Tonight, however, my stomach was simply too unsettled to allow me to indulge.
“You going to eat that?” Jaxon asked, eyeing my burger with distaste.
“There’s not enough grease to suit me,” I said.
“Fine.” He rolled his eyes and threw his napkin on the tabletop. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said, opening one of the files, “since you’re not going to relax until we do.”
Only moments later, he glanced at me, his features blank. “On the outside, this looks like a nonrestricted file. This should be a nonrestricted file. Yet what did I find when I took a glance at the inside? This is confidential material, Mia. What’s it doing outside of A.I.R.?”
I shrugged and said, “I’ll return everything when we’re done.”
“My God.” He shook his head, but I detected a hint of admiration in his expression. “You are some piece of work.”
While he read on, I grabbed a file and poured over every photo, every sentence. I had just reached the third page when I paused, reread, blinked. Blinked again. A thought jumped to life in my mind.
“Check this out,” I said to Jaxon and handed him the folder. “This wasn’t mentioned in our file. Steele and his wife had just had a baby, right? Turns out they conceived through artificial insemination. Didn’t Hudson say that Lilla paid Sherry to try and get pregnant by him? And now I discover that SullivanBay made frequent deposits at his local sperm bank.” I shook my head. “Who are you working on?”
“Raymond Palmer.”
“Check for—”
I didn’t have to finish my sentence. Jaxon glanced up at me. “Mr. Palmer made regular deposits at Kilmer, Peterman, and Nate, too. Same place Rianne Harte worked. Why wouldn’t they give us that information?”
I didn’t know, but a thrill of success tingled through me. I had a common thread. Fertility. I turned my attention back to the photos and papers in front of me. A few minutes later, I was shaking my head in disbelief. “Look what else I found,” I said. “Check out the fourth paragraph.”
He glanced at the paper, looked back at his own file, then glanced again at mine. “Guess what? Mine says the same thing, except the name isn’t mentioned. Just the description.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I wish I could,” he said gravely. “What do you want to bet the others say the same thing?”
I fought back a groan. “Let’s pray they don’t.” We knew there was a particular person connected to two of the cases, but if all of them were connected to—I sliced that thought to a halt, not wanting to borrow trouble. Still, I fought a sense of impending doom as I withdrew the two remaining folders from my briefcase, handed one to Jaxon, then opened the other myself. Only two minutes had passed before we were staring over the table at each other.
“Glad you didn’t take my bet?” Jaxon asked.
Damn it. Kyrin was mentioned in every file as a “tall Arcadian male.” Twice by name. Not only had he dated Rianne Harte, he’d had dinner or some type of contact with every f**king man the night before they were abducted. The very night.
This was not the kind of information an agent could ethically withhold from a commander. If we told Jack, however, twenty agents would immediately be assigned to hunt and kill Kyrin. They might even write off the missing men as casualties, not stopping to question Kyrin about their whereabouts, just killing him in their fury.
I couldn’t allow that. Because I didn’t doubt for a moment that Kyrin would act on the threat he’d made to me. If he discovered other agents were hunting him, he would vanish, and Dallas would die.
Unbidden, Kyrin’s image formed in my mind. White hair. Enigmatic lavender eyes. Taut sinew and rigidly muscled body. The way he moved with such grace and fluidity; his long strides of self-assurance. The way strength radiated from him.
“What do you want to do about Kyrin?” Jaxon asked.
“I don’t know. God, I don’t know.”
Jaxon rubbed his jaw with two fingers. “We could split the search. You take one half of the city, and I’ll take the other. Or…” He tapped his fingers against the tabletop. “Or we could bring Kyrin to us.”
Intrigued, I tilted my chin and studied him. “How so?”
“He loves his sister and wants to save her, right?”
“That’s right.”
A man strode by our table, followed by another. Jaxon waited until the two were out of range before continuing. “What if someone alerted the media about Lilla’s execution?”
“Execution? We aren’t killing her yet. We need—Oh. Ooohhh.” I smiled slowly. My heart kicked into overtime. “A false tip. I like that.”
“Everyone at headquarters will be shocked when protesters storm the doors.”
“Which will allow Kyrin entrance. And when the sea of reporters burst inside, every exit will be sealed, trapping everyone inside.”
Jaxon nodded. “Think we should tell Jack and the others what’s going on? They’ll be able to give us more cover, and we’ll have a better chance of capturing our guy.”
“No.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m not taking a chance on a trigger-happy agent who doesn’t care if Kyrin lives or dies.”
“Okay. I’ll make the call at eleven tomorrow night and say Lilla’s being executed at midnight. That’ll give the press one hour to spread the word, yet won’t give Jack enough time to deny it.”
“Perfect. If he somehow finds out what we’ve done, though, I’m taking full responsibility.”
“I don’t need you to cover for me. I’ll take the consequences.”
“Sorry. No.” I gave him my grittiest won’t-take-no-for-an-answer glare, which he of course ignored. The male ego was not going to make me change my mind. “I won’t let you go down. I asked you to help me, not the other way around.”
“Too bad.” The lines around his mouth firmed. “Dallas is my friend too. Now, do you want my help or not?”
I paused. “Fine. If we’re caught, I’ll tattle on you like a whiny girl. How’s that?”
“That’s good.” He grinned. “Real good.”
“Go home, get some rest,” I told him. “You’ll need it. I’ll meet you here for dinner at seven.”
Maybe I should have taken my own advice and gone home to rest. I didn’t want to sleep, though, didn’t want to dream. I ended up making the twenty-minute drive to Kilmer, Peterman, and Nate Pharmaceuticals.