I punched my hand through a wall in the living room instead of through Evans’s face, and I was fortunate that we were in a trailer instead of a house. The walls were thin, and I’d missed the studs. It still hurt like hell, but I didn’t break any fingers, so I was gonna call it a win.
Rais went to the kitchen and found a Ziploc and ice and a clean dishtowel, and wrapped up my hand, which was nice of him.
“Listen,” Jared told me. “We’ll put his father away for endangering a minor, neglect of a dependent, animal cruelty, and anything else we can throw at him.”
I nodded and made my way outside; it was all a bit much, and my desire to maim Walker Evans was visceral. I wanted to hurt him. Irreparably. I wanted to make him as lame as Sun King and the others.
“And now,” Jared said—I could hear him through the window—“tell me where the other copies are, Mr. Evans.”
He swore again that there were no copies, only the originals, and that there were no contingencies; this was the extent of his plans.
He had a four-terabyte solid-state drive that everything was stored on. That was it. One. Singular. And it was kept in a climate-controlled safe that he’d had made specifically to keep the drive in.
“We need to make certain you’re not lying, Mr. Evans,” Jared said, turning to him, drawing himself up to his full, towering height, muscles bulging, his face devoid of expression.
I was not surprised at all when the man fainted.
When he finally came to, Jared put him in the shower, had him wash and dress, and then we put Evans in the back of the Navigator with the three rescued dogs that growled at him, even with Cooper petting them, and we all drove to the airport.
They were flying directly to Lexington, and Jared would call the police detective he knew and get everything settled before they touched down. He was going to go ahead with all of it, except the extortion, which I would need to talk to Nick about.
“Thank you,” I said, looking at my boss.
“Of course,” Jared said, giving me a glimmer of a real smile and a pat on the shoulder that I wasn’t expecting.
Ella hugged me, as, surprisingly, did Cooper. Rais and I did the guy handshake. I told them all how much I appreciated them coming to help me.
“Always,” Cooper assured me.
It was very humbling that they cared.
Ten
On the plane ride home, I called Nick before I thought about it, and was pleased that it went straight to voicemail.
It was very early in the morning when I arrived back in Flagstaff, and even though we were a few minutes early, Croy was already waiting on the tarmac for me when I got off the plane. I had called him when I left Calexico, and he was surprised I was coming back so fast.
“It basically turned into a fugitive pickup,” I told him.
“Good,” he said. “I was worried you all were going to be digging graves in the middle of the desert.”
“Are you listening to yourself, for fuck’s sake?” I snarled at him, because yeah, when Jared went all alpha, I’d had the same thought, but I was exhausted, and he was talking out of his ass. “Your husband is a goddamn Fed. How the hell would you explain us getting rid of dead bodies to him?”
“By explaining to him that you felt they deserved it,” he replied flatly, in his unflappable Croy way. Nothing ruffled his feathers, and everything rolled off his back.
“And you think he wouldn’t just throw my ass in jail?” I growled at him.
“No, Loc, he would not,” he assured me. “He knows the kind of man you are.”
The way he was looking at me, calm, steady, like everything he said was making perfect sense…was humbling.
Him, Jared, Ella, Cooper, and Rais—all these people believing in me was a lot of positivity coming my way at once. I was definitely overdue to piss someone off.
I scowled at him, and he laughed and stepped into me like that was totally normal, and hugged me. Tight.
It was a mindfuck. Worse was when I somehow felt compelled to tell him that Ella and I missed him—Jesus—and that I was planning to visit when the job was over, and she was going to come with me.
“I’ll be looking forward to that,” he assured me with a sigh, seeming very pleased.
I shoved him off me, and he was chuckling as he left me, which didn’t help my mood one bit. I was going soft, and that was not helpful in my line of work. I really needed to go to some horrible dive bar and get in a fight. That would take the happy edge off.
Once I was in the SUV driving back, my phone rang, and I saw it was Nick.