Page 4 of Maximus (Gold Team #4)

Tex needed to hurry up and call me back. Max had to leave.

His presence took up all the space in my small living room. He sucked all the oxygen out of the room and made it hard to breathe. The man was larger than life, and the way he stared at me made me nervous.

He didn’t like me, that much was obvious.

Not that I could blame him, I’d done some horrible things in the past, things I was trying to atone for, but I knew I’d never achieve salvation.

There was no way to erase the black marks on my soul.

Even knowing that, I didn’t regret saving my boys.

But I did regret having to hurt two innocent people in the process. I’d never forgive myself for that.

Zoey and Mark.

Thank God, they were alive.

But then, I figured they had a better chance than most. Mark Wright was a Navy SEAL.

Max’s cell rang and I held my breath. Please, let it be Tex.

“Tex,” Max greeted, and relief washed over me.

“Thank God,” I mumbled, and Max cut his icy blue eyes to me .

Sweet Jesus, his stare was lethal.

Even as he listened intently to Tex, his gaze never left mine—alert, assessing. Full of condemnation.

In his mind, he’d already tried me, convicted me, and there’d be no changing the guilty verdict. Not that I cared, but I still felt the wrath of his censure.

“Right,” Max spoke. “We already went through all of that. She’s got nothing useful.”

Of course I don’t, because I’m useless.

“Sure.” Max pulled the phone away from his ear, tapped the screen then continued. “You’re on speaker.”

“Eva?” Tex’s voice boomed.

“Yeah.”

“I want you to go up to Maryland with Max. His team has a safehouse—”

“No, Tex. The boys finally have stability—a routine. You know that. I can’t just disrupt that. No one has been bothering me here.”

“I get it. Why don’t you come up to my place and stay with me and Melody?” he volleyed.

“Melody?”

“My wife.”

“I didn’t know you were married.” Though the thought made me smile. Tex was a good man, very kind and giving. “I like that for you.”

“Listen,” he sighed. “I wouldn’t be telling you to move your boys unless this was serious. I have two kids of my own. I know how important stability is.” Tex is a dad? Wow. That kind of explains some of why he helped my kids. “Trust me.”

His last two words hung in the air— trust me —I didn’t trust anyone.

I’d blindly trusted two men in my life, both had fucked me over. One royally. The other had screwed me over in a way that I’d never forget—my boys would never forget .

“Tex, I hate to sound like a broken record, but—”

“There’s a hit out on you, Eva.”

Oh, fuck .

It was questionable which one of us, Max or me, tensed more. It looked like every muscle in his body had frozen, but every cell in mine burned.

“Wh-what?” I stammered.

“Who put out the hit?” Max inquired angrily.

“I’m still working on finding who put out the contract. The payout is low so there weren’t that many bites. But someone finally put in a bid, it was accepted this morning. You have a hitman-for-hire now hunting Eva.”

“Um… are you sure? You could be wrong, right?”

Dear God, I sounded like an idiot but my mind was buzzing. A hitman?

“Wish I were, Eva, but I’m not wrong.”

“I haven’t done anything,” I blurted out. “I swear it.”

Max’s glacial stare was still watchful, but now there was a sliver of pity.

God. I didn’t want his pity. I didn’t want anyone’s. I just wanted to be left alone me and my boys.

“The boys!”

“The contract is for one hit—you,” Tex gently told me.

“But just like before, they’ll use my boys, they’ll hurt—”

“Calm down, Eva,” Max snapped.

“Don’t you tell me to calm down. My boys are in danger—again. Because of me.”

I was up for the worst mother of the year. Fuck that, worst mother in history. Guilt flowed through my body and fear pounded in my chest.

Not my boys—not again. They’d been through enough because of me.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you or them,” Max vowed. “Tex, how much time do you think we have? ”

“You know I can’t tell you that. I tracked the IP to Idaho, but that means nothing. Though with the low payout, I doubt we’re dealing with a professional.”

Low payout, oh my God. I’m not even worth the cost of a professional .

“Keep digging and call us back,” Max told Tex.

“Stay safe.”

Tex disconnected and Max set his phone down and studied me. Not that he hadn’t been focusing on me through the conversation, but now he seemed to be working something out in his mind.

“You’re gonna take a vacation.”

“What?”

“That’s how we’re gonna play this with the boys.”

My boys !

“I need to go get them from daycare—”

“We will. But first, we need to have a plan.”

“I can’t go on vacation. My job.”

My eyes drifted closed, I sounded like a nitwit, I knew it. But I’d just gotten my life back on track. Liam and Elijah were finally starting to trust me again, they were relaxed, the nightmares were subsiding—now this.

On the run once more.

“Call your boss and tell her that one of the boys is sick. You’ll need to come up with something that will keep you out of work awhile. Tonsillitis. Chicken pox.”

Do kids even get chicken pox these days ?

“Great. Back to lying,” I huffed. “Deceiving the people around me who trust me. Of course. That’s what I do, right? What I’m good at. Lying and running. Putting my kids in danger. Making stupid decisions.”

“Eva, you can stand here feeling sorry for yourself or you can help come up with a way to introduce me to your kids in a way that won’t hurt them when this is over and I disappear.

I’m guessing you don’t want to tell them the truth, which means we need a plan.

Lying to your boss is necessary if you want to keep the job.

Or you can call her and quit. That choice is yours. ”

Pain sliced like a thousand tiny blades. Was that what I was doing, feeling sorry for myself? Being the selfish bitch I’ve always been?

I just wanted to be a good person. My whole life had been a series of uncontrollable events.

I left home at fifteen thinking I was saving myself and instead I found how na?ve I really was.

When I was free of that nightmare, I learned how one wrong choice could snowball until you were so buried you couldn’t dig your way out.

Nothing had ever been in my control.

“I’d prefer to quit,” I told Max.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. I’ll call my boss and tell her I have an emergency and I need a week off.

She’ll either approve the time or I’ll quit.

I’m not lying and saying my kid’s sick. Lulu has been kind to me.

She knows I’m a single mom and she’s worked my schedule around daycare.

I’m not repaying that with lies. After what happened…

never mind, it doesn’t matter. But I’m telling Lulu as much of the truth as I can.

I have an emergency and I need time off. ”

Max’s brow pinched and cold eyes took me in.

“Whatever you feel you need to do. What about your boys?”

“I don’t want them to see you.”

“Impossible. I need to be close.”

“They’ve—”

“Tonight I’ll stay in my car, out front.

I’ll be able to keep an eye on you and they won’t see me.

You can tell them you’re going on vacation.

Tomorrow we leave, I’ll follow you, and when we stop for the night, I’ll get the room next to yours.

But then we need to find a way to introduce me to them. ”

My frustration mounted. I’d have to lie to my kids again. Introduce Liam to another man, and have my son wonder if I’d brought another asshole criminal into our lives. If he’d be hurt again.

“And who should I say you are?”

“Fuck, Eva. I don’t know. Tell them I’m your friend.

I get it, you’re trying to atone and make up for the past to your kids.

But you don’t have a choice. Either you tell your boys you’re going on vacation and I’m a friend that you happened to run into and you let me into their lives, or you make my job harder running the risk of a fucking hitman taking you out.

Then what? Where do your kids go then? Who will protect them if you’re dead? ”

“I never have a fucking choice,” I whispered as my insides twisted. “Where are we going on vacation?”

Max picked up his phone. “What do Liam and Elijah like?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Do they like the beach? Amusement parks? Airplanes?”

“Liam is obsessed with trains, so Elijah is, too. But I still don’t understand why you’re asking.”

“You don’t want to lie to them but you cannot tell them the truth. So you are going on vacation, just with a bodyguard.”

Max started tapping on his phone and tears pricked my eyes.

“Th-thank you,” I sputtered.

“You’re welcome. There’s a museum in Tifton, Georgia. It looks like if we stay on 75 north, we’ll run into others. We’ll stay on the move, you and the boys will be safe, and Tex and my team can track down who put out the contract.”

“And the hitman? ”

“That’s what I’m for—to protect you. But hopefully, he’ll never get close. Like Tex said, the payout is low, a professional would pass. Which means we’re dealing with an idiot with no formal training.”

“Right.”

“I can and will keep you safe,” Max told me. “Tex likes you, he wouldn’t have sent me if he didn’t trust I was good at my job.”

“Tex doesn’t like me. I tried to kill his friend and Zoey. Tex feels sorry for me, but more than that, he wanted to save my boys. Which was confusing why he’d care, but now that I know he’s a husband and father, it makes more sense.”

“Tex would’ve done whatever he needed to do to help Liam and Elijah—father or not—that’s just Tex.”

I’d have to take Max’s word for it, I didn’t know Tex the way he did. The man was a mystery to me. My guardian angel—via cell phone.

“Thanks again for—”

“Don’t mention it. My job is to keep you safe.

But to do that, I need your cooperation.

If stopping at some museums assuages some of your guilt and makes you compliant, then it’s worth it.

But I need you to understand, in the future we won’t have time for compromise.

When I tell you something, you need to follow directions.

And for the love of Christ, pay attention to what’s going on around you.

Head up. Focused. Alert. I’ll be there, but there are three of you and one of me.

We have to work together to keep the boys safe. ”

Work together to keep the boys safe …the concept was foreign to me.

Liam didn’t remember his father—the guy had taken off before he was born. But Liam and Elijah both remembered Jay. And my ex-husband certainly never did anything to keep them safe.