I hadn’t heard their name out loud in three years. The name was like a scream right in my ears—feral and deafening. The Vitalis were big fish for the F.B.I. back then and now too. Our branch had been trying to take them down for years, but they’d always been one step ahead of us.
Now, thanks to her, they were miles and miles of untouchable.
“Sir, I’m not on that case anymore.”
“I know you took yourself off of it, but you’re the only guy we have there now, so you’re back on it. Consider it a special assignment.”
Yay.
“While I appreciate the circumstances, I took myself off of the case for a reason, and I’d be much more comfortable if you found another agent.”
“This wasn’t a suggestion, Reyes. You’ll do yourself good to remember what a paramount player the Vitalis are in the weapons trade over whatever your personal reasons are to want to shift the case.”
Against the wall, my hand warped to a fist, the skin over my knuckles stretching and peeling as I ground my anger into the wall. I pushed and pushed, harder and harder, wanting to break through the wall, break through the side of the building, and just fucking fall. Just get it over with.
I’d rather crash through the side of this hotel and break both of my legs than go back to working that case even for a day.
But thanks to Scarlett fucking Avery, I was about to be sent back down Memory Lane.
“Yes, sir.” I walked towards my bed, slumping down and already feeling nauseous. Cold crept up my neck and wrapped around my head while the opposing heat draped like a cumbersome robe across my body.
Ten seconds with their name back in my head, and already, I was feverish.
“We don’t have an exact location on them. Just that some surveillance feed picked one of the brothers up at a hotel nearby. The Palace Station?”
My fever got wiped out in seconds flat.
“That’s where we’re staying,” I clipped into the receiver.
He gave a sigh that sounded personally pissed off about that little fact. “I was afraid of that.” Gossip was in his undertone, and my ears pricked up to listen. “Scarlett thought it would be fun to befriend one of the Vitalis boys a couple years ago. I can damn near promise you he and his family are only there because she is.”
My stare flew to the sleeping woman lying just feet in front of me. She knew them? Fireflies of questions swarmed my head, each one's shine of importance brighter than the last.
Was she friends with him?Did she know her? Did she know my history with any of them?
“You think she’ll meet up with them?” I asked, reeling.
“If she hasn’t already, yes.”
She was missing for hours last night, hours that very well could have been spent with them. That fucking family. When she came back here last night, was it because they told her to? Her coming back all on her own didn’t make a lick of sense, so maybe they told her to come back and fuck with me some more.
To get information. To make a fool of me. To drive me off the cliff of my sanity.
“I need you to let her go out on her own and follow where she goes. She’s bound to lead you at least to the boy she’s taken up with, and you can survey them from then on.”
“Sir, I’ve been doing my best keeping Scarlett from running away. Don’t you think she’ll find it suspicious when I suddenly let her out on her own?”
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out to say. You said she’s sleeping, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Grab her phone and activate The Bug.”
The Bug was an app F.B.I. Tech created years ago that not only tracked but recorded all conversations on the user's phone. It was an app only accessible by a special code given to agents.
Sighing, I got up off the bed and scooped up her phone laying next to her arm. Her home screen lit up, and a face that I’d seen before in Sir’s office shined up from the phone.
Her brother.