Hello My Angel - Sue Brown Page 0,13

into his arms, burying his face in Josh’s neck. It felt hot against Josh’s skin and he knew Cal was struggling to keep himself together.

The murder of his uncle had knocked the life out of Cal, and the last twenty-four hours had been one shock after another. Josh’s big, strong boyfriend was mentally and physically exhausted. If Jesse had been here, he’d have sent Cal home for a dose of their friend’s vegetarian chili, a cure for all ills, and twenty-four hours sleep. As it was, all Josh could offer was more coffee and his shoulder.

Cal sighed and raised his head. His face was flushed and his eyes red-raw. “Sorry, I’m just tired. Let’s get started.”

“Don’t you dare apologize for anything.” Josh pulled him down for a fierce kiss and after a moment of resistance, Cal went with it.

“Oy, you two can do that later.”

Not letting Cal go, Josh flipped Dave the bird. They could wait.

The large office dwarfed the tired group of men sitting around the conference table. The table was littered with dirty mugs and sandwich wrappers.

Josh didn’t see the trash. He was too busy trying to process the information they’d just discovered.

“Lucy Raymond. Christ,” Rick muttered.

He looked wrecked, Dave not much better. Josh felt for them both. No one wanted to discover one of their co-workers was dirty. And Lucy was. Really dirty.

It had been Max who discovered the connection again. They’d spent the afternoon focusing on the woman who’d opened the door to Chyna Moles.

It was so simple and they’d all missed it.

“Our mistake was not looking closely enough at the victims,” Max said, and then looked quickly to Cal as if he’d said something wrong.

Cal gave him a curt nod. “Don’t hold back. This is not the agency. We need all the information you can provide. If I cocked up, I need to know about it.”

“We all fucked up,” Josh said, jumping in to defend his lover. “Not just Cal. We had the resources of the agency at our disposal and we still missed it. Everything happened so fast we never caught up.”

Rick grunted in agreement. “We’re still fuckin’ running.”

Everyone nodded. Chyna was way ahead of them.

Max took a deep breath. “Did you know Lucy was responsible for extracting Jesse from Mexico?”

Cal shook his head. “I was out in the field. I didn’t know he was held hostage until after I returned.”

“We didn’t work with Jesse before he left,” Dave said.

It was before Josh’s time. He only knew some of the details. Obviously not enough.

He narrowed his eyes. “Did Lucy have connections with Mexico?”

Max nodded. “I couldn’t work out why Lucy would be involved. That wasn’t her role. What no one knew was that Lucy’s goddaughter was married to a Mexican citizen, and one of the gang members.”

“Someone knew,” Josh pointed out.

Cal turned to him. “Someone in the agency? Billy? He had connections to the Mexican gang too, remember.”

He’d turned dirty when the drugs gang had given him money to pay debts.

Josh shrugged. “Did they know of each other’s existence? Did Billy mention her?”

“No, but someone must have known. Weatherly or Sir Gideon?” Cal said.

“Or Mullins,” Max pointed out.

No one said anything and Max subsided.

“Is that why they kept Jesse alive?” Josh asked suddenly. “Because of Lucy?”

“Maybe they knew if they killed him they’d lose their hold over Lucy and maybe Billy,” Cal said. “Okay, we have who and why. Now we need to know where she is and why she’s taken Weatherly.”

“I thought she wanted to destroy the agency,” Rick said.

“But taking Weatherly means she’s going to have the weight of the agency looking for her. She must know that.”

Josh chewed thoughtfully on his pen. “She could’ve killed Sir Gideon and vamoosed back to Mexico before we’d even realized who she was. Her work here isn’t finished. She’s got other plans and we still have no clue what they could be.”

“Dominic knows her identity and he’s upping the security around Jesse and Dan,” Gil rumbled.

Josh’s lips twitched as he saw Max jump and Gil’s eyeroll. The kid was gonna have a heart attack at this rate. Maybe he’d need to have a word with him. Gil’s bark was worse than his bite. He caught Gil’s gaze and hoped he conveyed a ‘don’t scare the kid’ approach. Gil rolled his eyes again, so he obviously got the message.

Cal tapped his fingers on the table. “Max, we need to find any location that’s not fake where she could have taken Weatherly. Rick and Dave, you know