Chapter Thirteen
Ana
For just a moment, I’m back at Kasey’s burial site, reliving that godforsaken, brutal day…
I’m standing alone after everyone else has left, a cold drizzle tormenting my body, while the casket in front of me shreds my heart. Kasey is gone. Kurt is gone. And I don’t even know what is happening with me and Luke. He killed Kasey, and damn him, I know Kasey was troubled, but why couldn’t he have found a way to save him? Or let someone else do it at least. How am I supposed to love the man who killed my brother? Why do I still love him so damn much? And why isn’t he here with me now?
It’s then that I feel this tingling sensation, as if I’m being watched, and my gaze jerks up and toward a cluster of trees. Luke steps out of the coverage of those trees, and I’m both relieved and elated to see him here, well and alive, after the bullet that ended up in his gut. I didn’t mean to shoot him, but some part of me knows, I should have wanted to shoot him. I was really trying to protect him from Trevor when my gun had fallen and I’d tried to catch it.
The next thing I knew I was trying to stop him from bleeding out.
It was a freak accident and had my emotions not gotten the best of me, it would never have happened.
But no matter how it happened, I shot him. I’ll never make him believe it was an accident. He’ll always hate me. And some part of me will hate him, too, for killing Kasey, even if I know Kasey forced his hand. The very fact that I haven’t turned away from him now, that I am relieved to see him, stabs me with guilt. So much guilt.
I turn away from him and leave him standing there. I turn away from us, and it about kills me all over again.
I blink back to the room and find Kurt watching me.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
I forced Luke to leave, I think, I drove him away, but I don’t say this to Kurt. He doesn’t want to hear my emotional confessions about me and Luke. All he’s doing is distracting me from whatever he doesn’t want me to figure out by triggering such thoughts and feelings. My lips press together and I dive into the deep, dark waters of the topic I think he’s avoiding and I’m not sure why. “Why Maverick? Why kill him then?”
“Well, if you’re reading this like I did, it feels a little like a threat, doesn’t it? Almost as if they knew I was watching, but they didn’t. I think your partner made them nervous.”
There he goes distracting me again, but I punch back. “Darius wasn’t my partner anymore.”
“Close enough. You were with him often. He acted as a friend and a close confidant. That bond kept you both alive for a while. They thought he’d find out what you knew about the package. But he nosed around the wrong things and people, which would have been fine, but he got too confident. When you get too confident, you get sloppy. Even I could see that, and I wasn’t up close and personal with him or you. But I was sure that your boss, Mike, being as high up in FBI as he was, was the train that led up the hill to the mighty king. I wanted the king.”
“And you think that ends this?”
“It won’t end these assholes, whoever they are, no. They’re too big and their ties run too deep with the government and the rich and powerful. But maybe it ends the obsession with this particular package and our inner circle. It’s hard to know. It’s worth a try. That was my thought process, but that never happened. It feels like every time I get close, someone ends up dead.”
Obviously, he means Maverick and Mike. “Who do you know that tells them you’re close?”
“No one.”
Now I know he’s not being straight with me. “Wrong answer,” I argue. “If there was no one to tell, there would be no one to share information with you.”
“I told you. I hired a hacker. He’s disconnected from the organization.”
“Unless he isn’t,” I say. “Who’s the buyer?” I ask, aware that the buyer is dead. We went to Newman Phillips’ house, the man who was supposed to receive that package from Kasey, hoping to dig up at least a clue to follow. He was dead on our arrival.
“I don’t know, but they're powerful enough to rattle the cages of the assholes when not much does. Normally if you get in their way, they kill you.”
“Unless they have money to make, I assume,” I reply, and yet they killed Newman Phillips, who per Darius’s notebook was on the list of buyers. He was just rich, the son of the man who owns a professional sports team in Denver, and the man who was supposed to buy the package that went missing when Kasey died. “Why kill off your buyer?”
He arches a brow. “Are you telling me they did?”
“Why?” I press.
“Because you have another buyer. Or because the buyer has damning information. Or both.”
“Are the men hunting us, and the package, working for the organization or the buyer?”
“I’ve heard both had treasure hunters working for them. And once one or the other finds the package, you’re nothing but a liability that must be disposed of. You need to find that package.”
Says him and everyone else, I think. I’m so tired of hearing about this damn package. “And do what with the package when we find it?” I ask, hoping he has some grand plan that actually makes sense.