Page 27 of Fighting for Scarlett

Was it possible she was really innocent?

The email said otherwise but …

Scarlett didn't act guilty.

Her profile didn't match with someone who would sell sensitive information for money either. They’d done a deep dive into her past when they were given this mission, and from the background check none of this added up.

Scarlett and her twin brother had been mostly raised by their paternal grandparents up until the age of thirteen while their parents served in the military. Their grandfather was also former military and it looked like Scarlett’s life had been rough. Not abusive, but not a warm, loving environment to grow up in either.

After their grandparents’ deaths and their parents’ refusal to accept the offered honorable discharges, she and her brother went into the foster system. While there were no reports of abuse suffered, Scarlett and her brother were both bounced about often, sometimes winding up in a home together but oftentimes separated. Again, a lonely place to be even if not outright abusive.

As an adult, she had bucked against family pressure and gone to college instead of enlisting. That had gotten her shunned and contact with her brother had dwindled to virtually nothing after he did enlist. She’d been engaged twice before. She was lonely and from all reports a romantic at heart.

Bottom line was Scarlett Madden was desperate to be loved.

The exact reason he never should have touched her.

She wanted a family and a happy ever after, he wanted to remain single.

But it was her very profile that said she wasn’t the kind of person who would do what she was being accused of. People desperate to be loved and accepted didn't usually throw away the only connections they had for money. Because love and acceptance were more important to them than money.

Was she possibly coerced into selling the formula for the Reactivator?

The idea had been bouncing around inside his head since they’d been sitting on the helo. It would explain why Scarlett had been tortured—and the evidence on her body meant nobody could argue with that fact—and why she had been grateful to see him when he came to rescue her. Maybe she’d tried to go through with it and then found that she couldn’t, and that was why Raul had turned on her.

Or maybe he was just reaching because he … wanted … her to be innocent.

Sighing, Tate raked his fingers through his hair and then rubbed at the tight muscles in the back of his neck. Tension had his entire body feeling like it had been twisted into knots.

When the door to the room he was holed up in watching the feed from Scarlett’s interrogation room opened, he lifted his eyes to see who it was.

Chaos and King walked into the room. Both of them looked as exhausted and stressed out as he felt. Despite what Scarlett probably thought, everyone at Prey seemed to be on her side. Even with evidence to the contrary, nobody seemed to believe it. Every single person had wanted to be there for Scarlett, comfort her, reassure her, make sure she knew they believed in her, but the best thing they could do for her right now was let someone neutral handle the situation.

None of the Prey people could be neutral when it came to her.

Hell, he couldn’t even be neutral when it came to Scarlett, leaving him feeling angry and helpless.

“Why are you still here?” Chaos growled. Despite the fact the man had a reputation of being easygoing and lighthearted, a lover of practical jokes that he sometimes took too far, right now, Chaos looked every bit the lethal warrior he was behind the jokester veneer.

Since there was no good answer he could give to that, Tate merely shrugged.

“She hasn’t wavered in her story once.” King said it as a challenge, but Tate had no intention of refuting it. That was true. Her story had zero inconsistencies no matter how many times she was asked to go over things. Either she had her lies memorized or she was telling the truth.

King had been a notorious playboy up until he met and fell in love with Faith Johnson, now Faith Voss. All it had taken was for him to meet the woman who would own his heart for his entire life to change. King and Faith were now happily married with a two-year-old daughter Indigo.

Was that how easy things could change?

Was it possible for falling in love to make everything different?

If he wasn’t intent on lying to himself, would he admit that he already had feelings for Scarlett even if he’d done his best to shove her away?

Refusing to allow himself to continue down that path, Tate straightened and looked the two men in the eye. “Did you get the results of the polygraph?”

There had been no hesitation on Scarlett’s part when she had been asked to take the lie detector, she had readily agreed. Eagerly even.

While not admissible in court because it was much too easy to fake it, passing the test would go a long way in helping convince everyone outside of Prey that something else was going on.

Instead of answering, the two men shared a look, and Tate felt his stomach drop.

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