Chapter Thirty
Ash
The cup of tea burned my fingers as I brought it to Angel.
She smiled at me, cushioned between Margo and Carrie on the couch in Grayson’s office.
Dominic was standing in the corner, his back to us, eyes on the city.
I took a quick assessment of him, knowing he was trying to get into a mindset he didn’t like being in.
But for what was about to happen next, we needed him to be Dom. Not Dominic.
Grayson was at his desk, phone to his ear, trying to pacify Sheriff Humbly.
Easier said than done.
“A member of my team was kidnapped, Humbly,” he barked. “What the fuck did you expect us to do? Sit around and wait for you to use your nonexistent resources?”
Carrie and Margo winced. Angel looked up at me, confusion painting her face. I bent, kissing her on the forehead. “Your tea all right?”
“Yes, it’s lovely,” she whispered.
“I didn’t get any tea,” Margo grumbled.
My eyes narrowed at her. “Hayes is bringing you some.”
She smiled and scrunched her nose. “I know.”
Carrie didn’t want tea. She wanted coffee. “Is the pot nearly done brewing?”
“It was about halfway there when I left the break room,” I said, stepping back to glance down the hall.
Jake was still in the holding room with Scott. Tucker had passed out from the pain on the ride over.
“Doctor Morris is on his way,” Hayes announced, entering the room, Margo’s tea in hand. He set it on the coffee table in front of her and pressed a quick kiss to her lips before murmuring something into her ear.
Angel’s cheeks went pink and the sight alone was enough to be grateful for.
“Of course, Sheriff, I’ll send the man who tried shooting at my guys right over to you,” Grayson clipped before dropping the phone on the receiver.
“Michael didn’t take the news well, I gather?” Dominic asked from his place.
Gray ran his hand through his hair. “No. He wants us to bring Fitzgerald and Scott in.”
“Not until we get some answers,” I declared, arms over my chest. “I need to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Well,” Dominic began, turning to face the room. His eyes were dilated, glimmering with a rage I hadn’t seen from him in a long time. “Whatever it is, it’s bigger than anything we’ve dealt with before.”
“We also need to determine whether Ash and Angel need to go underground,” Hayes tacked on, his hand on Margo’s shoulder. “Tucker can’t be the only one looking for him.”
Grinding my teeth, I looked at Gray. “I need you to tell me what happened in Devil’s Den.”
He shook his head once, a shadow hanging over him. “Out of the question.”
“I have a right to know.”
“Yes,” Dominic agreed, stepping forward. “You do, but you need to honor your body’s defenses. If you try to remember the trauma your mind suppressed, it could cause a number of issues. Some of which I don’t think you’re prepared for.”
Before I could open my mouth, Carrie’s soft voice stopped me.
“I would listen to him, Ash.” My eyes met her blue ones, brows slowly coming together.
So much of Carrie’s traumatic memories had been suppressed and with the help of her therapist, she had been working on a safe way to acknowledge and heal from them.
“Care, I need answers,” I told her gently, holding her gaze. “Not only for my safety, but for everyone else’s.”
“And you’ll have them,” Dominic promised me before looking at Hayes, then Gray. “Send me in.”
We each shared a look. “Let me see if I can break him first,” Hayes offered.
Dominic gave us a smile then, small and dripping with heavy sadness. “You won’t be able to. Tucker Fitzgerald was the best SEAL in the game, second to Ash. He’s been trained to resist torture and interrogation tactics.”
“Let us try first,” Gray urged.
I cleared my throat, guilt heavy in my gut. “We don’t need you going back into that headspace, Edwards. It’s a last resort.”
He was still as stone. “I did what was necessary to help locate Carrie and I will do so again to protect this family.”
Angel pressed her lips together and grabbed Carrie’s hand.
“I have something.”
Everyone looked over to the door, finding Jake with a tablet hanging by his hip. There was still a gun strapped to his thigh and he hadn’t taken off his vest yet.
The second the chopper touched down on the rooftop, he was dragging Scott inside, disappearing into one of the holding rooms for over an hour.
Grayson leaned back against his desk, bracing his hands on the surface. “What do you have?”
“Before we get into it, someone needs to go in there with him.”
“Why?” Hayes demanded to know, his eyes alert.
“That fucker needs to be on suicide watch,” Jake answered, looking at Angel. “I managed to get him to tell me everything, including details about Felix’s murder.”
She lifted her chin slightly, squaring her shoulders. “As Grayson asked, what do you have?”
Fuck, my strong woman.
He stepped up to the coffee table, his voice soft. “You want to be in here for this?”
“She can handle it,” Margo said.
“I need to hear it from her, Margo.”
Hayes walked over to my side, his voice low. “You want her in here for this debrief?”
“I’m her lover, Mitchell. I have no say in what she can do. It’s her life.”
“I want to stay,” Angel announced, standing up. Her golden eyes looked at everyone in the room, stopping on me. “Felix was my friend.”
“Know that, baby,” I murmured, touching her cheek. “You can do whatever makes you comfortable.”
Carrie moved to stand in front of Grayson, his arms instantly going around her. Margo and Hayes stayed close to one another. I took a seat on the arm of the couch, guiding Angel to sit back down, her hand in mind.
“Right, well,” Jake sighed, tapping on the tablet screen. The pale light covered his face and all of us waited in silence as he worked his magic. The shades above the wall of windows across from Gray’s desk started to come down and a projector lowered from the ceiling.
“When the fuck did you install this?” Gray deadpanned.
“When you two went to Hallow Ranch for a romantic weekend getaway,” Murphy boasted, swiping up on the tablet. A second later, a mugshot of Scott and his demographics were on the shades.
“Thomas Herman,” Angel read aloud, gaping at the mugshot.
It was a few years old, the man in the photo much younger and skinnier than the fucker who’d tried to shoot me.
“Yup,” Jake said, popping the P. “Forty-year-old male. Born in North Dakota. Son to Martha and John Herman, both deceased. Went into the Army right out of high school and didn’t even make it through basic training.
After that, he spent the rest of his twenties dealing drugs, gambling, and racking up a ton of debt with the Italian mafia in New York. ”
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Collin Stevens is going to have a fucking field day with this.”
“Who’s Collin Stevens?” Angel asked.
Carrie pressed her lips together. “He’s the Don.”
“A don? Like a mafia don?” she gaped.
Margo clicked her tongue. “No, Blue, like the Don. He’s the head of the Italian mafia.”
Angel looked up at me with wide eyes. “That’s bad, right?”
“No, he’s a friend,” Carrie chirped, looking at the screen.
Angel fisted my shirt and yanked me down. I smirked at her. “You’re friends with the mafia?”
“He’s a good guy, Starlight. His wife owns a few bakeries in Chicago. You’d love her,” I assured before I looked at the rest of them. “Let’s hold off on calling Stevens, yeah?”
“Agreed,” Hayes drawled, looking annoyed.
“So the fucker gets caught and wants to off himself to avoid jail time,” Gray summed up.
“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking,” Jake said, sighing. “The second I got this fucker in the chair, he confessed to everything.”
“Naturally,” Dominic deadpanned, pushing up his sleeves.
“Herman was hired by Fitzgerald, who he knew as Rom, to take out Ash. He was also under the impression that he had been hired by the United States government to take out a SEAL who’d gone rogue and was conspiring with terrorists.
Fitzgerald told him the award for bringing him in was forty million dollars. ”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Aside from all the other bullshit, Tucker sent a drug dealer after me?”
“No.” Jake held up a finger and swiped it across the tablet. “That bastard sent a hit man after you.”
The screen was filled with various emails and texts from multiple jobs.
Jake swiped again, revealing a section of the FBI’s most wanted list. Thomas Herman was in the dead center.
Hayes pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re saying that Tucker Fitzgerald, a trained Navy SEAL, hired the man who assassinated the CEO of Ruby’s Gas Stations to take out Ash?
And on top of that, he got this dumbass to believe the US government would pay him forty million taxpayer dollars for doing so? ”
Jake adjusted his glasses. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, yes.”
Gray and I shared a look. “How in the fuck did he manage to convince him?”
I shook my head and gestured to the screen. “That’s not the question we need to be asking, if Tucker said I’m worth more alive than dead, then why hire a hit man?”
“Psychological torture,” Dominic answered, stroking his jaw.
“But he hasn’t done anything to Ash. What the fuck was the point?” Margo chimed in. “Ash has only been back for a month and a half. Scott—or fucking Thomas—has been working at Margie’s place for years.”
“And the hardware store during the holidays,” Carrie noted, chewing on her cheek.
“A decoy?” Angel guessed. “I don’t think he knew about our connection. When you walked into the kitchen on the day of Felix’s funeral, Scott looked genuinely shocked to see you there.”
I grunted, remembering how he lingered next to the ovens.
Carrie moved away from Grayson and walked up to Jake. “You said this guy used to deal drugs?”
“Yeah,” he said, switching the screen back to Herman’s rap sheet. “He was a low-level pusher, never got to run drugs, just sell them in the streets.”
“Did he sell Nightwalker?”
My spine stiffened.
Angel tilted her head to the side. “What’s Nightwalker?”