Page 78 of Whatever It Takes

I’m thorough.

They won’t find anything to link Briar to Jameson electronically. Well, not outside of the texts, but I’ve already cut off her old number, and we ditched her phone on the way here. They can search for the mystery woman from his texts all they’d like. They’ll never connect the messages to Briar.

The longest and most arduous part of the process was scrubbing the security feeds at his apartment for the two months she lived with him. I end up accessing and looping the November and December feeds from two years ago. Otherwise, it would have taken weeks to digitally delete her coming and going twice a day, and we just don’t have that kind of time.

The biggest win we had came when I realized Jameson never said a word about Briar to his parents. They’re the one set of witnesses that I knew Easton wouldn’t be able to buy off.

Sighing, I shut down my laptop. There really isn’t anything I can do to rush the process. We’re stuck waiting on the mail service and that woman to have her baby.

We lose most of the afternoon snuggled in the nest, which spills into another intense wave of heat.

This is why doctors are supposed to be careful how and why they prescribe suppressants.Briar goes from fine to foggy and begging with almost no notice. If she wasn’t safe here with us, there’s no telling what could have happened to her.

Briar lies glued to my chest as she snores against my skin. My knot is locked inside her, but I’m simply enjoying the closeness and being able to study her without seeming creepy.

She wore the old man out. Keir sleeps on the other side of the bed with his arm thrown over his face.

Easton was with us, but he got a call five minutes ago and abandoned the makeshift nest.

It’s what woke me.

I’m kinda surprised my knot is still locked inside Briar, but as I watch her face, she grinds over me in her sleep. It’s precious. Her system knows what she needs, even if she’s not conscious enough to ask for it. Which, again, makes me obsess about how grateful I am that she’s in a safe place.

Easton unzips the nest tent and climbs back in. There’s just enough room for him on the edge.

“Everything okay?” I ask, keeping my voice low to avoid waking Briar and Keir.

“Yeah, Sky is staying with us. They headed to the hospital. It looks like Chelsea is in labor.” He shrugs and rolls over until he’s facing me and Briar. He runs his hand over the back of her head and snuggles closer. “The fence here won’t keep Sky in, so we’ll have to make a rotation for taking her out.”

I nod.

I’m an animal person. I’m totally down for walks and playing fetch.

On Monday, the package that we’ve been waiting for arrives. It’s a massive trunk packed in a shipping box, and I’m tasked with checking out its contents.

It feels highly invasive, and I hate every second of it. Finding the flash drives isn’t difficult, but there’s an encryption key somewhere. It could be coded into one of his handwritten letters, or it’s possible he didn’t include it all, because he wanted Chelsea to hand it off to the FBI. They would have had the same software that I do or a similar version.

My laptop communicates with my desktop computer back in Vermont. It gets to work on cracking the encryption the hard way as I stare at the letters.

I’m going to have to actually read them.

Easton will have my ass if I don’t and I miss something big because of it. I briefly scanned them for anything obvious, like letters, numbers, or symbols in a different size or underlined. Nothing caught my eye, but I steel my resolve to actually read them line by line.

Fuck.

Sometimes my job really sucks.

My glasses get all foggy and wet with tears, so I pull them off and rest them on the top of my head. Maybe I’m a softie, but fuck, that just ripped my heart out.

“Aww, are you okay?” Briar asks, climbing onto my lap. I camp out in the downstairs bedroom to work since we don’t use it for sleeping anymore.

“Was my sadness spilling into the bond?”

“It was, and that’s why I knew I needed to come check on you.” Her fingers dig into my jaw as she brushes her thumbs over my skin above where my beard ends. “Rough stuff?”

“It was fucking brutal,” I admit, wrapping my arms around her lower back. “One of those tragedies that will never make sense.” I sigh, squeezing my eyes shut.

Fat tears slip down my cheeks, and I almost wish I was as stoic and reserved as Keir or Easton.

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