Page 61 of The Illusion of Power (Passion and Politics #1)

BECK

I n every investigation, there’s a moment, a single instance, when you’re left with no choice but to throw caution, protocol, common fucking sense, to the wind and follow your gut.

When you’ve exhausted whatever options you had and the only decision left to make is what you’re willing to risk to close the case.

Four days ago was that point for our back-channel investigation into Jacob Marsh.

When Cal and I asked ourselves that question and the only answer was: whatever is necessary. Our careers, our connections, and the element of surprise that gives us somewhat of an upper hand over Jacob and whoever he has working for him on our team.

All of it.

Because the only thing we can’t risk, the one thing neither of us can abide losing, is her.

Selene is over thirteen hundred miles away in Detroit, while I’m sitting next to Cal in a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, waiting for Leland Marsh to grace us with his presence.

The decision to come and see him wasn’t made lightly, and I’m still not sure how much information we’ll be able to glean from our conversation, but we had to come.

I wanted to look him in the eye and tell him to call his boy off before I put him down like the last man he sent after someone under my protection.

My leg bounces harder with every minute that passes. “I don’t understand what’s taking so long.”

“He’s fucking with us just like Valinsky did,” Cal responds, flipping through the copies he made of Leland’s visitor logs and the duplicates of the worrying amount of fan mail he’s received over the years.

So far, none of it has linked back to Jacob, but we know he likes to use proxies to do his dirty work, so that doesn’t mean anything.

I grimace at the mention of the visit with the man who murdered my family.

He wrote to me every day after his sentencing, asking me to come see him, taunting me with details of my wife’s final moments that he would only share with me in person.

For some reason, I got the wild idea to grant his request on the anniversary of Diana and Cameron’s deaths.

Cal and I were working together by then.

Partners and friends, but not yet lovers.

I didn’t tell him I was going to see Valinsky, but somehow he still knew.

He beat me to the prison, meeting me outside the gates.

We walked in together, and he sat beside me, stoic and silent for the entire hour it took for the guards to bring Valinsky down.

And he pulled me off of the bastard when I snapped after hearing him say Diana used her final breaths to explain that she was far enough along for Cameron to survive outside of her, to beg him to save our son.

“You’re probably right.”

He closes the folder and sighs. “There’s nothing useful here.”

“So we’ll have to depend on Leland to give us answers.”

A vein in his temple throbs. “Unfortunately.”

Another twenty minutes pass by before I hear the tell-tale clicking of secure doors sliding open and the slamming of them closing shut. Then the door to the windowless box we’ve been stuck inside swings open, and we’re sharing air with Leland Marsh.

He’s a short man, about five inches shy of six feet with beady blue eyes and a bald head that used to be covered in fine, blonde hairs.

What he lacks in height, he makes up for in width, slabs of hard muscles rippling under pale skin as he shuffles towards us with cuffs on his wrists and chains around his waist for the shackles on his ankles.

“Nice of you to join us, Leland,” Cal says, watching with vague interest as the guard secures him to the table and pushes him down into the seat across from us.

Leland heaves a sigh, turning to look at the guard and exposing the confederate flag inked into his neck in the process. “Told you I didn’t want to see these nig—” I slam my fist into the table, and he chuckles, cutting his eye at me. “You got a problem, boy?”

“Behave, Marsh,” the guard warns, stepping out of the room with a shake of his head.

“Let’s be clear,” I bite out through clenched teeth. “There are no boys in this room, only two men and a hate monger who spends his days bartering for packs of noodles and single cigarettes. When you address me and my partner, you’ll refer to us by our names and nothing else.”

“That would be Agent Beckham.” Cal points to me and then to himself. “And Agent Drake, respectively.”

“I know who you are, bo—” The disrespectful moniker dies on his lips when I reach across and grab the back of his head, slamming his face into the metal table. Leland’s groan of pain draws the guard’s attention, and he opens the door, prepared to come to the rescue.

Cal stands, holding out his hand. “Don’t.”

“There’s no need for your partner to handle him like that,” the man says, shrinking back as Cal advances on him.

“Walk away,” he growls. “Before your head is on the table next to his.”

The officer retreats, but I can tell by the look on his face that he won’t be gone long.

It’s highly likely he’ll be back with the warden and a few of his buddies to escort us out of here.

Apparently, Marsh is extremely litigious, and I just gave him grounds for a new excessive force claim.

If the prison doesn’t try to de-escalate the situation, then they’ll be implicated too.

Leland struggles against my hold. “I’ve got rights. You can’t treat me like this.”

Since I’m already going to hell, and to court too, I apply more pressure, watching as his face turns red and the veins in his forehead start to pop. “Where’s Jacob?”

“What?!” he sputters, spit flying out of his mouth. His eyes wild and pleading as Cal rounds the table. For a second there, he looks like he hopes Cal will help him, but then his face falls when Cal crosses his arms over his chest and looks down his nose at him.

“Your boy, Leland,” he chides. “We know you’ve been in contact with him, know you’re a part of whatever it is he’s planning to do to Selene Taylor. Tell us where he is, so we can bring him in. If you cooperate now, I’ll pull some strings, get him a cell next to you in this hellhole.”

“Who is he working with?” I ask. “Are the Brothers back together?”

“I don’t know anything about what Jake is up to,” he groans, sweat blooming on his brow.

I grind the heel of my palm into his temple. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Marsh.”

“Not…lying,” he pants.

“Yes, the fuck you are, and Jake’s blood will be on your hands when we find him and put him down.”

“Agent Beckham, that’s enough!”

I glance up, unsurprised to find the warden, Ethan Bennett, standing in the door with the officer who, in my opinion, is far too empathetic with a prisoner, behind him with a smug smile turning up his thin lips.

Bennett marches into the room, hands on his hips. “I order you to release this prisoner at once.”

“I don’t take orders from you.” The cords in my arms strain against the fabric of my shirt, and heat creeps up my neck, searing my anger and fear for Selene into my skin. “This man has information that we need, and we’re not leaving until we have it.”

Cal puts himself between me and Leland and the Calvary that’s come to save him just to cover their own asses. “It’s a matter of national security.”

“So you said,” Bennett barks at him. “But I’m afraid that even a matter of national security isn’t enough to justify such excessive force. Agent Beckham, you need to let Mr. Marsh go. If you refuse again, I’ll have no choice but to have you physically removed from the premises.”

There’s red in my vision. These days, it’s all I seem to see.

It paints the room, bathes Leland, Bennett, and the stupid fucking guard, turning darker when Leland’s laughter reaches my ears and his face is level with mine.

I don’t remember letting him go, but I must have because no one is close enough to have made me.

Not that the proximity would have mattered when none of them had the power.

I watch Leland run his hand over the lines of my palm that are etched into his skin. His eyes glow with contempt, and his bottom lip curls into a sneer. “I used to hunt your kind for sport, bunch of filthy fucking animals.”

“And yet you’re the one in a cage,” I remind him, shrugging out of my jacket because it’s far too warm in this room now. “Jacob will be caged up next. That is, if I don’t put him in an early grave.”

“That’s enough,” Bennett says, gesturing for the officer to come into the room when Leland tries to lunge at me. “Get him out of here.”

He struggles against his restraints, trying to break free when the guard unhooks him, spitting empty threats at me and Cal. He is still shouting when they drag him out. “If you lay a hand on my son, you’ll regret it, you hear me, you fuckers? You and that Black bitch will fucking regret it.”

When he’s gone, Bennett has us escorted out of the prison. The gates slam shut behind us, and Cal looks at me. “Well, that was pointless.”

I tip my head to one side and then the other, cracking my neck. “No, it wasn’t.”

“We didn’t learn anything, Beck.”

“Yes, we did. Did you see the way Leland reacted when I threatened to kill Jacob?”

He nods, pulling the keys to our rental car out of his pocket as we approach the vehicle. “Yeah, and? Anyone would be upset if someone kept threatening to kill their kid.”

“Right.” I pause at the passenger door, my hand resting on the handle as I look over the top of the car at Cal.

“But everything we’ve seen in his visitation records and contact logs suggests that he hasn’t seen or spoken to Jacob in years.

They were estranged before Leland went to prison.

I re-read the transcripts of our interview with him and even found one with his mom after the arrest. She said Leland disowned Jacob for refusing to join the Brothers.

He told anyone who would listen that he no longer had a son. ”