“They have a sister, Michaela,” I tell Drake James as we go over everything related to Mia’s arrest last night. “I had an ex-fed looking into her, but her records were sealed tight.”
“Yeah?” he mumbles, and I imagine him furiously taking notes. I fill him in on everything I learned from Lionel before he died. “I wonder what Jake’s role in it was?” I rub my hand over my jaw. “At the very least, he’s implicit in any cover-up.”
“Hmm. I’ll run it by Nathan when he flies back in the morning and we’ll get one of our guys on it. Pretty sure he knows some hot shot hacker in Manhattan.”
“Is there anything else from the cops? Is Mia at any risk of getting pulled in for questioning again?”
“It’s unlikely but not impossible. Seems Mulcahy had nothing but his own hunch to go on. Some old buddies of his work at the precinct, and they let him use an interrogation room to scare Mia into a confession. Thankfully she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut. But the guy’s a rottweiler. He’s not going to let this go, Lorenzo. The most important thing is for Mia not to panic and do anything stupid. Even if he does try to rattle her cage again, he doesn’t have any evidence, and knowing you, there’s no evidence to find.”
“I’ll rattle his fucking cage,” I say with a snarl.
Drake sighs. “You know you can’t touch him, right? Not with all of this going on?”
“I know,” I assure him, even as plans for torturing and killing that fucker race through my head.
“So you’ll tell your girl he has nothing on her and she needs to keep a clear head, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Except she’s not my girl any longer. That reminder makes my chest ache.
“Bring her in tomorrow when Nathan’s back and we’ll go over everything with a fine-tooth comb. Make sure we have every base covered.”
Ending the call, I lean back in my chair. At least Mia will be forced to spend a little time in my company tomorrow. I’ll be damned if I let anyone else take her to see the James brothers. She’s avoided me all morning, leaving the kitchen under the pretense of needing the restroom when I walked in for breakfast, and then she never returned.
What can I expect after those things I said to her? The memory of the pain on her face tears my heart in two. How the fuck do I ever take something like that back?
I walk out of the study and bump into her, almost knocking her off her feet. Reaching out, I grab her forearm to steady her, but she jumps back like my touch scalds her skin.
There was a time when my touch set her skin on fire for a different reason. I clear my throat. “I just spoke to Drake. He said you have nothing to worry about for now. Jake has no evidence to connect you to Brad’s death. Looks like he was on a fishing expedition.” I don’t tell her that I agree with him about her ex-brother-in-law not letting this go. I imagine she already knows that.
“Thanks,” she says, without looking me in the eye.
“We’ll still have to go in and see Nathan and Drake tomorrow. So they can make sure everything is properly dealt with and this won’t bite you in the ass in the future.”
She continues to look anywhere but me. “Fine.”
I want to grab hold of her and shake her. Fine? Nothing about this is fine. I’m falling to fucking pieces here, Mia! But that’s not her fault, is it? I had her in the palm of my hand and I forced her to fly away.
