Page 52 of Catch Me When I Fall

My mouth snapped shut, and my eyes found her photo once more, focusing on her smile, hating how forced it looked—how fake it looked. Everything about this version of her was fake, and I had no interest in it. I only wanted to know her, the real Carrie, underneath all that shame, pain, and torture. I wanted to find her sunshine.

My voice was thick as I gave Mags the truth. “I’d do anything to see her again,” I whispered.

It scared the shit out of me.

He chuckled. “I fucking knew it,” he said before hanging up.

I found Hayes in the weapons room, cleaning his pistol. I knocked on the door frame.

“Yeah?” he asked, not bothering to look at me.

“You coming with us to Denver?” I asked. Dominic and Ash were loading the truck while Jake backed up our files and shut all the electronics down. He raised his head, and I held back the curse on the tip of my tongue. He looked like shit.

“Yeah. I need to get out of this fucking city.”

“Right,” I muttered, unsure of what to say.

A thick silence drifted into the room as he leaned back against the gun lockers, his head tilted back, eyes on the metal ceiling. “Thought I was going to marry her,” he finally said, his voice strained.

Fuck.

“She didn’t deserve you,” I told him, meaning it. Cheaters were scum of the damn Earth. I’d only met Veronica once or twice, but she seemed like a nice woman.

Apparently not.

“Went on a hunt while you were gone, came back, and she was fucking her ex in our fucking bed,” he explained, his voice dark.

“You get a name?” I inquired, crossing my arms.

“Jake already hacked into his accounts.”

I nodded. “Anything?”

He looked at me, his green eyes hard. “Not anymore.”

Translation: the fucker’s accounts were drained.

I gave him a look. “Transferred to?”

“The women’s shelter downtown.”

I nodded. “Right. Look, I wanted to apologize for yesterday. I wasn’t in the right head space.”

“Neither was I.”

I stepped into the room, holding out my hand, the red ink of the snake bright under this light. “We solid?”

He pushed off the wall, taking my hand with a smirk. “Always, Gray.”

Two hours later, we were packed up and on the road.

Twelve hours after that, we stopped in Little Rock for the night, staying with one of Hayes’ old friends. They served together in the military and were currently stationed at the air base there. We ate, showered, slept, and got back on the road.

Twelve hours later, we were in Denver.

Once we were at the office, we parked the vehicles in the parking garage, unloaded, and took the elevator up to the thirtieth floor. The boys and I went our separate ways, appreciating that the cleaning staff managed to make sure the place didn’t go to shit while we were gone. Jake and Dominic went to the left, Hayes and Ash to the right, and I went straight, heading for the wall of glass in front of me.

The last time I was here was last year, on a hunt for a politician.

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