Page 124 of Risky Obsession

“He choked to death. He had a bow tie shoved in his mouth, and well, I was interrogating him, and he died.”

“Jesus.”

How could Cooper be so brilliant, and yet so dumb? Beyond the window, the Milky Way that dominated the night sky provided enough light to see the cows in the distant paddock. “I can’t believe you killed those people.”

“Don’t act so fucking pure. You killedthat pilot.”

I sucked in a breath. I should never have told him about that.

“I bet you pissed your pants when they found that plane on the bottom of the ocean.” He released a short laugh.

Rage blazed through my brain. “That was self-defense. I didn’t know the fucking pilot was going to shoot me. I just got lucky.”

“Yeah, tell that to the judge.”

I banged my fist against the bulletproof glass that had cost me a fortune. “Shut up, Coop. Why did you shoot the staff at the hotel?”

Cooper groaned. “I panicked, okay? They saw my face.”

The guts dropped out of my stomach. “This is a fucking mess.”

“Shut up,” he hissed. “You think you’re so smart living in your high-tech mansion and hiding behind your encrypted computers while you make me do your dirty work for you. You ungrateful bastard. You have no idea what I’m going through.”

His rage had an edge of emotion to it that I knew only too well.

“I do know what you’re going through.” I softened my tone.

“You promised to help me.”

“I do help you. And we’ll get through this. I promise.”

“Exactly. We’re in this together. You and I are the only ones left. You and me, just like the old days.”

The only ones left? That means he doesn’t know about Beatrice.

Good. I didn’t want him stressing about that evil bitch.

This was nothing like the old days though. We were innocent then, and free.

Yet no matter what he’d done, I needed him, and I wanted to help him. I owed him that.

“You’re right,” I said. “We need to be smart about this.”

A silent beat boomed down the line.

“I’m sorry, Thomas,” he said. “I’ll fix this.”

It sounded weird hearing my real name, yet it was perfect, too. If we played our cards right, I could return to that name. “It’s okay, Coop. You’re under stress. We’ll get through this.”

“I hate it over here. I want to come home. I’m sick of this shit.”

I groaned. It was very unlikely that he could ever come home. And I’d told him that many times. But we didn’t have time to go over that again.

“I know you do. Listen, we have a chance to find the rest of thatgold and when we have it, we can disappear together, just the two of us, like you said. We’ll go to Barbados, or Rio.”

“We can do that now. I still have forty-seven gold bars.” He sounded so lost.

“I told you, they have frozen our offshore accounts, Coop. We need to start again.”