Hello My Angel - Sue Brown Page 0,68

onto that information and on the other, if he hadn’t come forward and stood in the rain at Waterslea would they still be fumbling around in the dark?

Josh felt a tremor go through Cal and he reached under the table to squeeze his thigh. Cal pressed their legs together. Seeking comfort or silent thanks? It didn’t matter.

Rick and Dave were staring at them stony-faced, but Josh knew they wanted to beat the living crap out of Max. Gil wasn’t keeping the feelings off his face. No wonder Max was cowering in his seat.

“Mullins found out that you’d gone behind his back?” Cal guessed.

“He was furious. Threatened to fire me unless….unless….”

“You pretended to become part of our team,” Josh finished for him. “Which you did.”

“I didn’t tell him everything. Just enough to get him to leave us alone,” Max burst out.

“Us?” Gil growled. “You’re not one of us.”

“I thought when Mullins was killed and no one contacted me, that was it. I could be part of Angel Enterprises for this assignment, then return to the agency, no one the wiser.”

Sweet Farrah, the kid was so naïve.

“Why did you do what he wanted?” Cal asked.

“I needed my job. I take care of my mum. Mullins knew that. He used it against me.”

The scumbag. He manipulated a kid. Probably the only person in the agency he could have controlled.

Max was still talking, the words spilling out now like he couldn’t stop them. He’d been waiting a long time to tell this story.

“He—Mullins—said you were just a bunch of cowboys. But then Mullins was murdered, and I thought no one would find out about me. And you are cowboys—”

Josh had a sneaking admiration for Max’s sudden burst of courage.

“But you get the job done. I wanted to stay with you. I kept gathering the information, but no one asked, and I thought that was it.”

“Until Stephen asked me about the file.”

Max hung his head. “If I’d been at the agency I’d have wiped Mullins’s computer. No one would have guessed.”

Josh shook his head in disbelief. No one would have guessed the biggest weasel in the agency planted a spook into their organization.

“How did you guess it was me?” Max asked.

“Mullins left a note in the file. ‘Wrong ring.’ You said that the wedding ring on Weatherly’s finger was the wrong ring. It was too big and the white skin left by the band was thinner.”

Josh dug into his pocket and drew out a plain gold band. He held it up to the light. The sunlight glinted on the gold. “This is the right ring, Weatherly’s wedding ring. The other one was her husband’s. She’s worn it since he died.”

“Why did she swap it over?” Cal asked, his brows furrowed.

“I don’t know,” Josh admitted. “We’ll have to ask her.” He frowned. “Did you know about the cottage in Ashtead? Billy said he’d told someone about it.”

Max looked startled. “Not me. I’ve never spoken to him.”

Josh was inclined to believe him but that meant there was someone else in the agency they didn’t know about. He rubbed at his temples. This was too much to deal with.

“What do we do with him?” Dave asked, his thumb pointed at Max. “If he goes back to the agency, he’s got all our resources.”

Cal shrugged. “We’ve solved the case. We stole all the resources from the agency in the first place. He goes, we replace everything. And I mean everything.”

Oh, the joys of an unlimited budget. Josh was going to have to find out just how deep Sir Gee’s pockets had been.

“I don’t want to go back,” Max burst out.

They all stared at him. He blushed crimson and looked down at his hands.

Rick’s snort was loud and derisive. “You can’t think we want you here?”

“If I go back Herring will think he can use me again.”

“He has a point,” Dave said.

“You were a mole for the Weasel and probably the Seagull. How can we ever trust you?” Josh demanded.

“Because everything I told him was a lie.”

“Wrong rings,” Josh reminded him. “That wasn’t a lie.”

Max bit his lip. Josh narrowed his eyes.

“What did ‘wrong rings’ mean?”

When Max hesitated, Josh leaned forward, “You want to stay here, you tell us what it meant.”

“It was a message.”

Cal nodded. “Proof of life?”

“Yeah,” Max admitted. “I had to tell the agency. Weatherly would have killed me if I hadn’t.”

Josh leaned back in his seat. “You know what, we’d be stupid to let him walk out this door. Who knows what else he’s gotten hidden