Thomas a easton organi.., p.23
In A Fix: Torus Intercession Book Two, page 23
“Oh?”
He nodded.
“Could you tell me, then?”
He took a few steps toward me and then stopped and leaned again. “I think you like my house,” he said, his expression softening as he looked at me. He didn’t smile, but there was a warmth in his eyes and his stance was relaxed. “And I think when you came in, it hit you, like maybe you were home.”
“That’s very perceptive.”
He shrugged before he took several more steps and then stopped again, leaning once more, appearing totally at ease. “I think you’ve had a house before, like when you were younger, and now, in Chicago, you have an apartment, but a home…” he mused, “I don’t think you’ve had one of those yet.”
There was a flutter of panic in my chest, and I took a step backward.
“No,” he cautioned, moving again, getting closer but stopping, this time leaning on the right side of the hallway instead of the left. “Wait.”
I took a breath. “I’m sorry, you’re hungry. I’ll put this down and we can—”
“I don’t want you to put it down here,” he assured me, stepping into the laundry room, leaning against the small counter with the farmhouse sink. “I want you to carry it down the hall to our bedroom.”
The shudder ran through me. “To your bedroom.”
He shook his head. “No. To our bedroom. Because even though this is gonna be long distance, it’s still your bedroom too, because I’ve never had anyone else in it, I don’t plan to ever have anyone else in it, so that pretty much makes it yours as well.”
It felt different. Just being in the laundry room was comforting, but I wasn’t stupid, and I knew what it really was.
Crossing to the dryer, he leaned back against it, close enough that he could have reached out and touched me, but just stood there instead. “I fell asleep on you the first night.”
Why was I being reminded?
“And you like my house.”
I squinted at him.
“Has it occurred to you that I got as freaked out about being able to sleep as you are, right now, about liking my house?”
I met his gaze. “It isn’t the house.”
“No, I know. Just like for me, it wasn’t that I fell asleep.”
“Then what was it?” I asked the question I knew the answer to, but didn’t want to say.
He slid sideways and put his hand on the washing machine. “I fell asleep because sitting there beside you, on the couch that night, felt like coming home.”
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way; things didn’t work like this, at least not things that were built to last.
“Croy, you––”
“Dallas––”
“And just now, when you walked in the door, you had the same feeling of coming home that I had the other night.”
That made no sense.
“You’re fighting so hard.”
What was I supposed to say to him?
“This house, this place…it suddenly feels like a sanctuary, right?”
It really did.
“Do you know why?”
Of course I did.
“Croy?”
“It’s too fast,” I warned him instead of answering. “Regular people don’t do things this fast. You can’t just leap. You have to know everything is solid first.”
“Nah,” he said dismissively. “You just need a net. That’s me. I’m your net.”
I gestured at him. “You can’t even take care of yourself.”
“No?” He tipped his head, grinning at me. “Who has the house? Who’s saving for his retirement? Who’s ready to make a commitment and to fly back and forth across the United States because someone else is too scared to say fuck it, and just move in?”
“Move in?” I gasped.
He smirked at me, taking the last step into my space, hands on my hips, gentle but firm, before he kissed the side of my neck. “Yeah, Croy, I want you here. I want you with me. I wanna come home and see you on the couch, or meet you after work for dinner. I want you to be the person with your name on the deed next to mine.”
I closed my eyes, because while I’d had the same fantasies, life didn’t work this way. We needed to take things slow and be smart about everything.
“There’s nothing but a job keeping you in Chicago, and I know for certain that you can get one of those here, maybe even one doing something you’d like better. You’d make an amazing private detective, and this is Sin City, so there’d be no shortage of people needing you.”
Now he was embellishing my fantasies, fleshing them out, making insane flights of fancy seem possible.
“And maybe your boss at Torus could be convinced that you could keep working for him, just in this new capacity, and you could have a satellite office and still have his resources. You’d still be a fixer, but not one that leaves town, and one who always comes home before dark.”
I met his gaze. “It doesn’t work like this.”
“I say travel, you say…”
“What?”
He had an eyebrow arched, waiting.
“What’s happening right now?”
“I say travel,” he repeated, nodding, “and you say…”
“I don’t—DeLorean, I guess,” I told him. “Time travel is the kind of traveling I’d like to do best.”
His smile was huge. “You see? Your brain is whacked.”
“What?” I scowled at him.
“You are so logical, and so completely not, at the exact same time, and that’s because you never let your heart run,” he assured me, wrapping his arms around me and hugging me tight. “But now you can, because I’ll take good care of it. I’ll take good care of you too. You’ll see, you’re gonna fuckin’ love me.”
The problem was, I was fairly certain that I loved him already, and how in heaven’s name that had happened, I had no clue. What I could say for sure was that I’d never met anyone in my life who saw me as clearly as Dallas Bauer, and the idea of getting on a plane and not seeing him every day for the rest of my life seemed contrary to what was best for me. Because logically, if someone made you feel free and weightless and happy and content and like you could say anything at all to them, then leaving was completely counterintuitive.
He leaned back to look at me, and I caught his cheek in my hand and kissed him, first gently, then deeply, taking what I needed and that which he willingly gave. Every time. Every single time, he gave me what I needed most. Because I was neurotic, opinionated, combative, and far too logical when sometimes feeling was for the best. He could remind me to be human; I could make sure he stepped back from the abyss. It was a good trade-off.
He trembled when I eased back to look at him. His blown pupils, his parted lips as he caught his breath, and how tight he held me, arms wrapped around my neck, told me everything I needed to know about Dallas Bauer. He was already in this with me. Not terrified like I was, because his heart was stronger than mine. He’d used it more, the muscle more developed, but the fact that he would risk everything in the sanity-defying feat of choosing to take a chance on me, was still very brave and completely illogical.
“I know you,” he told me, his lips hovering close to mine. “I see you very clearly.”
And that I knew.
Fifteen
I woke up with a raging headache, sometime after three, and was in desperate need of painkillers, so I eased out of bed, careful not to wake Dallas. It was the shots of tequila we’d done at dinner. Ella, who had never been able to hold her liquor, had assured me that after being in Murray’s employ for almost two years, she could drink like a fish. It was impressive. Dallas went shot for shot with her, as Ryder and I watched. Lund was clearly smitten with my friend, watching everything she did, and she’d asked me how bad it would be if she did him in the guest room. Apparently she’d been celibate for the last two years, and the handsome agent with the dark brown wavy hair and deep, dark chocolate eyes was something she might want to take a bite out of. I told her to go for it, but I suspected they were both a bit too sloshed.
I walked out of the bedroom and looked down the hall toward Ella’s room, and noticed that the nightlight that was normally plugged into the wall had been switched off. Perhaps it had shined in under Ella’s door and bothered her. For some people, trying to sleep with any light at all was no good. When I looked left, toward the garage, I noticed that the light on the alarm panel was green. It should have been red. The fact that it was green, when I knew for certain Dallas had set it before we all started drinking, and I knew for certain that I was the first and only one up, sent a chill through my body.
I was going to turn and rush back to the bedroom, but the light over the stove came on, and I saw Digby Ingram standing there holding a gun. It was leveled at me, and yes, I could have dived sideways and avoided getting hit, but I was afraid what that would mean for Dallas if he came running out of the bedroom, or Ella, or Ryder, who I was guessing was with her.
Walking into the living room, he gestured me closer, and I went to the counter where the barstools were, where I’d served brunch to Dallas and his mom and sister just two days before.
“Why are you up?” Ryder asked from behind me, sounding pained.
Shit. I hadn’t even bothered to check if he was on the couch, assuming he’d slept with Ella, but I turned at the sound of his voice and found him sitting there, holding his Glock in his lap in one hand, the other fisted in his short hair. He looked terrible, like he was going to throw up, ashen and sweaty.
“I have a headache,” I answered flatly. “What’s with the alarm being off?”
His face scrunched up. “I have to…”
I nodded. “You have to what?”
“I don’t want Dallas to get hurt.”
“People are coming here to kill me and her, right?” I said, not wanting to say Ella’s name in case Ryder hadn’t shared her real one with Digby.
“No,” Digby said snidely, and I gave him my attention. “Just you, Croy, nobody else. Murray is going to drive up, I’m going to shoot Ryder in the shoulder, and then I’ll walk you out to his car.”
“Why?”
Ryder got up and moved to the opposite end of the counter from me, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his left hand. “Because Murray wants to hurt Lucia, and killing you—after I saw how she was with you, how much she cares about you—will be worse punishment than killing her. Plus, she gets the bonus torture of knowing that if she hadn’t put you in Murray’s sights, by betraying him to begin with, you’d still be alive.”
That made sense. I couldn’t fault him.
“And plus, I fuckin’ hate you,” Digby snarled at me, moving forward to press the muzzle of the gun to my temple. “You turned my friends against me, you piece of shit!”
He had done that to himself, but since he had a gun in his hand, it was not the time or place to point that out.
“Shut up,” Ryder whispered roughly, pointing his gun at Digby. “If you wake up Dallas, I swear to God, I’ll fuckin’ shoot you myself.”
“We should just kill all three of them,” Digby told him, moving the gun off me and letting his hand fall to his side. “It would be so much easier. Bam-bam-bam, and walk out of here free and clear.”
“For fuck’s sake, think, Ingram. You’re a lowlife, blue blood, nickel-and-dime drug dealer. You kill a federal agent and you go straight to the top of the Bureau’s most-wanted list, overnight. They’ll be gunning for you for the rest of your life, and when they catch you, which they will, you get the needle, no questions asked.”
Digby sneered at him. “I’m going to Mexico, man. I get in that car with Murray, I’m never coming back.”
Digby Ingram was low on the food chain in Murray’s organization, but he knew enough to have put this whole thing in motion to begin with, from the moment he turned up on Wednesday night, to now.
“You told Suárez about Lane,” I said, staring at Digby. “You knew she was there, you told him she was visiting friends, and he picked her up.”
He shrugged, smiling at me.
“And you knew Murray would be pissed when he found out.”
“It only made sense. Why would a cartel want the kind of heat a kidnapping would draw?” he scoffed, leaning on the counter, on the kitchen side, as I walked around the end and stepped into the room with him. The tile was cold under my bare feet, and I gave an involuntary shiver. “But Suárez wanted the stupid foreign trade zone for the Mexican artifacts he was going to start smuggling out of the country, and of course, he thought he needed the new supply route. Little did he know that Murray could already move all the product he needed to just by making sure no one looked his way.”
Of course. Murray was a special agent with the FBI. He was decorated, and he was invaluable in the war on drugs in Mexico. If he said not to check that truck or that plane, why would anyone question him?
“Murray’s blown now; he’s as good as dead,” I told Digby. “He’s poison. His men must have already turned on him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Digby assured me, “he has money and resources, but most importantly, he has the product. He can start over, and I can help.”
Digby Ingram had no idea what was really going on. As soon as I got into the car with Andrew Murray, I was dead, yes, but so was he. Murray was going forward with a clean slate, and that included putting a bullet in Digby.
“I’m gonna enjoy watching Murray kill you,” Digby told me, and I could hear the venom in his tone. “You burned my life to the ground when you outed me to Brig, so believe me when I tell you I’m gonna enjoy being the last thing you ever see before you take a bullet to the brain.”
I could say the same for him.
“Murray was thrilled when I told him what Ryder said, that she treated you like you were the fuckin’ second coming. He’s practically salivating to have you star in your own little snuff film so he can send it to her.”
Murray would kill me to hurt Lucia Diaz because, as far as he knew, I was the only person “Lucia” had in her life that she cared for. He didn’t know about Ella’s big, warm, loving family, and so would strike at me to hurt her. It was a good plan, logical even, except for the part with Ryder.
I turned to look at the man I’d thought would be in my life because he was important to Dallas. It was sad to be wrong.
“I can’t wrap my brain around your part,” I said to him. “Why?”
His eyes met mine. “It’s an old story. I got hurt a few years ago, and when my doctor weaned me off the oxy, I wasn’t ready.”
“You never stopped taking it?”
“No.”
“The Bureau doesn’t drug test you?”
“They do, but”—he shrugged—“you know. Drug tests can be faked.”
I nodded. “And you and Digby?”
He cleared his throat. “The other night when he was brought to the office, we checked his pockets and he had pills on him, and I’ve had trouble getting free to see my dealer lately, so…”
“You paid Digby.”
He shook his head. “He said no need, said I’d owe him one, and then I saw him again and there were more.”
It was very smart in a sleazy, slimy way.
“This is—I’m sorry, Croy.”
“You knew the alarm code, so you turned it off.”
“Yeah. I turned off the chime too,” he informed me, “so it wouldn’t wake anyone up when Ingram came in.”
“There’s patrol cops driving by the house,” I reminded him. “There are four other agents outside in—”
“No,” he told me. “There’s nobody out there. I told Vegas PD there was a change of plans and that we didn’t need them to do visual check-ins.”
“How are there no agents? Higa gave explicit instructions—”
“Think about it, Esca. I control comms. It’s not quantum mechanics.”
“So you called everybody and what, told them guard duty was cancelled because the witness left early? Because Higa decided Dallas’s house was secure enough with just you and him on-site?”
“Something like that.”
“So no agents and no Vegas PD providing backup, no drive-bys.”
He nodded.
“That’s very clever,” I told him while at the same time knowing there was no way in hell it was going down like he thought. In his drug-induced euphoria, he’d counted himself too important and far too clever. Not to mention the fact that I’d met Reina Montez, listened to her ask questions, seen her record conversations on her phone while taking notes on a tablet. She would check, double- and triple-check. She was not about to let Ella Guzman get hurt on her watch. My bet was that this was all going to go sideways for Digby and Ryder any second.
My concern now wasn’t for myself, that there was a good chance I was going to end up dead, but that the gunshot, when Digby shot Ryder, would startle the hell out of Dallas and he’d come rushing in from the bedroom without assessing the situation first—the way he’d been taught—and Digby would kill him. Ingram hated me enough to shoot Dallas just to watch me suffer. And even if Ryder tried to protect Dallas, and shot Digby, he could still get caught in the crossfire.
I couldn’t have that.
And there was also Ella to consider. She could get up at any time and become a target. Murray wanted to kill me to hurt her, but if he saw her, and had a clean shot at her, that might change on a dime.
I couldn’t have that either.
It was a mess, and I had no idea how to keep the guy I loved, and my best friend, safe in the middle of—
Jesus. Worst timed epiphany ever.
Somehow or other, Dallas Bauer got in under the tripwire around my heart and made himself at home alongside Ella, who had apparently been there all along, just waiting for company.
Digby’s phone chirped, and he checked the display.
“He’s here,” he said, smirking at me. “Sorry you can’t say goodbye to Dallas.”
I wasn’t worried about that. My entire focus was on disarming the two men in the house with us. Andrew Murray, outside in a car, was not my most immediate concern.
Lunging for the stove, I grabbed a heavy professional-grade pan hanging from the pot rack above and turned and caught Digby in the side of the head, hard enough that he dropped like the proverbial ton of bricks. Whirling around, I heard a shot at the same time I flung the pan at Ryder.
