Page 39 of Hacker Betrayed

“Lie,” Paxton growled as we walked up the cobbled driveway to her large stained-glass door. Paxton pulled me into his arms, and I couldn’t stop myself from wrapping my own around his waist.

“You didn’t have enough fun last night.” My sex ached, thinking about his tongue licking me.

“I crave you every second of the day. Last night I learned one of your tells. You see, my love, when you lie, your nostrils flare. To be utterly honest, I find your little twitch sexy as hell. If I had to guess. You know it was her over the years and you should have back up, and I don’t count,” Paxton said.

He was right. Paxton added an extra layer of danger to the mission. I had to keep my attention on my sister, but I would worry about him. That’s why I sent a text to Kat. My friend would understand confronting my sister was something I would never hand off to one of my teammates or my boss. She would also cover my ass and not tell my boss until I’d spoken with Ashlyn.

I pushed up on my toes and placed a quick kiss on Paxton’s soft lips. If I wasn’t careful, I would forget what I needed to do because the man was so intoxicating. Reluctantly I pulled back. “I’m a step ahead of you, Doc. Backup is on a rooftop. One of these days, I’ll have to have her teach me how she scales the building so easily,” I said.

Paxton's head whipped to the side as though he could actually find Kat’s location. I was glad the woman was on my side. During my time with the CIA, we never crossed paths, but I’d hear rumors about the Ice. Nobody believed half that shit to be true. So many of the stories were so crazy they sounded fictional. Like the time she trudged through the Congo, took out a militia with her bare hands, and freed seven American tourists. I once asked her about the story, and she laughed and told me she’d had a knife.

“Let’s hope we don’t need Kat. I’m all for getting to the bottom of what happened yesterday, but I’m not sure if I want her to kill my sister. Ashlyn and I used to be close. We need to sit down and talk and figure out why she would want me dead and who she hired to kill Tabitha. Ashlyn might be cold on the outside, but she would never kill a person.”

Ashlyn would plant flowers in the backyard every time we saw dad’s men drag a body out the back door. She would say a prayer and cry for their soul. A chat with her would be the only way to get to the core of what the hell was going on.

“She didn’t seem very friendly when I spoke to her at your family gathering.” Paxton pulled back but linked his fingers with mine. “Let’s get this over with. I’d rather spend Sunday in bed worshiping your body. This week I have a lot of surgeries scheduled. With no partner, I’ll have to take on the extra case load.”

I wanted nothing more than to be in bed with Paxton and not on my sister's front doorstep. But if I put off confronting my sister, she could have time to cover her tracks. The sooner I put all the pieces together and figured out why she wanted me dead, the sooner I could get my son back. The FaceTime calls weren’t enough. Lucas had told me how much fun he was having, but that he wanted to come home. I wasn’t sure what home looked like. In the heat of the moment, I told Paxton I would move in with him, but we needed to talk like adults.

No matter how much I wanted to fall into Paxton’s bed, I needed to figure out what my next step was. I knew I would end up in his bed permanently, but I had to check with Lucas first about everything else.

I pushed the circular doorbell and waited. Once we stepped foot in the house, Kat would lose sight of us, but I felt sure she stole some tech from her husband or sister. She probably didn’t even need to steal the tech. Knowing her, she had a stash of everything a spy could need packed in her car for emergencies. For a mom of three, she sure did have a lot of emergencies not linked to her kids.

Ashlyn pulled open the door. Dark, puffy circles under my sister’s eyes drew my attention from the gun in her hand for a second.

“You going to shoot me on the front steps or wait for me to come inside? Just for the record, it’s a pain in the ass to get blood off the concrete. You’re better off putting down some tarps. I was sure you’d remember this from when we were kids.”

Paxton growled next to me, but I never glanced away from Ashlyn. I hesitated, and I never paused when it came to someone holding a gun. Ashlyn had changed, and I wasn’t sure if she would shoot Paxton or me. If I went for my gun, there was a seventy-five percent chance I could take her out before she could fire. The only problem was, I worried she would fire at Paxton.

There was a man behind my sister with his hand inside his jacket. “Bring them inside, Ash.”

“If this is a bad time, we can come back later. I’m sure Mia will call you before she shows up unannounced next time. My brothers and sister pop up at my house all the time. I can’t say I’ve ever held a gun to one of them. Well, I don’t keep a gun in the house… I guess with Mia at my place I have two guns in my house now—”

“Five,” I corrected.

“Okay, five. When we leave, I think we need to discuss that. I’m sure my cleaning lady will be surprised if she comes by one. What I was trying to say was, Mia and I are leaving,” Paxton finally finished rambling.

“Why are you here?” Ashlyn asked. Her voice didn’t have an edge like the prior day when I tried to ask how she was.

She wasn’t the weak sibling I remembered from our childhood. Her hand didn’t wobble, but the light in her eye had dimmed. I’d hoped Ashlyn would have the life I never did. When we were younger, I promised to get her out, make a little home somewhere and have her live with me. Then I was sold to a monster, and all I wanted was to escape my past and never look back. “Ashlyn, can I come in? Or do you really want to have this conversation on the front steps? I have a couple of questions, and you owe me, after all.”

“Owe you? Are you fucking crazy?” Ashlyn waved her hand through the air, pointing the gun in our direction, and stepped in front of Paxton.

“Yes. You were the one that drugged me last night. Paxton and his brother found me passed out. What was your plan, to drag me out and kill me?”

Ashlyn’s mouth fell open. “Wait, you’re at my house because you think I’m the one who tried to kill you?”

The man inside the house dropped his arm and pulled Ashlyn to the side. “Come in. Ashlyn thought you were here for a different reason. Sorry, we are both a little on edge, and I think we might need to talk.”

Paxton’s hand rested against the small of my back as we walked into the home I’d spent time at when I was a child. My grandmother wasn’t like my mom; she gave the best hugs. During the summer, I would spend at least a month every year at their house until they both died in a car accident. My parents never went into detail about the accident, but I always wondered if their death was tied to the family business. Grandfather was in his late eighties, but refused to step down from the head of the family and let my father take over.

There was tension between them during the last year of my grandparents’ lives. I was only ten at the time and didn’t understand when Mom told me I couldn’t spend the summer with Grandma, and a week later, their car was hit by a semi that ran a red light. They both died on impact, and the man who drove the truck died his second day in prison. Dad said it was vengeance for killing my parents. At times I wondered if it was because they worried the truth might come out.

I followed my sister into the sitting room to the right of the entryway. The walls weren’t covered in family photos anymore. The light pink couch was gone, along with the antique coffee table. In its place were two white loveseats facing each other with a glass coffee table in between.

Over the prior years, I had wanted to reach out to Ashlyn but never knew what to say. And I never wanted to jeopardize Lucas’s identity.

If my dad hadn’t sold me all those years ago, I was sure Ashlyn and I would still be close. But he had, and the woman across from me was not the sister I remembered.

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