Page 95 of Guarding Bristol

Nico expelled a painful breath and pulled her closer, cradling her head on his chest.“Thank you,” he said.

Barros nodded.“Take care of yourself, man.”He stuck out a hand.

“I will.”Nico caught it, squeezed.“You too.”

Barros released his hand and walked away, leaving them alone in the private room.Nico closed his eyes and kissed the top of Liana’s head.He’d just been given another unexpected reprieve.He still had time.

He had to figure out a way out of this.And he had to do it fast.

****

TJ eased the recoveryroom door shut and turned toward the elevators at the end of the hall, only to come to an abrupt halt.

His handler Diana was leaning against the wall between him and the elevator, arms folded across the blazer of her navy pantsuit.“Well?How was the romantic reunion?”

“So far, so good.”It wasn’t often he got to witness nice things on the job.Or for him to be kept in any kind of loop by Diana and the rest of the agency.But given Nico’s involvement, his history with the agency, and the complicated shitshow they now all faced, Diana had fast tracked a deep dive into him.

Everything she’d found over the past several hours, including intel from Nico’s waterlogged phone, had revealed his probable motivation for becoming Leandro’s enforcer.

His wife Liana had a terminal illness.Western medicine’s limitations, or maybe shitty insurance coverage, had made Nico desperate enough to resort to taking on contract killing to make enough money fast enough to pay for private treatment.They hadn’t found any specifics on his targets or evidence of accepting large payments.He would have discarded any burner phones he’d used for those kinds of communications, and probably an offshore account somewhere.

Personally, TJ hoped they never found any of the evidence.

He’d managed to convince the agency to get Liana and bring her here to see her husband.He couldn’t imagine being in Nico’s position.If it had been Bristol, TJ would do everything in his power to save her too.

The op to meet with Jon had been blown to hell—along with Jon on that dock—but the memory stick he’d retrieved had somehow stayed in his pocket throughout his unplanned, prolonged swim in the ocean.Leandro had valuable intel on the inner workings of the lynch pin of the Pacific Northwest operation of the cartel that they couldn’t get from anyone else.The agency’s techs were trying to retrieve the information on it now.

Hopefully the thing was waterproof.

His hands and feet were still freezing, even though they’d pumped him full of warmed fluids on the emergency helo flight here and he’d changed into dry clothes.“Any word on Leandro?”

“Yeah.”Her pale brown eyes glittered with annoyance.“Another flight crew spotted him and his passenger climbing into the hatch of a small sub about six miles off the southern Oregon coast.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Oh, I wish I was, believe me.”

He shook his head, anger punching through him.They needed to find that asshole and drag him into a hole so they could extract every single thing he knew about the cartel and its PNW operations.

“We’ve got everyone in the region and then some hunting him right now.We’ll get him.”She shook her shoulder-length brown hair back.“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What are you gonna do from here?”

“Haven’t had time to think about it.”That was a lie.He’d been thinking of almost nothing else in every free moment since he’d been pulled from the water.

“You’re a shit liar.”

His lips twitched.“No, I’m not.”Lying was part of the deal with going undercover.“But since you want me to be real...I’m done with undercover.”

This whole thing had changed him forever.He couldn’t go back to who he’d been or to the life he’d been living before it.Because it hadn’t been a life at all.Or living.Bristol had forced him to see that clearly.

She was a ray of light in the darkness.He couldn’t lose her now.Whatever sacrifices he had to make from here on out, he would fight for her.

“Agreed.And I figured as much anyway.”Diana cocked her head.“No other thoughts?Ideas?”

“Not yet.”He was acutely conscious of the minutes ticking past, the rising frustration at being kept here.He needed to see Bristol.Given that they’d told her practically nothing, she probably thought he was dead.He couldn’t do that to her.And, yeah, it confirmed he was a selfish asshole, but he needed to see her for personal reasons that were entirely unprofessional.

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