Page 16 of Infinite
“You think I’m stupid? I know this group. Cole is predictable. Dixon is emotional. Dempsey is a coward. Each one of those guys will fail because I know their weaknesses.”
“Okay, and what about this guy?”
“He’s bait.”
He’s fucking deranged. That much is clear. I try to think like a lunatic for a minute. If I wanted to get back at someone, I would lure them out and then get their guards down, which is exactly what will happen when they realize it’s Aaron.
He’s their friend.
They clearly care about him, otherwise, they would’ve told me about whatever the hell is going on. Instead, they protected him.
I hear my door crank open. They both fall quiet, and I stay extra still. If they think I’m still out, there’s a likelihood they’ll keep talking.
“So, he was your friend?”
“They all were,” Aaron replies. “Until they left me to fucking rot, stole my wife, my kid, and my life . . . so, it’s time to repay the favor.”
I have to hope they won’t make the same mistake they made with Aaron and not let me fucking rot. Otherwise, the bait will become chum.
6
Ashton
“Aaron, as in, Aaron and Natalie?”
Jackson looks down at his phone again as though it’s some kind of calculus question he’s stuck on. “Yes. That’s what the photo shows.”
“Where the fuck has he been?” I ask with a bite in my voice that is almost murderous.
Aaron is a goddamn SEAL like them. He works for Jackson. He’sfriendswith Jackson and Mark. This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
Gretchen squeezes my shoulders. “After I uncovered some of the issues with Jackson’s legal team, I started to dig deeper. Typically, if you find something on the surface then chances are more is buried. The deeper I looked, the more I found, but I couldn’t really make sense of it. A lot of the stuff Aaron oversaw, but he didn’t remember any of it.”
Jackson nods. “He was having periods where it seemed he blacked out or had no memories. He talked about the dreams he was having, and all of us knew something was really wrong.”
“So, he went insane?” I ask. “And no one thought to tell anyone?”
Mark returns to our little party. “He checked out or signed out or something, but he’s been gone about two weeks now.”
I huff. “You guys are kidding me, right? You had him committed?”
“No,” Jackson answers. “We got him help at one of the best facilities for PTSD and other combat issues.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “If this is true, and that’s Aaron in that photo, what does it mean?”
That’s the man I love in there, and he’s been taken by one of their friends. Aaron has way more history with these guys than Quinn does. They weren’t on the same team, fighting side by side like Aaron, Jackson, and Mark were. There’s history there, and I’m not at all okay with how the odds are silently stacking in my head.
Quinn is my concern.
Not some brotherly bond. I don’t care if that makes me a bitch. I’ve lost enough, and I’m not willing to lose anything else.
“It means we have to be even more cautious.”
“Cautious how?”
Mark takes my hand in his. “It means we have to worry about everything. He knows us. He knows what we’d do in this situation. He’ll have contingency plans for all the possibilities because Aaron literally wrote our combat handbooks. Not to mention, he’s our friend and has been in actual combat with us, so he will know exactly how we will handle something like this. We have to take a beat, collect ourselves, and rethink things.”
I want to say more, but Gretchen speaks first. “I think what she’s worried about is Quinn’s safety in all this.”
