Page 22 of How Much For a Life of Lies?

I was over it. Mostly. I’d had dark moments during the op when all I wanted to do was haul him out of there, but that wasn’t my role. I was his handler, and I’d had to live with it. Even if seeing Kerry’s hands on him, or watching him with her, made my chest tight.

“Is she okay?”

We’d left Kerry in the clutches of the intricate WitSec arrangement—the Witness Security Program—a labyrinthine web designed to conceal and protect those who dared to testify.

Last I knew, she’d been set up with a job as a bank clerk in a quaint little town nestled among the rolling hills of New Hampshire.

“She’s…” he started, but stopped, and this wasn’t like Zach—he was cool and calm to my chaos and this was wrong.

“Who do I need to kill?” I asked, one hundred percent behind anything Zach needed me to do. We might snipe and snap, but after everything we’d shared, I didn’t want the pain of breaking in someone new.

Or that is what I told myself, anyway.

He’s my partner.

With a shake of his head, he spat at the ground, and leaned back on the car, dragging out a bottle of water from the six he’d bought last night. He swished out his mouth, spitting the water into the grass, then drank the rest of it, and piece by piece, he was pulling himself together.

“Matteo is loose.”

“What?”

“The CIA suggest that with his links to Italy, Matteo is worth more if he’s turned.”

Turned? Against who? We’d taken everyone out.

“And you think he’s going to go after Kerry?”

“I don’t know. But it’s not that…”

I didn’t have to be an expert to see that during Zach’s undercover stint as Kerry’s new lover, he’d grown attached to her. No person can truly sell a cover unless they open their heart a little, and I got the feeling that Zach had opened his way too much and found empathy for the woman who’d been stuck on the wrong path. His tight-ass SEAL control had crumbled, and he’d become sensitive. Hell, we’d only left Matteo alive because Kerry begged him.

Yeah, and see how that turned out if Matteo was back on the streets.

“How about we take a drive over to small town NH and find her?” I asked.

He threw me a glance. “I’m going alone,” he murmured.

I swung the keys under his nose, then headed for the driver’s side.

“Fuck that. I love a good off-book takedown.”

Zach stared at me, his sparkling green eyes full of something that looked a lot like he was going to spout some meaningful shit. “Kai?—”

“Ride or die, Zach. Or is that ride and die? Who the fuck knows? Get in! We have assholes to kill and damsels to save.”

He closed the door, but stopped me with a hand to my arm.

“It’s worse,” he said and was so damn pale—in shock, I think, his lips in a thin line.

“Worse how?”

He gripped my arm for a moment. “Kerry’s pregnant.”

I blinked at him. Pregnant? I counted back. Hell, it had been eight months.

Which meant either Zach or the mobster asshole Matteo was daddy to Kerry’s baby.

Well, shit.

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