“Beating someone at their own game is exactly how I like to win. Where’s Nick now?”
Seth fishes his keys from his pocket. “The only place I know is one hundred percent secure, because I made it that way. He’s at my house, waiting on us.”
“And if I go, who’s watching Emily?”
“A team led by Nick’s best man, Cody Rodriguez, who I happen to know personally. No one will get past Cody.”
“Someone did get by him.”
“No. Cody just flew into town from another assignment. Nick pulled him here immediately. He’s as good as they come.”
“I’ll save the rest of my questions for Nick.” I motion to Seth’s car. “I’ll ride with you,” I say, already walking to the passenger-side door while he climbs behind the wheel.
Neither of us speaks during the short drive to the Cherry Creek neighborhood where Seth lives, and where I’d considered moving, both of us watchful and thoughtful. And as I scan the roads, I think that it’s time I start carrying my gun and get Emily one as well. I also decide that she was right. I am scared, but not of what I will become or perhaps what I already am. Everything I have done or will do is about saving my family and my woman.
No. What I fear is the moment when I’m forced to do something that I can fully justify but she can’t. That moment I do something Emily can’t live with, because I know her, and that means she won’t be able to live with me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EMILY
I lock up behind Shane, feeling naked beyond my skin beneath the thin blanket. Suddenly experiencing the sense of being exposed and out of control for too many reasons to count, I dart down the hallway and up the stairs. Once there, I dig out a pale pink bra and panty set, put them on, and then cover up with gray sweats and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. And because a drug cartel seems to be hanging around, I opt to slip on socks and tennis shoes before my mind starts racing, my thoughts twisting and twirling in such a whirlwind that I sink down onto the edge of the bed. Thoughts come at me hard and fast, but there are two that demand center stage. Shane just all but promised to shut me out, and I all but begged the man to spank me. He did spank me, and that connects to so many pieces of my past that should have made that traumatic and lost the me I’ve known, yet it did not. But then, it wasn’t about me. It was about Shane and trust, which brings me back to his vow to shut me out.
“But it’s not about trust,” I whisper, thinking about his promises to protect me and quickly dashing my anger. Shane’s had a hellish night. Anger doesn’t help him. My mind goes back to a statement he made. I am not Derek. He’s right. He’s not like this brother, but if this “war” as he calls it forces him to stoop to that level, what will he be on the other side? I have to help him find a way out of this that won’t do that to him, and do it in a way that doesn’t get us all killed.
Which is what? I go back to a certain law professor who used and abused me, and pretty much said the same thing Shane did tonight. Know your enemy better than they know themselves or you. I need to gather every fact I can for Shane and present him with every idea I can to defeat his enemy.
I push off the bed and dart for the door and down the stairs, my destination the office. Once there, I flip on the light and bypass the giant mahogany desk directly in front of me, cutting left to the couch and chairs framed by bookshelves. Claiming the spot on the floor between the couch and the coffee table where my MacBook sits, I power it up and bypass all my research on the new fashion line I’m determined to make happen for Brandon Enterprises. Right now I have one thing on my mind: finding Adrian Martina’s weakness.
I start reading, and it’s kind of eerie how alike he and Shane are in many ways. Both with elite educations. Both with family empires they’re battling to control. Both with brothers, only Adrian’s is dead, and … gulp. At the hand of his father. So add a brutal father to the list of commonalities they share. But the one difference that stands out to me is a sister. Adrian has a sister, and she is the one Derek is involved with. I have no idea why, but she feels important. Teresa Martina has my attention. If only we didn’t have her brother’s.
SHANE
Twenty minutes after I leave Emily in our apartment, Seth guides us past the foliage-covered gate of his traditional-looking home with a steepled top, the exterior impression more family home than bachelor pad to an ex-CIA operative. But then, that’s exactly why an ex-CIA operative would want it. Traveling the driveway, we cut into the back of the house, and there’s a white Porsche, my brother’s favorite color and make, parked outside the garage.
“Nick’s,” Seth says, hitting the electronic pad above his visor to open the garage door. “Needless to say, leaving the FBI and opening his own security business has been a good decision, though I doubt with his man’s disappearance, he’ll agree.”
“Considering Martina made it to my apartment on top of that,” I say dryly. “I’m not sure I can agree either, but at least he has something in common with my brother. Maybe Nick can understand Derek where I can’t.”
He pulls the car into the garage and lowers the door behind us. “Your brother is a narcissist and driven by greed. I understand him just fine.”
I glance over at him. “He called me tonight.”
“He wanted to know about your father’s treatment,” he assumes, popping open his door, “like you did.”
“He did,” I confirm, exiting the car to meet his stare over the roof, a realization hitting me. “But my mother didn’t,” I add as we walk to the entry.
Seth keys in a code on a panel by the door. “Maybe she elected Derek to call you.”
Rejecting any answer that indicates my mother has the heart my father does not, I offer another solution. “Or she told Mike about my father’s treatment and he’s trying to get her answers.”
“In which case,” he assures me, “he’ll find the information we made sure he finds.”
“As long as his people weren’t as fast as ours.”
“Despite tonight’s events,” Seth says as we enter the newly remodeled house to be greeted by pale hardwood steps to match the flooring in the entire lower level, “you have the upper hand with our team.”
“After tonight,” I say, the two of us starting the climb up the wide steps before us, framed by stainless-steel handrails, “that’s a statement I’m going to need Nick to back up with more than words, or we’re replacing him.”