Mine to Crave (Mine 4)

Victor’s gaze slid to the closed door, then back to Drake. “Yes,” he said softly. “We do believe that Maxwell Case escaped from that blaze. He set the bomb—the fire as a distraction so that we’d be thrown off…but we know he got away, and we’ve launched a search for him.”

“The guy might not even be in the country anymore,” Noah muttered. Like Drake, Noah had been…different since the fire. Quieter. Harder.

“His assets are frozen. Thanks to our…inside man…we were able to learn about all of his off-shore accounts. Maxwell Case is running on his own. He’s desperate, he’s broke, and we will take him into custody. It’s just a matter of time.” Victor seemed so confident.

Jerk. This confident prick had been the one who was so sure Jasmine would be all right. “It’s your fault,” Drake accused.

Victor blinked.

“You left her in there too long.” He wanted to punish the bastard. He would punish him. “You knew where he was holding her. You should have gotten her out—”

“Easy.” Trace. Trying to be the voice of reason as he carefully positioned himself between Drake and the FBI Agent. Trace just didn’t get it. There was no “easy” for Drake anymore. There was just darkness. A void. A fire had taken Jasmine—heat and an inferno, and now, all he felt was…cold.

Victor leaned forward and tapped a code into his laptop.

Drake’s hands fisted. “You’re going to pay,” Drake told him.

Victor glanced up, his eyes narrowed. “You think you can threaten me?”

“I’m promising you. You’re going to lose everything that matters.”

Victor’s laugh was bitter. “Now you sound like Maxwell Case. Maybe there’s not so much difference between you guys—”

Even Trace couldn’t slow Drake down when he lunged for the bastard. “I’m nothing like him!” He slammed Victor into the nearest wall. The guy’s crutches fell to the floor.

The agent didn’t fight back. He just stared at Drake. “Aren’t you?”

“You don’t have to hunt Case,” Drake managed to force out from between his clenched teeth. “The FBI is done with him. The guy’s a dead man walking.” Even before he’d gotten confirmation from Victor, Trace’s intel had told them that the SOB had escaped. Trace and Drake were already hunting the man. When they found him, there would be nothing left for the FBI.

But Victor’s jaw hardened. “My man inside gathered enough information to put Case away for life. Case is going down, and it’s going to be handled the right way.”

The idiot didn’t get it. “There is no right way. He killed my Jasmine. He’s going to suffer.”

Victor’s brows rose. “She wasn’t yours. She was just a woman you picked up for a night—I’m sure you pick up plenty of women and forget them the next day.”

Drake leaned in close to him. “She’s not the others. Do you understand? There is no forgetting her.” There was no moving on for him. She was inside of him, where his heart should have been.

Drake had known the risks. He’d seen what love could do to a man. Trace and Noah had both fallen hard. Gotten in too deep. There was a danger in loving too much. When you loved too much, you had too much to lose.

I lost everything.

“Let him play the recording, Drake.” Noah’s flat voice. “I want to hear what went down.”

Because they’d finally gotten access to the last moments of Jasmine’s life. The FBI’s “inside man” had been wired, and they’d applied every bit of pressure they could to get this access.

Drake stepped away from Victor. Trace handed the guy his crutches. Then Victor shuffled toward the table. “There’s no point in this,” he said again, but he tapped on the keyboard once more.

And…

“I expected more from you.” Drake tensed when he heard that mocking voice.

“Maxwell Case,” Victor said. “Asshole extraordinaire.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Jasmine’s voice—and that voice hit Drake like a punch to the gut.

Noah inhaled sharply.

“It was a simple job.” Maxwell was speaking again. “Get close to Archer. Use him. Help me to wreck him.”

He was wrecked without her. She didn’t use me. She never did. Jasmine’s voice trembled when she replied, “You-you shouldn’t have set those bombs at the Arrow. Innocent people could’ve died—”

Maxwell’s voice cut through her words. “Do you think I give a shit about those people?”

A beat of silence, then, “I don’t think you care about anyone.”

“You screwed that up for me. The Arrow should’ve burned—the place was meant to blow—”

“Because of you.” Jasmine sounded both terrified and furious. He hated her fear and as for the fury…it was just driving up Drake’s own rage. I should have saved her. But he hadn’t. She’d burned.

“Because of me.” Maxwell was gloating.

“How many others have you attacked?” Jasmine asked him. “With your bombs…with fire?”

Trace shifted then, moving closer to the computer. “What the hell? It sounds like she’s interrogating him.”

Yes, yes, it did.

Maxwell laughed. “Oh, Jazz, I don’t always need those tactics. Destroying a man’s life is easy these days. A matter of business. I use tools. Tools like you. I hack into accounts. I learn secrets. I use them.”

Victor paused the recording. “As you see, he was incriminating himself. My man did his job perfectly and—”

“Jasmine is dead.” Drake’s heart was pounding. Her voice hurt him. “He fucked up his job.” I fucked up.

Victor’s eyes glinted. “You feel guilty, I get that. Jasmine…she was different. Maybe it was her eyes or those damn dimples. Whatever it was, she had a way of getting beneath your skin.”

Drake caught Trace studying the agent with a thoughtful expression. “Did she get beneath your skin?” Trace asked him.

Victor’s head tilted as he continued to study Drake. “This whole bit is about you getting closure, isn’t it? Here. Listen to this, okay? Jasmine didn’t blame you, not for anything.” He typed again and Maxwell’s voice filled the small room once more.

“Does Archer care about you?”

Drake stopped breathing when he heard that question. Then Jasmine replied and his whole body shuddered.

“No.”

Had she truly believed that? It’s not just fucking to me. Her words. They should have been his. They should have been his. “Will he come for you, try to save you?”

No hesitation as she replied, “No.”

Maxwell cursed and demanded, “Then what good are you to me?”

“I’m not.”

Drake shook his head, helplessly. No, no, no!

“As you just heard, Jasmine didn’t expect you to rush in, guns blazing, and save her. There’s no need for you to feel guilty at all.” Victor leaned forward to close the laptop.

Drake caught his hand. “Who was the inside man?”

“I’m not at liberty to say—”

“He’s in the room, but he’s not speaking. That means he’s one of Case’s flunkies.”

“He speaks…but you aren’t going to hear him. Revealing his identity would just compromise other cases that the man worked for us—”

“So this guy,” Trace broke in, “he made a habit of working undercover for the FBI? For you?”

Victor’s chin shot up. “I think we’re done now.”

Hell, no, they weren’t. “Play the rest.”

“I don’t—”

“I want to hear it all.”

But Victor shook his head. “There’s no point.”