“She won’t talk,” Boomer said. “I don’t like the dirty stuff, but Drake and Ian are doing the only thing they can.”
“By pretending Kyle’s dead?” MaeBe asked, some of her fire back.
There was a little hitch to Deke’s breath that made Maddie wonder.
“Mae, would I lie to you?” Ian asked, sounding infinitely weary.
“Yes. You would lie to anyone if you thought it was for the good. This is not for the good, Ian.” Mae walked into the room, her feet in hospital slippers and a robe around her body. Maddie had brought her the robe. The cast on her arm peeked out of the too-long sleeves.
“I know you’ve been through a lot,” Ian began.
“Show me the body,” MaeBe countered, her chin tilting up stubbornly. “Is it in the morgue downstairs?”
Ian’s jaw went tight. “You know I’m not going to show you the body. I assure you I can identify my own nephew. I’m not going to make the woman he loved do it any more than I would put Sean through that trauma.”
“Don’t say that. He didn’t love me. He left me behind. He lied to me and forced all of you to lie to me, too, and I won’t ever forgive him for it.” MaeBe’s head turned up, locking eyes with her boss. “She will come after me. She won’t be fooled by this insane ruse of his. All he’s doing is leaving me completely vulnerable to her. But then she’s the important one, isn’t she? That’s been made plain to me.”
“Mae, you need to rest.” Ian’s tone was patient. “And you need to accept that Kyle is gone and he’s not coming back.”
“Oh, I accept that he’s gone,” MaeBe replied. “I one hundred percent accept that he’s not coming back. He’s going to follow her.”
Was it possible Kyle was alive? She glanced down at Deke who watched MaeBe, his eyes haunted.
If Kyle was alive, he would need everyone to believe he wasn’t. He would have put that on Deke. But now that she thought about it, Deke had been trying to talk Kyle out of doing something in those final moments before the world had exploded.
“I quit, by the way,” MaeBe said quietly. “I already sent Hutch my resignation letter.”
“Oh, you should have done that after you got a ride home.” Ian’s voice had gone cold. “You going to hoof it back to Dallas?”
“Yeah, well, maybe Dallas shouldn’t be my home,” MaeBe replied.
“Come on, Mae. You can’t leave.” Boomer stood up, his expression turning worried. “You have a family in Dallas.”
“I don’t have a family,” Mae replied tightly, her head shaking. “I have coworkers. I had a guy I liked who it turns out I didn’t even know. My blood family doesn’t want to have anything to do with me, so I have no family.”
“Don’t say that.” Boomer moved into her space, reaching for her hand. “Because if you don’t have a family, then neither do I, and I can’t stand the thought of that. Blood doesn’t have to make a family. God, I hope not. All I have in this world is you guys. Don’t make it less than it is because you’re mad. Losing Kyle is going to devastate all of us. We can’t lose you, too.”
“We didn’t lose him. He left us,” MaeBe insisted.
“Whatever you believe, we lost him,” Boomer said, a hitch in the big guy’s voice.
“She’s not going anywhere,” Ian announced, his shoulders squaring. “I mean it, Mae. I’m not about to let you go out into the world alone. You can hate me all you like, but I’ll lock you in a fucking room if I have to. If that psycho is going to come after you, she’ll have to get through me.”
“She’ll have to get through all of us,” Boomer agreed.
MaeBe took a step back and shook her head. “No. I’m not going to be the girl who hopes someone stronger protects me. If I come home, I want training. Real training, Ian. Not the little bit of self-defense you give non-operatives. I come back and you make me a badass.”
“Done. I’ll have a training schedule for you Monday morning. We can work around the cast. You want to be a badass, you learn to work through the pain,” Ian announced. “You’ll train with me and Erin on weapons and self-defense, and you’ll join the bodyguards in their daily workouts. You’ll do everything they do, and you’ll be accountable for the same goals they are.”
MaeBe nodded, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Then I’ll come home.”
Boomer put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll take you back to your room. There’s a nurse who’s sweet on me. I can get us pudding or Jell-O. Anything you want.”
They walked out and Ian’s head fell forward on a low groan. “I hate everything and everybody.”
“I’m sorry,” Deke said.
Ian sighed, a long-suffering sound. “You have nothing to be sorry about. Kyle made his decisions, and we have to live with them. You did what you needed to do, and Madeline made sure The Consortium didn’t get the intel they needed. You should know the Agency is working to clean everything up. There shouldn’t be any blowback. They’re saying it was a gas leak. Kyle had recently applied to work security for the company, but Byrne hired him as a private bodyguard. Both he and Byrne were killed in the accident.”
The CIA guy had worked very quickly. “And they’re saying Byrne sabotaged his own satellite?”
“It didn’t work, and he couldn’t make it work. The story is he lied to his employees and his board members,” Ian said with a shake of his head. “Yeah, the conspiracy theories are already swirling, but the Agency is going to keep a lid on this because they believe Madeline. It looks like that weapon was going to be used on high-value targets while in the air. Some things are more important to the Agency than investments, and that’s power.”
“Well, my investment portfolio is currently taking a major hit.” She didn’t want to think about how much money she’d lost. “But the good news is my boyfriend has an excellent job, and I hear Texas is cheaper than California.”
“Maddie, no,” Deke said, bringing her hand to his chest. “I go where you go. Ian, I’m so sorry, but I’m going to have to…”
She wasn’t going to let that happen. “He’s going to go home and go back to work because like Boomer said, his family needs him. Though we would like a little time off. We need to go to see his parents or they will swoop in on us, and his condo isn’t big enough for that.”
Deke stared up at her. “Maddie, I will not…”
She stared right back at him, hoping that the look she gave him had her full will in it. “What? You will not what, Deke?”
“Uh, he will not make the same mistake again?” Ian offered. “He will not prove he learned nothing.”
“Fuck.” Deke brought her hand up to his lips. “I need you to know, I will be there for you. I will sacrifice anything but you. I love you, Maddie. You’re my life now, and I won’t make a decision for you. If you want to come with me, I’m happy, but if your career takes you somewhere else, I’ll go with you.”
Ian nodded. “Then something good came from this. The doctors said you could go home in a couple of days. Head to your parents and heal a little more. Let me know when you’re ready to come back to Dallas and I’ll send the plane for you. I’ll be taking MaeBe and Boomer home with me. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to have a bodyguard twenty-four seven. MaeBe has a point about Julia still wanting to hurt her. If MaeBe doesn’t believe Kyle is truly dead, who knows if Julia will. My nephew played some deep games, and Drake has a lot to answer for.”