“The motel clerk took her bounty of cash and drove to San Antonio,” he said. “A spontaneous vacation to visit a friend. If she hadn’t left town so quickly, we would’ve located you within twenty-four hours.”
“What did you do, Tommy?” She shifted to face him, her voice rising. “Answer me.”
He had a lot of bad news to give her. Christ, she’d already been through so much. He wanted to spare her this. For just a little while longer.
“She just butchered a man, Tomas.” Liv met his eyes in the rearview, her voice melodic yet icy in its command. “Don’t coddle the woman. She can handle it.”
He knew that. Fuck, he still wore the vicious marks of Rylee’s claws and teeth. He knew exactly how she handled things.
With a steeling breath, he turned toward her.
“The hitman located the girl before we did.” He reached for her face, her expression falling, collapsing in agony before his eyes.
“No.” She jerked away, shaking her head. “No, no, no!”
“She’s dead.”
Killed slowly. Body parts removed. All left for his team to find.
Her eyes glistened with tears, but she didn’t let them fall. “So the hitman learned my location and killed that poor girl.” She inhaled deeply. “How did you follow him?”
“Cole and I stayed behind, working it from a different angle.” Tomas hadn’t been much help, his technical skills no match for Cole’s. “It took days, but Cole managed to trace Paul Kissinger’s phone to multiple other devices. I still don’t know how he did it, but one of the devices he locked onto was traveling from San Antonio back to this area. We knew that was our guy and scrambled to catch up. When the phone stopped moving at your motel, we were still ten minutes out.” A hot clamp squeezed his airway. “Ten minutes too late. I’m so sorry, Rylee.”
“I got myself into this.” She leaned back and looked out the window. “I won’t forgive the way you treated me, but I know you didn’t send that hitman after me. That is a result of something I’ve done, evidently. Not your fault.”
“What do you mean?” Suspicion thickened his voice. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing!” Her gaze shot to his, wide and urgent. “I don’t know what’s going on, but when I was stabbing that man, he mentioned the bridge.” She nervously glanced at Liv and Luke in the front seat and whispered, “He was smiling like he knew a dirty secret. But you’re the only person I’ve ever told about that night.”
“Start from the beginning. Tell me step by step what happened from the moment you saw the hitman talking to the motel clerk.”
She explained how she left the shower running and hid beneath the bed, hoping to distract him long enough to escape. She had the knife and her wits—two things that saved her life. While it was hard to hear the details of her struggle, he was so fucking proud of her.
“I asked him about the bridge. How did he know about it, and what did it have to do with him?” Her brows pulled together, and she chewed her lip. “He was pretty much dead at that point, but he mumbled something about Thur… Need? Like Thursday? Or thirsty? He never finished.”
Baffled and agitated, he drummed his fingers on his knee. He’d briefed his team on everything he knew about Rylee Sutton, including her ex-husband, the suicide bridge, and her sexual history, as well as her hate-fuckfest with him.
That had been a strange conversation. He never shared shit like that with anyone. But his secrecy in writing emails for ten years had started this mess. They deserved to know all the facts, no matter how personal.
The consensus among everyone was that this had nothing to do with Rylee. They were dealing with a team of sophisticated spies and assassins who were likely using her to get to the Freedom Fighters. Probably a loose end from a sex trafficking ring they’d taken out in recent years.
So how would her near-suicide on a bridge a decade ago have anything to do with this?
The emails.
That was the night he’d started writing.
“I called Mason yesterday,” she said into the silence.
Luke’s gaze snapped toward Liv, and every tendon in Tomas’ body went rigid.
He wanted to bend Rylee over his knee and show her luscious ass just how foolish it was to contact anyone right now. But the damage was already done.
Now he needed to understand the repercussions. “Tell me what was said. Every word.”
“I used a disposable phone.”
“Purchased from a corner store? It can be traced.”
Despite the darkness, her face paled. Then she breathed in and walked through the conversation—Mason’s confession that he loved her, kept tabs on her, and wanted her back.
“He reported me missing because Evan called him with claims that I was acting scared and disappeared.” She rubbed her temples. “That just isn’t true. Even weirder, Evan admitted to Mason that we were sleeping together. Why would he do that? To enrage Mason? To bait him?” She dropped her hands, her voice monotone. “I think Evan is behind all this. It doesn’t fit his personality, but there are too many things that don’t add up.”
He exchanged a look with Liv in the rearview. Her gaze crystallized, issuing an order that shriveled his balls.
Yeah, he knew what he had to do and didn’t need her controlling the situation from the front seat.
Fuck, this was going to hurt.
“Rylee, listen.” He clasped her hand, clenching tight as she tried to pull away. “Evan died at work today. He fell off a six-story building at his construction site.”
“What?” She yanked frantically on her hand, her breaths gusting hard and angry. “No. It wasn’t on the news. They would’ve reported it. He wouldn’t fall off a fucking building. He’s smarter than that.”
“His death is being investigated. They’ll rule it accidental, but you and I both know it was foul play.”
“He’s not dead.” Her voice shook, her gaze brimmed with anguish and denial. “He’s not dead, Tommy. He’s not.”
He would give anything to order the caravan off the road and chase everyone out of the car so she could wrap her emotions around this in private.
Nothing like breaking down in front of strangers. He hadn’t been able to do it when he lost his mom and Caroline. He didn’t leak a tear at their funerals. Couldn’t open his soul to a therapist, either. He still didn’t know if he had it in him to show weakness in front of his closest friends.
He felt her fighting it, battling the sobs in her chest, and pushing it all down. She trembled with the effort.
She needed to let it out. He knew that from experience.
All those years of writing emails, pouring his fears, sadness, and loneliness into the ether, and to think, someone had been listening to him after all. While he’d mourned his dead girlfriend, Rylee had been there for him through every word.
Now the tables had turned. While she grieved her friend, her lover, he wasn’t jealous. He only felt an overwhelming, protective need to take away her pain.
Gathering her in his arms, he fought her snarls and weak attempts to break free. Once she settled down, he held her on his lap, cradling her, wrapping her up with his body, and kissing the tears on her cheeks.