Page 74 of When He Protects

“Don’t you want to see what you stole, Esme?”

Her big goal. Getting that drive. But now she wasn’t moving toward it.

“What did you intend to do with the contents of this drive?” Tyler asked.

She pushed off the desk. For a minute, her knees wobbled. Odd. They’d never done that before. Not even when she walked across a slippery ledge as light rain dusted down on her at Jorlan’s party. Esme pulled in a breath,made sure her mask was in place, then she turned for Tyler. “I intended to get my vengeance, of course.”

A furrow appeared between his brows.

“Isn’t that the end game for all villains? To get vengeance? Wreak destruction? Those two items were at the top of my wicked to-do list.”

“Esme, why in the hell can’t you be honest with me?”

I have been. You just don’t know it.“You’re not honest with me. You steal things from me in the middle of the night. The sex is great, but everything else between us is just pretend.” Utter honesty from her.

She saw the hit in his eyes.

“Don’t watch,” she implored him again.

But his fingers were tapping across the keyboard. So much for her pleas. There was nothing else she could do. Esme’s steps were even slower than his had been. She moved to stand right behind him. One of her hands went to his shoulder. An instinctive movement.

“Three video files,” Tyler said.

That was one more file than her intel had indicated. She’d just thought two would be on the drive.

He opened the first file. A grainy image filled the screen. She sucked in a breath when she saw the old café in Paris. She’d gone there so often. It had been their meeting place. And, sure enough, there he was.

Louis Turner. Of course, that probably hadn’t been his real name. He’d been a CIA operative. She’d known that he was working undercover. Known that he was workingher. Only fair, really, since her job had been to report back on him. To talk about the questions he asked her. To share any suspicions he might have.

Louis sat at a table with another man. Casually dressed,with silver at his temples, the man wore a pair of wire-framed glasses.

“That’s Thaddeus Caldwell,” Tyler muttered. “He’s Gray’s boss at the FBI. But he doesn’t wear glasses these days, and he’s got more silver in his hair.”

Her spine stiffened. Her hand remained on Tyler’s shoulder.

“Who the hell is he talking to?” He’d paused the footage to study the screen.

“It looks different, doesn’t it?” Esme mused. “When the walls are still up and the ceiling hasn’t collapsed and there isn’t ash and fire and hell everywhere, the café seems different? Such a beautiful place, once upon a time. I loved going there. I was the one who told him about it.”

Tyler tensed beneath her touch. His head swung so he could look back at her.

But she kept peering at the image. It wasn’t every day that a dead man stared back at you.

“I mentioned him to you before. He was the someone who I said could have caused a great deal of trouble in the international world.”

“Because he had proof of a weapons and drug trade. Proof that he wanted in the right hands.”

The proof had never made it to those hands.

“I knew him as Louis Turner.” Her voice softened as she spoke his name.

“Fuck. Were you in love with him?”

Had she been? “He was using me. I was using him.”

“That’s not a yes or no answer.”

“Sometimes there isn’t a yes or no answer.” Things could be more complicated. “You need more shades of gray in your world.”

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