Wicked and True (Wicked & Devoted 4)

He loved her too damn much.

And tonight had only underscored one indisputable fact: he was totally compromised. And no matter what she’d done, he belonged to Tessa.

Fuck, he needed to make some decisions.

As soon as he got some answers.

With a ragged breath, he stepped toward her. “You swear to God you had nothing to do with Kimber’s abduction?”

She turned even more tense. “Nothing. I promise.”

“Is that your final answer? Think carefully. Trees has your computer and your phone upstairs. He’s taking both apart now. He’ll know the truth in the next few minutes.”

“I only passed on information after the fact. I didn’t—” Her shaky voice stopped, and she still wouldn’t face him. “Explanations don’t matter to you, so yes, that’s my final answer.”

Maybe he wasn’t the best barometer of her sincerity, but everything in his gut—the killer instincts Trees swore he possessed—told him to believe her.

“Okay. That’s good.” If she’d been honest, there would be no reason to call the police. No trouble with the law. No possibility she was going to prison.

But that left her in trouble with the Edgington-Muñoz brothers. She would be out of a job by sunrise. She would need money for herself, for her daughter. From somewhere. From someone.

He could be that person. He could marry her, keep her safe and in comfort. In exchange, she could spend the rest of her life owing him—and paying him back however his cock wanted. Zy would be a lying motherfucker if he said imagining all the ways he could extract repayment from her didn’t make him both happy and hard.

But that wasn’t why he refused to let her go now. He fucking loved her and that was never going to change.

“Let’s go back a year, before you went on maternity leave. Who gave you the code for the spyware and remote access software you installed on your computer?”

That finally had her turning to him, her face so full of confusion he didn’t think she could fake it. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Maybe the enemy hadn’t told her what the code did. “Before you left, did someone give you a USB drive or email you a program and tell you to install it? Did you double-click something from whoever you’re sending information to?”

She gaped as if she couldn’t find the right response, almost as if he was having a conversation she couldn’t comprehend. “I wasn’t passing information back then. No one gave me anything, and I certainly had no reason to betray the colonel.”

Was she saying her enmity had something to do with Hunter, Logan, and Joaquin? If she didn’t like their hardball management style, she wouldn’t be the only one. But if she hadn’t installed the code onto her computer, who had? Aspen didn’t seem that smart, so it had to have been Tessa. Unwittingly, perhaps. Or maybe she didn’t remember now. It had been over a year ago.

“What about last March, before we met?”

“What about it? I was still out.”

He nodded. “Yeah, but were you contacted by someone who wanted information about our mission to Mexico?”

“No. I didn’t speak to anyone about anything work related until I came back from maternity leave. And no one has ever asked me about our missions to take down Tierra Caliente.”

“C’mon, Tessa. We found communications from your Gmail account to a secure email service we’re pretty sure belongs to someone in the organization, communicating our mission plans to them.”

Her eyes went wide with something between abject horror and shock. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t! I swear.”

“Then how do you explain the emails?”

“I don’t know. I can’t, and I know that makes me sound guilty as hell, but I didn’t do it.”

She seemed so fucking earnest. Was it even possible she was telling the truth? Had someone maybe gotten ahold of her computer? Or was she tossing up another smoke screen?

Her frown deepened. “Zy, you’ve asked me about Kimber and the cartel. What is it you think I’ve done?”

“For nearly a year, EM Security Management has had a mole. The bosses have talked to me about it off and on for months. Process of elimination has led them to believe it’s either Trees or you. On Monday, they gave me two weeks to figure it out or we’re all fired.”

She shook her head, eyes going wider with even more distress. “Oh, god. No. No! I didn’t— I had no idea… Is that how Walker was taken and held prisoner?”

“Yeah. The cartel knew we were coming because someone inside our four walls told them.”

Tessa shook her head. “I swear it wasn’t me.”

He cocked his head, wanting to believe her so badly…but logically, he didn’t see how. “The only successful mission we had in Mexico was when we rescued Walker. You’d left town for your father’s funeral.”

She shrugged like she was at a loss. “It must be a coincidence.”