can’t drag it back. Just wait. Give yourself time to think about it.”
She’d been doing nothing but thinking about it for the past twenty-four hours and every instinct she possessed insisted she come clean.
“Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
“Promise me you’ll only tell this detective what Porter told you. If you need to admit to more later, we’ll deal with that then. But for now, only admit to what Porter told you.”
She sighed and turned to study his face. “Why? Why do you want me to do it this way? Earlier you told me to tell them everything. Now you’re telling me not to implicate myself—why the change of heart?”
It wasn’t because he’d forgiven her; he would have told her if that was the case. Nor was it because he still loved her. To love her, he’d have to forgive her. So why was he trying to protect her?
This time his entire jaw bunched.
“Ah hell,” he finally growled. “Mitch went after you and Sean because of me. Because I went up the chain and turned him in when I caught him stealing from the operations fund. Everything he put you through was because he knew that torturing you was the best way of punishing me.”
He was feeling guilty? That’s why he wanted to protect her? Because his actions had set Mitch’s revenge into motion? She considered that…yeah, that sounded like the man she loved. He’d always had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
For the first time, it made sense why Mitch had come after her. She’d been wondering for years why he was so determined to marry her. It hadn’t been because he’d loved her. Their original breakup had been amicable. Nor had he been interested in her physically. Other than one early attempt at forcing himself on her, which she’d rebuffed with some self-defense moves and a little blackmail of her own, he’d never tried to coerce her into sex.
While she’d suspected Mitch’s manipulations had something to do with Brett, she’d hadn’t been able to figure out how her ex-lover entered into it. At least not until Brett showed up at her door before the wedding and told her he’d caught Mitch stealing. That’s when everything had started to make sense.
But there was something else that was bugging her. Something that had come to light with her kidnapping.
“So we’re on the same page?” Brett asked.
“For now,” Sarah said absently. Like Brett had said, she could always change her mind and tell the cops everything later. For now, it looked like she’d be taking the easy way out—again.
“Good.” He lifted his arm and looked at his watch. “We should head in. They’re expecting us.”
Sarah nodded, pushed open her door, and hopped out. She waited for Brett to join her before asking, “Why do you think Mitch didn’t pay Hayes?”
He frowned, glancing down at her. “What do you mean?”
“It makes no sense. Hayes was the cornerstone of Mitch’s whole operation, right? Hayes was how Mitch got the guns. Without Hayes, there would be no gunrunning. So why would he refuse to pay him? Why would he chance shutting down his supply chain?”
Brett’s pace slowed. “Hayes got canned after that last shipment of M4A1s went missing. He couldn’t supply Mitch anymore. Mitch must have decided that since he couldn’t use him, he might as well hang onto that half a million.”
Now that sounded like the Mitch she knew and hated. It was easy to imagine Mitch double-crossing someone if he thought they were of no use to him anymore. No wonder he hadn’t bothered to answer Hayes’s phone calls.
He’d killed two loose strings by ignoring those calls. After all, Sarah had become as useless to him as Hayes.
Chapter Fifteen
Tag was still fighting misgivings over his decision to let Sarah skate on her involvement in the stolen weapons ring when he checked in at the sergeant’s desk in the police station’s main lobby. If these two new detectives were as sharp as Rio, they’d sense his frustration. They’d sense his boiling aggression. They’d question what had him so pissed—maybe even take a closer look at Sarah. He’d better lock himself down ASAP, because the only thing this suppressed emoting was going to do was give him a damn stroke.
Just because he’d asked her not to tell the police about the video and the fucking hell Mitch had put her through didn’t mean the bastard was going to get away with anything. He’d take the prick down himself—hard—at some point.
The sergeant called over a uniformed officer with blazing red hair