Page 129 of Bottles & Blades

“But unless I’ve missed something, I don’t see anything that connects her to something bigger.”

“That’s because you didn’t see this,” Jace says, snagging the stack of papers and flicking through them, pulling one out and showing me?—

“Fuck,” I hiss.

A defense contract.

My eyes scan the pages, and I arrow in on what’s gotten Marie so excited.

The name.

The connection the FBI has been searching for.

“She was this fucking dumb?” I say, finding that hard to believe. Angela has been careful, skirting anything that could actually tie her to illegal activities, and now she’s put her name alongside one belonging to a company that’s known for illegal arms trading and suspected of human trafficking? Not to mention she did it on a contract that the Department of Defense has seen?

That doesn’t feel right.

“Dumb or not,” Marie says, “It’ll be enough to hold her, and it should be enough to persuade her to go the fuck away and stop bothering us, especially with the FBI on her ass.”

That also doesn’t feel right.

Angela hasn’t ever been persuaded to do anything she doesn’t want to do.

Not when we were married.

Not since she’s shown back up to fuck with my life.

I can’t imagine that anything’s going to change that particular personality trait.

“Your ex has been a pain in my ass for months now,” Jace says, his dark brows pulling together into an intense scowl.

“Tell me about it,” I mutter.

“But if opening my doors to the FBI means I can run my business without her trying to burn shit down from the inside out then, like I told Marie, I’m open to it.”

“Appreciated.”

“I know that you’re both busy,” Marie says, gathering the papers. “I’ll liaison with Attie’s team and your company, Mr. Henderson. I’ll make sure we follow this to ground and hopefully it’ll pan out as we expect.” She pulls out a pen, her pad of paper, turns to Jace, gaze flashing to his and then back down to the pad. “Who’s the best person to coordinate with this on at Genen-core?”

“Me.”

I blink.

Hmm.

Marie’s cheeks flush.

Hmm.

Jace is a good guy. A workaholic, yes, but I’ve never seen him look twice at a woman, let alone look at one as though he wants to consume her.

And he definitely wants to consume Marie.

So yeah,hmm.

He reaches into his pocket, passes her a card.

Probably has his personal number on it too.

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