“Tucker,” I said, halting his first aid attempt and grabbing onto his arm. “Tell me.”
He abandoned the Band-Aids and ointment, sitting up and looking forward, keeping his gaze directed away from me.
“A couple days ago, the FBI showed up on my doorstep. They wanted me to step into Max’s life, to tell no one, and to finish what he started.”
“The FBI asked you to come here?”
He nodded.
“Max didn’t just die, did he? He was murdered.” The FBI didn’t knock on just anyone’s door.
“Yes, and I’m going to get the bastards who took his life from him.” He vowed, sounding deadly calm and utterly serious.
“Does this have to do with his job?” I knew that lately Max had been under more pressure than usual, but he would never open up and tell me what was going on. I should have pushed harder. I shouldn’t have taken no for an answer. If I hadn’t, maybe Max would still be alive.
“Apparently some of the higher ups at his firm were involved in corporate espionage and money laundering. The Feds went to Max to work undercover—as a mole of sorts—to get physical evidence of the crimes.”
“How could he agree and not talk to me about it! I could have helped him!” I all but shouted and shot up from the couch. I couldn’t sit still another moment. I began pacing the living room, thinking of the ways I could have helped him.
I was a lawyer for God’s sake. I worked for one of the most powerful and influential law firms in New York City. I could have helped him gather the information he needed. There were ways to gather information quietly so no one had to know.
“I don’t think the Feds gave him much choice,” Tucker said, grim.
“So he went undercover and the people he was trying to bring down found out and killed him for it” I surmised.
“Yes.”
“How do you fit into all of this?” Maybe I was still muddy headed from the crying and everything else that happened tonight, but I wasn’t making the connection.
“Before Max died, he got the evidence the Feds needed to put these guys away.”
“Why aren’t they in jail, then!” I demanded. The lawyer in me started thinking of the case I could build and what judge would be the best to reside over the case.
“Because the Feds don’t know where he hid the flash drive with the evidence on it.”
I stopped pacing and looked at him. “And they sent you here to find it.”
He nodded.
Realization slammed into me. “That’s why they came for me,” I said to myself, the missing piece from my attempted kidnapping finally falling into place.
“What?” Tucker said.
“They think I know where it is,” I whispered.
“What the hell are you talking about!” Tucker demanded, standing up from the couch.
I told him about the night the men came into the apartment and tried to drag me away. He listened with a gloomy look on his face.
As I talked, I thought of something else. “Those men tonight, they weren’t really trying to mug us, were they?”
“No. When I walked into the office today, quite a few people were surprised I was still breathing. They intend to finish the job. They don’t know where the drive is either, and they want us dead before we can take it to FBI.”
“We have to find that drive. Those men who killed Max have to pay.”
Tucker glanced at me, a determined look spreading across his features. “My thoughts exactly.”
19
Tucker
Her tears unnerved me. I was use to grief, but I wasn’t used to seeing it so clearly displayed.
I hadn’t pegged her as an emotional type, so the feeling of her cool tears against my chest and the sound of her body-wracking sobs came as somewhat a surprise.
But in a sick way, her tears relieved some of my own sorrow. It was nice to be able to share that he was gone with someone. It felt good that there was now someone else who felt the absence of my brother like a bullet wound to the chest.
When she cried, I held her, not because I was hoping she would cry less, but because her tears were my tears. She didn’t know it, but Charlotte cried for both of us. The release of her sadness somehow released some of my own. I hadn’t realized how heavy of a burden carrying his death was. How truly angering it was watching the world go on around me as if nothing changed, when in fact everything was changed.
Finally, someone else understood. And while I didn’t wish the pain of death on anyone, I was relieved I didn’t have to feel it alone.
Except now she was in danger.
More danger than anyone realized. Those men came for her the night they killed my brother. They came for us again tonight. Now more than ever I was sorry I bated Wallace Jr. today because if Charlotte paid the price, I would never forgive myself.
“Have you looked through the apartment?” she asked, studying the room.
“Yes. And Max’s office. But we can look here again. You might think of places to look that I hadn’t.”
She nodded and the movement caused her to sway just slightly on her feet.
“You need to sit down.” I told her, standing up.
Her eyes went directly to my chest.
I ignored the flash of heat in my system and turned away, going to the kitchen to retrieve some water bottles from the fridge. “Here,” I said, placing it in her hand and guiding her to the couch.
I studied her bloodied knees as she uncapped the water and took a drink. It seemed like forever ago those guys jumped us. It seemed like I’d been here for weeks, rather than days.
I heard a sniffle and I glanced at her. She was crying again.
Damn, women were leaky.
There wasn’t anything I could say so I kept my mouth shut. I was likely doing her a favor anyway. I wasn’t the kind of guy who had an arsenal of pretty words to make a girl melt. My arsenal was loaded with guns. And grenades.
But I was good at dressing a wound.
I sat forward, grabbing up an antiseptic wipe and ripping it open with my teeth. The smell reminded me of the battalion aid station (otherwise known as BAS) when I was enlisted and had to go to sick call.
“We don’t have time for that,” Charlotte said, glaring at the wipe.
“So you’re one of those patients.” I quipped.
“Excuse me?” She sniffed.
“The kind who battles the nurse even when they’re just trying to help.”
“Are you comparing yourself to a nurse?” she asked, lifting a delicately arched brow.