Page 32 of Unbearable

“Please, don’t do me any favors,” Knox grumbled. “Her brother is much nicer.”

“Harsh,” she argued. “Anyway, about Fox. I still don’t know if I buy into the idea of following Brooke. Even if she’s cheating on him, he’ll never break up with her. It would mean losing Ethan. He would never stand for that.”

“But you agreed the best case would be for Bailey to get custody of Ethan, then Fox would be free to leave her,” Knox pointed out.

“Yeah, but how do we do that?”

“Leave it to me. In the meantime, Dex can find out what’s happening.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure how this will help anything either,” Dex admitted.

“I just want to know what she’s about before we take a chance on having to identify Fox’s body at the morgue,” Knoxsaid. “Don’t look at me like that,” he added when Dover scowled. “Something’s going on with her. I’m pretty good at recognizing when something isn’t right now.”

“He’s not wrong,” Dex added. “Knox said she works at a spa during the day?”

“Yeah, it’s not too far from where they live and the precinct,” she agreed.

“Then I’ll come to your office for as long as you need me this week, and in the evenings, Knox and I can check out your brother’s girlfriend. No harm, no foul. We just need to know when she’s going out,” Dex said.

“I’ll tell Fox that the next time Brooke goes out to let me know so I can come hang. Even if I have to cancel, at least we’ll know she’s out of the apartment,” she added.

“Like I said before, we’ll give you everything we learn, and you can decide what to do with it,” Knox promised.

“It just feels weird. Did you stalk any of the other siblings like you are us?” she asked.

“He did taser Memphis and tie him to a chair,” Dex said. “Flint, our youngest brother, found us. Since he was still a college kid, Knox was nicer to him. Tyler he met while she was still in high school. She was the only sister. There’s also the fact that she’s stronger than all of us put together and can break him in half, so no on that front. I think he just likes jacking with Memphis the most.”

“Friggin’ hell. Why does he even talk to you?”

“It’s the charm,” Knox answered with a grin.

“Sure, that must be it,” she said with a smirk.

“Hey, I did introduce him to his wife.”

“Actually, Memphis rescued Thayer from a root cellar after she’d been abducted and used for an extortion scheme. I was the agent on that case,” Dex added.

“Well, that just sucked all of the romance out of it,” Knox teased.

“Memphis almost died,” Dex continued. “There was nothing romantic about it. Glad they wound up together in the end. Oh, Knox also burned Memphis’s house to the ground. But,” he said, raising his hand when Knox opened his mouth to protest, “he was trying to save him from getting gunned down.”

“Why do I feel there’s a lot more to my new family than I previously thought?” she asked.

“A lot more. That doesn’t even cover how his wife was kidnapped by a Houston gang to be sold into slavery or how she was entrapped in New Orleans by a crime boss. As I’ve learned in the short time I’ve known this family, there is a lot more than meets the eye. How much time do you have?”

CHAPTER 12

Brooke steppedonto the sidewalk with a singular purpose. Her instructions said to take the T to a relatively new bar downtown. She supposed it was full of young businessmen trying to impress each other and anything in a skirt as well. A shiver raced down her spine at the thought of a new hunting ground.

That’s what he called it. She didn’t think of what she was about to do so much as hunting as retribution. The last man had a tan that didn’t include where his wedding band normally sat. His wife was probably better off without him. That’s what she told herself anyway. What did she care? Men were all the same.

The same catcalls reached her as she crossed to the station, same leers hit her as she found a seat, and the same brushes slid across her as she hunted for a seat at the bar. It wasn’t long before her first free drink was set in front of her. A cranberry vodka.

“No, thank you,” she said, sliding it back across to the bartender. “I’ll take an old-fashioned with whiskey.”

She spun around in her seat to take in the atmosphere while the bartender mixed her new drink. It wasn’t bad as far as bars went. They had managed to keep an old-world feel while stillappealing to the younger crowd. She picked up her drink and took a sip while watching the growing crowd. There were plenty of young, successful looking men to pick from.

“Didn’t have you pegged for a whiskey gal,” a man said, sliding onto the stool next to her. His accent labeled him as a visitor to Boston right off the bat.