Page 12 of Maximus (Gold Team #4)

This was not how I pictured my evening.

I went back to the living room after the boys were asleep to find out the details about the explosion at the restaurant.

There was also the small detail of my car.

With the fleeing for our lives, and the safehouse, and Max being hurt, it seemed rather insignificant at the time.

I mean, Max was injured and bleeding and he’d gotten that way protecting us.

Not even I was na?ve enough to think that an explosion at an eatery I happened to be dining at could be a coincidence. I liked to live in denial most of the time, like believing the best in people and not paying attention to huge red flashing neon warning signs, but I wasn’t dumb.

“Humor me.” Max’s nonchalance pissed me right the hell off.

“Humor you?” I spat. “Seriously, you want me to spill my guts, for what? Your entertainment?”

“There’s not a damn thing entertaining about children being taken from their mother.” Every muscle in my body seized at his angry tone. “I need to understand how a judge awarded a drug dealing, money laundering prick custody of two boys—one of them not even his blood.”

“Have you ever been to Kenai, Alaska?” I found myself asking.

“Nope.”

“Picture this, the prettiest little town you’ve ever seen.

Cook Inlet and all its beauty. The Kenai River so blue-green you wouldn’t believe.

Except at sunset, when the Kenai turns pink.

Mount Redoubt in the distance, tall and proud, a beacon of splendor.

Beauty all around you, Mother Nature at her finest. The whitest of whites.

The deepest greens and yellows. Eagles soar, whales play, salmon run, trout plentiful.

Glaciers and brilliant, vivid wildflowers in bloom, the contrast is mind-blowing. ”

“It sounds beautiful.”

Beautiful didn’t begin to describe the majesty. Nor could I begin to explain the magnitude of the pain that had sliced me to shreds while living amongst all that magnificence.

“It is. There is so much to love about Kenai. About Alaska.”

Though there was way more for me to hate.

“I’m not understanding how that has to do with—”

“Population under eight-thousand,” I interrupted.

“Now, that sounds like a lot of people, but it’s not.

Not when you’re involved with the criminal underbelly.

Jay had a knack for collecting favors. But he was better at collecting dirt.

And once Jay had something on you, you were screwed.

He played the long game, he’d bide his time, hold his cards, and wait for the perfect time. ”

And when Jay found his perfect time, he brought me to my knees.

“So he blackmailed someone,” Max surmised.

“A lot of someones. ”

“What happened when you were arrested?”

Whoa! That was a cold hard slap.

But of course he knew. He knew everything about me and I knew nothing about him.

And the way Max framed his question annoyed me—he sounded so casual, like he was asking about the weather, not one of the worst days of my life. Yet surprisingly, his tone didn’t hold any of the disgust I felt for myself.

Disgust and shame seemed to be the running themes of my life. I swallowed down the humiliation, cleared my throat, and with my palms sticky with sweat, I explained.

“Jay set me up. Start to finish. He played me, but it began long before I was arrested. When I met Jay, I was eighteen, pregnant with Liam. He was just some guy who came into the sporting goods store where I worked. Looking back, I see it; he went out of his way to be nice to me. Every time he came in, he asked me how I was feeling, then after Liam was born, he’d ask about him, too.

But of course he knew who I was—who my parents were—so I’m positive he saw me as an easy mark. ”

“Who are your parents?”

My arms tensed around my legs, pressing my knees tighter to my chest. My heart pounded so hard I felt the beat against my thighs as I curled into myself.

Hell to the no ! I would never tell him about my parents. Max already thought I was trash, but he had no idea how right he truly was.

White trash.

Trailer trash.

A gutter rat.

That was all I’d ever been.

“That’s a story for another time,” I told him.

There was only so much I could take, and adding my parents’ dysfunction and abuse to the stupidity of me falling for Jay was more than I could bear.

“This went on for almost two years. Then Jay made his approach and asked me out. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.

He was sweet, funny, good looking, and I was none of those things.

A single mother trying to make ends meet.

Six months later, he said he had a job offer in Anchorage and he asked me to go.

I wanted out of Kenai but I was hesitant.

Then he asked me to marry him, said he wanted to give me a better life, that he loved me and Liam.

He said he’d waited so long to ask me out because he’d wanted us to be friends first. I fell for it. Like a fucking idiot.”

“So you moved.”

“Moved, married him, and got pregnant with Elijah. Now, you see, he had me trapped. That was when he let it all hang out. He showed me exactly who he was.”

God, it hurt to even think about how dumb I was.

I’d never forget the first time I’d witnessed Jay sell drugs from our house.

Liam had been asleep in his bedroom and I was in disbelief.

I don’t know what I found more shocking; my beautiful baby boy being in the other room and Jay not giving a shit, or that Jay was selling drugs.

Something that up until that point I hadn’t known, yet I should’ve because all the signs were there.

Jay had told me he was a day worker on fishing boats, picking up jobs from the dock when they were available.

That was how he explained always having cash, but he always had too much of it. Yet, I didn’t question him.

“Whose idea was it for you to become a pilot?”

“His. Jay said I needed to go back to work, he was tired of supporting us on his own. He said he’d pay for the flying lessons.

I felt guilty because he had been supporting us for almost three years.

So I went along with his plan and became a pilot, which are always needed in Alaska.

I had a job with a private charter company a month after I finished my mandatory hours. ”

“Did you like it?”

“I hated it. But I made decent money. Then I started planning my escape. I was in hell and I wanted out. Having a job was going to make it possible.”

Until it wasn’t, because I was fired.

“Why’d you agree to run drugs for him?”

There it was—I was a convicted drug trafficker. Well, sort of; I was arrested, convicted, and served time, but my charges had been reduced, thanks to one of Jay’s buddies who was a lawyer and owed him a favor. But there was more to it than that. It was Jay’s scheming, all the way down.

“I didn’t. It was all bullshit. I was set up.

I didn’t know there were drugs in my plane.

And not that anyone would’ve believed me, but Jay planted them there, then he was the one that called it in and tipped off the authorities.

Just enough to get me busted, but not enough for me to do any real time. ”

“What the fuck? I read the arrest report and the trial notes, why didn’t you fight the charges? You pled guilty.”

“Can we stop talking about this?”

Max’s features softened and for a moment I thought he was going to acquiesce, but then he frowned and I knew he wasn’t going to let up.

“This is important.”

“Why is it important for you to hear about what a fool I am?”

“Do you think you’re so unique you’re the first woman to be snowed by a con-man?”

“No, but I wasn’t snowed. I was buried in an avalanche. Most women are smart enough to get out long before I did.”

“You did what you could—”

“I stayed with him for three years after the first time I saw him deal drugs. I was pregnant with Eli. I should’ve taken Liam and ran then. But I didn’t, I stayed. That is not doing what I could, Max, that’s just plain ridiculousness. ”

“So he used your arrest record to get custody?”

“Yes. But Jay had dirt on the judge, so he was gonna get the kids no matter what. His whole plan hinged on me losing the kids. Once that happened, he had full control.”

“Why’d he want them?”

“He had four thousand pounds of cocaine he and his partner, Novak Yazzie, wanted me to fly down to Seattle for them.”

Max let out a low whistle and his eyes widened. “Seriously?”

I didn’t answer his question. Instead, I told him, “One-thousand-fourteen kilos. Four-point-five million dollars. I refused. He burned Liam. I went to the DEA. I wanted to make a deal, but they were taking too long. Then suddenly Jay had a different plan—if I paid him three-hundred-thousand dollars, he’d give me back the kids. ”

“That’s when you—”

“Yes, that is when I was hired to leave Mark and Zoey in the middle of nowhere.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say the truth out loud.

I was hired to kill them. Leaving them stranded in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness would’ve been certain death for the average person.

Thankfully, Mark Wright wasn’t your everyday average man, he was a highly trained SEAL, and he and Zoey had survived.

“Fuck.” Max tore his fingers through his hair and he shook his head.

“You weren’t supposed to strand Bubba and Zoey.

All three of you were supposed to die. Malcom Wright’s plan didn’t work if his brother was only missing.

He needed him dead. Malcom and Tracy Eklund had no intention of paying you. Hell, Eva, they didn’t have the money.”

I tried to keep my face blank. I was afraid of what it said about me if I allowed my hurt to surface. After all, I’d tried to kill Mark Wright and Zoey Knight. Why shouldn’t I have died right along with them?

“You didn’t know?” Max inquired.