Page 64 of Rescued By the Mountain Man

“Who is coming after you, Zoe?” I asked calmly. “Who would kill an FBI agent as a warning?”

“It’s not just one,” she said emptily. “They killed my editor too.”

“Editor—” I paused, “Were you a journalist?”

“Investigative journalist,” she replied. “That night I got sick in the bar was because my editor had been killed,” she swallowed, staring at her knees. “In her house?—”

“Execution style,” I said, my brows lowered. “I remember hearing it. Didn’t think much of it, though.”

“She’d warned me to let it go, but I didn’t,” Zoe admitted, her gaze now turned to the window. “And what did she get from my stubbornness? She’s dead, and so is this guy, and who knows how many others are going to die because I was stupid and proud and naïve.”

She began to speak and told me about stumbling into this case while writing up a fluff piece about clinics in New York doing good jobs for the people. “When I went to interview one of the women who managed to get fibroid surgery because of the clinic—I found she didn’t exist. That started the snowball.

“I dug too deep, and when my editor flatly refused to run the story, I did what I thought best and went to the FBI…they took it on. They found out it probably had ties to one of the mob families in the tri-state area or even the crooked governor. And then, someone broke into my house and strangled me.”

“You tried to do the right thing, and sometimes it backfires, but the good thing is you tried to do right, something many other people would have ignored,” I told her. “What do you plan on doing now?”

“Warrick…” she looked away, fingers tight on her lap. “Maybe it’s best if I leave. I don’t want to be a threat to your family.”

I stared at her, dumbfounded that she thought that. “Zoe, I just met with the vet. She told me that the bull Santos was riding was drugged with enough stuff to kill him, and we had to do it for them. Whoever is after you is after my people, too, and believe me, I don’t let this shit go easily.”

“Which is precisely why I should leave,” she said.

I scowled, “And do what? Keep running from pillar to post? What happens when you have nowhere else to run to, Zoe? What then? They’ll keep coming after you, and chances are, one day, you won’t be able to outrun, outthink, outmaneuver, or overcome them.”

I reached out and slid my fingers into her hair. “You’re not going anywhere. Do you hear? Don’t fucking say that.”

“I…okay,” she gasped. “I don’t really understand what…”

I put my forehead against hers, wishing I knew how to say everything without fucking up what we had in progress. “We’ll figure it out, Zoe. We’ll find a way out of this.”

She swallowed and nodded to the box with the ear. “What are we going to do about that?”

I looked at it. “Take a picture of it and send it to whoever is your handler. Then, ask them to dig into Jake O’Hara. I want to know what his financials look like.”

“Why?”

“Remember when I said that the Draytons have their sticky fingers into every town from New York to California?” I said. “I learned today he owes the Draytons money, and since they were in New York when he got the loan, I am wondering who else he might owe money to. He might be in bed with these people who want to kill you.”

Zoe shook her head. “Warrick, that is a very big leap. It sounds insane.”

“Insane is what we have to go on now,” I replied. “I know it’s a long shot, but nothing is too little to try. So, text your handler about the ear and ask them to look into their people too. We don’t know where the leak is coming from.”

I held the box while she took out her phone, took the picture, and sent it in with the message I told her to write.

Ten seconds later, a text came back in, A team is coming to you by tomorrow night. We’ll look into the men too.

Dropping the phone, she leaned onto me and pressed her face onto my shoulder. “I just want this to be over, Warrick.”

“Give it time, baby.” I held her. “It will.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Zoe

The smell of fresh grass and pine filled the night air as we headed down a barely there, narrow footpath. Warrick had taken me beyond some pasture—west, I believe—and now he was leading me down somewhere he promised would take my mind off all the shit happening around me.

Small boulders and scraggly bushes dotted the land, and even an elmwood tree or two swayed in the wind. After we rounded a corner, I stopped short and gasped at the waterfall, its water dazzling in the moonlight and dropping freely over a sheer rock lip to feed into a deep pool.

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