Authors: Megan Isaacs
T
HE SOUND OF
Noah’s deep voice resonates in my dreams. His scent surrounds me, floats in the air and wraps me in comfort. My eyes flicker open when the bed sinks next to me. My heart splutters when my vision clears. It’s Alex, not Noah.
“Hey.” His soft voice is relaxed.
“Hey.” I’m groggy from the anaesthetic, but my whole body tenses with the question on the tip of my tongue. “Is Kai safe? They don’t have him, do they?”
“He’s fine, sweetheart. He’s with Layla, where he’s been all along. Bear has a team running security as a precaution, but the danger has passed.”
Relief sweeps through me. My little boy’s safe and secure. I lay my head back on the pillow and close my eyes as I fight the emotions bubbling in me.
“I’m sorry you had to find out that way about… well… everything.”
My eyelids fly open. “Sorry?” My pulse surges and the monitor gives away the temper rising in me.
“Lizzie, calm down.” Standing up, he rubs his neck.
The beeps get faster.
He lowers his arms and faces his palms to me. “Just… Stop.”
“What are you doing here?” I look around him to the door, and a biting pain shoots down my arm, making me gasp for breath. “Where’s Noah?”
“Way to make a guy feel special.” He laughs but his face shows no light. “He’s not here, sweetheart.”
The concern on his face makes my insides twist. This is my friend Alex. The one who’s been by my side for the last three years. Gentle eyes, which won’t quite meet mine, a sad smile, which doesn’t make it to his eyes, graces his face. My whole body shudders with cold even though I’m under a layer of blankets.
“Is… is he…?” My heart falters with my words.
He places a reassuring hand on my forearm. “He’s alive, don’t worry. How are you keeping up?”
The relief which sweeps through me is indescribable, yet there’s something in Alex’s expression that won’t let the relief take away the ache in my heart.
“Where is he?” I crane my neck around him to see if I can find Noah.
“I’m not sure.” He eyes me for a second. “He left.”
“Left?”
Alex nods and drops his gaze. “As soon as you came out of the operating theatre he came in to see you. When he came out, he said he needed to leave.”
My chest constricts, making it difficult for me to get in any air. My vision fogs over.
“You need to calm down, Lizzie.”
“Was he injured? I need to see him. I need to tell him I love him. I need to know he’s okay.”
Again Alex runs his hand around the back of his neck. “He had a couple of flesh wounds, nothing major. He didn’t even get treatment before he left.”
His words release some pressure from my chest. Noah’s fine. So why isn’t he here?
“I think he just needs to let off some steam. This must be tough for him to deal with, and you know Noah.” He blows out a breath and his gaze goes to the wall behind my head.
Tears well in my eyes. I do know him. The knowledge he’s related in some way to Mac would have been enough to make him wild. He’ll worry he let me down. He’ll worry he isn’t good enough, when the truth is there’s never been a man more right in this world. But he doesn’t know that, because I wouldn’t hear him out when he needed me to the most. It was me who let him down. The things I said to him… Oh, God.
My bottom lip begins to tremble and Alex places his hand on my forearm. “It’ll be okay, sweetheart.”
The voice that has been my protection for years soothes my breaths, but hurt wells in my stomach, along with anger and I turn on Alex. “What were you even doing there?”
He pulls his hand from my arm and sits a little straighter. “You know I worked for you,” he begins. He sucks on the inside of his cheek and glances away from me.
“Of course. It’s how I met you.”
“Do you know who owns Pegasus?”
“No, should I?”
He laughs. “Well, it would make all this easier on me but, no, I just wondered.”
Putting his elbow on his knees, he drops his head into his hands and scrubs his face. “Okay. Bear owns Pegasus.”
I try and let what he’s telling me sink in. Bear runs Pegasus. Alex worked for Bear? Bear’s Noah’s best friend.
“When you hooked up with Noah that first night and left the club with him, I warned you away. But you being the strong-headed pain in my arse you are went with him anyway.”
“I remember.” How could I forget? I’d never want to.
“I thought it would be best to keep you away, but Bear thought it would be a one night thing. He thought Noah would fu—sleep with you, get the need out of his system and that would be it.” He gives me a tight smile. “To be honest, I thought the same. Until Noah took you to his home. He never did something like that. I knew then we were fucked, because he must have felt something for you, even that early on. Then you fell in love with him, and all I could do was help you cover up your tracks with Mac. I failed big time on that one.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, well, it still felt like it. Anyway, I… um… never stopped working for Pegasus.”
“What?” The last three years of my life become a lie in a matter of seconds.
“It’s not what you’re thinking. Stop looking at me like that.” His expression turns sorrowful.
“I thought you were my friend. Not being paid to babysit me.”
“I am your friend. You know I am.”
“Did Noah know? Did he know where I was the whole time? Was it him paying you?” My voice rises with the fear that he knew and never came.
“Fuck no. He had no clue. We weren’t that stupid. I told you when we left that Noah loved you and you couldn’t possibly have said anything to him to stop that. He would’ve killed Mac. He couldn’t know what happened, because we know Noah. We know what he’s capable of. He’d be locked up in maximum security by now. Killing an enemy as part of his job is not the same as him offing a celebrity. Protecting you, avenging what happened to you, would have been his only option. The government wouldn’t have stepped in if he lost his shit like that; he’s retired. None of us wanted him to go down. That’s why I kept you away till Mac was gone.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Because you needed me as a friend. In doing what I did, I lied to one of my friends
and
my cousin.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you honestly think if I’d told Bear you were pregnant he wouldn’t have told Noah? He only found out when you returned. He was angry anyway because you hadn’t been protected under his watch. Noah was—is his best friend. And Noah didn’t know Bear ran Mac’s internal security. He couldn’t know. This op has been going on since I started working for you. He did what he had to do to protect him, and I did the same with you.”
“So you kept it from them?”
“Of course I did. Bear was living with the fact he knew you were being used as a punching bag but couldn’t tell Noah a damn thing. He thought he could fix everything. Plus, like I said already, Noah would flip the fuck out. I’d been brought in six months before you even met Noah for this op and to try and run interference, but I couldn’t be there 24/7. It’s like he knew I was watching out for you. The attacks seemed to happen when I wasn’t on shift. I couldn’t stop it. Bear was powerless. He hated it. I know the feeling. The other men on the payroll weren’t close enough for Bear to instruct the way he did me. They were from an agency, brought in by Mac’s management. He didn’t trust them at all. Bear only ran the systems, but he requested to have a man put inside. That was me. He wanted me to protect you but look like I was on Mac’s security and keep my eyes on our objective.”
I’d often wondered why when Mac went on tour Alex always stayed by my side. I’d never thought to ask him because he was such a comfort to me.
I let the information whirl around in my mind. It’s hard to take it all in. And as much in the dark as I was kept, thinking of what Noah is dealing with makes me cringe. His best friend kept the reality from him. It’s going to tear him apart.
We sit in silence and images of the events that led to me being here play in my mind. I need to know the answer to something. “Is what he said true?”
Alex scrunches his face as he thinks about the question. “About him not loving you?”
“No. That’s the biggest pile of crap he’s ever come out with. It hurt to hear him say those things to me. Really hurt.” I drop my gaze away from him and fidget with the cover, rubbing it between my fingers. For a few moments Noah’s painful words pierce my heart again. I let the words tumble in my head until the ones I need to hear replay, then I look back to Alex. “But he made it obvious he was lying,” I point out.
Alex’s brows furrow. “What do you mean?”
“He said something about going out with the lads. But he hasn’t. He’d been with me and Kai since we came back into his life. He lied.”
“Sneaky bastard.” Alex laughs. “I was waiting around the corner when he said all that. The bastard nearly had me convinced even though I know he loves you. And look at you… your acting skills were amazing.”
“I wasn’t acting. I was angry as hell with him. But after that, I picked up on what he was doing. Well? The job. Was it true?”
He looks puzzled for a second before the penny finally drops. “You mean the last mission he went on?”
“Yes.”
“Um, yeah.” He uncomfortably rubs his nape. “That’s all true.”
“Why would he do that?”
His face softens as he begins to speak. “When men like us hand over our hearts it’s for a lifetime, sweetheart. It’s not an infatuation that will die when your wrinkles start to show, or if you put on some weight. The love won’t disappear with time. We’re passionate by nature. It’s forever. Mix that with a shit tonne of alcohol and depression and you may get somewhere close to where Noah’s state of mind was at that time.” He places his hands over mine to stop them from moving. “It may be hard to hear but if he hadn’t gone on that job he probably would have killed himself anyway, just with alcohol. In a way, it was his wake-up call. He pulled himself together after that.”
Tears run down my face. Images of a broken Noah flood my mind. That’s something I caused.
“Can you tell me anything about the sort of jobs he went on?”
Alex laughs and pulls away. “You want to know how he could kill someone, right?”
“It confuses me, to be honest.” He’s so gentle with me, with Kai. I wipe the tears away. I need to be stronger. I have to understand in order to fix the damage I caused.
“You know he took guys down today, don’t you? If Jase hadn’t stepped in, Noah would have happily killed his own biological father. It’s what he’s trained to do.”
My stomach clenches at the thought. “I suppose I’m a little unclear on the details.”
“Okay. Let me get this straight with you. I’ll simplify it. I’m guessing Noah never talked about this with you?”
I shake my head. “He tried to make me understand but—”
“You wouldn’t hear him out?” he offers.
Again, I shake my head. Shame for being so judgemental of something I knew nothing about heats my face. It took me a while to calm down, see I was being unreasonable and close-minded, but I had wanted to talk to him about it all. I sent him a text to say so. A little while after… they took me.
“Okay, Liz, simple version. He killed bad guys. He got paid very well for it, but risked a lot at the same time. He was deniable. Do you know what that means?”
“No. Not really.”
“It means if he got captured he was on his own. No one would come to his rescue. No government will jump in to save him. No one will admit he belongs to them. He would be left to either die, be tortured then killed, or be turned.”
My stomach twists and knots at the thought. People actually do these things through choice?
Alex continues. “The unit he worked for is called
The Underdogs
. Noah pulled out just before he set up the workshop. Bear also retired, but set up Pegasus. However, Bear still ran a team of special ops for the Dogs alongside his standard security.” Alex stands up and begins to pace. I fight a tiny smile. These boys are all so alike when agitated they could all be carbon copies of the other. Funny I never noticed before now.
He turns his gaze on me. “You following so far?”
“Just about.” The only sense I can really make from it all is I now understand Noah’s tattoo.
“Good. Okay. And I’m only sharing this with you because you’ve been through a lot. So, Noah begged Bear for that job, and he had to jump through fucking hoops to get Bear to let him go. I guess he just wanted to stop feeling anything. When Noah went silent, Bear moved heaven and fucking earth to get to him. We reckon if it had been ten minutes later when the lads arrived, Noah wouldn’t have been alive. You have no idea how bad things got for him. Got to admit, he’s a hard bastard to kill, though.” He laughs a little, but without much humour. “That last job he went on, he still took down his target before…” Alex trails off and sits back down.
I really want to know what happened to Noah, but at the same time, I don’t. I’m unsure I could deal with the details. The nightmare he had and the newer scars on his body tell the tale without words. For now, that’s enough.
“He hasn’t done anything like it since, until yesterday. Except Noah didn’t know we were working on a takedown op. He knew nothing except they had you. He decided to go after you on his own. Bear had been investigating Archie for a while and suspected he would try to pull Noah back in for some big op, but he wasn’t sure. There was no reason to tell him until he had something concrete. Then it was too late because unfortunately, we hadn’t factored in how stupid Archie was. Taking you was fucked up, unexpected and a harsh blow for Bear. When he was sure it was Archie who took you, he had to move quickly to get the team together so we could assist Noah in a way that wouldn’t tip Archie off. He knew whatever Archie had planned was about to blow up.”
He rubs his hands down his thighs. “Anyway, someone up the command chain was highly pissed that Archie was dealing with the bad guys, knew he had bigger plans. The Dogs have always been the good guys. They were used to run covert ops worldwide. That includes taking down things like child prostitution and human trafficking, amongst other things. Anything bad they were sent in to clean up. That was always our mission. But Archie was getting in bed with these lowlifes instead. That’s not how The Dogs operate. Never has been”