Wicked and True (Wicked & Devoted 4)

That would make it an awfully big one. “Your Gmail account was also used to forward the floor plan of Valeria Montilla’s St. Louis safe house, the one Walker sent to you with instructions to pass on to Trees, over to the cartel.”

“I don’t know how. But that wasn’t me. Maybe someone who wants me to look guilty hacked my account? But I did nothing with that message except forward it to Trees via my company email, just like Walker asked.”

Tessa had a point he hadn’t considered sooner. If someone wanted to frame her, how hard would it be to hack a freebie email account and do their dirty work, leaving behind an easy-to-follow trail? As scenarios went, it wasn’t impossible. But why would someone choose her to target?

He didn’t know, but was that really the important question? He was grilling her about things the bosses would want to know. Fuck that. He had questions of his own.

Before he told her what he intended for their future, he was going to figure out exactly how much she had betrayed him…and how much he didn’t dare trust her.

“Let’s talk about something I know you did, and don’t you dare tell me otherwise.” He growled in her face. “You told someone else the ‘plan’ to rescue Kimber. The one I told you about less than eight fucking hours ago. You going to try to deny that?”

She flinched. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Bullshit. You always have a goddamn choice.” He couldn’t stop his anger any more than he could resist the urge to touch her again, so he gripped her arm and yanked her closer. “Did you understand that, by passing the information on, you could be sending me to my death?”

“Yes.” Tessa closed her eyes. Anguish twisted her face. “And it was killing me.”

Zy didn’t want to be moved by her tears. “But you still did it.”

“Not because I wanted to, and only because you had a chance at surviving. And my choices were so unthinkable that—”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You don’t… I thought you said you’d figured this out.”

Now he was confused. “Are you saying someone’s holding something over your head?”

Tears pooled in her red-rimmed eyes again and spilled onto cheeks already stained with silvery paths. He, with all his alpha-hole bravado, couldn’t bring her to her knees when he’d tried to make her hurt like he was. But whatever upset her now had her sinking to the concrete with a thud, her face buried in her palms as sobs wracked her.

Oh, fuck. “Baby?”

A sudden pounding on the bunker’s lid sent Zy whipping around. Talk about shitty timing…

“Zy!” Trees shouted, banging on the metal lid again.

“Damn it,” he growled, then ascended the ladder enough to unlock the portal.

Trees ripped it open and clambered onto the rungs, then jumped into the bunker. He turned, looking somewhere between stunned and annoyed as he glanced between Tessa, barely clad in the quilt, and him, still sweating and half-dressed.

“I guess you didn’t spend your time with Tessa finding out what the fuck has been going on.” And Trees sounded more than a little pissed.

“Can it,” Zy barked as he bent to cup her shoulders and help her to her feet.

Trees slanted an incredulous stare at Tessa. “Why haven’t you told him? Why haven’t you told anyone?”

She reared back. “You know?”

“Yeah, I do. And—”

“Know what?” Zy roared, looking back and forth between them. “Stop fucking talking circles around me and spill.”

Neither spoke for a long moment.

Tessa bit her lip, like she was terrified to say a word, then she blinked away her tears, stifling another sob. “The man who accosted me in the parking lot on Tuesday?”

“Yeah, I remember. I’m still trying to identify him.”

“That night, he abducted Hallie. When I woke up Wednesday morning, she was…g-gone.”

Zy felt his stomach drop to his feet. He scrubbed a hand down his face as the implications of her words rammed him in the solar plexus. “Oh, god. Tessa…baby. You’ve been passing on information to save Hallie’s life?”

“Exactly,” Trees confirmed when Tessa was too broken to answer.

Fuck. She’d done what she thought necessary to keep her daughter alive. He’d had no idea…

But he still had a thousand questions.

If Tierra Caliente had Kimber, why did they need Hallie, too? And why hadn’t Tessa come to him the minute she’d realized her baby was gone? Last but not least, if the girl had only been gone a handful of days, who had engaged in the espionage that had fucked EM Security for nearly a year?

Zy turned to Trees. “Tell me what you know.”

“Not much since I didn’t get to finish the forensic deep dive on her devices. Madison started texting me about ten minutes ago. She went to peek in on Hallie and found an empty crib. She panicked and—”