“I guess I figure I owe you.”
“That’s not like you.”
“Whatever, I just don’t want you waking up dead one morning.” The man’s eyes kept roving, his vision clear, thanks to Adrian—who was hovering in the background, an invisible guard. “You saved my life a couple of years ago, and I didn’t think it was a favor. Now? It gave me…a priceless few days that are worth every torture I’m going to wind up with soon enough.”
“You sound so sure of that.”
“You’re part of this game—or whatever it is. You have to be. So you know where I’ve been. And as for XOps, in the next couple of days, maybe a week, everything is going to be over—you’ll know when it happens. Everyone will know. If I were you, I’d go into deep hiding and stay that way.”
Okay, this was all great, but where were the crossroads…?
“You came here just to tell me this?” Jim said.
“Some things you’ve got to do yourself. And you…matter. I can lose myself—that’s fine. Hell, that’s inevitable. But I’m not living with your death on my conscience. Not if I can do something to prevent it.”
Jim blinked, and was surprised to find some of the perma-pressure on his chest lifted a little.
God, he hadn’t expected to get emotional. Hadn’t thought that was possible anymore.
Matthias took a deep breath. “And I’d stay if I could, but I can’t. I’ve got to get moving—and besides, I know you have good backup. That roommate of yours is a hell of a fighter—”
Another car made the turn onto the lane and came flying toward the garage.
“What is this, a f**king convention,” Jim muttered. Except then he sensed who it was.
Not the cops. Not an operative.
“I think your girl is here,” he said to Matthias softly.
As the headlights of her mother’s car hit the garage in the woods, Mels’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
Matthias was standing next to a sedan with Missouri license plates—clearly, a rental. At his side, Jim Heron loomed like a sentry.
Neither seemed particularly happy to see her, and tough shit with that.
Skidding to a halt on the far side of the police tape, she cut the engine and got out, marching up to the men.
In the tense moment before she spoke, she noticed for no good reason that the night sky was spectacular, glowing clouds streaking across the heavens, forming a shifting patchwork over the stars and the bright moon.
“I need to talk to you,” she said gruffly. “Alone.”
Matthias turned to Jim and spoke quietly; then the other man stepped away. The whole time, Matthias was looking at her face as if he’d never expected to see her again, his eyes roaming, drinking her in.
Mels fought the urge to do the same. God, she still felt a pull toward him and that was not just nuts; it was suicidal.
Crossing her arms over her br**sts, she kicked up her chin. “Guess you avoided the cops—and intend to keep doing so.”
“I told you I was leaving.” His voice was rough. “What are you doing here?”
“I read through those files. Didn’t you think I’d have some questions?”
“None you’d ask of me.”
“Who better to go to than the primary source.”
As he met her eyes, his stare was steady and focused, like he was a man with nothing to hide. “It’s self-explanatory—”
“It was your baby, wasn’t it.” She nodded in Heron’s direction. “You ran them all—you recruited them, told them what to do, kept control of the entire organization.”
“So you think I should go to jail.”
“Well, yeah. Although if what I saw is true, you did the world a service.” She stalled out briefly. “To be honest…I’m stunned that you gave it all to me.”
“I meant what I said.” He dropped his voice. “I need you to believe that what I had with you was the truth—I can’t…I can’t live with the idea that you think I lied about that. And as for that operative at the Marriott—he was sent to kill, and it was a case of either we took him out or he completed his mission. We had no choice.”
“You and Jim Heron?”
“Yes.”
“Did you take the body?”
“No, we did not—but reclamation of remains is standard operating procedure for XOps. Someone else took care of that.”
“XOps is the name, huh.”
“It has no name, but that’s what we call it.”
“Some of the men were marked with an orange strike—what does that mean?” She pointed to Jim. “Like he was.”
“In those cases, there has been some intel suggesting a mortal event, but the body has not been claimed or otherwise visually confirmed.”
“Jim is certainly alive and well.”
“He is.”
A stretch of silence followed, and Mels thought back to being against the man’s body, the two of them moving together under the sheets—so close, heart-to-heart, until the whole world didn’t exist, the power and combustion between them sweeping everything away.
“What can I say to help you with this,” he whispered. “What can I do.”
“Tell me where you’re going.”
“I can’t.”
“Or you’d have to kill me, isn’t that the line.”
“Never. Not you.”
Cue another stall-out, and in the tense quiet, she retraced the steps she’d taken to come out here: As soon as she’d finished looking at all the files on that flashdrive, the urge to confront him had taken hold. A quick dial into her contacts at the CPD had indicated he hadn’t been arrested and there were no leads on his whereabouts. In the end, she’d decided to drive out here, because Jim Heron was the only contact she had.
And now here she was, speechless.
She wanted to yell at Matthias, as if his past had been lived solely to screw her.
She wanted to rail against the whole course of their…God, it wasn’t even a relationship, was it. More like a collision that had involved so much more than just her car.
She wanted to throw her arms around him…because, looking in his face, she sensed that it could be true…the things he’d given her on the SanDisk—as well as the things they’d been to each other. So much in this situation was bizarre, but the feelings…could they have been real?