“We have a match.” Davis pointed to the screen.
They all gathered around Andrew’s back. Joel, who had been so quiet during the entire exchange, read the name. “Rico Gabriel.”
She looked around at the blank faces. “Who is that?”
“No idea,” Ellis said. “Scroll down to aliases and known associates.”
Sara scanned the list. One name popped out. She didn’t know him, but she’d heard Jeremy mention him. The man who’d stabbed him.
“Bruce Casden.” Joel’s eyes narrowed. “So, this is about Jeremy?”
Garrett hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t moved.
Sara bit her lip. She ached for him and the pain she saw in his eyes. Her inclination was to wrap her arms around him and assure him Jeremy would be fine. But she hesitated, not wanting to be rejected or humiliate him in front of his men.
“Give me a phone.” Garrett held out a hand and took the first cell he touched.
When he looked at her head-on, eyes blazing, her knees buckled. She knew for certain what she’d always suspected. Garrett would die for his brother. It was the right answer, and not a surprise, but the determination scared her to death.
He shifted the barest of inches and put his hand on her back. The touch radiated through her, wiping out some of her fears.
“It will be okay,” she promised.
“I’m happy you’re here.”
Chapter Seventeen
Meredith stared at the closed drapes. They were in adjoining rooms at the back of a three-story hotel on the way to the desert. Jeremy had taken roads she didn’t even know existed and pulled off the highway in the sedan they’d stolen from their attacker. The path led to a simple place tucked between the mountains and run by one of Jeremy’s informants.
Seeing the inside removed all her doubts. Clean sheets and big king beds piled high with pillows. Now she watched as Jeremy helped Pax out of the bathroom to the edge of the bed. Even balanced under Jeremy’s arm, Pax’s footsteps were unsure.
He sat down hard on the mattress. “I’m ready for this day to be over.”
Meredith had basic first-aid training, but this situation needed more. They should be at a hospital, or at least with a doctor of some type. “You okay?”
Pax put a hand to his forehead and winced. “Except for the concussion.”
“That settles it.” She grabbed a towel and pointed toward the door. “We should go to the hospital.”
“No,” both men said at the same time.
“Gentlemen.” She used her best teacher voice. “This is crazy.”
“We barely made it here without becoming part of a canyon.”
“Tell me how you think that furthers your argument.”
Pax smiled through all the wincing. “She’s got you there.”
“We should all get checked out.” She focused on Jeremy, hoping to get through to him before he bled out. “I saw the towels in the sink. You’re bleeding again.”
“It stopped.”
Even Pax shot Jeremy a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look at the denial.
Jeremy ignored the strange looks. “We’re not going anywhere until we know it’s safe to move. I’m done being chased and shot at. It’s more dangerous in San Diego than at home.”
The casual comment sliced through her. “Where is home?”
“Right now, Arizona.” He threw out the answer like it was no big deal.
To her it meant something. She fought off the gnawing sense of loss. He was still here and already she missed him.
“We doubled back three times and covered our tracks. There’s no way anyone can find us here,” Jeremy said, as if trying to convince himself as well as them.
She hated to ask, but the question tickled at the back of her mind. “How do we know everyone is safe back at the garage?”
“I got the signal.” His voice stayed steady as he said the words.
Which confused the crap out of her. “Tell me what that means in English.”
“Garrett and I agreed to no communication. The plan was if we were okay, I’d ping him. If all was fine there, he’d ping me back. I got the ping.”
As far as she was concerned, he missed a pretty big problem with his theory. “Did you send a ping? Because the last few hours sure didn’t feel okay to me. How do you know he isn’t telling you what you want to hear to keep you from running back into danger?”
“I know.” He didn’t sound sure.
She used the tiny slip of doubt to push her point. “I think we should throw up the white flag and ask for help.”
“I don’t want them sending men into the same type of danger that we escaped. It’s bad enough we came under fire. The team might not be lucky enough to survive a second time.” Jeremy shook his head as he walked away from the bed. “No, they stay where they are, with Ellis’s Secret Service detail there to add firepower.”
Jeremy had opened the door to this conversation, so she breezed right through. “Then will you at least admit that you’ve had this operation all wrong from the start?”
Pax whistled as he propped his head on the pillow stack. “That’s a gutsy lady right there.”
Jeremy’s narrow-eyed frown suggested otherwise. “What are you talking about?”
“You are the target. Not Garrett. You.” Since he didn’t look convinced, she laid out her argument, ticking off each point on her fingers. “The Coronado house was in a corporation in both your names. The attacker followed us, not Garrett.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“You were stabbed and your work is just as dangerous as your brother’s. There is a man sitting in prison waiting for you to testify. Darren isn’t the only one.”
“Go on.”
At least it wasn’t a rabid denial. She hoped that was a good sign. “It is conceivable the revenge is against you. That you are the one in danger. From where I sit, it’s more likely than the Darren–Garrett scenario.”
Pax looked at her through one open eye. “She has some good points.”
She gave one more push. “Maybe you should tell us what happened on your last job to give you that slice in your side.”
Jeremy glanced at Pax, who had nodded off in midsentence. “We should let Pax rest.”
“Should he?”
“His vision is fine. No blurriness. He doesn’t have nausea. We have to watch him, but we can check in every hour.”
She bit her lower lip. “What if something happens, like it’s more serious, and we could have prevented it by being in the hospital?”
“I’ve had a concussion before. That’s the standard treatment.”
She let Jeremy steer her into the other bedroom. When he closed the connecting door, her heart started flipping around. Close proximity and a bed. Sounded like a dangerous combination to her.
She turned around and spied him. He stood with his back to the door and his hand on the doorknob. He didn’t look scared or worried...not exactly. But something unsure lurked there.
“Bruce Casden stabbed me when he figured out I was an agent. Until then, I was a budding player in his operation.”
“What kind of operation?” She wanted to go to Jeremy but suspected he didn’t want any tenderness right now.
He needed to get the words out, regardless of how painful they were. Dragging them out of him struck her as a horrible way to spend the evening, but trapping them inside was destroying him.
“Drugs. He runs them, sells them and sneaks them into the country through drug trafficking tunnels that stretch from Mexico to businesses he owns and likes to pretend are legitimate. He’s been under investigation for years but always managed to slither away.”
“You were undercover.” The past year fell together in her head. He’d been out and hunted. She’d been hanging out in a classroom and playing tenant.
She loved her life, but his work made parts of it seem shallow. Not the kids, but the other stuff. The silly girl stuff.
“I got in through his girlfriend.” The storms brewing inside him halted his speech and had him shuffling his feet. “Befriended her when I tended bar in the club where she sang.”
“And Bruce eventually found out it was all a sham.”
“She was in on it. She wanted out of that life. I let her believe...” Jeremy let his head fall back against the door with a crack. “She thought we were together. That I would whisk her away and keep her safe.”
Meredith hated hearing this part. The days when he cared for someone else sent her self-confidence spiraling down. “You wanted to.”
“That’s the sick part. I viewed her as a job.” He pushed away from the door and came over to sit next to her on the bed.
His words punched and pricked at Meredith. She kept her expression blank, not wanting him to stop talking. It was like a streaming poison and he needed it out of his system.
“I would have taken her out of the building, away from Bruce’s reach, and dumped her right in witness protection. I would have told myself I was helping, because that’s what I’ve done before, but really my goal was to hurt Bruce in every way I could. Stealing his woman assured that.” Jeremy let out a noise somewhere between a yell and a growl. “That’s the great guy I am.”
Meredith slid her hand between Jeremy’s palms and looped her other arm over his shoulders. “You are.”
He finally faced her. “You’re not getting it. I set her up.”
She’d understood every word. In some ways, she thought she got the parts he didn’t. “You would have stepped in.”
“You don’t know that. I can’t guarantee that.”
“I know exactly what you’d do in this situation. You could have run, leaving me with the police to answer all the questions about the fire. But you didn’t.”
Every act he’d taken since they left Coronado fell into place. It all made sense. She was the woman he could save.
The idea of being the makeup for past sins crushed her. All her hopes and girlish fantasies of seeing him after they got out of this mess vanished in a huge exploding poof.
“He killed her and stabbed me. Cut me and watched while I lay bleeding on the floor.” The harsh words came out in a tone that sounded as if it were rubbed with gravel.
There it was. The horrible punch line to the nightmare he’d been living. She’d known the twisting, terrible truth was coming, but the words slashed through her anyway.
“A fellow agent saved me. We’d made arrangements to meet about Serena, and when I didn’t show he sent everyone in firing. Finding me on the floor made it tough for Bruce to buy off judges. He was caught in the act for the first time. When I lived to talk about the tunnels, it was all over for him.”
Jeremy squeezed her hand between his. “So you see, Bruce has a reason to want me dead. I took everything from him. I’m the one who put him in jail and I will keep him there no matter what I need to do to make it happen.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of that comment. But she did recognize guilt when she saw it. “What was her name?”
“Serena.” He dropped his head into his hands. “She’s buried in a ditch off an abandoned road. Or she was until the police took the sniffer dogs and all the equipment and dug her up again.”
It sounded so dehumanizing. So cruel. “I’m sorry.”
“The idea that I dropped this violence at your door. And Sara, who has no clue what to do with what’s happening around her. It’s just sick.”
Meredith snorted. Man, they all played the same game with Sara. The poor thing must spend all her time convincing her loved ones she’d grown up. Meredith had tasted that with her own parents and it was a terrible way to live.
“Sara is tougher than you think, and she needs to get used to this life and all its dangers since she’s marrying your brother.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes. As soon as he figures out the wedding dress saleswoman wants a real wedding they’ll be fine. She wanted him back. He just needs to work a little bit.” Meredith rolled her eyes. “Honestly, he is so slow.”
“I don’t know what any of that means.”
“And that makes me nervous.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Jeremy fell back on the bed and she followed him down. He needed someone to soothe and control him. He’d fight it. He’d deny the need, but she wanted to give it as much as he needed to receive it.
She curled her arm on his chest as she balanced her head on her hand and stared down at him. “What do we do now?”
“I have a scheduled check-in with Garrett in about—” Jeremy reached over and turned the bedside clock to face him “—thirty minutes.”
“Maybe in the meantime we could have that next date? I believe you promised me something a bit less dangerous this time. If the bad guys hold off, we should be able to work it in.”
She sounded flip, but in reality, what she suggested was the risk of a lifetime. She couldn’t stop her heart from taking the trip.
He lifted his head. “What are you saying?”
“Clearly my girl powers are misfiring.”
“After what I just told you about me, about my life, you want to be with me?” His voice said no but his breathing picked up speed.
She dragged her hand down his chest and tunneled under his T-shirt to hit bare skin. “Was I supposed to hear all the facts and hate you? Be disgusted?”
“Why not? I am.” Such harsh words while his fingers brushed gentle strokes in her hair.
“You know what I see when I look at you?” He opened his mouth to answer and she cut him off. She dreaded what he might say while he wallowed in his guilt. “A man who loves his brother. A man who puts others before himself. A rescuer. A good man, flawed but real.”
“I killed her, Meredith. I didn’t pull the trigger, but my actions put her in the ground.”
“She wanted out. She knew the risks.”
“It’s not that simple.”
Meredith sighed as she worked up the nerve she needed to say the words. “Serena picked Bruce in the first place. The one thing I’ve learned is that, regardless of how awful the guy is, if you date him, move in with him, marry him, you have to take some of the responsibility for your bad decision to stay with him.”
“You didn’t ask to be abused.”
“No, but I allowed Clint to break me down and part of that is on me, just as Serena’s decisions—good and bad—are on her.”
“Meredith.” Jeremy lifted his shoulders off the bed and kissed her.
The skimming of his lips over hers wiped away every bad choice and every sad hour. The craving for him didn’t lessen. He got near her and it flamed. He touched his mouth to hers and her insides caught fire.