Chapter 23

A senseof peace drifted over Teresa the second she walked into Angelo’s home. This was their safe haven, and after the stressful day they’d had, she needed the peace.

After the call with Steve, she and Angelo had passed on the information to Cass about her mom. Cass also said she’d get a location on Margery’s phone and send that to Steve as well.

It hadn’t taken them long to get everything ready for Angelo to email his counterpart in Australia. Teresa still couldn’t believe that a total stranger on the other side of the world was more than happy to watch over her mom and friend.

She’d wanted to ask Angelo about Steve’s comment about not being able to lure him to Australia, but maybe no one else in Alliez had known that was in the cards for him. Although now they were home, and she’d get the answers she wanted.

“Put your feet up, Tre. I’ll reheat some of last night’s takeout and bring you a glass of wine.

“Sounds perfect, thank you.”

“Anything for you.” Angelo pecked her cheek before he disappeared down the hall toward the kitchen.

How on earth had she lucked out with this man?

When she’d called him for help, she’d never expected this was where she’d end up.

At the time, Teresa hadn’t known what was going to happen. Angelo was a good-looking guy. He had swagger. An overabundance of confidence, not to mention a sexy personality. It might seem weird to say he had a sexy personality, but that was what he had.

He was sweet, but also spicy.

A chuckle erupted out of her at the thought. Maybe she was more tired than she’d estimated, and that was why she was coming up with weird thoughts and comparisons.

“Here you go, a glass of your favorite wine, and I grabbed the chicken fried rice, sweet and sour pork, and Kung Pao chicken for us both.”

“Thank you.” Teresa’s stomach grumbled in anticipation of the flavors about to bombard her mouth.

Angelo returned with his own bowl and put the television on to a repeat of an old sitcom.

It was easy-watching and just what she needed to unwind. Before they’d left Alliez, Cass had said she’d finally gotten the footage from the awards show Steff and Cynthia had been attending and would review it.

Fox and Jag had returned from meeting with her former boss, and as Teresa had guessed, initially he hadn’t been too eager to give them information but he’d eventually caved, so Eveline was able to continue her search.

Both the women were confident that by morning, they’d have something to work on. Cass had also asked if Teresa had access to her mom’s place. Teresa had a spare key so she gave it to Cass. They’d send one of the new guys to make a quick trip to the house to see if the panda was still there or not.

Things were progressing.

“You finished?” Angelo asked.

Teresa looked down to see that while she’d been reviewing all the events of the day, she’d eaten everything. “Yes. Let me take them to the kitchen.”

She went to get up, but Angelo put a hand on her arm. “They can wait until we go to bed. Come here.” He patted the gap between them on the couch, and she scooted over until she was plastered by his side and his arm came around to cocoon her into his embrace.

There was no place Teresa would rather be than where she was right this second.

Beneath her ear, Angelo’s heart thumped reassuringly. It’d be so easy to close her eyes and let the fatigue seeping up from the soles of her feet to overtake her, but she resisted the pull.

She had questions, and she needed answers.

“Can I ask you something?” Teresa plucked at the buttons of his shirt. He was still dressed for work, only he’d ditched his suit jacket when they’d gotten home.

Angelo had rolled the sleeves of his shirt up, and she had a bird’s eye view of his muscular forearm as it draped across her belly.

“You can ask me anything you want, Tre. I’m an open book. Except for the missions I carried out when I was a SEAL. I can’t talk about those.”

Teresa lifted her head to look at him. “So not quite an open book.”

He smirked, that sexy smirk that made her wet between the legs. “Still more of an open book for you than anyone else. What is it you want to know?”

There might be parts of her body that wanted her to forget having this conversation and have her wicked way with him, but she ignored them. “When you were talking to Steve, he alluded, a couple of times in fact, to you potentially moving to Australia to, I assume, work with him.”

His fingers tapped gently against her stomach. “I wondered how long it would be before you brought that up.”

“It’s not something I could easily forget. So, what’s the story?”

Angelo shifted so he reclined more and adjusted her position so she was half on his body and half against it. “When I was thinking about leaving my SEAL team, I was chatting to a friend who talked about Power Security and how they’d been working with four billionaires to bring down a sex trafficking ring because a sister of one of them had been kidnapped and sold. My friend was a former Delta, and he’d heard about it because one of the guys’ Steve had helping him had also been in the service, and also a former Delta. Chris is a few years older than my friend, but he was one of the best and still has contacts in the military. He’s settled now in Perth, fell in love with a local woman and stayed.

“Anyway, I was intrigued and thought maybe a change of scenery and location would be good for me, so I researched them, liked what I saw, and reached out to them. In the meantime, my buddy also mentioned I was looking at getting out to Ox, and he contacted me. In the end, I chose to go with Alliez because my mom had gotten a bad flu and needed me, and I thought if I was thousands of miles away, I wouldn’t be able to help her. Family won out, and I honestly don’t regret my decision. Even though it would’ve been cool to live in Australia for a while.”

Teresa digested everything he’d shared with her—and it was a lot. The one thing that stood out was that, even though in the back of her mind she knew it happened, the fact that sex trafficking and kidnappings occurred all over the world, including in far off places like Australia.

Angelo hadn’t mentioned if the girl had been found, only that the ring had been taken down.

“Did they find her? The girl that had been taken?”

“Yep, they did and last I heard, she’s happily married and living a full life with one of the men responsible for finding her.”

“That’s good. I’m glad they were able to get her out. Not many get rescued.” Teresa took a deep breath and pulled back so she could look into Angelo’s eyes when she asked the next question. “Do you think that’s what’s happened to Steff and Cynthia? That Ramirez Cartel got them and have sold them on to some sick fucker?”

Please say no. Please say no.

As much as she wished for him to say it, the way his eyes darkened and his lips firmed into a straight line, it wasn’t going to happen.

“I could lie and say, I don’t know, but my gut is telling me that in all likelihood that’s what happened to them.”

Teresa closed her eyes and fell back down on his chest, guilt eating at her. It was because of her that two innocent women were now living in a hellscape. “We have to find them,” she whispered. “They have to be all right.”

“With Cass on the job, they’ll have a damn good chance, and if there’s a way we can get them, rest assured we will do everything we can to bring them back safely.”

“I wrote the article,” she blurted, surprising herself at what she was about to admit to doing.

Beneath her cheek, Angelo’s muscles tensed even further than they had been. “What article?”

“The article about the cartel. What they were doing. Who they were using to launder their money. The fact that the people they thought were good were actually caught up in the evil web that Ramirez had created. I created a fake email account and used that name for the byline.”

Silence met her confession, and Teresa prayed she hadn’t just killed the relationship that was developing between her and Angelo. Her feelings for him were deep. Getting deeper every day.

“Why would you do that?”

His question wasn’t unexpected, but the way he’d spoken with no emotion cut her deep.

At least he hadn’t pushed her away. His arm was still around her, so she took that to mean he didn’t hate her.

She sat up, though, needing to look at him. See his face. “I did it because the story needed to be told. Ramirez needs to be brought down.”

“At the risk of what, Teresa? Your life? The lives of all the people you worked with? The girls that’d been taken? Not to mention the two guys in the hospital. It’s so easy to get into their room and inject something into their IV lines that can kill them.” His anger reached out like the flames of a fire.

With each word that she’d typed, there’d been a part of Teresa cautioning herself. Telling herself nothing good would come of it. Yet it was the other side, the stubborn part of her that didn’t like being told that her work wasn’t valued, that had overridden the common sense and had kept her fingers pounding away until she’d typed it all out.

“At the time, all I wanted to do was get my work out there. I wasn’t thinking of the consequences, which is selfish of me. I was still angry with Monte. With the paper. With the lack of support they gave me. The way he fired me because I wouldn’t stop and walk away from it when he asked me to. I know my boss. He’s a good guy, and the fact he wanted me to kill something for the first time should’ve been enough for me to know that this time was different from the other times. Yet, I couldn’t see that. All I could see was what I wanted and needed.” Agitation, annoyance, and disappointment at herself had Teresa getting up from the couch and began to pace around the living room.

Everything that’d happened in the last few days—people she worked with getting kidnapped and almost killed—was a wake-up call. As if the bugs in her apartment weren’t enough of an indication of how different this investigation had turned out.

Not once in the past had anything like this happened to her work colleagues.

Why was this time so different?

Not knowing was so frustrating. Her past investigations had been about some pretty nasty people and their organizations too. Their motivations, while not the same as Ramirez, were still selfish and illegal.

After everything that’d happened in the last few hours, there was no way Teresa was going to send that article now.

Angelo was watching her, and she wished he would comfort her. Yet he stayed where he was.

She didn’t spare a glance for her lover on the couch. She marched out of the room and found her laptop bag.

It didn’t take her but a few seconds to open it and pull up the online email program.

The lid closed with a snap, and she had to snatch her fingers away so that they didn’t get caught.

“What are you doing?” she demanded when she found Angelo looming over her.

“Stopping you from creating even more of an issue and having your location broadcast to all and sundry.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you’re going to delete the article or log into that email server, you’re going to do it in an environment where there’s no chance of it being traced back to you. We’ll fix it up tomorrow at the office.”

Again, Teresa had been so determined to walk her own way she hadn’t thought about the implications of what she was doing.

The last thing she wanted was to bring more danger to Angelo’s doorstep.

She’d done enough of that.

“Right. Okay, that makes sense.”

He took her laptop and placed it gently back in the bag, before he grabbed her hands and tugged her until she was standing in front of him, his hands resting on her hips. The action was gentle and caring.

Was it possible that she hadn’t blown everything with him?

That he still cared for her?

Teresa placed her hands on his chest and looked up at him.

His brown eyes were dark, not with anger but with desire and…was that love?

She didn’t want to read too much into what she saw because, based off her most recent track record, she wasn’t good at assessing what was really happening.

“Tre, it’s going to be okay. I’m glad you told me. Can’t say I’m not angry at the way you’re putting yourself in possibly more danger. But, I get it.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead and the tension that had her strung up tighter than a tightrope seeped out.

Teresa burrowed into his chest. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

He hooked a finger under her chin, lifting until she was gazing back at him. A small smile played on his lips. “How about we go to bed? It’s been a long day.”

She reached up and ran her hand along the soft bristles of his beard, recalling how good it felt between her thighs. “Best idea ever.”

Tomorrow Teresa would face the consequences of her actions and hoped when they arrived at the office, there’d be some good news on her work colleagues—and even better, if a miracle occurred and Ramirez had been eliminated by his competition.