JACE (Lane Brothers Book 3) (7 page)

“Ronny plans to contest my granddaddy’s will. Why? She should know by now that the original will was ironclad and has provisions for just such an occurrence.”

“I know. I figured.”

And I did. Like I said, it’s not the contesting that caught my attention, but the timing. It’s too coincidental for my liking that the very same week Ronny decided to start this rumor and actually go to a lawyer, the Bureau got intel that the Patriots were planning to make a move.

The timeframe is still unknown, and with this organization being this intricate and well run, we don’t even know what they’re planning. What we do know is that they have
plans,
and Ronny—she lives here.

She lives here. She has money she should no longer have unless she’s become a high-end call girl. And she has motive. And the best part of it all? Ronny is a staunch ally of Timothy’s and she’s been spotted with my own father.

This is all still just conjecture on my part, and if not for the fact that my superiors brought this case to me and demanded a thorough profile on the men involved as well as the entire operation, I would have just kept slogging away at other cases while investigating Daddy.

It’s a freaking bonus that I can, in some way, connect Daddy to this, even if just to say that he knows a person connected to an extremist group. Boy, would the press go nuts over that little nugget.

Jared’s eyes narrow at me and I close my own on a tired sigh.

“Your mom is so pissed at you all for making the women and your father stay at home for this.”

“Stop trying to change the subject, Trace, and start talking. Who the hell are you? Hearing a rumor and passing it along is one thing—which I have yet to understand since you should hate us all after Jace broke your heart and we walked away from you.”

“But?”

“But you came down here, knowing that the rumor held no water, anyway. Any other normal person would have just given one of us a call and stayed in DC. You got on a plane,” he points out like the freaking genius he is.

“Yup. So what? Has it even crossed your mind that I might have used it as an excuse to come down here and see Jace again?”

“No. You’d have gone just fine without seeing Jace again, though that would be a waste with him being your soul mate and all.”

“Jared—”

“We’ll argue about that later, Trace. Talk. I want to know why you’re here. I want to know why the sight of blood didn’t almost give you a screaming fit when Mama and even Ellie almost became hysterical. I want to know.”

“Fine. I’m trying to connect Veronica, Timothy, and my father to an extremist group very loosely referred to as the Pure Patriots. I got intel a few months back that the Patriots are operating out of a little town near here and being fed by funds stolen or made from the theft of drug evidence in this department.”

Jared’s eyes almost bug before narrowing on me suspiciously.

“Who are you?”

“I’m me, Jared. Just me. I, uh…I joined the Bureau three years ago after I was blackmailed by a high-ranking agent. My mom used to have a weakness for…she was a freaking klepto and they had footage of her lifting a shitload of designer gear. They built it up till she was liable to sit a life sentence for her sticky-fingered habit.”

That gets a long, low whistle and he shakes his head in disgust.

“That’s why I prefer the military. You know what you’re in for and it’s your choice from start to finish. Those government agency bastards will get you every time.”

“You’re telling me.” I snort, feeling plenty hard done by at this present moment. “They pulled me in to save my mom, but my first case—my only case, so far, really—has been my father. They want him investigated until there’s no stone left unturned and I have yet to find any real proof that he’s in any way involved in any of this. All I have going for me is the Ronny connection and now this thing with the Patriots.”

Jared doesn’t like any of this one bit, and I see it when he flares his nostrils the way some guys do when they’re pissed.

“This is dangerous territory you’re getting into, Trace. The Patriots, or whatever they’re calling themselves, are ruthless and so secretive. Miah and Roman have been working this thing for over a year and we still got nothing but a few dirty cops and a police chief that we can’t tie to any of the terrorist acts.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here. I’m doing a profile from what little I have and can manage to gather. It should tell us more about the organization and the men who work for and run it.”

“No,” Jared barks, getting to his feet to start pacing around. “You can’t be involved in any of this, Trace. Jace just go shot—”

“You think I don’t know that, Jared? I was there to see the blood and try to keep more of it from pouring out of him. I know—”

“They took Roman. That’s why Jace was out on Farmer’s Road in the first place and why he got shot. I sent him there after tracking Roman’s cell phone and he got shot. These people do not care about family connections or wealth. All they care about is their own agenda, and I will not see you hurt trying to investigate this shit.”

He thinks I can’t handle this shit? I’ve logged hundreds of hours in the firing range and I know enough hand-to-hand to cripple a man that isn’t too large.

I can take care of myself and have been for years while Jace and the Lanes forgot I even existed.

“Look, if you think I’m letting this go because some big, strong man thinks I’m too much woman—”

“The last time he let you go I had to fish him out of a bottle almost every night when we weren’t out on missions. He spent a full year crying in his fucking sleep like a girl, Tracy. He just got you back. I won’t let him lose you again just to prove to you that you’re capable.”

My lip is trembling now and I can barely hold the tears in at the thought of Jace being that distraught…over me.

And it saddens me, too, because I know that even if I’m not out for revenge against him anymore, Jace and I aren’t meant to be. I have a job to do and nothing left for anyone but myself.

All of my efforts for three years have been focused on this case and finding something to free myself from these ogres. I want a life of peace and security when this is all said and done. Not a family feud that turns deadly at every turn, or a husband who gets shot on the regular.

For once I’d like to just relax without having to worry about what I look like, the latest gossip, or the family member creeping up behind me with a knife.

“He can’t lose me, Jared, because he doesn’t have me. Now I’m sorry to say this because I do not want to hurt you or Jace or any of your kin, but I’m here to do a job and then I’m going home to finish it off. I’ve worked for three years to gain my freedom from the Bureau and my father, and I won’t just give it up now that Jason wants me again.”

“Trace.”

“No. This conversation is done. Go check if your brother’s okay. I need to know.”

Jared shakes his head and leaves me alone with nothing more than a sad look and a sigh and I sit there thinking about it all with a clearer view of how things are.

It’s easy to forget all the hurt and stuff when Jace is around. He’s like my moon or something, I don’t know. All I do know is that he pulls me into his orbit and keeps me there so easily, I can’t move away without his say-so.

I loved him once. Hell, I adore part of him now. I just can’t risk it again.

If Jared and the family are disappointed, well…I’ll live, I guess.

“Hey, Trace, Jared said to tell you that Jace just woke up. Want to see him, babe?”

Yes.

“You go on ahead, Miah. I’ll hit the bathroom and clean up a little better and then I’ll be in,” I lie, smiling at Wyatt when he hands me the coffee I never wanted.

It takes a lot not to cry as they nod and run to go see their brother, and it takes even more for me to walk out of that hospital without at least seeing him one more time.

I need to do a lot now that I have more information on the Patriots. I think I may be ready to deliver that profile now that I know how they’re working.

But first I need to find out what the hell happened with Roman Lane, and the only way to do that is to go to the source.

Jace

My shoulder hurts like a motherfucker and that’s with a boatload of pain meds swimming in my bloodstream and taking the edge off. I’ve been shot a couple times now, and being a big badass SEAL I’m used to it by now.

Or I should be. I’ve never had an artery hit before, and it usually only requires a cleaning and bandage before I’m ready to rock again. This sucker, however, feels like they tried to tear my arm off and I can’t say I appreciate the effort they made on my behalf.

“Hey, Jace. Bro, keep those baby blues open, fella. We need to talk.”

I struggle up through the sinking numbness and open my eyes to focus on Jared where he’s leaning over me way too close for comfort.

“Step away, you big baby. You’re in my personal space here,” I mutter through a dry throat and lips that feel like cotton wool.

“Ahh, there’s our Jace. I see the meds haven’t softened that disposition any, huh?” Miah quips, making me laugh hard enough to jolt my shoulder.

“Shut up.”

Wyatt’s here too, and it’s only when I don’t see Roman’s goofy grin that it all comes back to me with a bang. I sit straight up in bed, ignoring the pain in my shoulder.

“Jar—”

“Whoa, big guy, take it easy there, will ya? You just came out of surgery. They had to repair your artery and sew you back up.”

Yeah, fine, whatever.

“The phone.”

“I got it, bro, no worries. Now tell me everything from the beginning,” Wyatt barks, putting on his commander cap with an ease that makes me think he misses his days as a footloose and fancy-free soldier.

“I got onto Farmer’s Road and found Roman’s cell phone. You saw the blood?”

Jared and Miah both nod.

“That was it, man. I bent to get it and got one in the shoulder. I rolled and flipped behind my car, but to be honest, I was dazed for a few seconds and it wasn’t just luck that saved me from that second shot, man. Whoever was shooting purposely missed me that second time and aimed for my shoulder instead of any vitals.”

“That’s it?” Miah asks, and I can already see that mind of his working all the angles.

“Yup. Far as I can tell, the fire was purposely shoddy.”

Which is bugging me. I have no doubt in my mind that the person shooting at me was sent to carry out a hit, a warning to us to stop our investigation.

That being said, I was spared only because the shooter did not want to kill me.

“So we have at least one friendly in the Patriots,” Jared muses, rubbing at his chin in thought.

“Patriots?”

Jared stills and looks down at me with a sigh before shaking his head.

“That’s who they are. The Pure Patriots, who are apparently working out of a town nearby ours. If the intel is accurate, they have at least one senator in their pockets, as well as a mole in the SEALs and ties to this community that are not only dirty cops. According to Trace—”

“Trace? How the hell is Tracy involved in this?” I demand, getting that scratchy feeling down my neck as the words are forced out.

Jared pauses and rubs at his neck, a sure sign that he’s stressed or annoyed, at the very least. Not much fazes Jared—nothing trivial, at least—so the fact that he’s just about crawling out of his skin right now makes me jumpy.

“She’s Bureau. She’s been here to gather intel the whole time,” he finally admits, wincing when I growl.

Bureau? As in those FBI idiots who almost got Clari killed?

“No! No fucking way. Do you assholes hear me? She is not getting involved in any of this shit,” I yell, ripping cords and IVs out of my arm to get out of the bed. “How do you know any of this? Where is she?”

“Bathroom,” Miah and Wyatt both say at once, sharing a look when they realize she’s been gone way too long to be in the bathroom anymore.

Wyatt takes off without another word and I spend my time arguing with Jared while struggling into a set of scrubs a size too small for my six-three frame.

“You need to rest.”

“I need to get my girl, go home, and figure out where Roman is. In that fucking order.”

“You can’t—”

“She’s not in the bathroom and the nurses remember seeing her headed for the exit. She left man.” Wyatt breathes, wheezing out a huff with his hands planted on his knees.

She left? Without seeing me? Without a word?

“Jace, man, don’t get mad, okay? She was plenty upset when we found you in the driveway bleeding to death. I never saw a woman get that hysterical about a few drops of blood in my life. And it wasn’t the blood that was getting to her. It’s that
you
were shot.”

“Yeah? Then why the hell isn’t she in here with me making sure I’m okay?” I sneer, feeling all hurt and shit.

“Because she realized something while we were talking and she’s probably hotfooted it out of here to go investigate is why,” Jared growls, slamming a fist into the wall to my left. “Fuck, I have never met a more stubborn and hotheaded female than Trace, and that’s saying a lot, man. We all know Ma.”

Dammit, I should have known that she was into something like this. Trace is one of those women who get headhunted by organizations all the time because of the secret testing some colleges carry out on gifted students. The woman has a knack for reading body language from long years spent trying to navigate the shark-infested waters of the social elite.

She’s a Goddamned profiler. I just know it.

Shit.

“Where would she go? Who would she start with?” I ask, shoving my feet into a pair of socks and making for the door.

“Ronny maybe?” Miah asks.

“Too simple. If it were Ronny, Paulie would have called since she’s staying over at her place this week to visit with Cleo.”

“Damn, Jared. You’re like one of those creepy husbands who know everything about their wives, man.” Miah laughs, making me chuckle despite my pain and the fear coursing through me.

“Shut up, idiot.”

“So if not Ronny, then who?” I yell, practically running for the exit at this point.

I’m not a worrier, well not normally, but I have a really bad feeling about this situation and I can’t let my girl get hurt when I should have been protecting her instead of laid out on my ass in a hospital bed.

Weak-ass punk, Jace. You take one measly bullet and you need someone to kiss your boo-boo?

We’re in Jared’s SUV by now and I almost start hitting shit when he just sits there and stares into space.

“Jared.”

“I don’t know where to go, man. I just don’t…”

This is a first for me, seeing my usually strong and well-tempered brother at a loss. Jared is usually the one who has it all figured out, one step ahead of the enemy.

With Roman gone and Trace now in the wind…

“Give me your phone, Miah.”

It takes two rings before she answers, and I could kick myself for not thinking of this sooner.

“Where are you?”

“Well hello to you, too, Mr. Grumps. You feeling better?”

“Trace, do not joke around with me right now, babe. Where. Are. You?”

The silence that follows is deafening, and I’m crushing the dash beneath my fist before she finally sighs and answers.

“I just left Melissa Dobson’s place. The house is a mess and she’s nowhere in sight, Jace. Someone took her by force, I think. It doesn’t look good.”

“Trace, get the hell out of there right now.”

“Calm down. Just calm down and breathe, okay? You’re not supposed to mess with your blood pressure right after surgery. I’m fine. I have a team with me and a gun, besides. I’ll be fine. I’m just going on a hunch here and I need to follow it to the end.”

“Tracy, do not go digging by yourself. Please, babe, I’m begging here,” I say, sweating bullets when she doesn’t answer immediately.

“I won’t, Jace, I promise. I’ll stay as safe as possible. I—”

“You know they took Roman, right? And probably Melissa, too, from the sounds of it. They’ve seen us together, Trace.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it, Lane, I’m counting on it.”

“Trace—”

“Remember that day you took me to the ice cream parlor and we ordered every flavor on the menu?” she asks out of the blue, making me frown at the abrupt change of subject.

“Yeah, I guess. You ate so much ice cream you puked in Mrs. Toledo’s garden before we could make it home.”

That gets a giggle and I find myself laughing at the memory of her embarrassment and later her joy at having done something so simple as puking from overindulgence.

My Trace has always taken such delight in doing things that her parents would not have approved of. That specific day I dared her to go all on everything her parents would never let her eat because they were always so image conscious, they wouldn’t let her go over her perfect BMI.

It was one of the happiest days of my life, after I cleaned her up and waited two hours to make love to her.

“Yea. That was my best day with you. You gave me something I never had and took care of me afterward when I smelled like puke and looked like hell. You even kissed me, though I was gross. It was that day that I finally believed you loved me, Jace.”

“Trace—”

Shit.

“I
do
love you, Jace,” she whispers, cutting me off so thoroughly, I feel my heart kick and stutter at the words. “I just don’t
want
to anymore.”

That’s all I get before I hear dial tone and the unmistakable sound of my heart breaking wide open.

“Where to?” Jared asks when I hand Miah his phone back and just sit staring out the window.

“Nowhere.”

That’s the worst thing a guy like me can hear from his girl. She loves me, but the fact that she doesn’t want to anymore…is not something I can manipulate.

It’s not love that’s hard, it’s the little things, like actually wanting to be together and make a life with each other. Trace loving me again is the easy part—the part I can control with my charm and everything I know about her.

Getting her to want me, though, that’s not something I can force.

“You gonna sit here like a little sissy and cry silent tears, big shot? So she doesn’t want to love you. Does that mean you’re just going to let her go and walk into certain death?”

“Get to Melissa’s place and make it fast. If she’s still there, I get lucky. If she isn’t, we need to figure out what the hell happened there. Someone took Melissa Dobson and we need to find her to find Roman.”

Jared grins and I get that same giddy feeling every time I see that wicked look.

“I feel the need to break some people tonight, boys. You with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell yes.”

“Let’s make this quick. I have Alex duty tonight and Ellie doesn’t understand excuses when she’s tired.”

Damn, Wyatt. How does he make being whipped sound so damned appealing?

What we find at Melissa’s place is almost useless. Someone went to a lot of effort to make it look like there was a struggle between two people, and the packed bags are just plain stupid if you look close enough.

Women pack a certain way, whether they’re in a rush or not. From the looks of that bag, a man packed it. Which leads us to the part where there wasn’t one item of jewelry taken from her jewelry box.

Someone staged this and did such a piss-poor job of it that I’m starting to think it was deliberate.

“You see it, too?”

I whirl around and almost go down but for Jared’s steadying hand when Trace walks in, her face a study of frustration and confusion.

“Tracy?”

“I’m sorry about what I said, Jace. It was wrong and mean and…not true. I—”

She doesn’t get another word out because I’m crushing her to my chest while tremors race through my body. This must be what Wyatt felt when he made up his mind to let Ellie go that one time.

Not that it lasted past like two seconds of selflessness before he changed his mind.

“I thought you left.”

She starts shaking against me, and it takes me a beat to realize she’s laughing.

“It’s my Catholic complex.”

Huh.

“Anyway,” she mutters, pushing away to look over the scene and give each brother a chin nod. “This scene was staged. Deliberately and with the intent of leaving clues that only certain people would see. For instance—”

“The poorly packed suitcase.”

“And the deliberate track marks in the rug.”

“No jewelry packed.”

“And no toiletries or feminine products.”

“Yea. It was done so well, so…perfectly in its wrongness that I’m guessing it’s a message from that brother of yours. What could he be trying to tell you all?” she asks, looking at it all again with a practiced eye that intrigues me.

The question and her assumptions fit, so I take another long look around the room and try to look at each piece of wrongness through Roman’s eyes.