Pounding heat flared beneath his skin, his system flooding with the ire he’d been holding back for days.
“You have something to say to me, fucking say it.” He shot from the chair and stood over Cole, hands clenching. “Better yet, use your fists. You’re the one who taught me how to fight. We both know you can kick my ass. If you’re going to do it, fucking do it already!”
Cole slowly shifted his gaze from the computer screen, moved it over Tomas’ rigid stance, and stopped on his eyes.
The air thinned, and the tension in Cole’s lethal glare grew taut. Then he blinked.
“Nah.” He returned to the laptop. “You’re beating yourself up enough for the both of us.”
Irritation twitched through Tomas’ muscles. He spun away and paced the room, noticing the lack of dust on the surfaces. Cole had kept himself busy for the past few hours.
Everything that once filled these rooms had been replaced with new furnishings. Nothing remained from his childhood. No photos. No keepsakes. He’d moved it all to the Milton house and burned it.
His mother’s home and the land it sat on was the only tether he allowed himself to keep.
“I was seventeen when I sent the first email.” Tomas paused at the kitchen table and rubbed his brow. “It started out harmless. Just the words of a boy who missed his dead girlfriend.”
After his mother died, he’d spent two weeks alone in this house. That time in his life left a black hole in his memory, the grief more than he could bear. The only thing he could recall was his urgency to leave, to go somewhere, to be anywhere but here. So he’d left.
“Two weeks after my mother was put in the ground, I drove east. Ended up in Austin.” He laughed hollowly. “A small-town kid in a big city. I’d never seen anything like it. So many tall buildings, flashing lights, loud noises, and the people… Christ, they were everywhere, packed together on the streets in every size, color, and creed. I was so fucking out of my element. It’s no wonder I didn’t last a week.”
“That’s when Van captured you?”
“I was easy prey. A young, naive boy with a decent physique and no sense of danger, wandering the streets, utterly lost.” Lost in life. “I walked right up to Van’s car and asked for directions. Next thing I knew, I was chained in his attic.”
“No one blames you for continuing the emails after your captivity. If writing to her was therapeutic…”
“She was the only one I could talk to. A dead girl. I know that’s fucked up. I knew it then, too. But it kept me sane.” He released a slow breath and turned to face Cole. “I fucked up when I started writing about you and the team. As much as I covered my tracks and meticulously monitored the account, it was still reckless. Fucking careless. And I’m paying for it now.”
“Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.” Cole typed something on his laptop. “I hacked into the neighbor’s home network. Look at this.”
He joined Cole on the couch as the image of a shockingly gorgeous woman filled the screen.
His heart stopped, and his breath fell on a gobsmacked groan. “Holy fuck.”
“Yeah. There’s more.” Cole flipped from one photo to the next, each candid snapshot of Rylee Sutton more intoxicating than the last. “She’s not on social media. These photos are from Evan Phillips’ personal computer. All of them. We’re talking hundreds of pictures just of her.”
Completely enraptured, Tomas couldn’t look away from the screen, his gaze greedily feasting on her flawless features, the glossy shine of her brown hair, those sexy full lips, gleaming silver eyes, the healthy glow of her porcelain skin, and the curves of her exquisitely toned body in a glittery dress, a tiny swimsuit, obscenely short shorts—
Cole snapped the lid of the laptop closed, breaking the trance.
“Christ.” Tomas cleared his throat, trying not to imagine her naked and failing miserably.
“That battered woman in your bedroom is undeniably attractive. But when she’s healthy?” Cole made a whistling sound. “She’s the kind of beautiful that makes a man do crazy, desperate shit.”
No shit. The last time Tomas had such a gripping, ravenous reaction to a woman was…never.
And he wasn’t the only one. Paul Kissinger should’ve used the last of his energy to find water and survive the desert. Instead, he’d circled back and forced himself on her. A stupid fucking move but at the same time, sickeningly understandable for a guy who’d been ogling her through his binoculars for six months.
“Maybe,” Cole said, “we’re dealing with something as simple as an infatuated lover. Could be the ex-husband or the neighbor or some random hookup who’s feeling extra possessive of a beautiful woman.”
That didn’t sit well with him. He’d rather Rylee be a person to blame, not a victim. “Does the neighbor have pictures of other women?”
“No.”
“Did you come across compromising photos of Rylee?”
“None. No sex tapes or anything that implies that Evan is creeping on her without her permission.”
“He has a private photo collection of her.” An uneasy sensation coiled in his stomach. “I don’t like it.”
“I agree. It looks suspicious.” Cole turned to him, his gaze probing. “Maybe he loves her. Or maybe he just appreciates her beauty. I mean, if you were fucking a woman who looks like that, wouldn’t you keep photos of her?”
No question, he would keep them. And stare at them. Hell, he was never going to fuck his hand again without a visual of her in his head.
“Collecting photos is one thing.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking. “But we’re dealing with someone who hired a man to watch her. Someone who is obsessed with every detail of her life. What she eats, where she goes, who she talks to, and most of all, who she’s banging. Those were Paul’s exact words.”
“Sounds like a domestic issue. I should be able to determine who hired Paul within the next few days. Once we know that, we’ll know if it’s connected to us.” Cole drummed his fingers on his knee. “Best case, she has a creepy admirer and hasn’t told anyone about your emails.”
“Then we clean up and go home.”
“Yep.”
He wanted to spank the ever-loving shit out of her and leave a permanent reminder on her ass. But a few threatening words against her loved ones would be sufficient in keeping her quiet when he vanished from her life.
“The worst-case scenario…” Cole rolled that small plastic disk between his fingers again. “She’s planning to do something with the evidence she has against us, and she’s not working alone.”
“She didn’t know Paul Kissinger.”
“No, but she’s somehow connected to whoever hired him. Think about it. We send our people on missions all the time with tracking devices. We bug their cars, their clothes, their bodies.” Cole’s lips twitched. “I heard Camila once wore a GPS chip in her tooth.”
“Yeah.” He grinned. “She’s fucking crazy.”
He missed her. He missed his whole damn team and longed to return to them.
If Rylee was working with someone, it made sense that they wanted to track her whereabouts and jump in when needed. That would explain Paul. She disappeared in the desert, and he showed up to find out what happened.