Page 81 of Perfect Pursuit

“That’s not why I’m calling.”

“Then what is?”

“Hudson Investigations’ name is everywhere.” I scan the screens in front of me. “If it wasn’t for the firewalls Leanne put in place after we ran our initial test, you’d be under a brute force attack by some people who want very sensitive information about your company.”

Then I hit pay dirt—or mud splattered in my face, depending on how you look at it—the night when “Filia” described a scene I’d only told Fallon about. How I wanted to bend her over and fuck her the night of her high school graduation.

How, after she described every last detail of Fallon’s new lingerie down to a T, the insidious thought exploded into something much worse.

Betrayal.

Without hesitation, I used Sam’s window into Devil’s Lair and entered their HR files long enough to confirm my suspicions. That’s when it took everything in me to not throw up the highball of amber liquid I’d just consumed. My heart, which I was so ready to lay at Fallon’s feet, shriveled up and died in my chest. Then again, despite what my brain was telling it, it was still beating. The damn organ refused to accept what my eyes were seeing—the employment of one Ms. Fallon Brookes. Reading her file, I almost passed out, realizing this had been going on for almost the entire time we’d been dating.

All I can keep asking myself is, when did I let myself get soft? Should I have known better? Resisting the honeypots was part of my indoctrination when I trained for the Agency. Now, a girl barely out of the school room managed to slip past my defenses like I was groomed to be hers.

What if I’d really let her into my life? What other kind of traps could she have laid?

Scrubbing my fingers through my hair, I growl again, “I don’t get it. Why would she be involved in something as heinous as this?”

Thorn reminds me, “You’re making some pretty huge assumptions, Ethan. Have you questioned her? Asked why? There are always reasons.”

“Don’t give me this innocent until proven guilty crap, Thorn.” That was my woman in there—the goddamn bitch. I want to wrap my fingers around her neck and squeeze until she gives me the answers I want.

“Which means your objectivity is shot,” Thorn fires back. “You’re basing your assumption Fallon is involved on the fact you have feelings for her. You have no evidence to prove it conclusively, do you?”

No, I have nothing to prove Fallon’s one of the people after Leanne Miles, but there are far too many coincidences. My sister. Them meeting at a club in New York City. Fallon working at Devil’s Lair. My voice is blistering when I fire back, “Fuck you, Thorn.”

“Let my people work on a plan before you do something stupid.” His voice is placating, which sparks my fury even further.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to operate on US soil, which is how I keep getting dragged into your shit.” I mimic his baritone and a famous Bruce Willis movie. “Come work for the Agency, you said. It will be fun, you said.”

“Get your shit in check,” Thorn orders me.

“You have a day. Then I’m going out there.”

“That’s a dumb fucking move.”

“Why?”

“Because Sam and Q?za are putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Something doesn’t add up.”

I frown at Thorn’s words. “You don’t believe the evidence. It seems pretty clear cut to me.”

“There’s something off. Q?za’s looking into Fallon Brookes specifically, Sam into Devil’s Lair’s employees.”

“Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. Who the hell cares?”

His fist hits the desk. “I do! This isn’t about you, Ethan. It’s about so much more than just your broken heart—if that’s even the case.”

“You have doubts.”

“I think there are explanations,” he mediates.

“And I think there are absolutes.”

“Which is part of why you left the Agency to begin with,” he counters. “This whole business is a shade of gray.”

I have to verbally restrain myself before I tell him where he can take his agency. But my hands fist on my desk and Thorn takes note of it. “You’re hands off, Ethan.”

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