wide-spread terrorism. No one wants that on U.S. soil, so what does our military do? We offer more troops, more guns, more armored vehicles. The Senate Armed Services Committee is more generous than they’ve been in the history of our constitution and we’re not in the middle of an official conflict. This has been a trend for too long.”
“You’re confirming what I suspected, Penn. But what you’re not telling me is why someone wants you dead.”
His fingers thrum his knee and Macbeth proves how much she likes her master by ditching me. She’s up and in his lap in no time but Penn doesn’t pet her, he’s too focused on me.
“I might live in Switzerland, but I’m a patriot—” he throws his hand out to me “—whatever your name is. I don’t like anyone fucking with my country and I really don’t like it when innocent people are killed. I might’ve been playing superspy because I’m nosy, but it all changed when an American reporter paid me a visit.”
“Let me guess—Marie Kasey?”
He hikes a brow. “We do run in the same circles.”
“She’s on life support,” I inform him. “Shot in the chest.”
“No shit?”
“She was trying to blackmail a Senator.”
“A Senator from Florida who happens to chair the Senate Committee on Armed Services?”
“That would be the one,” I confirm. “Are you happy you didn’t shoot me now?”
He doesn’t smile, but his eyes relax a bit. “Yeah.”
“Why was Marie Kasey interested in you?”
“She said she was looking into DefenseJet and found the public records showing my company lost contracts repeatedly to them. Every damn time, we’d lose the bid. I got so sick of it, I started to lowball them. I was practically bidding at cost—no one in their right mind would turn it down. We never even got a second look. She discovered that and came to me to see what I thought about it.”
“And?”
“And I let on I knew more than I did, made a couple guesses, and then had her talking. Either Marie Kasey is more passionate about her job than anyone I’ve ever seen, or she had an ax to grind. I have a feeling it was the ax. Once I told her what I thought I knew, she gave me enough dots and the rest were easy to connect. But she must’ve run her mouth because, since then, I’ve had more close calls than I did in my entire career with the Marines.”
I narrow my eyes. “Someone important knows you know. If I were you, I’d get a cat sitter and take a vacation. My people won’t touch you, but had I blindly taken the order my boss gave me, those would not have been close calls. My people are that good.”
He pulls in a big breath. “Now what?”
“I probably have enough to get some people arrested but I’m not close to the end goal yet. I need to know who planted the bomb in Spain and who paid them to do it. I need money to change hands. You tell me about these dots you connected, I’ll tell you what I know, and then we’ll communicate on a secure line only. From here on out, you’ve got yourself an ally.”
“I need to know my wife and kids are safe.”
“We know they’re in Phoenix and have eyes on them. We’ll do what we can, but they might want to stay put for a while.”
He scrubs his hands down his face. “This is fucked up.”
He doesn’t know the half of it but I don’t say a word about Bella. I trust this guy but I don’t trust anyone that much.
“What do I call you?” he asks.
I shrug. “Cole. You don’t need to know more than that.”
“Okay, Cole. Where do we start?”
Chapter 30
You Were an Arsehole
Bella
“You really don’t need to do this.”
I throw a smile over my shoulder where Addy is sitting with a cooing Aimée in her arms. “You’ve recently had a baby, and we’ve not only taken over your lives, but your home. Cooking and doing some laundry is the least I can do to help.”
Addy has a garden big enough to start her own farmers market and Abbott was excited to explore. When she took my hand this afternoon and pulled me through the rows of vegetables in their crowning late-summer glory, we harvested more than enough for an Italian spread.
“It smells amazing. Bev and Morris have manned the garden this year since I could barely bend when it was time to plant. Of course it’s