Mine to Keep (Mine 2)

Noah swiped a hand over his face. “And you think he might be using people at my organization, too? Doing the same damn thing to me?”

It was a definite possibility. “The guy sure as hell seems focused on me right now, but the two of you needed to be warned. If he hasn’t already gone after you, he will.”

Drake gave a grim nod.

“I think he stole my shirt right out of the office.” The back-up clothing that he normally kept at the office was gone, so there really wasn’t any thinking about it. Now he knew how his shirt had wound up at Parker’s crime scene. You wore it while you killed him, didn’t you, bastard? “I’m sure he used Sara to get access to the clothing.”

Poor Sara. She’d been caught in a battle for nothing. Used. Thrown away.

“Your security footage got his face, right?” Noah said as he leaned forward. “I mean, this is Weston Freaking Securities that we’re talking about. This place is wired from the floor to the ceiling.”

It was, but… “Sara Kramer had access to all the security information here. She was my right hand.” Grief was there, painful, twisting grief that clawed inside of him. Sara had been a friend. “I trusted her, and it looks like, a few days ago, she took the security offline for fifteen minutes. The whole building went dark.”

Drake swore.

Yes, that was just how Trace felt. He’d been distracted—the security breach had happened right after the car crash. He’d learned that his team had reported the problem right away, only they’d reported to Sara, not him because he’d been getting stitched up at the hospital.

“So we’re saying a dead man is doing this?” Noah surged up from his chair. “Because I don’t believe that crap. No way. I don’t—”

“You were flying the chopper that got us out of there,” Trace told him. Because that had been Noah’s job that day. Trace had barely made it to the rendezvous point. “The snow was coming down hard, and you could barely get the bird back in the sky.”

Noah glanced over at Drake. “I was convinced he’d die before we got him to a doctor.”

Drake’s gaze strayed to the window. “Do you two ever think…maybe I should’ve been the one to die? Maybe Trace made the wrong choice out there. He grabbed the wrong friend.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed to chips of golden fire. “Stop being a dick, Drake. You both told me what went down out there. Tucker turned on you. He would’ve killed you both in an instant.”

“Instead, I thought that I killed him.” Trace flattened his hands on the desk. “But if he’s dead, then how’d my dog tags wind up in Chicago? How’d Parker get them? They should’ve been frozen in Siberia, with Tucker.”

“And with Anna Jean,” Drake said, his voice tight.

Trace frowned at him. There had been a different note in Drake’s voice then. Pain.

Anger?

Well, the guy was entitled to his anger at Anna Jean. She’d tried to kill him. She’d screwed them all.

“You’re the best shot I’ve ever seen,” Noah said, as he braced his legs apart and studied Trace. “From what you told me all these years, it was a point blank shot.”

Trace inclined his head.

“So how would you miss?” Noah demanded. “You hit his heart. You know he was dead.”

“Someone found the body,” Drake said as he straightened. “The snow melted. Someone was digging—the damn bodies were found, and with them, the dog tags.”

Trace’s lips curved in a mirthless smile. “You think I didn’t consider that? If that were the case, I figure that I would’ve gotten a blackmail threat. Not this…the kills are personal.” They all had to see that.

“Personal,” Noah agreed. “For you. Sharpe came to you, tried to warn you, and he died.”

“Parker Jacobs wasn’t interested in warning me about anything. He was more interested in destroying me,” Trace said.

“So that’s why he was used.” Noah was speaking faster now. “Sara was used, too. Both of them were pawns in the game.”

Drake’s hands clenched on the leather arm-rests of his chair. “So this is all just a game?”