Touch of Betrayal, A (18 page)

Adam glanced at me. I nodded, and he holstered the weapon then led the way to the kitchen.

Annie’s laptop was on the table, plugged in and open. It beckoned me, but it was the steaming mug of coffee sitting next to the computer that screamed my name. I knew it was for me because it had been topped with a mound of whipped cream, and dusted with cinnamon. The guys didn’t do whipped cream…on their coffee.

I grabbed the mug, downed a swallow of coffee, and took time to lick the cinnamon-flavored mustache from my lips before I slid into the chair facing the computer. Sometimes the little things were all that held one together.

Pierce swept into the room, nodded at Mitch, and then poured his coffee. “How do you want to play this, Belisama?”

Mitch tensed, the pale, early morning light a stark contrast to the dark circles under his eyes. The man was exhausted. And he hated when Pierce called me Belisama. I nudged the chair next to me with my toes. “Sit, Mitch. I want you to see the screen while we go over your activities for the past couple of years.”

He slid his wire rims out of his t-shirt pocket and adjusted them on his nose.

I ran my tongue around the edge of my coffee mug, tasting the sticky residue from the whipped cream. When I looked up, all eyes were focused on me, and I quickly pulled my tongue in and smashed my lips together. Not a good start to my interrogation. I met Pierce’s stare. Was there laughter lurking behind those azure eyes? I had to get control of the situation. Now. “Didn’t Mitch set the alarm off?”

Pierce saluted Mitch with his coffee mug. “Nice work. Watched you from the security room.”

I ignored the escalating testosterone level. “So everything is functioning again? No glitches? Annie and Madigan are protected?”

Pierce arched an eyebrow that clearly said: stupid questions.

“Okay, then. Why don’t the two of you go outside and pace around the perimeter, or whatever you do when you’re keeping watch. I’m going over these files with Mitch. Alone.”

Adam and Pierce shared some kind of silent communication that made Mitch’s lips quirk.

“That wasn’t a request or a question, guys. It was an order.” Steel sang through my words. Oh, yeah. The new me was already kicking butt.

“I’ll let you know when I’m ready to discuss Xifeng. Go find something to do. Got it?”

Twin nods, and then they took turns topping off their coffees before heading outside. Pierce turned to wink at me before the screen door closed behind him. I’d have to do some work on my badass persona.

 
Mitch reached for the computer. I slapped my hand over his, knocking it away from the keyboard. “I’ll do the scrolling, and I’ll ask the questions.”

He gulped a mouthful of coffee. “It’ll go faster if I talk you through it.”

“Your way isn’t working for me anymore, Mitch. I have a right to know exactly how much of our relationship, of my life, has been passed on to the nameless, faceless people you’re working for.”

“I get that. I’ll tell you everything I can, but I’m on a need-to-know status with this. Especially since our wedding.”

“Let’s take it one assignment at a time,” I said, bringing up his report from that fated day at the beach.

“I’ll go with however you want to do this, Sunshine. Whatever it takes to fix…us.” Mitch rested his hand on the back of my neck and started massaging the knots from my muscles.

I melted. Just a little.

His eyes had warmed to honey brown, and my heart fluttered. It apparently hadn’t received the memo on my new status. Or it had read between the lines. Yes, I was angry enough to murder him, but I still loved him. And he could still twist my hormones into a spiral of need.

I leaned into his touch.

EIGHTEEN

Footsteps shuffled behind me. I jumped,
knocking my coffee cup to Annie’s kitchen floor with a shattering crash—and Mitch’s hand off my neck with a forceful shudder. Melting was a habit I’d have to break. Fast.

“Sorry,” Annie said, grabbing a dish towel off the countertop and tossing it over the spilled coffee and pottery shards. “Maddie woke early, and I won’t get her back to sleep without a bottle.”

Mitch stood, and nodded at the laptop. “This is your work?” he asked, opening his arm to give her a hug, and then dropping it to his side with a forlorn sigh.

With a twitch of her shoulders Annie headed for the refrigerator. “You made me sweat getting through the back door to your firewalls, but yes, I’m responsible for handing Everly the evidence of your covert perfidy.” She turned to face him, a carton of milk held protectively in front of her. “You owe all of us an explanation, Mitch. I worked covert ops for a long time, and never once did I spy on someone I cared about.”

The air hummed with Annie’s words. Her face remained super-spy inscrutable, but those green eyes couldn’t hide how much Mitch had hurt her. This wasn’t only about me. Sadness slashed deeper into my heart. It had all been so perfect.

I shook off the pain. None of us had time to wallow in what-might-have-been. “I didn’t know you did spy stuff as well as the sniper stuff,” I said, squatting to clean up the coffee mess. “Damn, I hate that I lost that coffee. Whoever made it did an excellent job.”

I was doing the best I could to ease the tension, but they both ignored me. So much for good intentions.

Mitch lowered into a chair, his movements stiff. “Protect, not spy.”

Annie grabbed two clean mugs from the cupboard. “Uh-huh. I didn’t shoot anyone I cared about either.” Her tone was neutral, but there was an unfamiliar tension curling around her, and I’d bet my stolen .9mm that her aura was sparking with red energy.

“You think I would
shoot
Everly?” His hands clenched around the coffee mug.

I stood, gathering the dish towel into my hand. “That’s not what she meant, and you know it. I’m curious though, Mitch, about what you’ll do if they order you to shoot me. ’Cause you know, everything that’s connected to my mom has turned out to be fatal, or damn close to it.”

While Maddie’s bottle heated, Annie filled our mugs with coffee and topped Mitch’s off. Apparently, she wasn’t pissed enough to deny him a morning shot of caffeine.

She gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Adam left a bowl of whipped cream in the refrigerator. Want a dollop in your latte?”

“Yes. And maybe a sprinkle of cinnamon. It was a really good cup of coffee.” I emptied the remains of the broken mug into the trash and rinsed out the dishtowel.

“Adam bought me the DeLonghi to help me survive Maddie’s wake-up-mom-I-want-to-play nights. He’s been stopping by most mornings to make me a latte, and he’s become quite the expert. I’ve learned to stock whipping cream, though, ’cause sometimes he forgets to stop at the store.”

I wasn’t the only one grasping at mundane normalcy. Could be the human brain hits overload and there’s just no room left to hold the pain. The loss.

Annie set one of the fresh lattes next to the computer, and balanced the other in one hand, baby bottle in the other. “I’ll leave you to it, but don’t discuss anything about Xifeng until I get Madigan back to sleep, take my shower, and can make it back down to join the discussion.”

I gave her a thumbs-up.

It took an hour for Mitch and me to go through the files. There wasn’t anything earth-shaking in them, other than blatant proof he’d been reporting my activities to his boss on a regular basis. When we’d finally talked his clandestine work to death, only one potentially disastrous question remained.

The proof sat in front of me—no more denial, no more pretending Mitch was innocent. Maybe he had good intentions when all this started, but he’d frickin’ screwed it up beyond repair. Angry tears burned to escape, and I pressed the heels of my hands hard against my eyes.
You’re stronger than this, Everly. Hold. It. Together.

My heart pounded so loud in my throat, I couldn’t get a breath.
You have a gun. You have ESP fingers. You have friends. Fix this.
I dropped my hands to my lap, eyes dry, heart broken, spine straight. “We can’t undo what you’ve done, so what’s next?” I asked.

Damn it all, my voice had wobbled. I sucked in air, forcing it to fill my lungs. Too tight. Pain exploded in my chest.
Not so fast, Everly. Try again.
I inhaled, this time slow and steady. Better. Healing was going to take longer than ten seconds. Damn inconvenient, being human.

Mitch frowned, the shadows under his eyes turning darker. “I have to keep reporting on your activities. There’s no way to avoid that, Sunshine.”

“Right. To keep me safe and all.” Yep. I’d added enough snark to sound like a first-class bitch. Yay, me.

This time when he captured my hand, Mitch held on tight. “Yes. I’m one of the few people standing between you and the corrupt agents running this op.”

“You got names for me, Hunt?”

I about knocked over my chair when Pierce’s Irish brogue filled the kitchen. He stood slouched against the back door, hands jammed in his front pockets. He’d done his imitation of moving like the wind, and slipped into the kitchen without so much as a whisper of sound.

Mitch whipped around to face him, obviously as startled as I’d been. “Suspicions, but no definite names yet.”

I jumped out of my chair, pacing between the two of them. “Hold it. You think some government muckity muck is behind this? They’ve been after me, I know, but rogue agents? Aren’t you drowning in melodrama here? Bordering on conspiracy theories?”

“It’s not a conspiracy theory when there’s an actual conspiracy,” Pierce said, eyes twinkling.

Annie sauntered into the kitchen, rinsed her mug, and braced against the sink, arms crossed. The soothing scent of jasmine wafted around her. “I’ll see if I can narrow the list of potential suspects. Mitch, I’m going to need names of everyone connected to the Everly project. And Pierce, I’ve reduced the list you gave me to six possibilities.”

I stopped mid-pace, and faced Annie. “Wait. You’re buying into this? Have been ferreting out intel on these dudes?”

Her smile was cold. “Absolutely. There’s nothing I hate more than an agent gone bad.”

“I’m confused.” I slipped into my chair, bones gone squiggly. “What about Xifeng? I thought she was the one who wanted my mother’s formula. And possibly me and-slash-or Millie.”

Pierce stretched tall, filling the room with barely controlled energy. “Someone on my former team’s been leaking intel to Xifeng.”

“So why didn’t you stay with them? Catch whoever in the act?” I’d lost patience with the all of them.

“Didn’t want to be under orders when I find him. Or them.” Pierce’s eyes darkened to almost black.

The kitchen squeezed tight around me and a chill landed hard between my shoulders. Pierce on the hunt took up a lot of space. “You’re on an unauthorized kill mission, and Annie’s helping you.” My voice had shifted to an embarrassing squeak.

“Judging us, are you, Belisama?”

I sucked in a breath. It didn’t do a thing to calm me. “Not exactly. But it’s
my
mission.”

“You’re too close to it. Which is why you’re staying here with Adam and A.J. Way back when—” he paused, eyes steady on me—“we talked about this.”

My mind drifted to a day shortly after I’d met Tynan Pierce. He’d found me at my parents’ house when it was still a secret, promised never to tell anyone about where I hid from the world, and taught me to pick locks. It was the day he told me he became a physician to save lives—to balance the killing he had to do.

“How long has it been since you put on a white coat?” I tempered most of the bitchiness in my tone.

A faint tinge of red darkened his cheeks. “A while. I’m volunteering at the free clinic these days. No white coats required.”

Warmth flushed my cheeks. I should have known better than to challenge Tynan Pierce. The man was good to the bone. Dangerous and hard. There was an innate righteousness in him that made me both crazy and proud to call him friend. But I couldn’t have him killing people in my name. Nope. That wouldn’t do. “Xifeng belongs to me, and it’s time for me to do the killing.”

“Death can be healing, Belisama. Don’t lose sight of that,” Pierce said, his blue gaze burning into my soul.

My palm tingled, a reminder that I’d ripped a gun off a dead guy. That Pierce had let me walk out of a crime scene with evidence in my pocket that would clear him if he were questioned. I was going to have to touch him with the intent to trespass. An edginess clouded the back of my mind, because I wasn’t sure if he’d shot the intruder to protect Harlan, or if it was self-defense. Or both. For some unexplainable reason, I needed to see that scenario play out.

Mitch growled something unintelligible, bringing my wandering thoughts back into Annie’s kitchen. “Can we get back on track? I have to check in soon, and I’d like to know the plan so I don’t screw it up.”

Annie pushed off the kitchen counter. “Give me the names you have, and a way to contact you.”

“Yeah, about that. I had to ditch my cell. The messages I texted to Everly put me in the crosshairs.” He tucked a finger under my chin, turning my head toward him. “I’ll pick up a new one and send an appropriate message to you within the next hour.”

If there was a hidden meaning there, I missed it. It was clear he’d put himself in a bison chip load of danger by meeting me at Annie’s but… “Pierce told me you were scheduled here next week. For one of your regular assignments.”