Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
She was pretty sure he was right. She just had to prove it.
Her cell phone trilled, and she glanced down at it. Speak of the devil. Well, not the devil, but he was married to her. She swiped a finger across the screen and put the phone to her ear. “Hey, Dad. How are you?”
“Oh, hey, sweetie. I’m good. Real good.” Her father had a soft tone. She’d never seen the man get angry even once. Her mother had been the disciplinarian of the family. “Hey, I needed to talk to you about something.”
She could guess. “I promise I’ve got a perfectly respectable dress to wear on Saturday, and I will leave the combat boots at home.”
“About that, honey,” her dad began.
MaeBe’s heart sank because she knew exactly where this was going to lead.
* * * *
Julia Ennis stared out over the Los Angeles skyline and wondered where Kyle was. It wasn’t like she could ask the man on the other end of the line.
“Are you listening to me, Julia?”
She sighed and forced herself to reply. “Yes, Dad. I understand. I’m getting better every day. The group doesn’t have to murder me thinking I’m going to make some kind of deathbed confession.”
“Do you want to explain what really happened? Because your brother seems to know something.”
“He doesn’t know a thing about you.” She’d fucked up in an unimaginable way, but at least she’d hidden her stepfather’s involvement from her brother and Kyle.
Just the thought of Kyle Hawthorne put her gut in a knot. Her hand strayed to the place where the bullet had gone in, barely missing her heart. If it hadn’t been for John, she would have been dead.
“I told you that getting involved with that boy would be nothing but trouble,” her stepfather said. “He’s too much like your brother. You know there’s a reason I never recruited Drake, and it’s the same reason I would have stayed far away from Hawthorne. He’s practically a fucking Taggart. How did you think that was going to work?”
“I thought it would work like all things do. I was putting him in a position where he couldn’t exactly refuse. I just didn’t have enough time with him.” She had to admit that she’d been losing her hold on Kyle for the last few months of their relationship. He’d been talking to his brother a lot.
She’d intended to end that relationship on a permanent basis, but she hadn’t gotten around to it. She hadn’t been able to decide on how to off David Hawthorne. Then there was the fact that Kyle’s stepfather was a public figure and related to one of the most highly thought-of security experts in the business. The Taggart family might investigate any accident she could plan for David.
“You would never have changed his mind,” her father said firmly. “I’m disappointed. I thought you of all people have been taught to think with your head and not your other parts.”
She was ruthless. She was savage when it came to business. She’d viewed Kyle as a challenge at first, and then she’d seen how the darkness in his soul matched her own.
She wasn’t willing to give up on him. Why should one argument screw up the rest of their lives together? She was the only woman in the world who could understand him. If his parents knew what he was capable of, they would almost certainly turn away from him. She could love the whole of Kyle.
Well, she wasn’t particularly fond of the part of him that had shot her, but no one was perfect.
However, as a couple they could move mountains. She simply had to get him to see it, to buy into the vision.
“Did you put the money in his account?” Her stepfather sounded like he usually did. Gruff. A bit angry.
He was only truly happy with her when she was working, and now she was sidelined until she could find a new identity and new face.
She liked her face. Her brother was going to cost her everything.
She refused to blame Kyle. He didn’t understand, and she hadn’t explained it properly. If she had, they would be together right this minute and she wouldn’t be staring at her face for the last time. She would have to become someone else. Someone boring. Jane Adams. Even that woman’s name was boring.
“Of course I did. It’s there, and we’ll have the proof that we need to keep him in line,” she said. Her father had insisted that they maintain some kind of leverage over Kyle Hawthorne. “I sent you everything you need, but you’re not going to use it until we have to.”
She might have sent Kyle on a few non-Agency approved operations. Not that he’d understood it at the time, but now he did. It was precisely what had gotten her in trouble in the first place. He’d figured out the person he’d assassinated wasn’t a dangerous terrorist, and he hadn’t taken it well.