Page 52 of Never Say Yes To A Stranger

I beg the woman on the other end of the line toplease,pleasehurry.Please. Before it’s too late.

Chapter fifteen

Beau

The police came. And then an ambulance. The whole farmyard was pretty much swarming with vehicles, all flashing their lights, piercing the dark. They could probably be seen for miles over the flat, endless farmyards.

Aiden was taken away. In addition to the evidence we’ve already collected against him, he will now very likely be tried for anything and everything, all the way up to attempted murder.

Also, in addition to the damage the roof wrought on my face and body, I now have a line of thirty-eight stitches along my left thigh, where the bullet grazed me. It wasn’t just luck that the bullet buried itself in the floorboards. I twisted the gun straight down. I had to make sure that, above all, it didn’t go off in Ignacia’s direction. If it had to hit someone, I wanted to take the bullet. It wasn’t just my training kicking in. I wanted her to live. I wanted her to be happy and free. Not because she’s a client or a job or a contract.

But because I care about her.

I failed her, even letting Aiden get into the house. I still don’t know how I didn’t hear him coming. I let myself get too exhausted, too beat up, too tired. I didn’t let my guard down, but he slipped past what should have been flawless defenses. The first warning I had that he was in the house was the instant the gun jammed up against my temple. It never should have been allowed to happen.

I failed Ignacia. I failed Sam. I failed every version of her.

Now, I’m sitting across the table from her in the kitchen in the early morning, two cold, untouched mugs of chai in front of us. Even after being questioned by the police for hours, after witnessing everything she did, and after attempting to clean up thebloodon the floorboards inherbedroom, she’s holding it together remarkably well.

She’s dressed in one of her dresses, and she has her hair swept into a messy bun. She looks sunny and clear-eyed, as though nothing bad has ever happened in her life.

But the shadows in her eyes say otherwise. I needed to sit her down, so I asked her to sit. We’ve been perched this way, facing each other silently for what feels like hours. Forever. An eternity. All the time I’m never going to get to spend with her after I tell her how badly I’ve messed things up. How badly I’ve failed her all around. How badly I’ve lied to her.

I need to just do it already, but I know this is the end, and it’s so much harder than I ever thought it would be.

I dig my hands into my eye sockets as regret surges through me. I haven’t hit bottom yet, and I don’t know when it’ll come for me. Maybe I’ll just keep plummeting and falling forever. Time is something everyone wants more of. It’s the most valuable, unreachable commodity in the world, and mine is up.

“The FTC has been investigating you for two years now,” I tell her.

“I’m sorry, what the…what? The FTC? Oh my god. Oh my god. How do you—you know that because your team…the people who fixed all this. They found out. Right? Beau?Right?”

I barely trust myself to hold it together, but hold it together, I must. “Nearly since the start and since you went cold. It was the strangest case. They had enough complaints to spark real interest and start an investigation.”

“Oh my god,” she whispers again. Her face isn’t just pale now. It’s bloodless. Lifeless. “If the FTC was involved, then the FBI—”

“No. They hadn’t elevated it to that yet. They knew where you were the whole time.”

“They know who I am now?”

“Yes. You had a career on the rise. You were an up-and-coming designer, and you were scamming people out of what amounted to quite a large sum at the same time, all while getting huge breaks and making good money. It didn’t make much sense. But it was your disappearance out of nowhere that truly sparked interest.”

Her lips wobble, and I want so badly to take her face in my hands. But I can’t. It isn’t right. Not until I confess what I’ve done. I was picked for this job—approached by a friend who works for the Federal Trade Commission. I might be a bodyguard, but they thought I’d be perfect for an insider job. I had the training and the skills. I also had the kind of life that could give me an in. They needed a particular person, and they couldn’t just ask any rich guy out there. Not when I had to practically be a cop myself to make it work.

They also picked me because they knew I wouldn’t fuck it up. I wouldn’t let my judgment be clouded by emotions I didn’t have. Everyone knows I barely have a heart, and my soul is questionable at best. I may or may not be cursed, and emotions? Yeah, not happening.

Except they did.

They are.

They’re going to keep happening long after this is done, and I’m nothing but a bad memory for this woman. She’s had enough trauma in her life, and I have zero right to ask her to forgive me.

“Beau?” Her lip trembles again, and her eyes fill up with moisture. Goddamn it, I can’t just stand here. I’m not as tough as I thought I was. If I was heartless before, then I’ve grown something now. A conscience, maybe.

I have to bracket her face with my hands. Those honest, lovely, huge blue eyes search mine. “You know all this because the guy on your team…”

One deep breath. One second before I confess and ruin what she thinks of me forever. One last breath in and out before I ruin this so irrevocably that she never wants to see me again, and I become a curse for real. Her curse.

I know.

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