Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three (9 page)

Like he knew they were talking about him, Alejandro turned his head toward them. Talon and Evan stared back. The tension between the three of them was thick enough to ride a surfboard on.

Wes watched as Alejandro lifted a thick, black brow, his expression sardonic.

“I fucking hate that guy,” Evan repeated in a rare show of vehemence. Usually he was the more laid-back one.

Wes shot him a questioning look.

“Sam’s sending me to London to run the office. The guy who used to do it was killed protecting Jack,” Evan explained.

“Simon Michaelson can’t do it?” Wes replied, surprised Evan wouldn’t be guarding Sam at Wyatt Ranch with the rest of the crew.

“Would you trust Simon Michaelson to run a multi-million-dollar business on his own?” Evan replied with an eye-roll.

“Good point,” Wes ceded. “You out today then?”

“Right after you all jet.”

“What about you?” Wes asked Talon.

“I’m helping Carey run the Chicago office while he gets Sammy situated,” Talon answered.

“We both lobbied hard to stay with them, but Carey told us Sam would be more upset if we let Lennox Chase go to hell in a handbasket,” Evan added. “And he has to help run the board at Wyatt Petroleum.”

“So I’ll only have de Soto to keep me company in Texas?” Wes joked. “That’ll be a fuckin’ ball of laughs.”

“Yeah, about that…” Evan clasped Wes on the shoulder, looking him in the eye. “Listen, I know this is going to be hard for you to hear, but I want you to take a breath before you react, alright?”

Wes could feel his hackles rising. He had a feeling he knew exactly what was coming.

“Sam and Carey are going back to Texas,” Evan began, “She’s given explicit instructions, Wes: she doesn’t want you there. She’s asked that you stay away,” he told him, expression sympathetic.

“She’s not thinking clearly,” Wes replied calmly.

“Carey’s backing her,” Talon added quietly. “I know you want to be with her right now, but she’s laid down the law.”

“I’ll go talk some sense into her.” Wes made it one step before Talon caught him and pushed him back gently, but with just the right amount of pressure to show he meant business. Wes might be able to get past him, but he knew he’d never get through both him and Rush, then Alejo down the hall.

“Calm down, man—”

Wes took a deep breath through his nostrils. Christ, it was always one step forward, two steps back with Sammy.

“She needs my help—whether she wants to admit it or not,” he told the guys.

“It’s not just about that—” Evan started.

Wes met his eyes. “Then what
is
it about?”

“Wes, one of the reasons Sam doesn’t want you anywhere near her is because she doesn’t think Lightner knows anything about you. She’s asked me to tell you to split—to go take some assignment far off where you’ll be safe.”

That was an echo of what she’d said to him earlier. She was basically telling him to pull a repeat of what he’d done to her before, back when they were kids. Basically prove her right after Wes’d promised her left, right, and center that he’d changed. His jaw ticked with the effort not to lose his shit.

“Not going to happen,” he gritted out. “I’m not bailing on her. Not again.”

Evan shrugged, like it was a foregone conclusion. “I told Carey as much but Sammy’s mind is fixed. You know better than anyone, once she decides, it’s done.”

“Man, take a second to look at it from her point of view,” Talon chimed in. “She barely got out of this last mission alive. Her back is FUBAR and she can’t protect you—much less herself,” he pointed out in a moment of extreme insight. “I know you’re pissed and you want to push your way in, but now’s not the time for that. You know Sam better than all of us. What is she going to do if you go in guns blazing?”

Fuck.
Shit.
Fuck.

Talon had a point. Sam didn’t get backed into corners—no matter what the circumstance. Besides, he wasn’t completely lacking in self-awareness, even if he preferred to ignore it more often than not. What right did he have to push back into Sam’s life uninvited, when he’d been the one to walk out? This was her show, her call—but that didn’t mean he had to stick to the play—not absolutely.

“Are y’all still leaving tomorrow?” he asked.

Evan gave a short nod. “The surgeons aren’t happy about it, but they think she’s stable enough to make the trip with our doctor on board.”

Wes sighed. “Where’s Carey? I’d like to speak with him.”

“He’s in the cafeteria getting some coffee,” Talon told him, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “You just missed him.”

Wes nodded shortly. “I could use a warmer. I’m gonna go find him.”

As he turned toward the hospital canteen, Evan put a hand on his shoulder. “For what it’s worth—I’m glad you showed up in Afghanistan.”

Wes cocked his head. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“You helped the team with your intel, but most of all, you helped Sam. I don’t know what happened between you two, nor do I need to,” Evan added quickly. “But I could see the difference in her when you were there. She didn’t say it, but I think a part of her was relieved when you showed up.”

“You had her back, man,” Talon agreed. “There’s nothing more important to Sammy than loyalty.”

God, if only he’d fully grasped that years ago, when he was just a scared, confused kid, trying to do right by the both of them and failing miserably. Wes took one lingering look at the closed door of her hospital room.

Two steps forward, one step back.
In the time since he’d seen her, she’d been nearly killed twice. First fate and circumstance stood in the way, and now her stubborn refusal to accept help when she needed it. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

Wes’s resolve hardened. He’d just have to find another way.

He walked into the cafeteria and headed toward the coffee bar when he caught sight of Carey’s broad back to him, sitting down, speaking to a distinguished-looking man with a startling resemblance to Jack Roman.

Had to be his father, or some other close relative—the same build and eye color was unmistakable. Wes hadn’t seen Jack since that first night, and he’d been too focused on Sam to bother asking any questions about his nemesis’s whereabouts.

Wes got a fresh cup of coffee and casually sat down at a table behind Carey, close enough to hear their low conversation but not near enough to attract too much attention. He picked up a German newspaper someone had left behind, pretending to peruse it as he sipped his coffee.

“I’ll send some of my men with you, but I don’t recommend you take him back to Chicago,” Carey was saying as Wes leaned back enough that he could eavesdrop.

“I appreciate the offer, but that won’t be necessary,” the older man replied. “I’ll make sure my son is taken care of.”

“Mr. Roman, before Jack—” Carey paused, as if searching for the right words. “Before what happened, he gave me a file.”

Mr. Roman said nothing.

“Sam’s file,” Carey clarified after a pregnant pause. “Mr. Roman, there is no way Jack could have gotten access to any of that information without your help,” he continued, his voice so low Wes had to strain to hear it. “The information in that file had to have come from you. Is that a correct assumption?”

The man said nothing.

Wes stared at the newspaper, German words swimming in front of him.
What the hell was Carey talking about? Why would Jack have a file on Sam? And why would his father have given it to him?

“I’m not concerned with how or why Jack had this file,” Carey added meaningfully. “But there was something in it that directly pertains to me and Sam, and now that I have it, I mean to see it through.”

“If I knew what you were referring to—theoretically,” the man replied carefully after a few moments. “What would you be interested in pursuing?”

“I’d like to know why the CIA investigated the deaths of Robert Wyatt and his son, Ryland, for one,” Carey answered immediately.

Wes’s hands tightened around his coffee cup—trying to wrap his mind around the implications. He’d always thought Rob and Ry had been killed by a drunk driver. Just some senseless and awful accident on that dark, lonely stretch of highway headed back to the ranch from Houston.

“Were they murdered?” Carey asked, getting straight to the point.

Wes sucked in a quick breath.
Holy shit.
He sat still as a stone waiting for Mr. Roman to answer.

There was a long pause, as if words were being carefully selected and portioned out like so many kernels.

“I cannot comment on this supposed file, Carey, but I will say having met Rob Wyatt on several occasions, he was a complicated man with his fair share of enemies,” Mr. Roman said after a moment.

“You’re not telling me anything I didn’t know,” Carey replied, his tone dry and impatient.

“The truth is, I don’t know if they were murdered,” Roman admitted.

“And you won’t help us find out, will you?” Carey finished, his frustration clear.

“Carey, before you and Sam go down this road, I’d ask yourselves—what do you really want out of this? And what do you stand to gain by finding out more about Rob Wyatt than you probably care to know?” Roman asked him carefully. “History is set. It cannot be unlived. Anything you uncover cannot alter it. So be careful which stones you choose to overturn.”

“Just because a group of people agreed to a cover story doesn’t make it the truth,” Carey responded.

“But what does the truth buy you?” Roman replied. “You can’t get them back, can you?”

“No, but I can help Sammy close a wound that’s been searing her for over a decade,” Carey answered grimly.

Wes’s heart accelerated. He folded the newspaper casually, tucking it under his arm as he stood. He figured he’d better leave now before Carey could turn around and see him. He didn’t bother going back out to the waiting room. He knew exactly what he had to do now.

Wes stepped out of the main lobby and hailed one of the taxi’s waiting in the queue. He issued directions for the hotel before settling back, thinking about what he’d overheard. Jack was somehow out of the picture. His father would have no reason to be in Hamburg if he wasn’t, but Wes didn’t much care about that. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

Especially since that gift horse just delivered an unexpected whopper in the form of one helluva twist. Wes knew first hand Robert Wyatt had been a sonofabitch, but
murdered?
It made a strange, morbid kind of sense though. Wes’d driven that road for years while he’d been with Samantha. The stretch Rob and Ry had been killed on was generally empty and lonely as hell. You’d be lucky if you saw a truck or car for a solid forty-five minutes. And if the CIA had looked into it, whatever had really happened involved something far greater than a reasonless, awful misfortune.

Wes watched the snow-covered, idyllic streets of Hamburg fly by from the taxi window. He’d get his things, check out of the hotel, and be on a flight back to Texas within a few hours. Because this was it—
this
was how he could find his way back to her. By using all the skills he’d honed over years of chasing stories to figure out what really happened to Rob and Ry. Wes saw how clearly he’d be able to both help Sammy discover the truth and get over the past hurt. A hurt he’d had a big part in exacerbating. If he managed to figure out the truth about what had happened after all these years, he could finally make amends with her—find his way back in and prove to her once and for all that he was in it for the long haul.

He wouldn’t leave her again. He wouldn’t let her go through the hurt of revisiting this wound on her own.

June 2000

Houston, Texas

S A M A N T H A

“I
think you
should take the jet. It’ll be faster and less hassle,” her father said from the doorway of her bedroom. They were in his penthouse on top of Wyatt Towers, headquarters to Rob Wyatt’s petroleum empire. He’d popped up to see to her and her best friend, Marguerita Ramos, before they left on their post-graduation backpacking trip through the UK and Europe.

Sam stopped packing long enough to glance up at her father. “Dad, I’m trying to fit in. Not stick out like a sore, rich-bitch thumb.”

“But you
are
a rich-bitch,
jaina
!” Rita teased as she plopped down beside her on Sam’s bed. “Listen to your dad and let’s take the jet. I’m gonna roll off that plane like a Chicano J-Lo,” she added with a saucy wink.

“We’re back-packing and staying in hostels, for chrissakes,” Sam pointed out. “‘You were the one who wanted to ‘
honor a time-old college tradition,
’ remember?”

“Yes, but that was before I realized
el Jefe
here was going to offer us the jet. Why not take ‘Daddy Warbucks’ up on the offer?” Rita reasoned with a sly grin. “Besides, we can raid his liquor cabinet on the way over. I bet your pops stocks some good shit. Not like that hooch we’ve been used to drinking at frat parties the past few years.”

“I’m standing right here, Rita,” Rob drawled as he leaned against the door jamb indolently, still dressed in his sharp office duds.

“And looking good doing it, I might add,” Rita flirted shamelessly. Her father just rolled his eyes, used to her antics by now. Rita was a born flirt and a troublemaker, but Sam suspected that was one of the reasons they got on so well. Her best friend was the ever-constant instigator of fun and the life of the party. She was also the sister Sam’d never had and her constant companion since they’d roomed together during their freshman year. They’d survived four years of one of the toughest ROTC programs in the country, had won the grueling Ranger Challenge competition together, and ultimately decided to go into the Navy despite having their pick of military branches.
Two peas in a pod
, her father often teased them. If said peas were a Latina from Chicago and a Japanese-Cherokee tomboy from the middle of nowhere, Texas.