Page 148 of Taste of Addiction

“I’m sorry,” I cry. “I was so…scared.”

“It’s okay, Miss McFee. We were all pretty scared,” Austin says, rounding the corner. He is shirtless with a bandage wrapped around his upper arm. He has another one—but much smaller—on his ribs. I look at his stacked body and then back up to his eyes.

“You and Malcolm got hurt at the safe house,” I conclude. “I didn’t even see you guys there.”

“Yeah, it was all a clusterfuck.” He sighs, running his hands through his hair. “Sorry for the language.”

“What happened?”

“Just part of the job,” he says with a shrug. “Been hurt worse. Owen and Tanner knocked me and Malcolm out—after I put up whatever fight I could. They definitely had the element of surprise in their favor. I regret blindly trusting the traitorous bastard.”

“Anything broken?”

“Just a few cracked ribs. Nothing to worry about, Miss McFee.”

I close my eyes as more tears flood out.

“We’re all fine, really,” Nic reassures.

“Is Owen being handled?” I ask, fear still evident in the shakiness of my voice.

Collins clears his throat and rubs his hands over his forehead. “I’ll forever live with the guilt of not seeing it sooner. He has some balls.”

I turn to see the tall figure in a hospital gown at the edge of my room. “Graham?”

He walks over to me with a walker, tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry. I should have believed you when you were telling me Tanner came to terrorize you and that someone from the inside was a bad guy.” His hands brush against the sides of my cheeks, leaning forward despite the cringe of pain to kiss me gently on the lips.

“This isn’t your fault.”

“Yes it is. It is very much my fault. I could have gotten you killed.”

“You had reason to distrust me. I was self-medicating for so long, Graham.”

“You were clean though, and those fuckers were slipping you pills. Tanner had a whole lab with pill presses, prescription bottles, and imported Fentanyl. He would manufacture his own medication and push it out for testing. All my agency girls were just test dummies. You knew it. You had it almost all figured out. That’s why Dr. Williams kept steering you away from the truth. I wish I could have taken a hit on that man.”

“Owen said he was the one that kept tipping off the press about my drug addiction.”

“He doesn’t deserve to keep breathing air,” Graham snarls.

“It’s all over, right? The FBI got the key players?”

“Yes, sweetheart. And they are putting the fear of a huge prison sentence into any lower level pushers’ minds to encourage them to give out names and information surrounding the entire ring. This is all out of our hands now.”

“Benjamin, Samson, and Edward?”

“They’ve all been arrested. In fact, there’ve been over fifty arrests so far in just the past twenty-four hours. Dr. Williams made the mistake of not having his burner phones destroyed prior to entering the tunnels. I don’t think the man ever considered losing.”

Collins and Austin dip their heads, while walking out of the room. It pains me to see them bruised and a bit ragged, all because they were trying to rescue me.

“Bryce tried to rape me in college and drug me. He and Owen were running a whole ring on a smaller scale back in Baker City. They tried to run me over when I got away after a party and was planning on going to the police. James died.”

“Sweetheart, I am so very sorry.”

“I’m just glad this is all over and we are all safe again,” I say, squeezing his hand. It is over.

“Thank God the FBI decided to plant someone else into the mix who was trustworthy and not a fucking traitor,” Graham snarls. “I owe Paul for saving your life.”

He holds onto my hands and continues to examine my face. His fingers graze my chin, and for the first time I realize I have a bandage there from where I hit the step hard when Owen pulled me down. And where I was slapped over in the chair while restrained.

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