Chapter 7

I don’t always pass slow drivers, but when I do I check to see if they look as stupid as they drive.

-Dante’s secret thoughts

Dante

If what she said was true, then this woman wasn’t anything to be worried about, but I was skeptical.

I’d witnessed that scene out front.

Drake had his hands on her, and she hadn’t protested the move.

I wanted to trust her. Really, I did.

But I didn’t trust anyone. Not anymore.

Not after I trusted the one person that I always thought I could trust, and she ripped my life to shreds by uttering one tiny little lie.

And learning that she had cancer? I wasn’t so sure what to think.

Who wouldn’t try to fight if there was a chance? This woman was young. Just barely thirty. I’d looked at her driver’s license while she’d been in the gas station using the restroom at the last rest stop.

She still had a long life full of events to look forward to—like marriage and kids. Those would be the best years of her life, and she was just going to give it up?

That seemed off to me.

However, without actually seeing her doctor, I could only go by what she was telling me, and that wasn’t much.

However, Rafe, my contact with whatever secret organization he belonged to, was less than ten minutes away and would hopefully be able to fix that. Soon.

This woman, Cobie Cavanagh, was an enigma.

There was something about her that was making me insanely curious, and I didn’t fuckin’ like that.

I liked being distant from other people. I liked knowing that I wasn’t affected by getting too close to them.

So what if she didn’t want to do her cancer treatments. So what if she had cancer.

I shouldn’t fuckin’ care.

But I did.

It was driving me goddamn insane, thinking that she was going to purposefully not treat this disease that would eventually kill her.

The idea of her not being here on this earth next year was fucking hurting.

It shouldn’t hurt.

In fact, if I was living my life right, nothing should hurt anymore.

Mary was fucking ruining me.

And that was that.

She was making me care when the last thing on this planet I wanted to do was have feelings for another human being. Some person who could up and die on me, leaving me with yet another open and bleeding wound that I had no hope of repairing.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

I nodded, not bothering to look over at this Cobie chick with her soulful brown eyes and the cutest goddamn freckles I’d ever seen.

Her hair was brown and barely brushing her chin.

I wanted to touch it, which was the last thing on this earth that I needed to do.

What I needed to do was collect myself, build my wall higher, and continue not to feel.

What I was going to do was touch her goddamn hair.

I couldn’t help myself.

I reached up and grabbed one of the strands.

It felt like silk between my fingers.

“You had a bug in your hair,” I lied, pulling my hand back like it’d been burned.

Her eyes went wide, and she immediately started to sift her fingers through her hair where I’d just touched.

“Oh my God!” she gasped. “Really? Did you get it?”

“Ladybug,” I continued to lie.

I tried to think of something that wouldn’t gross her out, but she seemed to pale even further, causing my brows to rise.

“Gross,” she whispered, then did a full, head to toe, entire body shiver.

“Ladybugs aren’t gross,” I told her, taking the next turn a little too fast, causing her to lean slightly into the passenger side door.

“Yes, they are,” she disagreed with me. “They’re really, super-duper gross.”

“Why do you say that?”

Now she had me curious.

I hated being curious.

It made me ask questions, which inevitably made me get closer to the person despite my not wanting to get closer. But sometimes my curiosity won out, and this was one of those times.

“There was this one time when my grandfather, grandmother, and I were camping.”

I nodded, urging her to continue without saying it verbally.

“Anyway, we were in the RV, and I was going to the bathroom.”

My brows rose.

“I was… you know… and I decided to do a courtesy flush.”

I blinked, and she blushed.

“Never mind.”

“You have to finish it now.”

I didn’t know where she was going with this, but she had my interest piqued.

She shrugged, then continued as if what she was saying wasn’t the least bit embarrassing. Only her blush betrayed her and made her freckles stand out even more starkly on her face.

“I flushed, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an RV before, but it’s gravity fed. You push a lever on the base of the toilet, and the hole opens, letting the stuff fall through.”

I nodded in understanding. I knew exactly what she was talking about.

Lily and I had an RV… I viciously shut those thoughts down.

I couldn’t think about my wife right now.

Not when I was trying to appear normal and sane.

“Anyway, so I flushed, and I don’t know if the ladybugs had somehow gotten into the tank or what, but the moment that I opened the hole, a swarm of them came out from the tank below and went everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean all over my lady bits. When I stood up, they just kept coming. They swarmed the room, I had to slap them off my junk. It was god awful.”

I couldn’t help it.

I laughed.

It sounded rusty like the sound was being pulled out of a rarely used squeaking door, but it was a laugh, nonetheless.

It actually felt kind of good.

I could just see her, screeching and hollering, as she tried to get ladybugs off of her pussy.

“I’m still traumatized,” she said. “One even bit me on one of my petals.”

“Your petals.” I grinned.

She nodded. “My petals.”

I rolled my eyes.

“That sucks, honestly,” I said. “But I guess it could’ve been worse.”

“How?” she challenged.

My brows dipped low. “It could’ve been a wasp nest in there. Just imagine being stung on your ‘petals’ by one of those.”

Her eyes went wide. “Dear God. That’s sick! You’re sick. I could’ve died! Now I’ll never be able to go to the bathroom in an RV again!”

I just shook my head and returned my attention back to the road, not saying another word for the rest of the drive to our destination.

“You think I’m crazy,” she said as we pulled up to the gates of Free long minutes later. “I know you do. But it’s a fear, and most fears don’t tend to be rational.”

Some fears were rational.

But before I could argue with her, the gate swung open, and a man walked out of the office that the driveway led up to.

He had a wrench in his hand, and his eyes were narrowed on us, calculating everything in a single sweep.

Former military.

Had to be.

I pulled to a stop in the middle of the lot, seeing with my own eyes that the guy was wondering why I was there.

I was driving a company tow truck, and it was quite obvious that I had no reason for being where I was.

“Can I help you?”

Maybe calling would’ve been the better way to go.

Yet, it’d been a split-second decision, and I’d gotten the info from my brother on the way there.

Baylor had his own problems when it came to his wife, and they had led to his own trip to this same place to ask his own questions.

Baylor had told me he’d asked them about Marianne, yet they wouldn’t give him anything, citing that whatever problems his wife, Lark, had, they looked like middle-school problems compared to Marianne’s. And I believed them. Now.

But I needed more information.

Marianne hadn’t only gotten a promise about Cobie out of me. She’d also charged me with protecting Mary, and at this point in my life, I’d charge through the gates of hell to make sure she was safe.

She was all I had left, and I was going to make sure that she had everything she needed, that she was safe and happy and healthy.

Anything she needed, she was going to get.

I’d make sure of it.

“My name is Dante.” I got out of the truck and held out my hand.

The man took it, shook it, and dropped it without giving his name.

I felt a grin tug at the corner of my lips.

“I’m here to see someone,” I said. “Sam Mackenzie.”

The man’s eyes narrowed.

“What do you want to see him for?”

I admired his hesitancy.

“The mother of my daughter, Marianne Garwood, died six months ago. She told me that her daughter would always be in danger from her ex-husband and that if I ever felt that things were getting out of hand, to find y’all.”

Cobie inhaled behind me.

I’d left that part out. Oops.

The man’s eyes narrowed on the woman who was standing practically all the way behind me, and then flicked back to me.

“I’m Sam,” he said, his shoulders slumping slightly. “Get in the car and drive around to the big gray building. Follow the drive until you get to it. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I nodded, then gestured for Cobie, who’d followed my lead, to get into the truck.

“You didn’t tell me you had her daughter.”

“My daughter, too,” I muttered. “And you didn’t ask.”

She didn’t have anything to say to that, and I didn’t bother to explain myself. She’d learn everything along with the rest of them in just a few minutes anyway.

***

Twenty minutes later we were in a conference room. Cobie was sitting next to me, and we were waiting for the men to arrive.

Rafe, a man who—among other things—worked with my brother, was sitting across the table from us, watching with unconcealed interest.

I ignored him. When I’d left Hostel earlier in the day, he’d been working.

Now he was here.

He needed to be fired.

“Why is Drake living in your house?”

She grimaced.

“Apparently, Drake had to sell his house to help pay for Marianne’s cancer treatments. I felt bad, so I let them use the house that I was living in before my grandfather left me this place.”

“He pay rent?”

She nodded. “He insisted, actually. A thousand a month.”

I grunted.

“Thousand a month is pretty steep. What part of town?”

That came from Rafe.

“Wildwood.”

He blinked. “You moved out of Wildwood, to a house in the historical district, and you’re letting someone live in it for a thousand a month?”

It was obvious that he didn’t agree with her decision.

“She was my best friend, and he was her husband. What did you want me to do, let them live on the streets while she battled cancer?”

Rafe shrugged.

The door to the office slammed, and soon three men were making their way into the conference room, taking various chairs around the table and sitting.

All of them were big.

They were all Army.

I could tell by the tattoos that each one of them had on their arm.

Huh, go figure.

“This is Jack,” Sam, who’d taken a seat directly across from me, pointed to his left.

I nodded my head at Jack, taking in his dark eyes and even darker hair. “Nice to meet you.”

Jack didn’t reply.

“This is Max,” Sam gestured to his right. “They both worked on Marianne’s case.”

I didn’t bother offering a hello to Max. He was scowling at me like I’d done something wrong.

“And I think you know Rafe.”

I nodded. “I do.”

“Tell us what’s going on.”

I looked over at Cobie before turning back to Sam.

“It’s easier to start from the beginning,” I muttered.

“Please do,” Rafe said sarcastically.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Why am I giving you a paycheck when you’re not even doing your job?”

Rafe’s lips tipped up. “I am doing my job. Right now, in fact.”

My brows rose, and I pulled out my phone, looking at the log of calls and pick-ups we were supposed to be filling right now. “You are? Because right now, I show that there are four outstanding recoveries that need to be made. You’re on the clock, am I correct?”

I might not have put in the hours that I should have over the last couple of years, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t keep tabs on my business. Not to mention that before Lily had passed, we’d created an app that literally showed us all impending pick-ups when they were entered into the computer—and still did, to that fact.

Rafe grinned. “Sure.”

I growled under my breath and turned to Sam, who showed no surprise at either Rafe being there when he shouldn’t be, or me knowing that Rafe shouldn’t be there.

“I had a one-night stand with Marianne when she lived across the street from my brother. After leaving that night, she disappeared, then showed back up with a baby she said was mine. She told me that she couldn’t take care of her any longer and that it was my turn.”

Neither Sam nor anyone else at the table for that matter, said anything in response to that.

The woman at my side made a choking sound in the back of her throat, but I didn’t look at her.

“She told me to look her up on the internet,” I continued. “Then, a while later I tracked her down. She got two promises out of me, and then I left. I didn’t see her again unless you count her funeral.”

Sam cursed.

“What were those promises?”

“They were to watch over this one,” I indicated to Cobie with a tilt of my head. “And to watch over our girl. If I ever suspected that there was something brewing, I was to come to you.”

“What do you think is going on?”

That came from Jack.

I leaned over and pulled out an envelope that was folded multiple times. Once I unfolded it, I pulled the letter I’d received out and laid it out flat on the table before turning it around for the men across from me to see.

“That’s a letter from an attorney,” I said. “When Marianne died, she left everything she had to Mary. In doing so, she also put Mary on Drake’s radar.”

“What did Marianne leave Mary?”

I pulled out my copy of the will, laid it out flat, and pushed it forward for them to see.

“Eight million dollars. Two estates, one in Massachusetts and one in England. Multiple automobiles.”

“If he had that much money, why did they have to rent a house from me?”

I looked over at Cobie then and shrugged. “He didn’t have any money. Nothing. Mary is the beneficiary. I am the co-beneficiary until Mary is of age. Drake had nothing because Marianne made sure of that. If I had my guess, you resembled a cash cow like Marianne did, and Drake was trying to use you until he could figure out how to get his wife’s money.”

“She had to know that by naming Mary in her will, she would be shining a spotlight on her,” Max added his two cents.

I nodded and blew out a frustrated breath.

“Yeah, pretty much,” I agreed. “I’m in over my head at this point. I was in the Air Force. I’ve seen my share of clusterfucks, but I have a really bad fucking feeling right now. I’ve been sitting here, twiddling my thumbs, for almost six months, trying to make sense of some of this stuff, but I’m not getting anywhere. I need help. I need to know if Drake is as bad as he appears to be because I have a feeling that once this one lets Drake know she isn’t going to be his cash cow, he’ll come after Mary next. Plus, Drake knows where and how to find me very easily.”