Jacob Page 13

Lee rubbed his temples, regretting the whiskey in his coffee. It made him too warm, his brain too fuzzy. “How much more?”

  “Whoever broke into your server room didn’t actually break in.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There was no break-in,” he explained. “Lee, the intruder had a key.”

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Please, please let him be wrong. Just the thought of it made his guts twist. Someone he worked with broke into his server room and tried to steal Inferno. Why? He’d already uploaded it to the cloud, making it available to the world for free. Someone had to be after the source code. “It was one of my employees?”

  “According to the logs, it wasn’t one of your employees. It was you.”

  “Me?” Oh, shit. OhshitOhshitOhshit. He knew that’d come back to bite him in the ass. But, wait. He hadn’t actually staged the break-in, yet. As calmly as possible, he asked, “Why would I break into my own server room?”

  “That’s why TREX is now actively engaged. Your call didn’t pull us in. We were already on it. The agency is good. Really good. If you have anything to hide, they’ll find it. It’s what they do. You need to tell me the truth. I can’t protect you if you lie to me.” Jacob didn’t buy the act, and deep down Lee knew he wouldn’t. A guy with Jacob’s background and experience was probably trained in interrogation. A human lie detector.

  Lee was so screwed.

  14

  “Let me make sure I have this straight.” Jacob pinched the skin between his eyes to ward off the headache brought on by that nasty whiskey and fueled by the current situation. The story Lee had just unloaded made about as much sense as something that played out on TV.

  But there was one flaw. A fatal flaw. It was too neat. Neat equated to arranged. Arranged equated to organized. Nothing about this seemed all that organized.

  And they come full circle to the fatal flaw. Someone was lying. He hoped it wasn’t the man sitting on the couch next to him.

  Jacob channeled everything he’d learned about interrogation through the years. He always started with Weber’s lethal glare that had the power to break most. For those who didn’t crack from that, Jacob would then move on to Snyder’s more hands-on tactics. He’d heard a rumor the now assistant director had once partially cut out a man’s tongue when the dumb son of a bitch refused to talk.

  It wouldn’t come to that. Even if Lee refused to talk, Jacob wouldn’t let it get physical. He’d just earned the man’s trust. He wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that. Besides, he’d made him a promise to protect him. Even if that meant against himself.

  “You’re telling me you staged a break-in for the same night of the real break-in to get TREX’s help tracking down the prototype those men stole when they attacked you? But then when TREX sent agents to question you about the break-in, you described me as the intruder.”

  “I panicked.”

  “You panicked. This is so…” He paused to find the right words. When they wouldn’t come, he gave up and shook his head. There were no right words for this.

  “Screwed up,” Lee answered when Jacob fell silent. “I know.”

  “Why get TREX involved at all?”

  “Because the PIs I kept hiring all came up empty. I want my prototype back.”

  “It’s just a thing.”

  “It was my life’s work.”

  “It’s not worth your life,” he snapped. “Why hire a PI to find the prototype? You know it could attract some pretty shady men again, right?”

  “This time I’ll be ready for them.”

  “What are you saying?” When Lee’s eyes rounded right before he looked away, Jacob got it. “Don’t tell me you want to punch them in the nose, too.”

  “When you say it like that, you make it sound like a stupid idea.”

  “Because it is!” He worked his jaw to keep his temper in check. Besides, he’d never find them unless he went into the afterlife to look for them. Jacob had taken care of them in that alley. TREX had cleaned up the mess. No way would any PI find a trace of what had happened that night.

  “Let’s just take a step back,” Jacob finally said after regaining his composure. “How did you get TREX’s number?”

  “I hired a PI to track it down.”

  Well, shit. If a PI could track down enough intel on TREX to find a phone number, the covert agency wasn’t as covert as it used to be. Two years ago, only those directly affected by the agency knew of its existence. Now? Apparently any private dick had the ability to look them up.

  He made another note, trying to keep everything straight. He didn’t have a brain like an intel agent. He needed to write shit down to remember it all. “Does this PI have a name?”

  “McKoy, I think. He only lasted a couple weeks…and… Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Son of a bitch. Jacob was going to kill him. “Did you ever meet the guy in person?”

  “No, actually. He said he did his best work from behind a keyboard.”

  Chris. Jacob grabbed his phone and stabbed at the keypad, concentrating to keep his breathing steady, his temper under control. “TREX. Bravo… damn it.” He hadn’t had to call in a situation since being removed from the frontline. “This is Jacob Burns, former agent on TREX Team Two. I need you to patch me through to Special Agent Chris McKoy.”

  “Under whose authority?”

  “Leo Walsh.” God, he hoped as an SAC, Walsh had enough authority with the agency to order a secured patch to another SAC.

  “Stand by.” After minutes of Jacob ignoring Lee’s looks, his little noises, and silencing his questions with a glare, he got up and stepped out on the private deck. Of course it was raining.

  HQ finally came back on. “Special Agent McKoy is on the line.”

  “Burns? Why are you calling me on a secured line? Is everything okay?”

  Like he cared. If he did, he would have checked to see Jacob wasn’t okay. Not by a longshot. “Did you recently pose as a private dick?”

  The son of a bitch chuckled. “Figured that’s what this is about.”

  “Something funny?”

  “Don’t get all worked up. One of the rookies from my sister’s internship program caught something in his net on a daily data retrieval. She handed it off to me, thinking it didn’t feel right. She was right.”

  “What was it?”

  “Three separate private investigators, at separate times, all trying to track down a stolen prototype currently in my possession. If you ask me, the code was sloppy and would have never made it to market.”

  Of course TREX had the briefcase. Of course they’d sent it to the agency’s top intel agent to analyze. Jacob closed his eyes and muttered several curses, recalling how much it annoyed him working with this man. He used to call Chris probie, part of the hazing for being the newest member of TREX Team Two. Those days were gone. Now he had to address him as sir since Chris McKoy outranked him.

  “Why’d you get involved?”

  “I had to do something.” McKoy’s tone grew serious. “He asked me to hunt down a tactical retrieval agency with a special expertise in finding things. If I didn’t give him something, he’d just move on to the next PI. We couldn’t take the chance that one of the dicks would get lucky. I gave Lamont the number to an ex-agent known to take a side job here and there. It obviously worked.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob growled, his gaze locking with Lee’s through the glass. “Obviously.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Chris? Your brothers are here.” A female’s voice sounded from the background.

  “Be right there. I have to finish gloating. Was there anything else I can do for you, Burns?”

  “You could maybe not enjoy this so much.”

  “Why would I want to do that? For as long as you gave me shit when I was in your unit? Called me probie? Made me wash your and Granger’s disgusting socks on ops? No way, Burns. Cause and effect, man.”

  He wished he had a comeback. A
way to deny any of it. Even a defense to justify what an asshole he’d been. McKoy was right. He’d earned every minute of this hell he now called his life. The unrelenting rain soaked into him, chilling him into a fit of shivers. “You’re right. I deserve this. I deserve all of this.”

  “Whoa there, cowboy. I never said you deserved this.”

  “It’s the same thing,” he snapped, pissed.

  “No, Jacob. It’s not.” The fact he’d used his name caught his attention. The guys rarely used first names, and only then to make a point. Shit was about to get real. He braced himself. “You were an asshole. We were all assholes. Cold, cruel, heartless assholes. We had to be when we were in the field. We did a lot of good shit together. Did either of us deserve what we got as payment? No. I’m on crutches, trying to walk with a severed spine. And that’s on a good day. You were one damn good spec ops agent unfairly forced out after the board found out you were gay.”

  He tensed at the truth in that statement, a truth he’d been denying for two years. Even though deep, deep down he knew the truth, he wasn’t ready to believe it. “That’s not why I had to give up my spot on the team. I made the wrong call.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  “I could no longer be trusted.”

  McKoy laughed, damn him. “If that really were the case, do you think Dan Weber would be where he is today? He gave up his entire team to go after one guy. He got every single member of his unit killed because of his wrong call. Do you think TREX forced him out? No. He got a free pass and is now running the entire agency.”

  “Why tell me all this?” He was pretty sure McKoy just divulged a hell of a lot of classified information. Information that could get him in a metric shit ton of trouble if he didn’t tighten his lips.

  “Because I’m your brother. We don’t have to like each other, but we will always have each other’s backs. It’s bullshit that you were sent to the Farm. TREX knows what they do, how that so-called SAC running that motley crew has gone rogue and lets the residents take on freelance jobs.”

  Holy shit. TREX knew about the side jobs? Yet something else no doubt classified McKoy had just divulged. It also pissed him off. That motley crew was the closest thing Jacob had to family now. “The finds are harmless, jobs TREX would turn away anyway.”

  “Why do you think we haven’t stopped it? It’s a bunch of wannabes and former agents playing real agent. You’re too good to be there. That’s why I stepped in. You don’t deserve what happened to you. You do deserve to make amends for what happened to that Lamont guy, which is why I gave him enough to find you.”

  Jacob didn’t know what to say. He’d never heard so much sentiment from Chris McKoy. Any sentiment, actually. He stared through the window as Lee checked his phone, every few minutes glancing up to check on him. “I know what I’m doing. So does Walsh. He assigned me to protect Lamont.”

  “Protect?” McKoy’s voice changed, grew even more serious. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s been some chatter.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.” As much as Jacob wanted McKoy to use every resource at TREX’s beck and call, him getting involved and using those resources on an unsanctioned job could get his ass in serious trouble.

  “Good thing you don’t have to ask,” he chuckled. “I’ll feed whatever intel I can back to Walsh. Oh, and Burns? Be careful.”

  “Why?”

  “The last time I was assigned to protect someone, I ended up married.”

  Lee couldn’t figure him out. For someone who complained about the rain, he sure stayed out in it a lot. He caught when Jacob ended the call and went to bring him back inside before he ended up with pneumonia.

  He slid the door open. “Jacob?” When he didn’t turn, Lee walked out and crossed his arms at the invasion of cold. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Thinking.”

  “You can think inside.”

  “I just need a few more minutes.”

  Nodding, he turned to go back in before they both ended up with pneumonia.

  “Lee?”

  “Yes?”

  He reached for him. Lee took his hand and smiled. Looked like they were both going to end up with pneumonia. He stood next to Jacob and stared out over the water. The rain lightened to a drizzle. The sky brightened. It even felt a little warmer.

  “Have you ever heard of the name Sergio?”

  Lee studied him for several seconds. Jacob kept his focus straight ahead. Eventually, so did he. “No. Who is he?”

  “The man I used to work for.”

  Something in the tone of Jacob’s voice weighed on Lee. Why wouldn’t he look at him? “To do what, exactly?”

  He closed his eyes and winced at the way Lee punctuated the last word. Too damn bad. “You already know the answer to that.”

  When he wouldn’t look at him, Lee continued to push. If Jacob wouldn’t tell him the whole story, he’d keep pushing until one or both of them snapped. “Why’d you stop?” He waited until Jacob opened his eyes and looked at him. “You were a contract killer, right? What made you stop?”

  “I just couldn’t do it anymore. My hands aren’t clean by any means, but the people I went after…” he muttered and shook his head, swallowing several times and dropping his gaze. “They did terrible things. Things I can’t bring myself to say, they’re that sickening. I made it so no one else suffered by their hand. They were pure evil.”

  “Did that mean they deserved to die?”

  “Sometimes, yeah.”

  “How can you justify that?” Lee breathed in shallow breaths, unsure if he wanted to hear any more, horrified by what he’d heard already. “How many people have you killed?”

  “Please don’t ask me that.” Jacob looked at him. “Don’t ask me their names. Or what they were doing. The smell of the last thing they ate on their breath. Because I remember every one of those things. I’m not proud of who I was. I also can’t change what I did. All I can do is spend the rest of my life making up for the sins of my past. If that’s even possible.”

  Lee stared out at the water through the misty fog of rain. “I’m sorry I asked.”

  “So am I.” Jacob closed his eyes. “I’m such a disaster.”

  “Good thing disaster recovery is sort of my thing.”

  Jacob looked at him with a deep need inside him. Lee wondered if he even knew it existed. The man kept such a hard, protective shell around him. He did everything he could to keep people away when, deep down, he craved the exact opposite.

  Time to put that to the test. He grabbed Jacob’s other hand and turned him so they faced each other. “My name is Leland Patrick Lamont. I’m thirty-one, a Libra, and I hate glitter.”

  “Glitter?” He made a face.

  “I hate glitter,” he repeated passionately, earning a grin.

  “I’m Jacob William Burns, thirty-three, a Leo, and I hate inspirational signs.”

  “Like the little kitty one telling you to hang on?” His voice jumped an octave.

  Jacob rolled his eyes. “Exactly like that.”

  Lee closed the gap between them. “I hate lima beans.”

  “No one likes lima beans.” He dropped his attention to Lee’s lips. “I don’t like opera.”

  “I’ll hide my Il Divo collection.” He moved his hands up Jacob’s arms. “I don’t like the smell of dry erase markers.”

  “You must have to hold your breath during long, boring meetings.”

  “I can hold my breath for a very long time.”

  He slipped his arms around Lee’s midsection. “I like to sing but can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

  “I like to cook but, well, can’t.”

  “I like to cook and can.”

  “I like to sing and can.”

  Jacob licked his lips, sucking in the rain that had collected on them. “I love country music.”

  Lee cringed. “Sorry, that’s a deal breaker.” He pretended to walk aw
ay, then laughed when Jacob pulled him back, resting their lips a breath apart. “I love the way your body feels against mine.”

  “I need to feel you.”

  “I need to know there’s more between us than what we did last night.”

  “Right now,” he said and playfully nipped at Lee’s lips. “There’s far too many clothes between us.”

  “I think we should do something about that.”

  “I think we should move this inside.” A sharp look of dominance flashed in Jacob’s eyes, burning Lee on the spot. Dear God, what that look did to him. He followed him in, eager to have nothing between them at all.

  Jacob peeled the wet shirt from him and hung it over the back of a dining chair. Lee bit down on his bottom lip at the sight. The rain had soaked through and kissed his skin, the droplets clinging to the healthy mat of chest hair and drenching his flesh.

  “You’re beautiful,” Lee whispered in a shudder of breath.

  Jacob moved them both to the couch and held him. He nipped at Lee’s lips and trailed kisses along his jaw before settling in behind his ear.

  “You have no idea what you’re getting with me,” he moaned and bit at Lee’s ear. Jacob pulled Lee’s shirt out of his jeans and ran his hands up and down his back. “I’m a mess.”

  Lee kissed his shoulder, running his tongue along his skin and loving the taste. It was a mixture of rain and sweat—and him. Always him. “I want you, Jacob. I want everything about you.”

  “Lee, I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” He pushed Jacob onto the couch and wedged himself between his knees. He trailed kisses down Jacob’s chest, tracing his tongue along a sensitive nipple. Jacob sucked in a breath and arched his back. The man liked to have his nipples licked. Good to know. He made a mental note as he moved to the other side. Just as before, when Lee stroked his tongue across the tip, Jacob sucked in a breath and arched as his nipple puckered to a hard little bud.

  “Do that again.”

  He did, and Jacob ran his hand over Lee’s head. He shuddered from the feeling, relishing in it. Jacob cupped Lee’s neck and pulled him up, crashing their lips together.

  Jacob’s tongue plunged into his mouth and eagerly probed the recesses. The chill from the rain was gone, replaced by a burn deep inside him. Every kiss, every touch, only fueled the flame.