I don’t take the phone. I scowl, another thing I’m good at. Killing and scowling rank high on my list of ways I prove that I’m charming. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“He’s the former Associated Deputy Director of Military Affairs for the CIA, now a U.S. Senator representing Texas, who apparently knows her father well. Do you know where I’m going with this?”
I scrub my jaw. CIA with a connection to Candace’s father and as it seems, Tag. And he’s a high-profile asshole running for office. The picture is crystal clear. He’s the reason I’m here. He’s going to be the hit. He’s going to be the man Tag expects me to kill. Holy hell. He said I’d like killing this one. He wasn’t wrong.
“What are we into, Savage?” Adam asks, and the question snaps me back to reality.
“We aren’t into anything. You need to get out of this now.”
“You think her fiancé’s your target.”
“We aren’t talking about this. I’m going to take a shower.” I walk around the table toward the bathroom.
“What if he’s a good guy?” he demands. “You can’t just kill him to save her.”
I stop and turn to face him. “If you’d seen the CIA do what I’ve seen the CIA do, you wouldn’t want him to breathe another day.”
“We have Walker family that’s ex-CIA,” he argues.
“And I don’t work with them for a reason. I’m damn sure not letting one of them marry Candace.”
“What if she loves him?”
“She doesn’t.”
“She’s engaged to him,” he reminds me.
“I told you. Not for long.” I turn again, but there’s a knock on the door.
“What if this is what Tag wants?” he challenges again. “For you to kill a good man because this is personal to you.”
I turn to face him. “You think my woman ended up engaged to a man who Tag wants dead and that’s a coincidence? I didn’t know SEALs were that stupid.”
“By that logic, he can’t be the hit at all. Maybe you just want it to be him. Because he has her and you don’t.”
My jaw flexes. “You need to leave before I hurt you.”
“Come at me, man,” he says, motioning me forward with his hands. “Better you come at me than him before you know what you’re dealing with. Blake is looking into his history. Give us time to figure out what this is.”
“I don’t know how many ways to say this, but I don’t want Walker involved. You consider that maybe that’s what this is? An attack on Walker, using me to get to them?”
“I think this is about you. You don’t walk away from a man like Tag, knowing where to find his dirty laundry. Maybe Tag watched your woman, and you, and looked for an opportunity to take you down. Maybe he thought this would be easy. Maybe he thought you have no fucking control. Maybe he doesn’t want to end you or us. Maybe he wants you to believe you belong with him because you’re no better than him.”
I laugh. “You’re such a damn drama queen.”
“You want her back. Win her back. Killing him means you think you aren’t good enough to win a battle of the heart.”
“Now you sound like a Hallmark movie.”
“I’ve seen you watching Hallmark movies,” he counters.
I smirk. “Only if there’s nothing else on, asshole.”
“And the ones with dogs. You like those.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I snap. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to make me more human than I am.”
“You think ‘Savage’ wins her back? You think killing the competition wins her back? I heard her use your name, man. I saw the look on her face when she slapped you. You’re going to have to be Rick.”
“Same man, different name,” I say, but in my mind, I can hear her saying, “Maybe you can kill him. Because you’re a mercenary and a killer, right, Savage?”
“Wait, what look on her face?” I ask.
“Fear,” he says. “She still loves you and it scares the hell out of her. You scare the hell out of her.”
And there it is. The reason I had to walk away from Candace, simplified down to basics when my reasons were far from simple. But at my core, I didn’t want to see fear in her eyes when she looked at me. I didn’t want to deserve that fear. And I do deserve that fear, from everyone else but her. Tag better fucking fear me because I’m going to kill him before this is over. But not from her. I will die for her. I will protect her. I will do whatever it takes to keep her safe, even if it ends me in the process.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Candace
I loved Rick Savage. I loved him so damn much that he was a part of me, one half of my soul. He owned my heart, which I gave him freely. And then he left and never came back. I waited and waited. I prayed for him to return. Then I prayed to stop caring. I failed on that and failed brutally, but still, I gave up on him.