Her statement was so stark that Royce knew there was more.
“Your cover was safe?”
“As far as I know. They seemed to think I was just as much a victim as they’d been. The rage was real. I was on an errand in town when it went down and when I got back, he was dead and I had to get out of there. As a single woman, I would have been”—she used air quotes—“‘claimed’ by another rider. No way that was happening. By the time I got back to LA, the shit had hit the fan and there was finger-pointing in every direction about what had actually happened.”
“Did they think you had something to do with it?”
“If the Spiders had suspected me, I would be dead too.”
“And the ATF?” Because there was something going on, something that didn’t make sense.
Briar shrugged. “Before this op, I would have said no one questioned my loyalty. But I was reassigned and loaned to the FBI.”
The water began to boil and Royce lifted the pot off the burner, pouring it into the mugs waiting on the counter. He didn’t know Briar Nilson. He hadn’t seen her in a lifetime and even then they hadn’t been friends, but he believed her. He was very good at reading people, and Briar was telling the truth. He pushed one of the mugs closer to her and she wrapped her hands around it as she lifted it up.
“The op was Hank’s mission. He’d lost a family member to an MC gang, and he wanted so badly to bring the Spiders down. Sometimes I wondered if it clouded his decisions, but he would never have given me up.”
She looked away and Royce knew she was still grieving for her partner.
He had to ask. “Were you more than partners?”
It happened more than supervisors liked to think, and two operatives isolated away from their real lives could more easily justify a relationship. Maybe Briar had been blind to her partner’s faults.
“No,” she smiled ruefully. “Hank didn’t swing my direction. He was this huge bear of a man. I embarrassed myself when we first met, making some stupid joke.” Briar rolled her eyes. “He corrected me and let me know I’d never have to worry, he had a devoted husband at home.”
Royce sipped his hot chocolate as he mulled over what Briar had shared with him. She was probably leaving something out. What was it?
“Why were you loaned to the FBI, then?”
Over the rim of her mug, Royce recognized amusement in her eyes.
“Probably because I publicly dressed down my immediate supervisor before the dust had a chance to settle. A week later, I was on loan.” She sipped at her hot chocolate again, her tongue sneaking across her lips when she was finished. Royce was certain it was unconscious, but his body still responded.
Again, not the time.
Something—Royce wasn’t sure what, maybe instinct from his time in the Army—had him on alert. He was fairly sure they hadn’t been followed, though, and they’d been careful not to turn any lights on.
Briar must have sensed it too. Setting her mug down, she crept into the hallway between the living room and kitchen. Royce followed.
An eerie glow came from the direction of the bathroom and what had been Caleb’s room when he’d lived there.
“That motherfucker,” Briar hissed, creeping further into the empty bedroom so she could peer out the window. Royce was right behind her and couldn’t miss the flames shooting from the roof of Tor’s house.
“Motherfucker, definitely.”