Page 12 of Too Lethal to Love

Beth nodded, half in thanks for the intervention, half in silent affirmation, as another tear slipped past her defenses. Kane unlaced her clenched hands and slipped his fingers into hers. His hold was as fierce as his unspoken support.

“Dios mio,”Nic said.

“My God,” Chris echoed.

She opened her eyes. Both men stared at her from across the table, their lips pursed in horrified, livid lines and their lethal bodies tensed to fight. Ryan sat between the two, his hands speared into his wavy blond hair. Something akin to the strength emanating from the VIPER boys flashed in his gaze. A half second later, he banged his fingers on the keyboard. “We’ll find him.”

Linc slid behind Ryan and clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Work fast so I can filet the fucker with my fishing knife.”

“Not if I get to him first with my shotgun,” Edgar said.

Kane’s leg vibrated against hers like a ticking time bomb. “Get in line.”

The hard-core support surrounded Beth like a fortress. Her tears retreated as she pressed her palms onto the table to ground herself. For the past two years, she’d lived on edge. Yes, the police had investigated, and Scarlett had done her deep-dive cyber thing, but outside of her federally protected lab, she’d been solely responsible for her safety. Now, the nation’s most dangerous assets stood in her kitchen, vowing not just to protect but to avenge.

Little did they know she was the most lethal person in the room.

She slipped her hand from Kane’s. Getting too close to the sexy-as-sin super soldier put him in danger.

Ryan glanced up from his laptop. “The surveillance feed from the shopping center is too grainy to get an ID. The bakery’s video feeds were a dead end, so I called the shop and spoke to the teenager who helped you. Turns out, she took a photo of the cake stealer with her phone because she thought he was ‘smoking hot.’ The image is only a profile and it’s blurry, but I ran it and got a potential match.”

Beth shot from her chair so fast she swayed. “You know who he is?”

“Potentially.” Edgar cleared his throat. “While you were enjoying the festivities, Ryan and I were busy looking into your background.”

Eggnog curdled in Beth’s belly.

Oh shit. He knows.

She swayed again. Kane grabbed her elbow as she readied herself for what would surely come out of Edgar’s mouth.

“Dr. Parker, I need you to tell us about the drug you are working on at the National Agency for Health.”

The hurricane in her belly settled into a thunderstorm. He didn’t know about her past, thank fuck. As she sank intoher chair, she sent up gratitude for keeping her ghosts where they belonged—dead and buried. “I can’t talk about my work. It’s classified.”

Ryan handed her a file with the VIPER logo stamped on the cover. Trepidation skittered up her spine as she opened it.

Edgar slid next to her. “Your director confirmed all this information. You’ve been cleared to tell us everything about this project. This is groundbreaking work, Dr. Parker.”

Pride fought for space in her emotional whirlwind. “Thank you, but what does my work have to do with what happened tonight? And how did you get these details so quickly?”

“Because”— he took the file from her and tucked it under his arm like he was packing away a weapon—“I’m Admiral Edgar.”

“Okay.” Who was she to question a man who could circumvent bureaucratic red tape? “For years, since I started at the agency as an undergrad, I’ve been working with a team developing a promising cancer drug. We discovered it has applications in other areas, not as a treatment, but as a…”

She glanced at Scarlett. Despite the night’s events, a grin spread across Beth’s face. Permission to share this news with her bestie and the VIPER team, to tout the groundbreaking work she’d been sworn to keep classified, trumped the squall in her belly. “We found the drug could cure opioid addiction.”

“Holy fucking shit.” Kane spun her chair to face him. “Are you working on Triple X?”

She blinked, not at the awe in his gaze, which did a weird thing to her heart, but his knowledge. “You know about it?”

“I can’t pronounce the wonder drug with the threeX’s in it, but we know intel agencies have been tracking the Mexican cartels’ interest in Triple X for months.”

“Drug cartels?” A bead of sweat dripped from herhairline down the back of her neck. “No. The cartels can’t find out about Triple X. If they get the formula…” Goose bumps pebbled on her skin and burned like toxic rain as she scanned the grim faces in the room. No, not just grim, but… concerned. “Wait, do the cartels know about my involvement with the drug?”

“It appears so.” Ryan spun his laptop to face her. “The man who stole your cake, as far as we can tell from the photo, is Enrique Chavez, son of the Diablo leader, Maria Chavez.”

Beth jerked as if she’d been stabbed with a cake fork. She knew about the notorious cartel and its ruthless leader.

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