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“Sophia has seen that information, too. Suppose someone at LAI is trying to cover their tracks and tie up any loose ends. Well, Sophia’s a loose end.” Nathan’s words hung in the charged silence.
Fuck.Lachlan dropped his head back to stare aimlessly at Nathan’s ceiling. He’d brought nothing but danger to Sophia’s life.
He should have been the one who died.
“Can you check one more time,” Sophia asked, twisting the hem of her shirt in her fingers as she stared out the balcony sliding glass door.
“I’m sorry, miss,” the customer service rep for the airline said in a distinctly non-apologetic voice, “no one by that name checked into that flight, and he wasn’t rebooked on another.”
Flames, twisted metal, the stench of gasoline, burning plastic, and rubber. She gulped air but couldn’t fill her lungs. Bile stung the back of her throat.
She’d watched Lachlan burn.
The cocoon of numbness she’d slipped into after Jared brought her home shattered like glass. Her living room tilted. She lunged for the couch before she ended up on the floor. A sob wrenched free, then another. For some crazy reason, she’d allowed herself to imagine a future with Lachlan. Someone to love and call her own. Someone who might have loved her the way she needed to be loved.
She thought of the painting at the art gallery, the one with the Highlander leading his men into battle. How she’d fantasized that it was Lachlan in the painting. The more she’d gotten to know Lachlan, the more she saw the same qualities in him that the artist had captured in oil. The fierce bravery in the face of death, the willingness to lead from the front, the protector of everything he valued.
Silly, maybe, but there’d been times she was tempted to return to the gallery to see if the painting was still there. Now, she didn’t think she could bear looking at it. Her fantasy had been destroyed in an inferno of twisted metal.
Grief squeezed her chest and poured from her eyes. After what felt like hours, her breathing progressed from ragged hiccups to a steady rhythm. When Emily walked through the front door, she was too worn out even to summon a greeting.
“Sophia?” Emily bent over the back of the sofa, concern in her eyes. “Are you sick?”
“Lachlan’s dead.”
Emily’s inhale was loud in the quiet condo, her mouth forming an almost perfect O. She rounded the sofa to sit next to Sophia and envelope her in a long hug. “What happened?”
“His car exploded.” Sophia’s weariness vanished on a spike of deep, burning fury. She vaulted off the couch, needing an outlet for the dark energy triggering her muscles and causing her heart to race. “Someone murdered him, Emily. I told Lachlan he was too distrustful once, and he told me I was too naïve.” Tears—she hadn’t thought she had any left to shed—blurred her vision. “He was right.”
“You think the guy that ran you off the road...” Emily didn’t finish the sentence.
“Maybe.” How many enemies did Lachlan have? She sighed, swiping at the tears that leaked down her cheeks. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Where did she begin? Might as well rip off the band-aid and start from the beginning.
“Your dad came for a visit before I started at LAI. He asked me to keep an eye out for any unusual activity, any shipments to Afghanistan that appeared out of the ordinary.”
Emily exhaled long and slow. “He never stops with his scheming.”
“He asked me to spy on Lachlan in particular, as head of the Global Security division.”
“And then you met him and fell for him.” Emily’s brows lifted, then fell. “Awkward. Although, given the circumstances, maybe my dad had a good reason to suspect Lachlan was up to something.”
“There’s more.” Sophia bit her lip. “Your dad asked me to look for evidence of illegal weapons shipments to Afghanistan, and after my coworker, Fred, was killed, I found it in Fred’s office.”
Fred.
He’d been the one to unearth evidence of the additional weapons purchases right before he was murdered. Had he told someone other than her what he’d found? Before today, she would have dismissed the idea of Fred’s death as anything more than a tragedy of violence.
Now, she wasn’t so sure.
“Did you tell my dad?”
“No, because it implicated Lachlan, and I know what you’re thinking, but Lachlan is innocent. He was on his way to Kabul to confront the person accepting the shipments so he could discover who set him up.”
Her lips trembled as the magnitude of the situation sank in. “Someone didn’t want him to know the truth, and they killed him over it, which only proves he was innocent. Now, the actual criminal will get away with it, and Lachlan will always be known as an arms trafficker.”
Emily stood to retrieve a box of tissues, handing several to Sophia. “Back up a minute. You said you found the information implicating Lachlan in your dead colleague’s office. As in, the one who was murdered a few nights ago?”