Page 26 of Ice Cold Liar (Ice Breaker Cold Case #14)

Chapter Fourteen

Eb grabbed the gun in a blink and snatched it right from Madeline’s fingers. “What in the hell are you doing?” He quickly positioned his body right in front of Naomi’s. “That isn’t funny.”

“Good. Because I’m not laughing. Stop this bullshit lover’s quarrel and focus.” Madeline grabbed for her gun.

He didn’t let it go.

Her brows shot up. “Eb?” She tugged on the weapon. “I’m giving you an order. Release the gun.”

“Did you forget?” A silky reply. “I don’t take orders from you or from anyone else at the Agency. Not any longer. And you don’t ever fucking aim a gun at her. ” That shit had not been funny. Bang. You’re dead. What. The. Fuck?

Half of Madeline’s mouth kicked into a smile. “Ah. I see that you’ve fallen to the same affliction that took Hudson. Be careful. You might wake up with a knife in your chest.”

Okay, now he was really pissed the hell off.

Naomi knows that I lied to her. She knows that I came here to get her locked away.

Shit, shit. Talk about a clusterfuck. He should have remembered just how good Madeline was at manipulation.

His old boss probably thought that seeing a fresh betrayal might lead Naomi to crack.

Only…

Eb glanced over his shoulder.

Naomi stared back at him with dry eyes and a lifted chin. Grim determination—and a quiet fury—cloaked her. She was not a woman about to crack. Not even close.

A rumble came from Henry.

His gaze dropped to the dog. Those golden eyes of Henry’s didn’t seem particularly warm in that moment.

“He doesn’t like you anymore,” Naomi informed him way too enthusiastically. “It’s a feeling he and I both share.”

Sonofabitch. The dog was mad at him, too? But he liked that dog! “Let me explain.”

“Give me back my damn gun!” Madeline tugged harder. “It’s not loaded! I took the bullets out before I came into interrogation. After that agent got his ass shot that time in Boston, with his own weapon, you know the rule is to keep bullets out of our sessions!”

He was well acquainted with the rule.

He let the gun go.

She shoved it back into her holster. Looked disgruntled.

What the hell ever. He was more than a bit disgruntled, too. “That bang bullshit was ridiculous.”

“I was trying to refocus you two. The fact that a hit was placed is the big deal, don’t you think? Not the BS between you two?”

The BS between him and Naomi was important. To him. I need to get Naomi alone. I have to explain.

Except, explain what? That he had planned to trick her? Maybe even seduce her if it got him what he wanted?

“Ivan had become problematic,” Madeline suddenly announced.

“With Hudson’s death, he stopped cooperating with the Agency.

Started being far too secretive. I suspected something big might be in the works with some of his old partners—Bratva still in Russia.

So I had some tech guys piggybacking on his communications.

When I received word about the hit on Naomi, I stepped in.

The Agency was the one responding to Ivan, not the jerk he was actually trying to reach.

Then I assembled a team, hauled butt down here to make certain Naomi kept breathing—you’re welcome for that, by the way, Naomi.

Only what did I discover? You two, standing over the dead man.

And her initials on the bloody baseball bat. ”

“FYI, it’s a softball bat, not a baseball bat.” Naomi cleared her throat. “And we weren’t standing over him. We were outside his bar. And the bat was stolen. So, there’s all that.”

Madeline huffed out a breath. “I watched you enter the bar from my vantage point in the woods. My team was in the process of approaching the perimeter when you two sashayed up.”

His shoulders tensed. “I damn well did not sashay.” He’d approached carefully and cautiously.

Madeline rolled her eyes. “Please. You took a dog to a crime scene. Hello, amateur hour. And to think, I once called you the best of the best. Now this. How the mighty have fallen. Just so you know, your performance reflects poorly on me.”

Did he give a flying flip? “Didn’t know it was a crime scene at the time,” he pointed out grimly. But, yeah, Henry had been watching his six. So what? The dog was damn good at sensing threats.

“You went in, and you found the body.”

“Right.” From Naomi. He could practically feel her simmering.

With anger. With pain? “We found the body,” Naomi confirmed.

“As in, we didn’t kill Ivan. You know that.

We know that. Inform Detective Anderson, then everyone will know.

And I can leave. Get to this promised safe house and figure out a life plan for myself. ”

He reached back and curled his fingers around her wrist because he didn’t want her rushing away. Can’t let her get away from me. I have to explain ? —

What? The truth? He had to explain the truth to her?

Unfortunately, the truth was a whole lot more complicated than him just lying to her.

“I can’t tell Detective Anderson that you’re innocent.

I don’t know one hundred percent that you are.

Could be that you are just a really fine actress,” Madeline mused.

“Maybe you snuck away from Eb and you went to the bar and you swung that bat—one that happens to have your initials engraved on it, by the way?—”

“Well aware,” Naomi muttered. “Why does everyone keep harping on that fact? Can’t we focus on the part where I said it was a stolen bat?”

“You swung the bat, and you killed the man who’d taken your dog.” Madeline’s head cocked as she peered down at Henry. “He’s quite a beautiful dog, by the way.”

Henry winked at her.

Deliberate? Random?

Madeline smiled at the dog.

Eb locked his jaw. “Naomi didn’t sneak away. She had a seizure after the fire.”

Madeline’s gaze remained on the dog. “Service dog.” A nod. “You’re worth your weight in gold, aren’t you, boy?”

“She was wiped out after the seizure,” he continued through clenched teeth. “Naomi slept when she got back to the guesthouse. She didn’t go out and beat a Russian criminal to death.”

“She slept for every moment?” Madeline seemed doubting as her gaze slowly rose to crash with Eb’s.

“I think it’s possible that—with her in one room and you in the other—she could have crept away without you realizing what she’d done.

You need to give her more credit. Since Hudson’s death and the DA’s absolute refusal to prosecute, I have been doing a deeper dive into her past.”

“I’m right here,” Naomi snapped. “Stop talking over me.”

Madeline fired him a sharp smile. “If you try hard enough and you happen to know just the right people, you can unseal all sorts of old documents. You can also get people to share details that were supposed to remain quiet when you flash official-looking government ID.” She put her hands on her hips.

Ah, the favorite pose again. Madeline stepped to the right.

The better to see Naomi. “There is more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there, Naomi?

Just how old were you the first time you killed a man? ”

What in the hell kind of question was that? “ She didn’t creep away. I was in the same bed with her the entire time. I would have noticed her absence. Naomi didn’t kill Ivan.”

Madeline didn’t look shocked. More like…disappointed? But she nodded. “The same affliction that plagued Hudson.” A soft sigh. “Be careful, Eb. I really don’t want to lose two agents.”

Fuck this. “Was Hudson a killer?” Don’t think about what she said regarding Naomi’s past. Not now.

“Ah, come on. Don’t play the faked shocked role with me. This is the CIA.” Madeline’s gaze flickered toward the one-way mirror. “We’re all killers.” Low. Mocking.

There was a difference between cold-blooded murder and stopping someone who was about to detonate a bomb and kill dozens of people. Or stopping someone who was running at you with a freaking machine gun as he fired wildly and took out innocents in a crowd?—

“Tell yourself whatever you have to in order to sleep through the night,” Madeline added.

“But at its core, you know the job. You know agents have to do things that push them to the edge. And sometimes, beyond that edge. It takes a certain personality type to handle the job. Otherwise, guilt would eat you alive.” Her gaze flickered over him.

Then shifted toward Naomi. “Every employee at the Agency is given a personality assessment. A deep psychological analysis. We have to make sure that people are in the positions that fit their individual talents.”

“Yeah.” Annoyed, from Naomi. “Was Hudson’s individual talent his ability to kill women? Because I’ve been told by someone with a pretty damn good bit of knowledge about killers that he did, indeed, have a talent for?—”

“Memphis Camden is wonderful at tracking down runaway criminals,” Madeline cut in to say. “He’s got a knack for understanding the dark motivations of killers, but he is far from infallible.”

Eb sucked in a deep breath. “Memphis came to you. He told you about his suspicions.”

She tipped her head forward. “Memphis came to me. After Hudson’s murder.

” A quiet admission. “But I informed him that he didn’t have a full picture of Hudson.

Or of what he thought Hudson was doing with the, ah, international victims, that Memphis had compiled.

” A shake of her head. “One person’s victim is another’s monster who must be stopped.

Things are not black and white, and Memphis should have realized that much, much sooner. Especially with his own past.”

Shit. Eb’s heart slammed into his chest. “They were sanctioned kills.” The international victims that Memphis had tried to link to Hudson hadn’t been part of a serial killer’s twisted bloodbath. They’d been targets that the CIA had wanted eliminated. So Hudson had eliminated them.