates.
“And I think there are absolutes.”
“Which is part of why you left the Agency to begin with,” he counters. “This whole business is a shade of gray.”
I have to verbally restrain myself before I tell him where he can take his agency. But my hands fist on my desk and Thorn takes note of it. “You’re hands off, Ethan.”
“You’re benching me?” The kick in the gut is just one more agony tonight. Though nothing as bad as when I figured out it was Fallon’s hot as fuck voice trying to get me off—and succeeding—while I called into the Devil’s Lair as my colleagues listened in.
“Just until I get more intel.”
“Then why the fuck are you babysitting me? Call your other friends for intel and leave me to my fucking misery,” I bellow.
He ignores me in typical Thorn fashion and instead pesters me about Fallon. “Why are you so convinced she’s involved. Neither Q?za nor Sam can find any evidence that lights her up in their initial check.”
“She’s working there. That’s enough.” I rub my hand over the ache blooming in my heart.
Thorn hums contemplatively.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Thorn?”
“What would your reaction be—right now—if I wanted to bring her in for questioning?”
Every drop of blood leaches from my face. I may be furious as hell at Fallon, but I don’t want to see her go missing in an underground prison for the rest of her life. “No. Just…no.”
“But you’re so convinced of her guilt.”
“Thorn!” I snap.
“She’s yours, Ethan,” he taunts in that fucking know-it-all way he has that’s driven every agent who ever worked for him insane. “Just admit she got to you. It’s happened before.”
She got to me when she was eighteen years old. I refuse to admit the woman I knew as “Filia” got to me in any way. The bitter bite of betrayal surges through my veins.
Thorn makes a tsking noise. “I think you need to stop everything and think, but what do I know?” he asks then disconnects the call.
“Bastard.” At that point, I’m not certain if I’m referring to Thorn or myself.
You. You’re referring to yourself, asshole.
Shoving away from my desk, I whip out my cell phone and pull up my text string with Fallon, scrolling back a few days before I knew what I know now—that she’s working for an organization that’s in bed with criminals.
I knew she was far too young for me. Christ, she’s my niece’s best friend. She’s a fleet of red flags I ignored because I wanted to be able to what? Stand on top of a foundation of lust to proclaim she was mine? Look where that got me. Every warning I gave myself about becoming involved with her pales to the fact there’s a high probability she may be involved with illegal activities.
“I knew I should have resisted you,” I say aloud as I read through the last few days of our texts. Based on the schedule at Devil’s Lair I hacked, she’s at work right now. I could log in and listen to her phone calls live, but I can’t do it.
I just can’t.
Especially after the last one where she cut out the heart of me. I recall each and every detail in full, unable to shove it out of my mind knowing it was my Fallon who so used it with a complete stranger.
A fantasy I came close to orgasming to because I knew it was her.
Only she didn’t know it was me.
The disgust I feel right now is the only thing that pushes me through to complete this job so I can stop fighting the pain I know I’m setting myself up for. I also know I can’t talk with her. I can’t listen to her breathless sighs as she takes herself there. Instead, I set up a bot to text her around 2 AM when she’s supposedly going to get off work at Galileo’s to say, “Sleep well.”
Because one of us needs to.
I’ll be too busy trying to pull her proverbial fat out of the fryer so she can make more mistakes in her young life.
Just none that will include me after this.