Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

"I'm gonna marry her!" I heard from under the table.

"No. I'm marrying her. You're marrying Nebraska!" Another little voice said.

"I'm marrying KK," a third voice declared.

"You can't marry KK, Eric, she's already married to Cooper," Ivy told her son from the doorway. "You three better get out from under that table before your fathers find you."

"Too late," Zane boomed. "Chewy, Cujo, and Eric, get out from under the table. Now."

With equal parts confusion and curiosity, I watched a little black-haired boy crawl out from under the table and get to his feet.

"Hi Daddy."

Next the twins, Robbie and Asher, who I'd been introduced to earlier when I met their mother Jasmin, crawled out and stood next to their cousin.

"Uncle," the boys greeted in unison.

"Mission fail," Zane scolded.

The boys' shoulders hunched.

"It was Asher's fault," his brother accused.

I sat quietly. Zane walked into the room. Ivy followed Zane but unlike him, pulled out a chair and settled in.

Zane stopped in front of the boys. They all tipped their heads back and stared up at their uncle and father. That's when I noticed the boys were all standing at attention as Zane stared down like an unhappy CO.

Oh, boy, I knew what was happening.

I, too, had stood at attention in front of Captain Taylor many a time when I'd disobeyed and gotten busted.

"Do we blame others for our mistakes?" Zane asked.

"No, Sir," Robbie answered.

"Do you know why your mission failed?"

"Because Asher wants to marry Aria."

My gaze went to Asher. His cute little boy face turned red, but he didn't break.

"Did you learn something?"

"Yes, sir. Don't bring Asher on a recon mission," Robbie went on throwing his brother under the bus.

"Which one of you is the team captain?" Zane asked the boys.

None of them answered.

"That's why your mission failed. A team without a leader fails."

"You didn't tell us who the team captain is," Eric piped up.

"None of you asked. Lesson, son—when your orders are unclear, ask questions. When your mission is not clearly defined, ask questions."

All three boys stared at Zane like he was Sun Tzu imparting ancient wisdom. It was cute. It was sweet. I knew Ivy thought so, too, when she tried but failed to hide her smile.

"Next mission. Grab your lockpicking kits. Garrett's office. Retrieve his laptop. You have thirty minutes."

The boys started for the door but Asher stopped and looked up at Zane.

"Who's the team captain?"

"You are."

"What are the parameters?" Asher astutely asked.

A big question for such a little boy.

"None. Get the job done by any means necessary."

The smile that Asher gave his uncle was a tad bit worrisome.

Garrett's office was a glass enclosure in the middle of the huge open space, surrounded by a scattering of desks. When I asked Smith about it, he explained before Zane had renovated and built actual offices for his ever-growing roster of employees who now mainly worked out of headquarters since they were all married. Private contracts paid less but they didn't come with the headaches and red tape. Zane rarely took jobs that would send a team out for more than a week or two.

"Any means necessary does not include setting charges and exploding Garrett's office," Ivy amended, obviously thinking the same thing I was.

What was more worrisome than Asher's smile, was Ivy having to explain they couldn't set a bomb in the office.

Yikes .

"Okay, Aunt Ivy," Asher mumbled.

The boys ran out the door.

"You sent them in here," Ivy accused.

"Yup."

It must be noted Zane didn't sound remorseful in any way.

"They're not spies, Zane."

"Not yet and not ever if they don't learn to keep their traps shut."

With a harassed huff Ivy sat back in her chair.

"I should've married an accountant and had little number-pusher children."

"Bet that would've been boring as fuck," Zane shot back, unaffected.

"Bet an accountant wouldn't call my breast milk, boob juice."

"Bet an accountant wouldn't know what to do with your breasts."

It would be a guess, but a good one, they could go on all day.

"As amusing as this is, I have a spreadsheet to finish," I cut in.

"This is my conference room," Zane pointed out.

"Yes, and I'm kicking you out of it so I can work."

Unfortunately, Zane didn't move. More unfortunately, he looked like he had something on his mind, and after the morning I'd had I wasn't in the mood for Zane's brand of sarcasm.

"Please. I need to finish this. Then I need a ride to my house so I can get clean clothes and a checkbook."

"I can take you," Ivy offered.

"Smith is on his way back," Zane said.

I wasn't sure if that was a warning or a denial to Ivy's offer. Whichever it was made my heartrate kick up a notch and my interest piqued.

"Did they find anything?"

"Yeah, the red Tesla. The owner loaned it to Billy. Kira is going over the travel history now. Easton and Jonas helped themselves to Billy's house. They didn't find anything. Tonight the team's going back to apprehend Billy and bring him in for questioning."

My stomach whooshed, leaving me feeling a little nauseous.

So it was over.

I'd run out of time.

"Whatever's going on in that head of yours, lock it down. Your mission's not over."

My mission.

Pure Zane.

Sadly, I was afraid my mission was going to fail like the boys had.

"Lesson, Aria," Zane mimicked what he'd told his son. "There's failure and there's quitting. There's no shame in failing. Quitting." He shook his head. "Weak."

If Zane was going to say more, feet pounding into the conference room had his attention silently going to the door.

"Mission success," Asher announced, shoving a laptop at Zane.

Zane took the machine from the boy and smiled.

"Now for the extraction," Asher proudly declared and ran out of the room.

With the laptop in hand, Zane looked back at me.

No words were necessary; his smug smile said it all.

Well, shit.

"Lincoln!" I heard angrily bellowed from the main office. "Come get your semen demons!"

"I better go help with the extraction," Zane muttered.

Ivy waited until her husband left before she scooted her chair back and twisted to face me.

"It's worth it," she softly said. "I promise, it's worth whatever the hard part's going to be. When you get to the other side, it's totally worth it."

I hoped she was right.

It had to be now.

The timing was shit. I wasn't sure the smart thing to do was to get into what I was sure was going to be a knockdown, drag-out with a man who was going to be part of the apprehension team. But it wasn't like he would be facing down terrorists. Billy Rice was just a creepy asshole.

Easy day.

The tension is Smith's truck was so thick it'd take a Karambit to cut through the weirdness.

Thankfully, we had Billy Rice to talk about or the thirty-minute drive to my house would've been more uncomfortable than it already was.

"Do you think Easton's right? Billy's using the storage units behind his house?" I asked.

I was sitting cockeyed in the seat so I could look at Smith. Obviously, he was looking straight ahead at the road so I couldn't see his eyes but I could see his jaw flex.

"I don't think someone goes from being a teenager with the tendencies he's exhibited to no longer having them. For someone like Billy it's a compulsion, something he likely can't control for long. Easton and Jonas didn't find anything in his house, so yeah, I think he has a storage unit. Men like him don't stop feeding their sickness, they learn to be careful. The question is, how sick is he?"

Eek .

That was the final question that remained to be seen. Or maybe that was the second-to-last question still lingering.

"Kira said the gun that was found in the attic was reported stolen."

"Yeah. Three months before Billy went to live with the Calvins. Before his father kicked him and his mother off the farm. Man who lives in the adjacent farm, reported two guns stolen. A shotgun and the nine mil in your attic. Kira's waiting to see if the police come up with any crimes committed with the stolen nine. The shotgun could still be in your house."

Holy hell.

The dollar bills just kept flying out the window.

"More walls need to be demolished," I mumbled.

"Sucks. But yeah."

I didn't miss he'd forgone the use of ‘baby'. Something not even twenty-four hours ago he would've tacked on to soften the blow.

"Zane told me you were going back tonight to pick up Billy for questioning."

I counted—Smith's jaw clenched and released three times before he answered.

"We're rolling out at oh-three-hundred. Putting us at his door at four-hundred."

I didn't have anything to say about that and at this point small talk seemed awkward so I fell silent.

So did Smith.

We still had ten minutes left on the drive and every second of those ten minutes made the knots in my stomach multiply.

The relief I felt when Smith pulled into my driveway was palpable. I wanted out of the confines of his truck. I wanted the familiarity of my surroundings when I confronted Smith on the change in his behavior.

That relief went up in a blaze of ash when we entered my house and Smith flipped the script and immediately laid it out for me before I could pluck up the courage to broach the subject.

I hadn't had a chance to prepare and fortify my heart.

I hadn't even tossed my purse on the couch.

"I should've talked to you this morning. I thought I was doing the right thing, not making something out of nothing by dragging us into a conversation. That was a dick thing to do and I'm sorry. We've been straight with each other. I should've had a mind to that and just told you we need to shift to friends. If you want, tonight we can stay here. I'll take the couch and in the morning, Jonas can swing by and pick me up. Tomorrow we can meet at my place and you can grab your stuff or I'll bring it over when you're done with work."

There it was, the brush off.

The end I knew was coming.

The worst part, the part that killed, was he didn't sound like himself. He'd never, not even this morning after he'd checked out and I knew he was pushing me away, had he sounded so empty. Like he could care less. Like the words he'd spoken meant nothing to him.

"Why?"

Smith's shoulders jerked back like he'd been shoved but I stood five feet away from him. Distance he'd put between when he walked into my living room and rounded the couch.

Physical and emotional distance.

"Why?" he parroted.

"Yeah, Smith, why now?"

I'd been around military men and women my whole life and never had I seen one who could totally and completely close off their feelings as well as Smith. Not a tic, not a flex, not a clench, not a muscle moved. The pulse point in his neck didn't even jump.

"I told you?—"

"I know what you told me. And you know that's not what we're talking about. I'm asking why. Why now? What, you're bored of me already?"

Nothing.

No reaction.

"So that's it, you're bored of me," I pushed.

Still nothing.

God, infuriating.

"In the beginning you gave your warning. And in return I gave you a stipulation, the one thing I demanded was respect. Yet there you stand." I stopped to motion the length of him. "In my house pulling this bullshit. So much for saying it straight, Smith."

"This doesn't have to be ugly," he calmly noted.

It was the calm in his voice that sent me over the edge.

I was totally going to fail my mission. Not because I wasn't willing to stand toe-to-toe with Smith and fight for him. But I needed him to at least engage in the fight for me to win it. And he was giving me nothing.

Blank looks.

Disengaged.

Nothing.

"You're right, it doesn't. What it needs to be is done. You can't show me the respect of answering a simple question, there's the door, Smith. As you said, this is over. Not only me and you but my problems, too. You got your man, your case is all wrapped up, I'm not in danger. Babysitting duty is over."

His eyes narrowed.

Finally! Something .

"You're kicking me out?"

"Aren't you observant."

Narrowed eyes turned into tiny, scary slits.

"There are no simple questions," he contradicted.

His refusal to answer, followed up with a stupid excuse that as my father would say, was nothing more than words strung together in a sentence that decisively meant nothing for the sole purpose to evade, proved I wasn't going to get anywhere.

I couldn't outsmart, outplay, outmaneuver a Team Guy with years of training. If he didn't want to speak, he wouldn't. If he didn't want me to know his thoughts, I wouldn't. If he wanted to hide his emotions from me, he would.

I tossed my purse on the couch. Turned and made my way through my house to my bedroom. My oasis. The one room in the house I redid without resale value in mind. This room was all mine. It had never failed to make me smile—first thing in the morning when I woke up, last thought of the day when I went to sleep. That was, until that moment. I wasn't smiling, not even my pretty chandelier that cost a fortune and was a monumental pain in the ass to put up brought me joy.

I was pissed, hurt, heart sore, and it was worth the repeat pissed .

I yanked off my clothes, tossed them on the floor, and headed to the shower.

Before I got to my bathroom I heard the front door slam.

I felt the sound ricochet through my body.

The finality of it pierced my stupid heart.

Mission: Fail.