AS THE FOUR guys stood around me in the kitchen, their silence ate away at my confidence. Talon had a gun, Julius and Garrison both looked ready to kill me first and ask questions later, and Blaze… well, Blaze looked excited, bouncing his weight from foot to foot.
I should have strategized or, at the very least, taken a moment or two to think rather than making a kneejerk response. Noelle preached to always act, never react. Maybe I could have come up with some excuse to buy me more time to make a proper run for it. Maybe I should have known not to use the laptop at all, realizing Blaze would be savvy enough to crack the typical protections.
My jaw tightened as my frustration with myself and the situation I’d gotten myself into grew. I’d made too many poor decisions within the span of a few minutes, and those decisions could have deadly consequences.
“Are you going to say anything?” Julius asked, his voice taking on an even more commanding tone.
Would they torture me? I couldn’t tell how far these men would go for the information they wanted. I cleared my throat and allowed my lower lip to tremble.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Garrison said sharply, and my eyes shot up to meet his. “We’re not going to fall for waterworks.”
I couldn’t suppress the feeling that my entire life—everything I’d ever been trained to do—had been for nothing. It didn’t matter now. I was tied to a chair, a gun pointed at my head, and I might never get my chance to avenge the household.
Garrison might not be buying the innocent act, but that didn’t mean the others wouldn’t be swayed. In my experience, few men were totally unaffected by a woman in tears, one way or another.
“I don’t know why you have me here,” I said, willing a quaver into my voice. “Please.”
“How did you know about the murders?” Blaze asked, pointing to the laptop’s screen.
“I don’t—”
“Don’t fucking lie to us.” Julius leaned over my chair, bracing his hands next to my elbows. His tone refused any argument, deadly serious. “There’s no way in hell some regular woman off the street knows how to fight like you just did. So don’t try to pretend that’s what you are.”
His aura of authority wafted over me, and a tingle ran across my skin. I had the ridiculous urge to rise up to meet him, to soak up all that commanding confidence. I couldn’t remember ever being in the presence of a man who wielded more control than he could with just a few sentences.
But I couldn’t let him control me, even if some stupid part of my brain was swooning.
His eyes, blue like Talon’s but a much deeper shade, held mine unwaveringly. I had the unnerving sensation that he could read what was going on inside my skull. That he might even be able to sense the way my panties had just dampened, damn them.
I sure as hell hoped not.
“You don’t have anything to say for yourself?” he asked.
Since silence wasn’t working, I tried turning his cool confidence back on him. “I don’t owe you answers any more than I did before,” I replied, hardening my expression. “Even less now, really. Am I supposed to trust you after you tied me to a fucking chair? Dream on.”
Blaze let out a low whistle, and Garrison shot a glare at him.
To my surprise, Julius straightened up. His expression shifted from menacing to contemplative.
“You make a fair point,” he said. “We’re asking a lot from you. So maybe it’s only fair that we explain a little more about why we’re asking these questions at all. But what I’m going to tell you could put our jobs and our lives at stake. Once I’ve told you, we can’t let you leave until we’re sure of you.”
Interesting. I arched my eyebrows at him. “Since it doesn’t look like you have any intention of letting me leave anyway, I’ll take that deal.”
The corner of his mouth twitched—with the start of a smile or a frown? I couldn’t tell, he smoothed it out so quickly. The man had iron control over himself as well as everyone around him.
“All right then.” He tipped his head toward the other men. “It’s possible you’ve already guessed that we’re not actually landscapers. We’re cops, and right now we’re investigating a horrific murder spree that took place in a house not that far from where you had your accident last night. Actually, we saw you while we were on the way to the scene of the crime after a neighbor called in a report of hearing gunshots fired.”
A little of the tension in my chest loosened. “You’re with the police?” That fit a lot of what I’d observed about them that hadn’t made total sense before. And if it was true, it also meant that I was a little safer than if they’d been mass murderers or some other kinds of psychopaths themselves. Cops could still push people around, and from what I’d learned in my training, you couldn’t trust any of them not to be dirty, but there were limits on how violent they were likely to get.
They might happily toss me in jail and throw away the key, of course. My situation was still pretty freaking shitty.
“Undercover detectives,” Julius clarified. “We caught you speeding away from the scene of what turned out to be a major crime, with blood on your shirt and what looked like stolen goods on you. And when we ran the plates on that car and contacted the owner, it turned out it’d been stolen—from someone you’ve never mentioned in your stories. Understandably, we couldn’t let you just wander off.”
They’d known about the massacre and the stolen car the entire time I’d been here. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. I did have to point out, “I’m pretty sure kidnapping is still illegal no matter how many badges you have.”
Garrison didn’t look quite so peeved anymore. His lips curved into a cocky smile. “When you’re undercover, you don’t have to follow the rules quite so closely.”
I drew my gaze back to Julius, since he was the one in charge. “Why didn’t you tell me all this to begin with? Why make up all those other stories?”
“A lot of people in trouble freeze up when they’re around cops,” Julius said. “We wanted to see if you’d let anything slip when you weren’t on your guard. Obviously that hasn’t worked out so well. So here we are.” He paused. “We have reason to believe that the perpetrators of those murders are still on a rampage, looking for something they expected to find in the house but didn’t. Seeing as you had all that fancy jewelry on you, you might be not just connected but another target as well.”
I kept my expression impassive, but inside I itched with confusion. If the murderers had been looking for the jewelry I’d grabbed, why wouldn’t they have taken the stuff before they’d left? They’d been gone by the time I did my search of the house. It wasn’t as if the stuff I’d taken had been hard to find.
But then, just because these guys were cops didn’t mean they had everything right. He might have completely made up that part in the hopes of intimidating me into spilling my guts.
“You obviously have some connection to the murders,” Blaze piped up, his usual energy almost subdued as he studied me. “Your searches prove it. You were trying to find news on a massacre that happened in this city in the past twenty-four hours. There haven’t been any other murders in the past three days, and this situation hasn’t been publicized yet.”
“Yeah,” Garrison said, raising his chin. “There’s no way you could know about it unless you had an inside scoop. So why don’t you get on with explaining yourself, now that Julius has laid everything out for you?”
I wet my lips, absorbing all the new information they’d given me. I couldn’t tell them the truth—that was out of the question. But I had to tell them something they’d believe. Something that wouldn’t set me up for jail time.
I could easily retract some lies and replace them with new ones. Now that so much more was out in the open, I could concoct a ruse that better fit the circumstances—one that nobody would suspect.
And now that I knew who they were, maybe I shouldn’t be trying to leave. They were cops with access to police resources—things like running plates, which I couldn’t have done on my own. And they’d already made progress toward identifying the murderers. If I stayed with them, I’d get information that I wouldn’t be able to find on my own.
It’d be awfully useful to have two strong fighters, a tech genius, and a skilled manipulator doing a bunch of my legwork for me. Noelle always taught me to utilize every available advantage. This could be a huge advantage. They might lead me right to the perps, and then I could deal out my own brand of justice.
“Will I go to jail for stealing?” I asked, letting myself nibble at my bottom lip so I’d appear anxious.
Julius shook his head, pulling a second chair in front of me and sitting with his legs spread wide. “We handle bigger matters. We don’t give a shit about petty crimes.”
“You won’t report it?”
“We won’t.”
I didn’t necessarily believe them, but if they tried to prosecute me later, I could deny this conversation had ever happened. I nodded slowly, compiling a story out of details I’d used on various jobs in the past, tweaking it to fit the unique situation.
“I did go to the house where the murders happened,” I whispered. “Looking back, I wish I hadn’t, but I can’t change it now. One of my friends lives—lived—there, and she said I could come and stay whenever I needed somewhere to go.”
“Why did you want to stay?” Julius asked.
I forced a pained look into my eyes. “I know you saw some of my scars. I didn’t lie about having a boyfriend with a temper.”
Julius motioned for me to continue. “So you went to the house to escape him?”
I dipped my head, a piece of hair falling into my face. “Yes. I’d finally worked up the courage—I was going to hide out there until I figured out how to get my own place where he wouldn’t find me—but I didn’t know what had happened there until I got inside. My friend’s parents didn’t like me, so I always snuck in by going over the wall and through the back door. I slipped inside last night, and that’s when I found… that’s when—”
The sadness that filled my voice as I envisioned Anna gasping for air was no act. I cut myself off, my throat constricting. My mind flashed to the faceless woman who could have been Noelle, and the sense of loss deepened.
“Your friend’s name?”
“Anna,” I said, because it was easier to sell a lie when you mixed some truth into it. “She—she was dead with the rest of them.”
Julius’s brow furrowed, his gaze unrelenting. “Your friend offered you a place to stay, so you went to her house, found her dead, and decided to rob her and her family?”
When he put it like that…
I ducked my head as if I was ashamed of myself. “I had nowhere to go. No money, and nothing but a bag of clothes. I didn’t have a choice. My friend would have wanted to help me in any way she could, but she died. What use would a few things have been to a dead person, anyway? I saw all that blood, all the bodies—and I just panicked. I hardly even realized what I was doing. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Then you stole a car,” Garrison pushed.
“My boyfriend taught me how so I could help with some of the crap he was mixed up in,” I said in a small voice. “I’m not saying I made great choices that night. I was in so much shock—but that’s no excuse. I’m sorry I didn’t explain all of this earlier, but I had no idea what you guys wanted with me. I wish I’d stuck around and called the police when I found them. If there’s anything I can do now to help catch the psychos who did that, I’ll do it. Anna and the rest of them—they deserve justice.”
The men looked at one another, their expressions unreadable as they silently communicated amongst themselves. I could lie about my history and backstory all day long, but the truths I’d incorporated—the way I genuinely cared for Anna and Noelle, my determination to avenge their deaths—should have helped sell the story.
“It sounds like you’ve endured a lot,” Blaze said before anyone else had the chance to speak, and a flicker of relief passed through my chest. He sounded convinced.
I only nodded weakly in response.
Julius was still frowning. “How did you fight us so well?”
Good point. Even held back by my injuries, it had to be clear that I was well-trained to men who’d done plenty of training themselves.
“Mixed martial arts starting when I was ten years old,” I said with a shrug. “Competitive MMA when I turned twelve, added karate to the mix when I turned fifteen.”
“Then how did your boyfriend manage to beat the shit out of you?” Garrison asked.
His insensitivity made my anger flare. “You’re an insensitive prick, aren’t you?” I snapped at him, the way I thought a woman in my circumstances might. “I got into training because I thought it’d help me—my father used to—” I shuddered. “But I guess it backfired on me. That’s how I met my boyfriend—he was one of my instructors. He was always a little better, a little stronger than me.”
The one benefit to my injuries was that I could hope these men hadn’t been able to tell just how unlikely that’d be when I was at my full capacity.
“All right,” Julius said. He didn’t look particularly affected by my sob story, but he wasn’t trying to pick it apart anymore either. I’d call that a win. He took a step closer, looming as he peered down at me. “We can’t let you just wander off. Like I told you, we can’t risk you compromising our covers. You could be a key component in our investigation—and it’s possible the murderers are out for your blood too. You’ll be safer with us anyway.”
I glanced down at my wrists and tested my luck. “Are you going to keep me tied up the whole time?”
Julius did offer a hint of a smile then. “I think we can give you that much freedom. Just be aware that if you try to make a break for it again, we will intervene.”
Something in his words cued Talon to put his gun back in his concealed holster. Julius reached for the ties, pulling a knife from his pocket. I held myself totally still as the gleaming blade sliced through the plastic.
When my first wrist released, I swiveled my hand, loosening the stiff muscles. How much could I convince them to loop me in on their progress with the case? I had to work this advantage in every way I could while I had the opportunity.
“I might be able to help your investigation,” I suggested as the tie around my wrist brace fell away and Julius bent down to tackle my ankles.
He glanced up at me, no less commanding when he was lower down. “How do you expect to do that?”
I groped for a reasonable proposition. “It was dark when I got to the house, and obviously I didn’t stick around to pay a lot of attention to the place. Maybe if I could look around the property in the daylight, I’ll see something that you all missed. I’ve been there enough times to have a pretty good memory of how it should be.”
Julius let out a thoughtful hum. “We’ll see. We’ve definitely had enough excitement today. Talon, take her back to her room for the night.”
Talon moved forward to escort me. I leapt up from the chair and to the side before he could outright grab me. “I can walk on my own.” I turned to look at Julius again. “And I could help you. I want the bastards responsible to rot in hell.”
Julius didn’t respond as Talon motioned me toward my bedroom. He might not be aiming his gun at me, but we both knew he had it on him. The other three were probably armed similarly. Gritting my teeth, I strode back to the bedroom one step ahead of him.
The second I walked inside, Talon closed the door behind me. Then came the unmistakable sound of the lock clicking into place.
They didn’t trust me all that much, not yet. I’d just have to find a way to change that.
