Page 157 of Lone Star

“Agent Maddox,” she repeated, sharper this time.

When he turned to her, it was slowly, expression hardening. Shields going up, hackles lifting. He tipped his chin down, so he looked at her from beneath lowered brows. Trying so hard to look tough and inscrutable it was nearly cute.

“I asked about your orders,” she said. “Why were you at the hospital?”

What’s it to you?she read, plain as day in his gaze. He said, tightly, “To keep watch. Specifically over the one in the ICU.”

“Why him and not Jinx on the floor below?”

A muscle in his cheek flickered. “I don’t question my orders. I follow them.”

“Even when those orders come from half-dead bikers fresh out of the ICU?” Before he could respond, his mouth already opening in outrage, she said, “Jinx was on the same floor as Melanie Menendez, and unlike Tenny, they weren’t behind a locked glass door. They were far more vulnerable. Why were you stationed on Tenny?” she pressed.

The cheek muscle flexed again, lips whitening as he pressed them together.

“Why were you there at all? Neither Tenny nor Jinx could leave their beds unassisted.” She’d been wondering all of this from the moment the rag-tag group from the hospital first limped through the door, and she didn’t like the way the logic was unspooling. Hated the way it made lots of unwanted sense. “What were yourexactorders? To keep the local police away from the Dogs?”

“No,” he snapped. And then she saw it start to hit him, the way his brows jumped. “No, I – I ran into them, in the parking lot. Sent them packing.”

“Were you there specifically as protection? In those words exactly?”

“No. But…” He trailed off, jaw tightening again. He didn’t want to tell her.

“I don’t know all the intricacies of the FBI,” Eden said, “but I spent enough years with MI6 to understand that all government security agencies operate on insubstantial budgets. No one wastes manpower for the hell of it. If you were the only agent who could be spared to watch the hospital, then it was for a reason, and they would have positioned you where you would be most useful.”

His eyes had widened on MI6, and stayed that way.

“Your superiors didn’t think the Dogs would flee – they’re working with them, why would it even matter if they left? But they thought someone might come for them. They should have had you on the floor with Jinx and Melanie. She’s an innocent in all this, after all.” She couldn’t help but snort, because as far as she was concerned, Melanie was as bad as the whole cartel at this point. “You could have secured the hospital sooner. You could have done the most good there. But you were upstairs in the ICU. Why?”

He glanced away from her, and took a deep breath in through his mouth. “No.”

“Think about it,” she said, the idea solidifying in her own mind, clicking into place with a doomsdaysnap. This whole scenario had been bugging her since she learned of it; she’d known there was a piece missing, something that would make the picture whole. She knew in her gut, with a cold-dawning horror, that she’d finally found it. “You said so yourself that you’re a man who follows orders without questioning them. A good little soldier–”

“Don’t,” he started, turning back to her, eyes flashing.

“Who better to send into a trap?”

“Awhat?”

“The gunmen weren’t after you,” she said, thinking aloud, spit-balling; her brain felt full of static charge as she connected the dots. “You got up and interfered with one, right?”

“Two,” he said, sounding numb. His gaze had become withdrawn. He reached up to scratch absently at the back of his head, ruffling his carefully gelled hair. “They were gonna walk right past me, and I–”

“You did your job,” she said, injecting a soothing note into her voice. He was young, and obedient, and perhaps a little stupid – though she thought that was willful blindness and devotion. She was about to shatter his world, and she could do it gently. “Just as you were told. But you weren’t told very much at all.”

He chewed his lip, staring down at the square toes of his shoes; she knew they’d cost him a pretty penny, more than a junior agent should have spent on footwear. “‘I want you on the hospital,’” he quoted. “‘With the one in the ICU.’ That was it.”

“No further instructions?”

His throat clicked when he swallowed. “No.”

She felt a little dizzy, suddenly, the headrush that always came with this sort of chase. “Your superior knew the cartel was coming. He didn’t tell you to stop them, because he didn’t want you to – the plan was to get Melanie Menendez out, and killing the Dogs was a bonus. You, though – you were there as a witness, to cover the Bureau’s ass.” It was an ugly sort of triumph that surged inside her, but undeniable.

Maddox looked sick. He swallowed a few more times with obvious difficulty. “Doug Cantrell is–”

“In on it,” Eden said, and pulled out her phone.

Forty-Six

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