don’t mean to be a prick. I just need—”
“Me at my best. I get it,” I interrupt, my voice not as surly as it was moments ago. “I’m not dropping the ball on this one, Grayson. Izzy is as straight as an arrow. I don’t think she knows how to lie.”
His heavy sigh whistles down the line. “I’ve heard you say that before, Brandon.”
“I know you have, and I’m not saying you won’t hear me say it again, but this is different. Izzy isn’t playing me.” I stop just before I say, like Melody and Olivia.
Grayson scrubbing at his beard sounds down the line. “All right. I’ll take your word on it. I trust you, Brandon. We’ve had each other’s back for too long for me not to. I just need you to remain cautious. This is bigger than Tobias realized. I don’t want it taking us down like it did him.”
“It won’t,” I pledge without the slightest quiver in my words. “We just have to concentrate on one man at a time.”
My eyes stray to the massive criminal web we’ve been striving to dismantle for years. Grayson’s team is hunting the top-dog on the list. Mine is targeting the lone solider at the bottom. No matter which one falls first, the outcome will be the same. One loose thread unravels an entire outfit.
I strongly believe that thread is Isaac Holt.
9
Brandon
I close down the picture of Isabelle and Isaac kissing in his car in the front of a recently retired police officer’s house when my name comes tumbling out of Isabelle’s mouth in a purring moan. Their kiss happened weeks ago, and excluding her confronting him the morning after it occurred, it appeared to be the only contact they’d had. But I learned a hard and fast lesson on not trusting my instincts when Alex asked me to upload the images a fellow agent had obtained.
It sucked spilling details of my idiocy to Grayson for the second time in my career, but his reply had my objective teetering on an unstable cliff in an instant.
Grayson: When the Honey Pot has been compromised, bring in the beekeeper. He’ll get the bees back in order.
Anyone outside of Tobias’s inner circle would have been lost as to what his reply meant. I understood it in an instant, and I fucking hated it. I understand there’s no ‘I’ in team, and that I swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, both foreign and domestic, but this was different. This was the woman Tobias referred to as his daughter. She was his family as I was once the Greggs’. I couldn’t see how using Isabelle for the benefit of the Bureau was worth it—until Grayson found a link between someone in Isaac’s team and the cattle truck that crashed into the Greggs’ station wagon.
It was the most minute connection you could possibly imagine, but when you’re clutching at straws, you have to investigate every last thread.
That’s what I’m doing. I’m placing every thread under this spotlight. This is nothing against Tobias or Izzy, it’s solely about the pledge I made to Mr. Gregg when I was five years old. A promise I’ll uphold no matter what the cost. Even if Melody no longer wants my protection, she’ll always have it because I’m a man who keeps his word.
My mind shifts back to the present when Isabelle props her backside onto my desk. Her lips are pursed, and she’s batting her eyelashes. I watch her through suspicious eyes when she undoes the top button on her blouse, exposing the slightest peek of a rack every male agent in this office has admired many times the past few months.
“It’s so hot today,” she murmurs, fanning her cheeks with her hand.
“What do you want, Izzy?” I keep my tone as friendly as my smile. It isn’t really a ruse. I genuinely like Isabelle. I just hate that she’s keeping secrets from me. I’ve done nothing but help her, so why doesn’t she trust me?
Isabelle’s huff fans my cheeks. “What gave it away?”
I hit her with straight-up honesty. “The greeting was okay. It gained my attention, but you lost me when unbuttoning your shirt and saying it was hot today. You do realize summer is over, don’t you, Isabelle?”
“Ha ha.”
The disappointment on her face disappears when I playfully whimper about her returning her blouse to her pre-Brandon tease state.
Once everything is in order, I ask, “So, what brought you strutting over to