“Go there. Call me when you arrive. I’ll find a connection. Can you send me the recordings?”
“Not safely. That’s not my thing.”
“I’ll set-up a secure link. I need a number to call you back.”
“I’ll text it to you,” he replies.
“Great. I’ll have the link in about fifteen minutes. Get the hell out of Texas.”
“And come to Denver where it’s cold but the heat is burning hot. Same ol’ Lucifer,” he chuckles, “always walking right into the fire, not out of it, but here I come. Talk soon.” He disconnects.
“I’m going to find a computer. Get some rest. We’ll leave at daybreak.” I stand.
Ana stands with me. “I’m coming with you.”
“Get some rest, Ana.”
“No. That’s not how this works. You don’t tell me to sleep and leave me in this room while you handle this. I need to see the recordings. And we need to talk about how to handle Darius and what this package might be.”
“Fine,” I say tightly. “Come with me.”
Chapter Forty-One
ANA
Fifteen minutes after Parker made contact, me, Luke, Savage, and Adam are sitting around a table with Blake on video chat. The content of the conversation is creating that safe link for Parker, and I pace the living room as I wait for what seems most important: those who have betrayed us, most specifically, Darius. He had to have set me up the day we were ambushed. I can’t get my head around that idea.
“We’ve got the recordings,” Luke calls out to me over his shoulder, and I hurry toward the kitchen island where Blake is still on a Zoom-style chat, and Lucifer is pulling up the audio.
I step beside Luke at the end of the island. Adam and Savage are on either side of us. Luke hits the play button on the soundbite and we all listen. It’s a bunch of jumbled voices, but Parker is right. There are a couple of things that stand out:
The images are fuzzy. It’s impossible to make out faces, and even if we could, the men are wearing masks.
The men, are in fact, men judging by stature and tone of voice.
As far as words that can be deciphered:
Find the package.
Call Darius. Update him.
“It sounds like Darius is important,” I say. “I just can’t get my head around him being a mastermind. A follower, yes. A mastermind, no.”
“Me either,” Luke agrees, “but it could be as simple as he’s supposed to kill you if he finds you, if they retrieve the package. But keep you alive if not.”
“Yes,” I say tightly. “I do believe that feels more accurate, but I’d like to think that’s not the case.”
“I tolerated that dweeb without shooting him, but barely,” Savage interjects. “Don’t even think for a minute he’s not as shitty as a shithouse. He is.”
“Agreed,” Adam says, offering his simpler, quieter opinion. “He’s no one I’d turn my back on.”
“I can get him to talk,” I offer. “I know I can.”
“No,” Luke says. “Abso-fucking-lutely not. We just said that we believe he is tasked with killing you, Ana.”
“I’m highly trained,” I argue. “And this isn’t just about me. It’s about everyone on the hitlist. I’ll set-up a meeting. I have the badass Walker team to watch my back.”
“I’ll set up a meeting,” Luke counters. “You stay the fuck out of this.”
I whirl on him. “I’m an FBI agent, trained well above the level my badge requires. I’m not asking your permission.”
“I don’t give two fucks. If I have to tie you up and keep you here until this is over, you can use your time in captivity to plan my arrest. We both know you want to anyway.”
I flinch with that remark. “That’s uncalled for. I’ve been honest about how I feel and what I felt two years ago.”
“Yeah well, that’s still up for debate. You’re not going.”
“We need this to end,” I reply. “Me talking to Darius is the quickest way to make that happen. I’ll call him and have him meet me. And while you might not trust me, Luke, I trust you. If he tries to kill me and I fail to protect myself, I know you’ll keep me alive.”
“Come with me,” he snaps, grabbing my hand and starting to walk toward the stairs, using his larger size to basically bully me.
There’s a part of me that wants to stop that right now and do so in a big way. There’s another part that reacts to him touching me, the heat of his palm to mine distractingly right, even if it should be wrong. He cuts down the stairs, not up, and leads me to a second living area with a bar. The minute he halts and turns me to face him, I am ready to explode.
That never happens.
He folds me close, cups my head, and kisses me into submission, which shouldn’t be easy. I try not to make it easy on him. I resist. In my mind, at least. My body has a mind of its own, it seems, because I melt like a Hershey’s Kiss touched by the sun. I don’t just give in to the moment, I kiss the hell out of him, wishing, praying he might taste how much he means to me, how much I never wanted him dead.