TORI MOVED THROUGH the morning on autopilot. She felt like absolute shit; she hadn’t slept but a wink and had nothing left in her stomach after puking herself into a ball curled up on the bathroom floor.
If not for the baby, she’d still be in a fetal position, eyes squeezed shut against the ever-present reminder of the awful scene last night with Draegyn.
A vasectomy.
My god. Tori was so horrified by what he’d done that she secretly wished Carol had been an affair and not a doctor. At least with an affair, she could fight back. This? This was another thing altogether.
They had barely kept it together for a year. The sad realization didn’t help her frame of mind.
Switching on the TV, she brought up a news channel and settled down with Daniel for his mid-morning feeding. Her frayed nerves soothed when her son snuggled close and stared up at her with his startling blue eyes as he worked on the bottle.
At least, she had this. This one perfect part of her husband created during a time when their love affair had been intense and too hot to handle.
“Breaking news update from our reporter in Paris. Go ahead, Nic.”
Tori looked up at the TV screen. Jeez. Now what, she wondered. Watching the news story unfold hit her like a speeding freight train, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that Justice was somehow connected.
Around lunchtime, her mom rang and announced she was coming by in a little while. From her sharp tone, Tori assumed she was about to get the third degree. There’d been so much tension between her and her only parent that she knew it was up to her to end the subtle scrimmage.
There was no use in making up stories or pretending—this was Justice, after all. Everyone and their cousin’s best friend would know she kicked Draegyn to the curb before the dinner bell rang later this evening, so she decided to lay it all out and let the chips fall where they may.
That was when she remembered one small detail she’d practically forgotten. Her mother was pregnant.
How the hell did such a thing happen, she wondered. I mean, she thought, the mechanics are hardly a mystery but pregnant?
And her husband didn’t know. She hadn’t told him last night. They were too busy tearing each other’s hearts out.
Oh, well. He probably wouldn’t care anyway. Discovering babies weren’t his thing kind of threw a bucket of cold water over everything.
Dragging a bin of laundry down the hallway past Draegyn’s office, she heard the unmistakable electronic sounds she listened to all day in Alex’s hi-tech fun zone. Not thinking anything of it, she kept lugging the overflowing hamper, almost tripping over her stumbling feet, when she thought, Hold on. Why would Draegyn’s computer be talking to the agency’s mainframe?
Abandoning the pesky laundry, she backtracked to the office door and pushed it open. Some part of her feared her husband had spent the night here, so she was relieved to see such wasn’t the case.
She sat down at the desk and pulled the keyboard and mouse toward her. “Let’s see what’s going on,” she murmured aloud. A few keystrokes later, Tori gasped at what she discovered.
Not knowing what to do, she kept re-reading a message that almost got overlooked as her erratic pulse pounded in her throat.
Worry—gut-wrenching, frantic worry—sprang to life inside her. One of her Justice boys was in trouble, and the very idea that something terrible might happen to any one of them made Tori sick to her stomach.
She might be hurt and furious with Draegyn right now, but she’d never wish him harm. To her, the three men—Alex, Cam, and Draegyn—represented something extraordinary that she was proud to be a part of because, in her estimation, three finer, and more honorable men could not possibly exist on the whole planet.
Finding her husband was the first thing she had to do. He needed to know what was happening.
Bringing up a text message on the computer, she quickly typed, Where are you?
He instantly responded, I thought you didn’t care.
There was no time for this, she thought and furiously tapped away at the keyboard.
This isn’t about us. WHERE ARE YOU? I found a message on your computer. About Cam.
Within seconds, her phone rang, and she jumped a foot in the air at the unexpected sound. Fishing it out of her pocket, she saw it was her husband and connected.
“Where are you?” she asked again.
“Cameron’s house,” he replied. “What sort of message?”
“Someone named M-Allen bypassed the encryption program and dropped a message in your webmail. The mainframe was pinging all references to Cam, and that’s what caught my attention. Took me a minute to find it but the gist of what I read indicated that Cam was in a safe house outside Karachi until ten days ago. Then he moved to Paris. After that, the trail becomes murky.”
“Shit.”
“What does this mean, Draegyn? Is Cam all right? I saw on the news that there was an explosion in France. Are these things connected?”
She heard him sigh heavily. “Victoria. You should be here too. With, um … with Meghan and Lacey.”
Something painful thudded in her stomach. Maybe if he’d said he needed her.
“Carmen came and grabbed Dylan. Maybe you can take Daniel up to the big house with her. Come down here.” He paused and grew coldly serious. “This isn’t good. We can’t shake any information loose. It’s like all our sources are in a blackout. If Allen dumped a regular email in a personal account not connected to Justice, that tells me the blackout is deliberate. We’re being kept away from whatever’s happening.”
Oh, my god. It was so much worse than she imagined. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Do you need anything? I mean, um … from the house?”
“Yeah,” he gritted heavily. “Grab my go-bag. Just in case.”
It was hard to reply, but she did. Barely. “On it. Be there soon.”
And then she ran at high speed, taking the stairs two at a time while ripping the shirt over her head. The baby was napping, so she had a chance for a quick shower. Then she’d pack his stuff and drop Daniel off with Carmen.
All hands needed to be on deck. There was a Justice crisis and being involved was not optional.
Remy shifted her stool to the right just a smidge. The light constantly changed as the sun moved across the sky, and she was focusing on one particular spot, so a bit of movement was necessary.
The view from the arched doors opening onto a wide deck, from her second-floor apartment above the former Justice business center, offered a spectacular view of a mountain range she was particularly in love with. Setting up her easel to paint the amazing scenery surrounding her was how she relaxed.
It was also the best way she knew how to shut up the nagging voices talking at once in her head. Can’t mix paint and argue a point at the same time.
I should get a cat, one of her inner narrators chimed in.
Oh sure, she thought. A cat to shake things up at what was essentially a canine retreat. That sounded like a peachy-keen idea.
Shading and re-shading a section of sky, she concentrated on producing the right hue of blue-gray and tamped down the useless inner chatter.
Remy wished she were one of those people who could pop in a pair of earbuds and block out everything else.
“Hey, Rembrandt,” she heard Jace call out.
Standing, she went to the railing on the deck and peered down.
“You got the memo about this being my day off, right?” she snapped.
“Since when do I have to give a shit about your downtime?”
His smartass response was part of the reason she kept him around. Jace knew her, maybe better than most, and he never shied away from leveling the playing field when she got up on her high horse.
“What do you want?”
He held up a bag and wagged his eyebrows. “Mike did a run through In-N-Out. Animal fries and a double double. You in?”
When had she ever said no to a bag full of In-N-Out?
“You joking? Get your ass up here! And run.”
Her cousin laughed, saluted her, and headed for the stairs.
She went through the motions of a hasty cleanup and made sure her brushes were okay. As Jace came through the door, she hollered, “Pour me an iced tea, would you? I’ll be right there.”
It only took a few minutes to wash her hands and apply a good coating of lotion. The mineral spirits she used wreaked havoc on her hands. So did working on cars and the other thousand things she did each day.
Jace was already digging into his burger when she sat down. Wiping a glob of spread off his mouth with a paper napkin, he rolled his eyes and groaned. “Food of the fucking gods, man.”
“Say that in French and I might believe you.”
“Aw, come on, little lady,” he drawled in an exaggerated cowboy dialect. “What happened to our tequila-infused vow?”
“What?” She laughed. “You mean that half-assed blood cousins thing and the solemn oath to leave our Napoleonic roots behind?”
“Yeah! That very thing.” He chortled.
“Nourriture des dieux putains,” Remy murmured quietly.
“You’ve been at the Rosetta Stone again, haven’t you?”
She rolled a shoulder and dug into the gooey fries. “Never cared about learning the language before.”
“And now?”
“Bored,” she answered with a mouth full of melted cheesy goodness.
“I hear that,” he quipped in response. “Not a lot of social interaction out here. Well, not unless you count Busty’s for breakfast and Pete’s for drowning your sorrows.”
They ate quietly and then Jace muttered, “You probably need a date. Take the edge off.”
First, she stiffened and then, she nearly choked on her food. Hacking up a french fry caught in her throat, she glared at him through watery eyes as she gulped some tea to help wash everything down.
“Don’t,” she told him tersely.
“Don’t what? Don’t poke you from time to time as a reminder that you’re a grown woman and what happened to you is in the past.”
Before she could alter the pithy remark, she snidely barked, “Yeah, well, I don’t DO men.”
“And that, right there, would be my point, cuz. Being pissed off and angry is your right, Remy. You got handed a fucked-up deal. But what about now? It wouldn’t hurt, you know, to socialize a little. Maybe hang out. See what’s available locally. Man wise, I mean.”
Completely unbidden, a flash fire of hot embarrassment lit up her face.
“Shut your trap, Jace.”
He searched her face and snickered. “Hit more than a nerve. Care to confess something?”
Her appetite vanished along with whatever was left of her good mood.
Deciding her best option was to say nothing and give away less, she picked at her fries with a disinterested air. Fat lot of good that did her.
“Saw Finn earlier,” her cousin announced.
Her hand shot out without her control, hit the saltshaker, sent it flying through the air and onto the floor. When she jerked and tried to stop it from happening, her elbow landed in the cheese-covered fries.
Muttering darkly under her breath, she ran to the sink and wet a cloth to help wipe the goo off her arm. Jace continued to eat but watched her with a smirky expression.
“So. Finn O’Brien, hmm? Personally, I can’t stand the guy,” he bitched when she sat down. “Needs an ass kicking. But he sure has managed to ruffle your feathers, Ms. Bisset.”
If any other human being on the planet knew the true dirty about how damaged she was, it was Jace. No one, not the uptight military psychologist or that gum-chewing social worker she’d had to contend with, knew anything more than the cold, hard facts. The ones in the official report. The ones she recited in a military investigation.
But Jace? He knew it all. Or most of it. Some shit she still hadn’t come to terms with and carried deep inside with a crushing fear that it would happen again. He wasn’t going to let her brush off his direct challenge about Finn. And maybe that was a good thing.
“He rattles my cage,” she replied in a bland monotone. “I don’t like it.”
Chewing slowly, her cousin listened and nodded. “So what are you going to do about it?”
She threw her plastic fork down and angrily muttered. “Shit.”
“Uh-oh.” Jace chuckled. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Arrogant, pushy prick,” she muttered. Slamming her elbows on the table, Remy leaned her chin against her clasped hands and met Jace’s amused gaze. “He pushed me into a corner.”
“What corner?”
“Aargh!” she growled. “He’s making me go to dinner with him.”
Jace sat forward suddenly and playfully pretended to choke on his food. “How the hell did he ‘make you’ do anything, Remy?”
Refusing to look away, even though a growing sense of embarrassment continued to make her twitchy, she kept her chin on her hands and made a face of grudging surrender. “He asked. Well”—she snorted—“actually, he kind of yelled at me. There was no real asking.”
She saw her lunch companion try to hide a smile with his napkin. “Did he have some sort of Boston asshole episode or was it a case of temporary insanity? Why in the world would he make you go to dinner?”
“Some sort of business thing, he said.”
“What sort of business? They offering office space these days for spoiled brats with more stupidity than sense?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Hmph. You do know he’s younger than you are, right?”
Her hand slapped palm down on the table. “Fuck you, Jace. A couple of years is no big deal.”
Finding what she said fantastically funny from the way he belted out a laugh, he eventually fixed her with a knowing look and made a case, which only her cousin could.
“Let’s review, shall we?”
“Oh god,” she moaned. “Let’s not but say we did.”
He ignored her and kept on.
“Finn O’Brien rattles your cage. You don’t like it. Your answer to dealing with him is to go on a date. That he forced you into despite both of us knowing nobody forces you to do anything.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Soooo not true. There was that one time …”
“And that would be the reason why, Remington,” he said quietly when he saw where her mind went.
“Yet, somehow, this obnoxious fucker ends up with you on his arm and incredibly jumping to his unnecessary defense when all I said was that he’s younger than you are.”
“Wait,” she added with scathing mockery. “It gets better.”
“For real? Hmph.” He chuckled. “Maybe I should give the dick another chance. Especially if what gets better rattled your cage even more.”
She gave him the finger. “He made some stupid comment about me being a tomboy when what he needed was a real woman and then,” she said with a bit too much shouted excitement. “And then the obnoxious shit told me to dress like a girl! Can you believe the nerve of this guy?”
“So what are you wearing?” he asked matter-of-factly.
“Damned if I know,” she responded sullenly.
A pack of wandering coyotes in the next county could hear Jace bawling with laughter, that was how loud he was.
“No way!” He chortled with hiccupping glee. “You’re actually thinking about dressing like an actual human female, aren’t you?”
“What’s wrong with how I dress?” she asked grudgingly. “This is the desert, not a New York runway, for Christ’s sake.”
“Remy. Look at what you’re wearing. What the fuck is that outfit called? Penniless artist along the Seine? Shit, girl. Baggy overalls? Paint stained at that! And an AC/DC t-shirt?”
“I was painting,” she groused uncomfortably because she knew he was right.
“Your idea of getting dressed up is brushing your hair and putting on clean sneakers.”
“Oh, yeah?” she snapped when her feelings got hurt. “Well, you wear skinny jeans. Or used to,” she hastily added when it dawned on her that Jace had been through quite a transformation in the months he’d been in Arizona.
The guy who’d been her rock during a difficult time patted her hand and smile warmly. “Be that as it may, Remy. It wouldn’t hurt you to remember who you are. Who you used to be. Give it a try. Couldn’t hurt.”