Page 56 of Perfect Pursuit

“For what? A week?” she retorts.

Sam mutters, “Here we go.”

“Am I going to need some popcorn?” I ask the older man.

“Possibly.”

I’m stunned when Q?za and Thorn bicker back and forth like siblings. Remaining mute, I pick up keywords like singing, tabloid, and shot. Then Q?za brings me directly into the conversation. “I do owe you an apology, Agent Kensington.”

“For what? And while we’re speaking of it, I’m not an agent any longer.”

Q?za singsongs, “That’s not what your file says.”

Thorn’s cheeks flush when I glare at him. She snickers. “I, myself, tried to tell Thorn that years ago. Look where we are at right now. Together.”

I growl, refusing to cede anything. “What’s the apology for?”

She hits a button and the blur of her features disappears. I find myself face to face with a familiar one—a pain-in-the-ass business partner I bitched about to Sam what feels like yesterday. My mouth manages to push out her name. “Leanne?”

“Surprised?” Leanne Miles wiggles her fingers at me.

“That’s a bit of an understatement.” My head spinning, I ask one question, “How?”

Before I can formulate a reply, she sweeps my feet out from under me. “Sorry I left such a mess for you in Silverthorn. I couldn’t keep my cover and stay.” Her eyes flood with tears. “There were reasons I had to leave quickly.”

The “mess” being after she was attacked during her identical twin’s funeral—the famous musician Erzulie. It was a funeral the world thought was hers—famed CEO Leanne Miles, owner of the US government contractor, Castor. It shook the market for weeks until a successor was named and even then, until Leanne came out of hiding and took back her company, Castor felt the impact of the repeated attempts on her life.

Thorn butts in. “Now that we all know who each other is, can we get down to business?”

Leanne’s dramatic sigh is amusing. “Still working on those people skills, I see?” She shifts in her chair and I notice her body is ripe with pregnancy.

It immediately makes me wonder what it would be like if Fallon fell pregnant with my child. My dick becomes iron hard in an instant at the idea of her body swollen with our combined seed, her nurturing our son or daughter against her luscious breasts.

While I’m dreaming of a future, I need to be focused on the present. Leanne’s switched from picking on Thorn to the reason the four of us are on a secure compartmentalized call being bounced off a satellite. “Here’s the problem.” She explains that when she was in hiding from the death threat against her own life, she’d been hunting day in and day out. For five months, she did nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe, the threat against her while trying to protect her now husband.

The irony of her placing herself in harm’s way to protect her husband when he’s a trained bodyguard isn’t lost on me and I don’t hesitate to say as much. She offers me a wry smile. “He had several things to say on the subject when I took a bullet for setting off the failsafe inside of Dioscuri.” Leanne names software her company built specifically for the Agency that’s host to some of the highest classified information in the world.

A snort escapes my lips, causing hers to curve upward. “I just bet he did.” I suspect her “recovery” from that stunt was closely monitored by her then boyfriend—who happens to head my brother-in-law’s personal protection detail.

Small world.

The humor leaves Leanne’s face as she caresses her stomach. Her thoughts are more musings. “Do you know how Kane and I got together, Ethan?”

“Other than you impersonating your sister to draw out her killer?” That part was widely reported in every media outlet across the globe.

“Hmm. That’s the public version.” Across my screen comes a request to join a chat in a part of the dark web that won’t leave a trace of our conversation when it’s over. Leanne winks at me. “Meet you there.”

Then she’s gone. Sam and Thorn follow. I click the link and find I’m the last to join. As soon as I do, I find the background behind Leanne has shifted. No more smoke and mirrors, she’s clearly framed behind her desk at the New York City branch of her multi-billion dollar company, Castor. Musing, she shares, “I’ve never been satisfied Linus Messina was solely behind the attack against me.”

A pin could drop before Thorn thunders, “And you didn’t think to share that with me before now?”

She shrugs, fearless in the face of his temper. “All I had were suspicions, Thorn. I’ve been monitoring them…”

“Not through Dioscuri or I’d have known,” he cuts in.

“No. Through another piece of software I’ve been tinkling with.”

It doesn’t take a genius to observe Thorn alternately wants to throttle her for not keeping him in the loop while at the same time bombard her with questions about the new software she’s building. But it’s her words that shake us all because of their truth. “Your predecessor never would have accepted either of us back if someone still wanted me dead.”

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