“Yes, but we can also send an agent to grab takeout,” Evie answered. “We’ve got someone on the back and two on the front.” She wandered to the desk and pulled a stack of menus out of the top drawer, handing them to me. “I’m going to stay here with you both, but Alex is going back to check on our kids and then g
o to the office. He wants to use the SCIF room to try and run down a couple of leads.”
We put in an order for food and spoke for another couple of minutes before I crept over to check on my wife. I was sure Eden would be pissed when she woke up and realized she’d fallen asleep. But, I was extremely grateful to see her resting. Eden had suffered a few minor bruises from being thrown into the door when the blast shoved my car over. Then after the stress of worry over me, being in the hospital, and the mountains of other stress weighing her down, I could see she was dead on her feet when we arrived. She was still coming down off of the adrenalin high, and I was afraid she would burn out before she recognized the signs.
Alex wanted to head out, so I agreed to let Evie watch over the situation with Eden and Martin after she woke from her nap. Evie stepped outside to see him off, and I gently lifted Eden’s head so I could slip onto the couch and lay it back down on my lap. I brushed some of her dark hair away from her face and stared down at my Sunshine. She was so fucking beautiful and at the moment, she looked so fragile. I wanted to find the son of a bitch who was putting her life in danger and snuff the life out of him with my bare hands.
Evie came back in laden with a couple of plastic bags, clearly holding our food. She set it all on a table as worn as the rest of the furniture in the apartment. “Do you want to make a plate for her and set it aside so she can sleep?” she asked softly.
I glanced at my watch to see it was almost midnight. Fuck. I hated to do it, but I knew she hadn’t eaten since lunch. “I’d better wake her,” I groaned. I ran my fingers through her hair a few more times, then drew a line down her cheek with the tip of one. “Sunshine, I need you to wake up,” I urged softly. She didn’t stir, so I tapped her nose lightly and called to her again. This time, her eyes fluttered and then opened to stare up at me. They were cloudy with exhaustion, the blue turning almost gray.
She smiled sleepily and reached up to caress the side of my face with one hand. I instinctively turned into it and nuzzled her palm. “I need you to eat, Sunshine. You and the baby need your strength.”
Her gaze darted past me and the corners of her mouth turned down. As the remnants of her nap wore off, it dawned on her that she’d fallen asleep and her frown deepened. “You let me fall asleep,” she accused, her tone thick with irritation.
Rolling my eyes, I helped her sit up, not bothering to acknowledge her allegation. I pushed to my feet and took her hands, guiding her up beside me. The smell of Chinese food was wafting over and I laughed when Eden licked her lips, as though she was salivating over it. After getting her settled at the table with a paper plate overflowing with food, I sat beside her and demolished my own meal.
We ate almost everything, so clean up was easy, simply tossing it all into the trash. Eden disappeared into the single bedroom to use the bathroom and Evie pulled out a small black cell, subtly shaking it in the air. Her gesture and raised brow were a silent request for my permission to move forward with things. As much as I wanted to argue and force Eden to go to bed, I knew the chances of getting my way were slim to none. Reluctantly, I lifted my chin in affirmation and pulled a second chair over to the desk, so I could sit beside my wife while she worked.
Eden padded out of the back room and when she saw where I was, she eagerly made her way over. She plopped down into the chair and booted up the computer, which happened to be the only new and shiny object in the apartment. Evie joined us and leaned over Eden’s shoulder to tap a few keys, bringing up a screen with the large, round logo of the Central Intelligence Agency with a small box in the center requesting a password. Evie typed in a long, complicated string of letters, symbols, and numbers, then the screen went dark for a moment. When it came back up, not only we were looking at the CIA’s system, but there was a small frame in the bottom, right corner with a man staring back at us.
He had short brown hair, though it needed a cut and stuck up all over the place. Black-framed glasses surrounded piercing, blue eyes, and I couldn’t help laughing when I saw his wrinkled T-shirt that said, What part of 01000010 0101001 01101110 don’t you understand? This was the infamous Martin.
He whistled softly as his eyes swept over Eden and my amusement fled, leaving a burning anger that caused a growl of warning to rumble in my chest. Martin glanced at me, then looked at Evie. “Seriously, Scarlett? Another caveman? Like having to deal with Justice on a regular basis doesn’t stretch the boundaries of my patience?” Scarlet? When Evie scowled at him, it occurred to me that maybe this was her code name.
Eden snorted as she tried to hold in laughter, drawing Martin’s attention once again. This time, he smiled widely. “Beautiful, I hear you’re a fucking genius, and you have a sense of humor?” He winked at Eden. “Lucky man.”
“If you want to keep breathing, I suggest you stop admiring my wife and get to work,” I barked.
He sighed and shook his head, muttering, “No fun at all.” Out of nowhere, a hand whipped onto the screen and whacked him on the shoulder. He grinned at whoever it was and a female voice quipped, “What if he said that to me?” Martin scowled and threw me a dark look before his gaze fixed on something just above our little window, likely the rest of his computer screen, and I could hear his fingers tapping away.
For the next several hours, I sat silently at Eden’s side and poured over case law and evidence, working on a pattern of questions for Natalie to use when calling certain witnesses. I also watched over Eden as she and Martin delved into files, code, and many other things that I wouldn’t have had the first clue how to understand.
When I noticed her eyes drooping, I called a halt. “Eden needs to rest. You can pick this up after she’s slept.”
Martin peered at Eden through the computer and a sheepish expression leached onto his face. “I get lost in the work sometimes,” he admitted. “I didn’t notice how worn out she was.” I appreciated that he wasn’t the type of asshole to push her into continuing and it lessened my annoyance at him from earlier.
“WAIT!” Eden yelled, causing all of us to jump. “I found it! I fucking found it!”
Chapter 11
Eden
“Holy shit, you did!” Martin chimed in. “Damn, you’re good. Almost as good as me, in fact. We could use someone with your set of skills on the team.”
“Over my dead body,” Isaac growled. “And yours, too, for even suggesting it.”
“Sorry,” Martin mumbled. “My bad. I almost forgot about the caveman.”
“Yes, Martin. We have much better luck recruiting talented women before they find themselves married and knocked up by their very own caveman,” Evie drawled, making me giggle.
“What did you find?” Isaac asked, shifting his focus back to me.
“The owner of the Cayman bank account is none other than”—I paused for a moment when Martin tapped his fingers on his desk to make a drumroll sound—“Walter Morris, the CEO of SO&G.”
“Which explains why there are some serious discrepancies between the results the scientists noted in their files from the environmental studies and the published report. Several of the tests they ran found some scary shit, but the report gave SO&G a squeaky clean record,” Martin added.
“Because the first payment Whitney circled on the accounting sheets she brought home was a bribe,” I continued. “They must have decided he was too much of a liability and killed him to keep it from ever getting out.”
“When Whitney stumbled across the conspiracy, Morris must have put a hit out on her too,” Isaac deduced.
“There were only a few days between the second payment to the assassin’s account and her death. So the timeline definitely adds up,” I confirmed.
“That’s not all,” Martin added. “Turns out, the four other people on the research team have all ‘mysteriously’ died over the last six months. Each one coincides with another payment to the contract killer.”
Isaac scrubbed his hand over his face and shook his head. “Morris had multiple people killed to protect SO&G?
??s secrets. The last thing he cares about is sending an innocent man to prison. Framing my client was the easiest way to keep the company out of the investigation.” Isaac lifted me out of the chair and onto his lap, pulling me tightly into his arms. “And if he had his way, the body count would have been higher because you would have died in the explosion.”
“Actually, I think that might not have been Morris,” Martin interjected. “I think the assassin he hired went after her on his own because there’s no payment from Morris to him after Whitney’s death.”
“It’s entirely possible that his client told him about the intrusion on his account, and he decided to eliminate the threat for his own benefit,” Evie concluded. “It’s unusual to take on a hit without pay, but no assassin with his kind of reputation would be comfortable knowing there is a loose end which could lead the authorities straight back to him.”
Listening to Evie speak so matter-of-factly about the decisions an assassin would make was kind of surreal, considering the family lore that she’d been one herself. I wasn’t exactly sure how to process it since I was pretty sure she’d just confirmed that the gossip was true. Isaac didn’t seem to care either way, though, because he was focused on how what she’d said impacted my safety.
“Are you telling me that there’s an assassin out there who is so focused on killing my pregnant wife that he’s doing it for free?”
“And on that note, I’m going to sign off before the caveman loses his shit,” Martin muttered. “Evie, let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will do,” she answered, waving at the monitor before turning back to Isaac and me. “As dangerous as this guy is, he’s not going to find you here. And if he did, it would spook the shit out of him because he’d know Alex and I were involved.”
“Pun intended?” I giggled inappropriately. I couldn’t help it, not since spies were called spooks and I was exhausted. It was either laugh or cry, and I just didn’t have the energy for a sob fest at the moment.