Page 11 of Even if You Fall

I thought over the guys who’d walked through the door so far, then glanced toward the edge of the wall separating the frontspace from the rest of the office as I tried figuring out who could possibly be theDeadly Duo.

If I hadn’t already known Asher, I would’ve assumed he was part of it, but since I did, my mind skipped over to Beau Evans, then quickly flashed back to a pair of infuriated, amber eyes. Eyes that had shown every ounce of his resentment and seemed to see straight through me.

Um, Deadly Duo?

Lainey Pearson

You’ll know when you see them. Hudson and Mallory.

A startled laugh crept from me at the idea of Hudson, the shameless flirt, being part of something Lainey had titledDeadly Duo. But my amusement died at the next text that came through.

Lainey Pearson

Supermodel gorgeous. They look like undercover assassins, even though Asher swears they aren’t the most lethal ones of the team.

Got it.

Except I wasn’t sure I did because all I’d known about Asher’s company before this morning was that it was a security company. Once I’d arrived at the building, I’d finally learned its name—Shadow Industries. But in all the times he and Lainey had saidsecurityover the past months, I’d thought they meanthomesecurity. Cameras, alarms, the like.

After Lainey’s last texts, I had a feeling that wasn’t the kind of security this business offered, and I wondered if I shouldactually be afraid of Asher Briggs...of all the men I’d encountered so far this morning.

Dark hair and angry, golden eyes danced through my thoughts, sending a shiver down my spine. But as I caught myself stealing another glance at the edge of the wall I was sitting in front of, I knew that shiver didn’t hold the warning it should’ve.

Ididn’t trust the new girl.

I didn’t trust her, and for the first time, Asher was dismissing my concerns because he’dalready looked into herbefore his now-fiancée had moved into the new girl’s house.

Looking into someone could only show so much; it could also show a lie. So, I didn’t care what Asher thought he knew about Chloe; she was setting off red flags for me, and my job was to find the red flags.

The girl literally radiated joy, even in the middle of Asher yelling and me trying not to die from taking a knee to the groin. And throughout it all, her expression and tone had been bubbly, adorable excitement, which would’ve been fine if it hadn’t been so out of place.

You would’ve thought Asher had been gifting her puppies instead of yelling about why she shouldn’t be there. You would’ve thought she’d just handed me one of those ridiculously large checks for an obscene amount of money instead of watching me nearly choke to death on a donut.

She was justtoohappy, and I couldn’t trust that.

To be fair, I knew people generally considered me to be a happy guy, but I liked to think of it as a coping mechanism for what we’d seen overseas and on missions. Didn’t mean I was secretly miserable, or thought everyone else should be too. And I knew there were happy people in the world—sometimes annoyingly so. But there was something different about Chloe.

Like the joy pouring from her had grated on my every nerve because, for how genuine it seemed, I was sure it wasn’t. And it made the way she’d looked at everyone like the star-eye emoji bother me that much more. Like she’d gotten so used to faking her happiness that she didn’t know how to be anything else now.

Made me wonder why she’d ever had to.

Made me wonder what else she was that good at faking...hiding.

But again, Asher was brushing off my concerns. Worse, his only concern was Gray potentially breaking Chloe’s heart since he was already making comments about what he thought of thenew Ada. And he wantedmeto prevent that from happening.

I had no intention of doing that.

The way I saw it, the faster Gray broke Chloe’s heart, the faster she’d be gone. And she needed to go.

Briggs would thank me when I figured out what this girl was hiding.

“Everyone know what they’re doing?” Briggs asked, breaking into my spiraling thoughts about the new girl—the new threat on my radar.

“Yep,” I said when everyone else voiced their acknowledgments, then glanced at my tablet to see what notes I’d taken during our morning meeting.

None.

Perfect.

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