I SWUNG my putter and nailed the golf ball, sending it up the small hill. As I watched, the neon green sphere raced straight toward the hole, ricocheted off the back border, and rolled back toward us, invalidating my entire swing. “Fucking hell,” I grumbled, stepping back for Talon to take his turn.
I didn’t bother watching him, knowing that if he didn’t get an immediate hole-in-one, he’d come close to it. I should have never suggested we join in this mini golfing expedition to keep an eye on Dess and her family, but once they made it deep enough in the course, we would have struggled to keep an eye out without being spotted if we weren’t players ourselves.
Dressing like golf-course employees had been the second option, but the margin for error was too high. This place didn’t employ that many people. It would have taken only one genuine employee to catch us and kick us off the course.
So here I stood, groaning as Talon sent his ball toward the hole. With a single bank, it clattered in effortlessly. He tugged at the lapels of his polo shirt with a satisfied air.
I glowered at him. “You could at least act humble.”
A sliver of a smile crossed my long-time partner’s lips, and I’d worked with him so long that I could recognize it as a taunt when most wouldn’t have. “You could act like you know what you’re doing,” he retorted.
He was the only member of the crew who’d have dared to make a comment like that, and he’d only have made it when the younger men weren’t around. I let out a disgruntled huff and lined up my shot before hitting it haphazardly. I knew how to aim guns, not golf clubs.
My ball didn’t go anywhere near the hole, but it stayed atop the hill, so we strode up there together, looking over at the next part of the course as we walked.
Dess stood before her ball. She swung the putter with about as much skill as I had, which soothed my wounded ego a little. The ball lifted and soared into the rocks outside the range. Her mother let out a soft giggle and patted Dess on the shoulder with a few words of encouragement. Dess shook herself, and I could see her reining in her natural competitive instincts to plaster an easy-going smile on her face.
I had to restrain a grimace at the sight of that artificial friendliness. She didn’t fit with this family: her mother perfectly outfitted in white capris and visor, her brother slouching along the side of the course as he leaned on his club nonchalantly, her father completely at ease with his putter as he tapped it on the greenery.
“Must be a rich person thing,” I muttered as I eyed them and then my ball. “I’d have thought they’d stick to the real thing, but I guess this is just a mini version of the country club.”
Blaze had surveyed this place after Dess had gotten the invitation. I’d wanted to see how her birth family interacted with her for myself, for reasons I didn’t feel I needed to spell out. The Maliks did head off to a country club where they had a membership every weekend that Damien was home, but the owner of this miniature course was a donor to their campaign, and sometimes the family came by here to play.
“They’re easing Dess up to the full challenge,” Talon remarked in his usual unemotional way.
“She doesn’t need that kind of challenge. She’s got plenty of other things on her plate.”
“They don’t know that.”
“If they had any brains, they’d figure it out.” I managed to hit my ball into the hole, finally, and straightened up. Damien was just taking his own turn, easily hitting a hole-in-two. My hackles rose for no reason I could put my finger on. “He’s just keeping up appearances by coming here, buttering up the donors.”
Talon shrugged. “That’s part of his job, isn’t it?”
“I don’t trust anyone who mostly thinks about what they can get out of the people they’re supposedly working on behalf of,” I replied.
As we moved to the next part of the course, Talon spun his ball in his hand and studied me. “He’s her father, and he planned a simple activity to keep them entertained.”
“His being her father doesn’t mean anything. Family doesn’t automatically make someone a good person.” As Talon should know, although my own sense of personal consideration stopped me from saying that out loud. He didn’t need salt rubbed in the wound openly.
From the way my friend’s eyes flashed, the remark had hit home anyway. “Playing the role of parents in public doesn’t mean much, but he’s been good with her so far. She seems happy.”
I had to admit, if only in brooding silence, that he was right. I’d thought that seeing her happy would be the only thing I’d want, but as I watched her exchange small talk and the occasional grin with these people, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wished she wasn’t so relieved to be with them.
I wanted her to have sustainable happiness, but the Maliks—and their political lifestyle—didn’t seem like a life I’d ever have envisioned for her. Maybe it was the right fit for her and she’d just never had the chance to grow into it, but I had trouble believing that after seeing her in real action.
But I couldn’t pretend away the victorious bounce in her step after she knocked her ball into the hole. Or the way she leaned into her mother’s hand when the woman touched her hair as if confirming her daughter was really still there. Or her chuckle as she gave her brother a light punch to the shoulder and laughed harder at his playful complaints in response.
God, that laugh could have sent me into an early grave. The sight of her tipping back her head to the sun, delight shining in her pale face and dark eyes, tugged at my heart.
Had she ever laughed with the crew like that? I wasn’t sure I’d seen that much joy fill her face when she talked to us. Sometimes she looked mischievous or content. She’d smiled in amusement, but never unadulterated happiness like this.
Would she decide to stay with us when her birth family could give her something I doubted we ever could?
Damien came over and motioned to Dess like he was giving her advice on her swing. My jaw started to clench until I forced it to relax.
“Look at the way he hovers over her,” I couldn’t help saying to Talon. “He needs to give her some space.”
Talon didn’t comment, simply getting into position on the next mini green. I watched him line up his shot before I switched to studying the Maliks some more. “It also seems pretty careless to take his family out in public when his life is under threat. Do his bodyguards have any idea how to do their job? We’ve been behind him the entire time, keeping watch, and nobody has looked twice at us. Shouldn’t he be more concerned about protecting his family? Especially the daughter who he just got back.”
I narrowed my eyes at Damien. He didn’t even bother to position himself to block his family’s backs.
Talon raised his eyebrows at me. “Do you actually think he’s being sketchy or are you just bothered seeing Dess that happy with them?”
“Why would that bother me?” I shot back automatically, and then my gut twisted. It had been bothering me. I wasn’t going to lie to myself.
“The reporters are keeping their distance because Malik insisted that they give Dess some room without having cameras in her face,” Talon said into my silence, pointing to where I remembered seeing them outside the mini-golf place. “That shows that he cares at least a little bit about her healing from her kidnapping.”
“It’s the least he could do,” I muttered.
“He could have been milking the publicity.” Talon rubbed his jaw. “And this place isn’t that public. We walked through a metal detector to get in. The course has a pretty good wall around it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s easier to get into the country club grounds.”
“All right, all right.” I glowered at him, and he gazed evenly back at me. “I’m looking out for her here too,” I reminded him.
“And so am I,” Talon said. “But the more people who are doing it, the safer she’ll be. So far, he hasn’t appeared to be a threat to anything except how much time and attention she has left to give us.”
He took his swing. The damned ball soared across the green and thumped to the ground right next to the hole, which it promptly rolled into.
I should have brought Blaze. He wouldn’t have golfed me under the table.
But Talon had a point. I had to acknowledge that Malik could have taken the opportunity to advance his political capital and instead had focused on his family’s needs. Having a kidnapped child would go a long way to prop up his anti-criminal agenda, and not using the story to his advantage showed a level of commitment to Dess that I couldn’t deny.
I wondered if the reason I was so hesitant to trust Malik—the reason I struggled to trust Dess alone with him—wasn’t because of Malik at all. I’d witnessed powerful people making decisions that hurt everyone around them plenty of times, and I’d rarely stepped in unless I was getting paid to. The only difference was that Dess was involved, and the thought of something happening to her… Even imagining it for a second sent a jab of pain through the center of my chest.
I didn’t have a strategy or any sort of plan to fix this situation if it went sour.
I watched Dess bite her bottom lip as she looked between her ball and the hole. She was so gorgeous she literally took my breath away. She clutched the putter and took a shot that wasn’t half bad this time. With a grin I could tell wasn’t forced, she bobbed on her feet and glanced at her parents, soaking in their approving exclamations.
Normally I was in total control of my reactions. Why was I letting Dess’s association with her birth family get to me so much?
Because every time she stepped out of arm’s reach, some part of me screamed that I had to protect her. I’d always treated her as an equal within the crew… but she was more than that. I sure as hell didn’t have the same urges and impulses with the other men as I did with her. I wanted her—and I’d also have done anything to know she was safe and happy.
Shit. Was I falling for her?
I’d never cared this much about another woman—that much I knew. But as I watched her with her family, I wasn’t sure it mattered anyway. She’d eventually have to make a choice. Her father was a criminal hunter, and I was a criminal. Telling her how I felt would only make it harder if she decided to pursue a life with her family. I couldn’t do that to her.
I wouldn’t do that to her. I’d keep my mouth shut until she decided where she wanted to take her life from here.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I tore my eyes away from Dess as I pulled it out. A text from Blaze had popped up on the screen. I scanned it and then turned to Talon reluctantly.
“Blaze has found a concerning post online that he thinks we should see. It looks like Dess is safe enough here. We’d better check this out.”
We found Blaze in the hotel room with his gaze skimming back and forth between his laptop and his propped-up tablet. At the pace with which he flicked through the content on both, I wondered how he could read anything they said.
I closed the door firmly behind me, jarring him from his state of concentration. He swiveled in his seat and then pressed his hand against the spot in his side that still gave him a twinge of pain when he moved too quickly. “I wasn’t expecting you back this fast.”
“More like you lose all sense of time when you get in that state,” Garrison snarked, coming over as we gathered around Blaze at the table. “Are you going to spill the beans now?”
I nodded. “Yes, what did you find that was so important?”
Blaze dragged in a breath. “It could be nothing. But the details, and the way it’s written… Well, I’ll let you have a look first so you can draw your own conclusions.”
He spun toward the devices and clicked on his keyboard. Several windows fell away, leaving one that he maximized on the laptop’s screen.
“I have a constant search on the web with several keywords related to our work, and I added some for Dess once we knew her situation. This result popped up today. It’s from a DC newspaper.”
It was a column of missed connections postings, people searching for someone whose eye they’d caught on a busy bus or across a grocery store. One of the longer posts was highlighted. I leaned closer, squinting at the screen to read it.
Rachel – You got coffee and talked about your accident. You think you’ve finally come home. There’s so much more I need to tell you. Not all the answers are in our saliva. If you care about the truth and not just making a family, please get in touch.
Then there was a phone number.
A chill rippled down my spine. “Could it be someone jerking her around?” I demanded. “How many of those details—the coffee shop, the faked accident, her giving Malik her spit—have been reported in the media?”
Blaze exhaled in a rush. “Good. You don’t think it’s a coincidence either. The specifics are so on the nose—and most of it hasn’t been reported. Malik had a blood test done to confirm the result he got from the spit test before they went to the media, and the public stories have only talked about that. And he’s never given any details about their first meeting in the coffee shop.” The hacker paused, his leg jiggling with nervous energy under the table. “Whoever this is, they were watching Dess when she confronted him. Closely enough to hear at least a little of what she said too.”
“And he—or she—thinks they have some important ‘truth’ to tell her?” Garrison said, scowling. “Why the fuck should we trust this shady creep?”
I folded my arms over my chest. Resolve wound around my chest, stilling the shiver of anxiety inside it. “We shouldn’t. But we have to show this to Dess. It’s addressing her—it should be her call what she does about it.”
“It could be someone who knows something about her kidnapping,” Talon pointed out. “Creep or not, we’ll want that information.”
I wished we could charge in there and demand it ourselves, but as much as I wanted to protect Dess, lying to her wasn’t going to accomplish that in the long run. She deserved her freedom after having it denied for so long.
“I’m sure Dess will agree,” I said. “We’ll fill her in as soon as she gets back, and she’ll make the call about what we do next.”
