The cold fear started to claw at my throat.
“Wait, what are you talking—”
“Whatever happens, know that I will always find you. I will always—”
The door to the cabin exploded in, and I screamed at the rush of bright lights, and men in black tactical gear with guns raised.
“Cormac!”
He roared, lunging from the bed with his gun raised, but there were too many of them. I screamed as four of them tackled him to the ground, shoving him down and wrenching the gun from his hands.
“Wait! No!”
“Ma’am!” A man in a blue jacket with “FBI” in bright yellow letters strode through the door, badge out and gun trained on Cormac as he approached me. I yanked the covers up around me, fear clutching at my throat.
“What the hell are you—!”
“I’m Deputy Chief Urlech, Miss Case, and we’re the FBI,” the man interrupted, glaring at me curiously and then at Cormac.
“He’s FBI! He’s here to protect—”
“No, Ms. Case,” Deputy Chief Urlech shook his head. “No, he’s not.”
“Yes, he is! He brought me here to protect me from—”
“He brought you here because he’s a psychopath with delusions of missions he doesn’t have,” he hissed.
The world froze around me.
“What?” the word was quiet on my lips.
“Don’t you listen to them, Nina! He’s part of it! He works for—” Cormac bellowed from the ground before one of the men sank a fist into his side, making him roar.
“Miss Case,” The Deputy Chief sighed, holstering his gun and rubbing his temples. “Cormac Alderson is not with the FBI. He’s a rogue agent with his own agenda.”
“Goddamnit Nina! You know who I am! You know what he’s saying is—” Cormac bellowed as the men cuffed his hands behind his back, one of them kicking him in the side, making me scream.
“He—he brought me here to protect me! He saved me from—”
“He brought you here to do what he wanted with you,” Deputy Chief Urlech spat, his eyes narrowing. “Get him the fuck out of here.”
“Nina!” The men started to drag Cormac away, and I lunged after him, the blankets wrapped around me. But there were more men with guns who held me back, heedless of my screaming and my thrashing.
“Wait! You can’t just—”
“Did Mr. Alderson give you anything?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Did he give you anything,” the FBI chief hissed, making me shiver in fear as he glared at me, like I was also an accused. And maybe that’s the reason I lied.
“No.”
He studied me for a second before he nodded. “We need you to get dressed and come with us, now.”
“Where are you taking him?”
“Prison.”
I swallowed, shaking my head. “But he saved—”
“He kidnapped you, he took you here, and from the looks of things, he had some fun along the way.” Ulrich sneered at me, and my skin crawled.
“But I can promise you, he’s not who he says he is. Get her out of here.”
Two female agents strode over and wrapped the sheets around me before they grabbed me by the arms and led me outside. Cormac was bellowing as they threw him into the back of a SWAT van that drove away, and my heart was bleeding all over the ground as they pushed me into the back of a cop car.
But I love him…
I kept saying it over and over as the car barreled into the night, away from the cozy cabin I’d shared with the man I loved, and into the unknown.
13
Cormac
Rage burned inside of me like a fire. It’d been five days. Five days since those assholes pulled me away from her. Since then, they’d tried everything to break me—to get me to sign things that would incriminate me and let them off the hook. Torture, sleep deprivation, beatings. All of it.
…And I didn’t give a damn about any of it.
Yeah, I was tough, and I’d had worse than anything that pussy Urlech could throw at me. But it was more than that. What kept me going the last few days wasn’t just that I was tough, it’s that I had a reason to withstand.
Nina.
Because if I broke, what would happen to her? She was between a rock and a hard place, and I didn’t even know if she knew it. Because Sylvan Bucks was still out there looking for her, and now she had Urlech too. Fuck, for all I knew, she still thought he was the good guy. But I knew better. And I knew if I fell, she was next. If they couldn’t break me, they’d go after her until they were satisfied that their own traitorous asses were covered.
This went deeper than Nina having just seen a gangland hit. Urlech, my handler with FBI, has been dirty for years. I was wise to it for a long time, but it was only in the last few weeks that I’d gotten hard evidence together. He and Sylvan had been in cahoots with each other—Urlech helping Sylvan move seized weapons and Sylvan helping Urlech stay in charge of things by taking out anyone who got close.