When she made no attempt to continue the attack, he straightened, his hand rising to his jaw.
“You remembered your self-defense lessons.” He winced, fingering his chin, before opening his mouth and working his jaw. “I would have reconsidered teaching you those moves if I’d known you’d use them on me.”
She lifted her eyebrows and folded her arms across her chest.
“If you’d identified yourself instead of grabbing me, I wouldn’t have beaned you.” She refused to feel guilty for protecting herself. “What are you doing here?”
Her eyes had adjusted to the dimness enough to see his face harden.
“Where is he?” He stepped back and reached to the left, next to the door, flipping the light switch on.
“Who?” She frowned, wincing as light blinded her in a haze of white.
“Mitch.” Tag stalked across the room to shove open what had to be the bathroom door.
“I don’t know. He’s not here.”
He shot her one quick, suspicious glance and stepped into the bathroom. The sound of the metal rings on the shower curtain being shoved to the side drifted to her.
Shrugging, Sarah backtracked to the front door, opened it, and leaned out to snag her suitcase. The case didn’t feel nearly as heavy as she rolled it through the doorway. Her adrenaline must still be cranked high. She should thank him for beating back her exhaustion.
She turned to find him closing the closet door. Seriously? She’d told him Mitch wasn’t here. Had things deteriorated so badly between them that he couldn’t take her word for it?
“Have you checked under the bed?” she asked sarcastically. “He could be hiding under there.”
He shot her an indecipherable look and frowned, then shoved his fingers through his hair, lifting the short strands straight up. “What are you doing, Sarah? Why run?”
Her lips tightened. “This doesn’t concern you, Brett.”
“Mitch concerns me. Mitch concerns all of us now.” He contradicted her.
His cold, level tone sent shivers of unease down her spine. He’d never used that tone on her before. Never. And she hated him using it now. Hated that Mitch had ruptured the easy affection that had once sat between them.
“Look—” Exhaustion suddenly riding her, she collapsed on the neatly made bed and tried not to think about the cesspool of germs she might be sitting on. “I’m not meeting Mitch. Okay? That’s over. For good. I want nothing to do with him.”
Which wasn’t quite true. She wanted to know what the bastard had done to her brother. She wanted to hunt him down and drive his balls right up to his chin in retribution for everything he’d put her through. Obviously, her brother owned most of the chaos swirling around him. But Mitch owned his fair share too. He’d preyed on her brother’s weakness and fed him to the sharks.
A small frown knitted Brett’s tan forehead. He studied her with sharp, glittering eyes. “When’s the last time you talked to him?”
“The night before the wedding,” she answered without hesitation.
When she’d tried to call the nuptials off. When she’d tried to force Mitch to back down. Only he’d pushed back by threatening Sean, and she’d been forced to reconsider canceling the ceremony.
“Did Porter Hayes explain where the money he was demanding from Mitch came from?” Brett asked slowly, obviously choosing his words with care.
“Who?” Sarah asked, exhaustion crashing over her. His words sounded like they were drifting through a void…distant and tinny.
“Porter Hayes. Captain Porter Hayes. The guy who kidnapped you.”
“Oh…” she said. As the name registered, her focus snapped into sharp relief again. Ohhhhhh… “He never told me his name.”
Which was pure, crappy bad luck, because if she’d known his name and his title—he was a captain for God’s sake—she would have known the cops would quickly identify him. All military personal were fingerprinted and uploaded to the national data base. If she’d known his name, she would have prepared herself for this line of inquiry.
Of course, the cops had already asked her this question…and identifying who her kidnapper had been didn’t mean diddly squat when it came to narrowing down the illegal activities he’d been involved in. Nor did it implicate Mitch, and through him, Sean, in Porter’s crimes—not completely, anyway.
They—as in Brett, Lucas and the cops—didn’t necessarily know that the money this Captain Porter had been demanding from her low-life-scum of a fiancé had come from illegal arms dealing.
After all, it could have come from somewhere else, something entirely legitimate like stocks or real estate.
One look at Brett’s closed, suspicious face and narrow eyes told