“How did you watch me?” Her eyes snapped open, bloodshot and glinting silver. “Were you there?”
He should’ve given her a sedative. How long had she been eavesdropping?
“Spying again?” He made a tsking sound. “That’s a terrible habit of yours.”
She kicked her leg, trying to knock him from the bed. A pathetic attempt, given the weakness in her body. She glanced at the cloth in his hand, the IV in her arm, and the blood on her shirt.
“You were there? The whole time?” Her gaze made an uneasy pass over Cole and returned to Tomas. “You watched me suffer for days and did nothing?”
“I stepped in when I needed to.”
“When you needed.” She coughed a dry, raw sound. “Well, now you can step out, let me change clothes, and I’ll be on my way and gone from your life.”
She tried to sit and failed.
“My backpack.” She scanned the room. None of her belongings were in here.
Her attention landed on Cole, tracing his tattoos and lingering on his beard. Tomas waited for her to voice the man’s name and spout every incriminating thing she’d read about him in the emails.
Instead, she pressed her lips together and directed a disgusted glare at Tomas.
He glared back, daring her to open her deceitful mouth. He’d written enough about Cole that she could easily identify him. He’d also outlined his assumptions about Cole’s background, his shady military training, his ability to slip in and out of any fortress, computer system, or security infrastructure. No one was that good unless they were hiding some scary shit.
The most concerning thing about Cole was his motivation. He wasn’t like the rest of them. He’d never spent a night in Van’s attic, never had his freedom ripped away, never experienced the kind of loss and hopelessness that made a man long for death. Not that Tomas knew, anyway.
That was the problem. None of them knew Cole Hartman. Yet here he was, mired in their lives, and fighting alongside them. For what? Van and Matias stopped paying him a dozen jobs ago. Now he was what? Contracting for them pro bono?
Whenever he was asked about his past life and current endeavors outside of the team, he just smiled or gave vague non-answers. The bastard was as closed-off as Tomas. Perhaps more so.
Tomas didn’t trust him. But he’d contacted him anyway, because he was the best at digging up secrets. If Rylee was hiding skeletons, Cole would find them along with every dirty person connected to her.
Eyes locked, she watched Tomas as he watched her. He hated that she knew all of his secrets. His skeletons, regrets, desires, every thought in his head. She also knew that Cole’s presence in Texas meant they’d already learned some things about her.
“You were in the desert with me?” Her gaze lost focus, her momentary spurt of awareness dwindling by the second. “I never heard the truck.”
He’d parked it out of hearing range and hiked in close enough to watch her through the scope of his rifle. Only once, he’d left her unattended to return to the house and call Cole. That was when he found Paul Kissinger on his property.
“Fine. Don’t answer me.” She weakly flexed her hand. “That man…Paul. He must be connected to you and your friends somehow. But you don’t believe that, so you put him in the desert to spy on our conversation.”
Cole leaned against the jamb of the doorway and squinted at Tomas. “What did you learn?”
She was fucking her neighbor. On the back porch, in her car, on every surface in her house.
Seeing a woman take it in the ass does something to a man.
His stomach hardened against the stirring images. “Paul monitored her for six months. She didn’t know him.”
“Didn’t?” A muscle flexed in Cole’s jaw, twitching his beard. “You killed him?”
“Like I said, he attacked her.”
Pulling the trigger hadn’t been planned. It just happened. They’d needed the son of a bitch alive to get answers. Oddly, the only regret he had about his impulsiveness was the looming task of driving back and dealing with the body.
“We could’ve pulled information from him.” Cole gripped his nape, his expression etched in frustration. “Now we don’t know who he was working for, why he was following her, or how it’s connected to us.”
“She’ll tell me.” Tomas met her eyes.
“She doesn’t know anything.” Her jaw set. She didn’t look away, fidget, or show any signs of dishonesty.
Maybe she was good at lying.
“Did you find anything on the ex-husband?” Tomas asked Cole without breaking eye contact with her.
“He’s clean. Except one thing. She has a restraining order against him.”
“Ex-husband.” Her eyelids hooded over silver pools of fatigue and anger.
There was no surprise in her expression. She’d anticipated them investigating the people in her life once they learned who she was. That was why she’d shown up without identification.