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He flashed a smile that stole every thought from my head. “I’ll find Onyx.” He tossed the first-aid kit into the trunk. “Onyx! Come here, girl.”

I trotted to the nearest bush, thankful that the moon provided enough glow to see my way. As I crouched behind a thick bush, my arm throbbed to a painful beat. Or maybe that was my stupid heart, letting me know how much I enjoyed Jaxson’s company.

Another wave of heat swirled through me.

Bloody hell. I wanted to slap myself. Get a grip.

A man like him would never be interested in someone like me. I was boring. I’d already told him about my cats and my love for slippers, for God’s sake.

Real sexy, Tory. Bravo.

He probably had women falling at his feet, all of them with perfect hair, perfect bodies, and perfectly interesting lives. Definitely not a woman like me who looked forward to a night in, curled up with Oscar and Stella on my lap, watching documentaries and devouring popcorn by the bowlful.

Shaking off my foolish thoughts, I zipped up, straightened myself out, and hobbled back to the car, wondering if I should take off my other shoe.

Jaxson was already in the driver’s seat when I arrived, with the engine rumbling. The second I jumped in and shut the door, he hit the gas, screeching away from the curb.

Onyx whined from the backseat, and as I pulled on my seatbelt, I twisted around to look at her. “He’s crazy, isn’t he, girl?”

Jaxson shot me a grin. “That’s her excited whine. She loves it.”

Of course, she did. Apparently, even his dog was fascinated by his wild, reckless charm.

Gripping onto my seatbelt strap, I leaned toward the comms microphone. “Hey, we can use the radio to?—”

“No!” His sharp tone cut me off.

I jerked back, frowning as I twisted to look at him. “Why not?”

“We can’t use the police comms.” His voice was clipped and cold, back to that tactical edge he did so well. “They’re compromised.”

“Compromised how?” I frowned.

“Eddie? The corrupt cop . . .” His expression was hard as he flicked a glance my way.

“I agree Eddie was corrupt, but that doesn’t mean every cop is. You’re a cop, for God's sake.”

He groaned, like I was the frustrating one here, and pushed the accelerator harder.

“Jaxson, this is the third time I’ve asked you to tell me what’s really going on, and if you don’t give me a straight answer, I will use that fucking radio to?—”

“Okay!” He let out a heavy, frustrated sigh and gripped the wheel tighter. “I don’t believe Eddie just happened to find us. And I sure as hell don’t think he wanted to kill us. I think he was blackmailed into that.”

My stomach knotted. “Okay. What do you believe?”

His jaw tightened as he increased the speed. “He knew exactly where to find us,” Jaxson said.

“Meaning?” As the wind whistled through the bullet hole in the window, my annoying hair flicked over my face.

“Meaning someone fed him information. And that someone wants us dead. ”

My mouth went dry as the consequences of this tangled in my brain. “I have so many questions.”

He rolled his eyes like I was the world’s biggest headache.

I held up a thumb, refusing to back off. “First, any idea why Eddie would turn? Does he need money?”

“My guess is someone knew exactly how to manipulate him.”

I frowned. “Manipulate him into committing murder? That’s one hell of a leap.”

“In our minds, yes,” he said, sounding bitter. “But when family is threatened, it’s a different story.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that,” I said, “but why did he want to kill us ? What the hell did I do?”

Jaxson slid me a sharp side-eye. “What were you doing before they pumped your plane full of bullets?”

“Oh my god.” My jaw dropped. “I was filming that suspect boat, and they shot me down once they realized I was onto them. Was Eddie their onshore contact?”

“That would be my guess.” Every word came out grim.

I nodded slowly, trying to slot all the pieces together. “So, Eddie was waiting for the drug drop, but when they shot my plane down, he came to finish me off. And now you think Eddie was working for someone higher. Right?”

“Yes,” Jaxson said flatly.

“And what does that mean for us?”

“It means,” he said, locking his eyes onto mine with a hard intensity, “we can’t trust anyone. Not until we figure out who’s pulling the strings. No phones. No comms. Nothing that can be tracked.”

I bit my lip, torn between arguing and agreeing. The logical part of me knew he was right, but the idea of being completely isolated and on our own pressed down on me like a brick. “Except your brothers. Right?” I asked, my voice tinged with sarcasm.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “They’re the only people I trust.”

“What about me?”

His expression softened in a way I wasn’t expecting. “Of course I trust you.”

“Oh. Okay, that’s good.” There were still too many questions, though. One in particular that he’d dodged twice now. I crossed my arms and adjusted my seating so I could look at him better. “Good. Then tell me why your brother is in trouble.”

He heaved a massive sigh and hesitated for so bloody long that I clenched my good fist and punched his thigh. “Jaxson. Tell me.”

“Okay.” He growled. “Okay.” He released a noise like revealing this information was going to hurt. “I found a fresh grave at Angelsong Orphanage.”

I blinked at him. “What the hell? How?”

“Onyx and I went to the orphanage early this morning to search for more unmarked graves of those kids. And we found some. But we also found a fresh body in a shallow grave near an old fountain.”

“Jesus,” I blurted. The car jolted as we hit a bump on the winding road, and my empty stomach flipped. “I bet that was a shock?”

He took a sharp curve in the road way too fast. “You could say that.”

The wind slipped through the bullet hole, tossing my hair into my eyes. Pushing the unruly waves behind my ears, I asked, “Have you identified who the body is?”

He shook his head, and his gaze flicked between me and the car’s high beams lighting up the dark road ahead. “That’s Whitney’s job to figure out. But the body was a woman, and Whitney reckons she’d only been buried for a couple of weeks.”

“Jesus.” I sat forward, bracing myself against the dashboard as we veered around another sharp turn. Onyx whined softly in the back, and as her large head rested on the edge of the seat, her eyes closed. How on earth can she sleep with the way Jaxson was driving?

I returned my attention to Jaxson, and his lovely lips were drawn into a tight line, like he’d determined not to tell me anymore.

Too bad. I don’t give up that easily. “Why would someone bury a body there?” I asked.

“Because they have connections to the place.” His voice was tight, calculated, like he was trying to figure things out as he spoke. “Whitney guessed the woman was about fifty or sixty years old.”

“Could she have been an orphan there?” I adjusted the seatbelt over my arm, trying to stop the throbbing.

“That’s what I was thinking. But we don’t know for sure yet. ”

The moonlight spilled through the windshield, illuminating the handsome lines of his face. Wow, his lashes are so long.

Jesus, Tory. Focus. I cleared my throat. “But why would the person bury her there when the grounds are still being searched?”

Conflict burned in his eyes for a beat, but it quickly vanished as he sighed. “They couldn’t have known I was going to the orphanage.” His jaw tightened. “Only my family does. I go there in my own time. Off the clock.”

I frowned, trying to follow the tangled thread of logic. “Okay, so why do you think Whitney is in trouble?”

“Because,” he said, his tone dropping lower, “when I found out your plane had been shot down, I told my other brother, Parker, about the fresh grave.”

“But you said you could trust him.”

He shot me a warning glare. “I do trust him. With my life.”

His certainty was unshakable, and it made me ache a little, thinking about the bond he and his brothers shared; something I have missed terribly since my sister gave up trusting me.

“Okay, okay,” I said, holding up my uninjured hand. “But if you only told Parker, how did anyone else find out?”

“Because,” he glared at me so fiercely my stomach dropped, “he had to tell the chief about the body.”

“Whoa, wait. What?” My heart hammered as the car swerved slightly on the uneven road. “You don’t think Captain Watts is corrupt, do you?”

His jaw clenched so hard that the muscle in his cheek bulged. “All I know is that Eddie didn’t seem surprised to see me with you. And that means whoever Parker told, they told someone else, who put Eddie into action.”

“But who?”

The car skidded slightly on the loose gravel before he corrected it, bumping the tires back onto the pockmarked bitumen. Onyx let out another whine.

When Jaxson didn’t respond, I started working through the details I already knew. My Border Force crew had been coordinating with Rosebud and Risky Shores police, along with the Alpha Tactical Ops team, ever since we recovered that shipping container from the ocean that was filled with bodies.

And just like when we found the trafficking victims on that abandoned boat, and the others at Cody’s corn farm, it was always the same: every time we thought we were closing in on the bastards behind the Scorpion Industries crime syndicate, something would happen.

They’d slip through our fingers, and the clues would vanish like smoke.

The last big fish we’d landed was Grant Hughes.

I nodded slowly, fitting another jagged piece of the puzzle into place. “You think it’s B, don’t you?”

He sucked in a sharp breath, his shoulders rising as he exhaled slowly, like he was trying to calm a storm brewing inside him. Finally, he gave a reluctant nod.

“B,” I repeated, my mind racing. “She’s the woman that accountant Grant Hughes wanted protection from, isn’t she?”

Jaxson seized me with his eyes, and the flicker of surprise in his gaze was unmistakable.

I grinned as quiet satisfaction bloomed in my chest. “I know stuff too, Jaxson.”

The car bumped over another pothole, but he didn’t flinch. His eyes stayed locked on the dark, winding road ahead, lit faintly by the glow of the moon.

“So,” I pressed, and as his jaw flexed, worry etched into his expression, “who the hell is she?”

Rage contorted his features. “Someone who’s about to wish they’d never messed with us.” His tone was ice-cold, lethal.

The tension in the car became suffocating as I wondered if our near-death experiences were really over.

Or was the worst yet to come?