Page 12 of Don't Let Go

I resisted the urge to shake my head in answer. At the moment, it would probably leave me nauseated and I’d had enough of that.

When Locke didn’t withdraw, I focused on him. He seemed to be waiting on me to acknowledge the statement. Fair enough. “No, I don’t remember.”

“Okay,” he said, giving me a small smile. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“It sucks.” I wasn’t sure whether it was my words or my tone that made McQuade chuckle. At my glance, he just shrugged and folded his arms. Like Remy before him, he seemed to be adopting a more defensive posture.

To be honest, that was weirder coming from Crazy McQuade than it was from Remy. The latter had always been more guarded and infinitely patient. The former? Well, I doubted if McQuade had ever met a risk he wasn’t ready to take.

“Agreed,” Locke said, recapturing my attention. “So since we can’t just decrypt your memories at the moment or load up what is missing, let’s tackle what we can do.”

“What can we do?” Remy asked, a sudden sharpness in his tone. “We want her to rest and continue to heal.”

“No kidding,” Locke said, giving Remy a dirty look over his shoulder. “Pretty sure we’re all on the same page, Lord Obvious.”

Lord Obvious?

I had to bite the inside of my lip. Talk about giving a promotion to a captain. A little bubble of laughter escaped before I could contain it. “Yes, what can we do?”

That snared all three of them once more. Three weighty gazes pressed in on me. The air seemed too warm and the room too small. These guys all possessed such large personalities.

One corner of his mouth ticking higher, McQuade made no effort to suppress his smile. The light squeeze to my knee from Locke pulled my gaze back to him.

“Tell us what you need from us to prove you can trust us.” Locke raised his brows, the offer as much a dare as it was a request. “While we can make it work without the trust, I think we’ll all feel better about it if you know you can believe what we say.”

Remy blew out a harsh exhale. “Bloody thief has a point.”

“Thank you,” Locke commented with a smirk, but he didn’t take his gaze off of me. “Talk to us?”

Another burst of laughter tinged with hysteria escaped. I pressed a finger against my lips in an effort to stifle the inappropriate humor. It really was very warm, and I couldn’t seem to lock my gaze down on any one of them.

“I don’t even know where to start.” That admission cost.

“Go operational,” McQuade suggested. “You had to vet us when we became clients. I know it was more than a deep background. In theory, you saw something worth investing in with each of us.”

“Huh.” He had a point. I tapped a finger against my lips. It was as much a reminder to give the idea a chance as it was to think it through. “I did… Yes, I was probably a little more thorough with the deep background than I used to be. But I needed to make sure that not only were you who you said you were, but that you had no ties to my former employers.”

“So, we all passed?” Remy confirmed, his cool eyes rock steady on me. “No hiccups?”

I opened my mouth to respond then closed it as I considered the question. Finally, I nodded. “Everything I can recall says you passed my first vetting, then the second where I watched you for a few days.”

“Watching us?” Locke asked, both brows up as he leaned slightly away from me and studied me. “Were you playing the spy, Fallon?”

I didn’t quite flinch when he used my name. It had been so long since I’d been around anyone who even knew what my name was, much less used it to speak to me.

It was odd.

“Yes,” I said, not bothering to sugar coat it. “You’re all very dangerous people. I’d have been a fool to be the one who would open doors and clean up behind you without knowing more about you.”

“Smart,” McQuade said, approval radiating through that word. “Though it begs the question, how did you manage to ‘spy’ on us before we finalized the contracts?”

With a wince, I lifted my shoulders. “I sent you a deconstructed worm over the course of three emails that only activated when I sent the last one asking for a few days.”

The simple fact was, I wouldn’t take on every single person who tried to hire me. In fact, I answered only about five percent of the requests in those first weeks. Of that five percent, it was less than point zero zero four that earned a place on my roster.

“You infected our computers,” Locke said, the half-twist of his smile betraying his amusement despite the attempt at a stern tone.

Licking my lips, I nodded. “All of your devices. Pretty much anything that shared data. Most people link their email on multiple devices, so it gave me a good snapshot.”

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