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26

FBI Regional Headquarters, Chicago

Eight hours later…

Britt paced the length of the lobby, ignoring the concerned look of the guard manning the desk.

Yes , his pacing made him appear a little unhinged. Yes, his hair was in disarray thanks to the helicopter ride back to Chicago. Yes, he hadn’t been given anything to eat since the cabin, and even though he’d been given unlimited cups of coffee, the swill had been so weak it might as well have been foul-flavored tea.

So yes, he was gaunt with hunger and pale from lack of adequate caffeine intake. And yes, he’d been stuck in an interrogation room for five of the last eight hours, where he’d been forced to give his statement over and over again to different agents who hoped to trip him up just in case he wasn’t telling the truth about any part of the story.

News flash. He was telling the truth.

Well…the truth about what happened from the moment Knox showed up at my door , he silently amended. During all his myriad interrogations, there was one lie he’d held to. It was the lie about being nothing more than a simple motorcycle mechanic.

Given all of that, to say he was in a nasty mood was the understatement of the century. He wanted to breathe fire and bust heads. So yes, he didn’t give a flying fuck if the guard at the desk thought he was one sandwich short of a picnic.

After his time in the hot seat wrapped up, he’d been escorted to the lobby and told to wait. Ten minutes later, Hew had joined him, looking as retched and exhausted as Britt felt. But unlike Britt, Hew had chosen to lower his bulk onto one of the faux leather benches, cross his arms over his chest, and doze.

One of the great tricks spec-ops guys learned early in their careers was how to sleep in impossible positions in wildly unconventional locations. Britt had once caught some much-needed Zs inside an open-air Chinook helicopter flying through a thunderstorm. When he’d still been with the Army, it’d been standard practice for him to take a quick nap inside his transport Humvee while it bounced over uneven terrain. And he’d spent plenty of nights hanging off the side of a mountain on a portaledge—a suspended cot—at altitudes high enough to give a bighorn sheep a nosebleed.

But no matter how badly he might need sleep— and thanks to Julia and her insatiable appetite, lord knows I could do with forty winks —he couldn’t calm down enough to make shuteye an option .

Not that he’d trade his night with the sexy, blond agent for sleep.

Hell, no.

He’d have happily died of sleep deprivation rather than pass up the opportunity to get to know Julia O’Toole in the biblical sense.

Like the stories in the bible, the experience had been… transcendent .

He stopped pacing long enough to admire how the late afternoon sun glinted off the surrounding skyscrapers as his mind filled with scenes from the night before. He recalled how the real world had fallen away, and he’d been left with nothing but sensation when she’d first wrapped her succulent mouth around the head of his dick. He remembered how he’d forgotten every pleasurable sensation he’d ever experienced in his life the instant she straddled his hips and lowered herself onto him because nothing had ever felt as good as Julia’s hot, silky walls closing around his length. And he recollected how he’d been instantly lost to her, to the fire between them, as she’d ridden them both to completion.

The memories alone were enough to have his heart beating so hard he could feel it at his fingertips. In his toes. And in, er, other places that didn’t do him any good since he was stuck in the feds’ lobby.

He’d hated watching her get dressed, watching all that lovely soft flesh disappear into those flannel pajamas. He’d hated it worse when she insisted on returning to the couch. But what he’d hated the worst of all was knowing it was over.

Knowing their night together was over.

It’s good that it’s done , he told himself now. It’d be too easy to keep going, to take the leap…and then land on a bed of broken glass.

He resumed his pacing, hoping by moving his muscles that he’d burn off the toxic blend of emotions sliding like oil through his veins and?—

“You're burning calories you don’t have,” Hew’s voice cut into his thoughts. “And you’re making the guard anxious.” Hew cracked open one eye and patted the space on the bench beside him. “Why don’t you come over here and take a load off?”

“Can’t.” Britt shook his head. “Too keyed up.”

“Agent O’Toole will make sure Knox is safe.”

“I know.” Britt nodded. And he did know. He trusted Julia to do as he asked, to stay with Knox until they figured out who in the joint task force had outed him.

“Then what’s got you so wound up?” Hew sat up, stretching his neck from side to side. “You jonesing for another hit of the little blond fed? You got it that bad?”

That was enough to stop Britt in his tracks. He slid Hew a calculating glance.

Hew responded with a chuckle. “Don’t worry. Your brother was sawing logs like a woodsman preparing for winter. And Sabrina’s exhaustion finally got the better of her. I’m the only one who heard you and Agent O’Toole smashing naughty bits in the living room.”

“We weren’t smashing naughty bits ,” Britt grumbled.

“No?” Hew raised a bushy eyebrow. “Then what would you call it? Doing some aggressive naked cuddling? Going to Pound Town in the fuck truck?”

“She’s more than a piece of ass,” Britt hissed, making sure his voice didn’t carry to the guard at the desk.

“Sure.” Hew shrugged. “She’s smart and funny and seems to be good at her job.”

“She’s great at her job,” he insisted, unsure why he felt the need to defend her.

Now, both of Hew’s eyebrows tried to disappear under the shock of auburn hair falling over his forehead. “This is serious, isn’t it? I mean, I knew when you were stalking her that she?—”

“I wasn’t stalking her,” Britt insisted, mostly out of habit.

Hew was having none of it. “ Yes. You were. And it’s because she’s different from the other women I’ve seen you with.”

Hoping to distract his teammate, Britt kissed his finger and pointed it at the sky. “This one goes out to all the ladies I’ve known before. Don’t listen to him. You were all magnificent in your own ways.”

Ignoring his attempt at levity, Hew continued, “ You’re different when you’re around her.”

That had Britt blinking. “How so?”

“You’re less restless. More relaxed. It’s like she calms down all that edgy energy inside you.”

Britt scoffed. “Please. You’re making castles in the sky.”

“I’m not,” Hew insisted.

“Then you’re one chromosome away from having the brains of a kumquat. Julia is great. But she’s nothing special.” He bit off the last word because uttering it was offensive. Julia was special. The most special. But he couldn’t have Hew?—

His thoughts stopped when Hew started waving his hands in front of his face and coughing.

“What’s that?” he demanded. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry,” Hew said. “It’s just getting hard to breathe with all the bullshit flying around.”

Britt ground his teeth so hard he heard enamel crack. “Okay, fine. She is special. She’s the most amazing woman I know. And that’s saying something, considering I know women like Becky, Eliza, and Grace. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m me and have nothing to offer her.”

Hew frowned. “What do you mean? You’re smart. Some people think you’re funny—although I’m not sure I agree with that one. And you’re as loyal as a damned dog.”

“But my heart is a closed fist,” Britt countered.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means I’m not open to love. When I love someone, it costs me my peace. And that’s too damned expensive.”

Hew blinked. Then he blinked again. When he opened his mouth, Britt jumped in to stop him from saying whatever he was about to say. “What happened between me and Julia last night isn’t a topic I want to discuss. And I'm even less interested in talking about what’s not going to happen between me and Julia going forward.”

“Right.” Hew nodded, seeming to analyze Britt’s expression, which he hoped clearly indicated the subject was closed for business. “Far be it from me to stick my nose in anyone’s rose. And just so we’re clear, the extent to which I don’t give a shit about your sex life cannot be measured.”

“Good.” Britt nodded. “Great.”

“Good.” Hew sarcastically mirrored the harsh dip of Britt’s chin. “Great.”

Britt was about to say something appropriately scathing, but one of the elevators dinged . When the silver doors slid open, they revealed Agent Dillan Douglas.

Britt’s annoyance and frustration were instantly transferred from Hew to Julia’s partner. The sonofabitch had a face that’d been forged from steel. It was all hard angles and smooth expanses. Plus, the self-satisfied look Douglas always wore seemed to scream that he was the winner of the big dick lottery as well as the inheritor of a sizeable trust fund.

How long before Julia succumbed to those good looks and all that swagger? How long before Agent Dillan Douglas convinced her they’d be good partners outside the office?

The thought was enough to have Britt’s jaw sawing back and forth.

Douglas spotted Hew and immediately headed in his direction. By the time he reached Hew’s bench, Hew had gained his feet, and Britt had taken up a position next to him.

“Where’s my brother?” Britt demanded.

“Where’s Sabrina?” Hew asked before the last syllable left Britt’s lips.

“Both are still upstairs being questioned,” Douglas declared.

“I want to talk to Julia,” Britt insisted. He needed to know what was going on with Knox. He needed to know what they planned to do to keep Knox?—

His thoughts were interrupted when Hew said, “And I want to talk to Sabrina.”

Britt shot his teammate a curious glance. But Hew’s impassive face gave nothing away.

“Agent O’Toole is with your brother and will come down to fill you in on what’s happening with him when she has the chance,” Douglas assured Britt. “And Miss Greenlee is still talking with Agents Keplar and Maddox.”

Hew seemed to grow six inches. His tone was menacing when he said, “You think that’s a good idea? One of those sonsofbitches could be the rat and?—”

“Never mind that.” Douglas lifted the phone in his hand. “There’s a call for you two.”

“A call?” Hew’s chin jerked back.

“Who is it?” Britt asked as an odd sense of foreboding gripped the back of his neck.

Douglas wiggled the phone. “It’s your blond-haired designer. I don’t know how the sonofabitch found my personal cell phone number. But here we are. And he’s demanding to talk to you. He says it's urgent.”

“Right.” Britt snatched the phone from the fed’s hand before Hew could do the honors. “Ozzie, my man, what have you got?” he said into the phone’s microphone.

“I have been eating at a buffet of the bizarre for twenty-four hours.” Ozzie’s tone was brisk. “Every firewall I’ve jumped, every code I’ve cracked has made me itchy, like someone is watching my every keystroke. But I haven’t been able to figure out who it is. And then they made themselves known.”

Britt frowned. “What do you mean they ?”

“Kerberos.”

“Jesus,” Britt breathed. The hairs on his scalp lifted so fast and so high it was a wonder they didn’t jettison themselves right off his head.

For a long time, Kerberos was thought to be a myth, a secret hacktivist organization dreamed up by computer nerds who liked the idea of an all-seeing, all-knowing group that policed the dark web and brought the bad guys to justice.

But the Black Knights had come to know that Kerberos was, in fact, real. There was a group of vigilante computer geeks out there who remained anonymous and who seemed to find information even highly skilled white hat hackers like Ozzie couldn’t.

“What did they say?” he asked Ozzie now.

As Ozzie outlined what he’d learned from the supermen of cyberspace, gunpowder began to fill Britt’s veins, and his heart began to thunder in the rhythm of a war march. By the time he told Ozzie, “Got it. Thanks for the call,” he felt as focused and as ferocious as he did when he was dropped into a hot zone behind enemy lines.

The ding of the elevator bank diverted his attention.

When his eyes landed on the group of people exiting through the silver doors, the center of his sight began to crackle like disco lights, and the edges of his vision began to darken. The feds had confiscated his and Hew’s sidearms and had yet to return them. Which left only Agent Douglas.

“Take out your weapon,” he growled to Julia’s partner as all the restless energy Hew spoke of coalesced into a chilling stillness inside him.

“Wh-what?” Douglas sputtered in confusion.

“Take. Out. Your. Weapon ,” Britt snarled each word, not daring to take his eyes off the approaching group.

When the fed only blinked, Britt growled, “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

Before Agent Douglas could object—or offer any resistance—Britt reached into the man’s jacket and snatched his service weapon from its holster.

A split second later, he aimed his sights between the eyes of the rat.

“What the hell?” Julia, who at some point had changed into another one of her formless pantsuits, stopped in her tracks and stared at him incredulously. Knox, Sabrina, and the agents from South Carolina all followed Julia’s lead and abruptly halted their journey across the lobby.

The guard at the desk jumped up and pulled his service weapon, pointing it shakily at Britt’s chest.

“Drop it!” he yelled in a thick Chicago accent that reminded Britt of that old Saturday Night Live skit starring the late, great Chris Farley. Da Bears. “Drop it now!” the guard added, his voice as shaky as the gun in his hand.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Agent Douglas demanded from beside him.

“Britt, brother, go easy,” Hew cautioned from behind him.

Britt ignored them both as he stared hard at the one responsible for all this trouble. The one responsible for Sabrina’s assault, for his brother’s flight north, and for Cooper Greenlee’s death.

“You move,” he snarled, his nostrils flaring wide as his vision tunneled onto his target, “and I’ll put three holes in your head like a fucking bowling ball.”