Page 79 of Isaac

"Yes."

"Only buyer?"

"Only one I’m aware of."

"Hmm." She sips on her coffee some more while I wait and watch her from the corner of my eye. "We don’t have jurisdiction on the reservation," she finally says. "Unless we get tribal police to work with us, it’s all useless."

I nod.Good luck finding someone to cooperate. The tribal police are in on it.

"Any other progress on Thoreau? Can we get him on racketeering charges?"

It's a hook, baited with duty. And it twists in my gut, making me physically sick. "Thoreau's cautious. He moves like smoke." My words sound like I’m paying him a compliment, I realize after I speak.

"Smoke can be contained," Nicole counters, her gaze sharp as it sweeps over me. "Don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for him now? I sure hope as shit he didn’t tell you sob stories from prison. Anything he says is a lie. That man built an empire while behind bars. Should I remind you he killed his own father?"

Hesitation and doubt suddenly claw at my throat. I want to spill every dark secret I've gathered but held back. I also want to know what Nicole means by sob stories from prison. But Isaac's words about my touch—they've sunk hooks into my conscience, and now they pull taut, distorting my vision of the world. Things happened to him. I know it without hearing them. I know just by looking into his eyes, just by watching him. It’s like I sometimes look at my own reflection. Something I would have become if the job at the Bureau didn’t work out.

"He is... careful about who he trusts," I supply in a half-whisper. A fact dressed as an excuse. Excuse to have more time. "I'm close, though. I’ll find something solid."

"Close isn't good enough." Nicole’s tone is granite, unforgiving. "We need hard facts, names, dates. Not just—you being 'close.' When is the next delivery to Toro going out?"

"I don’t know."

"Find out."

"I got it. I will."

"I mean it, Dallas. Find out before the Cap decides to pull you out."

My hand trembles against the ceramic of my cup. Nicole watches, hawk-eyed, missing nothing.

"What happened with the passports I gave you?" I change the topic. "Who's handling the case?"

"Last I heard DHS took over."

"Did they find those kids?"

"I don't know, Dallas. You're well aware it's out of jurisdiction now. Besides, we're here to talk about Thoreau."

She waits for more, but I've given all I can without betraying the uneasy truce Isaac and I currently share. Instead, I just nod.

"Keep pressing," she instructs, standing abruptly and throwing a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.

She leaves and I sit there, hugging the coffee mug, torn. And each thought of Isaac is a splinter working its way deeper into my flesh. He’s both—balm and poison.

But I don’t know which one he’s for me.

Out in the street, the city breathes around me, indifferent to the commotion roiling in my chest. I walk with purpose, yet every step is filled with doubt. The withheld information sits heavy in my gut, a stone that's sinking me.

CHAPTER 24

ISAAC

I sit at my office desk, staring blankly at the computer screen, buried in paperwork. Yes, that’s the not-so-glamorous part of the job. My mind is elsewhere, replaying the events that happened in the bathroom downstairs over and over in my head. The way Hawk felt under my command, the way he submitted to me. I can’t remember the time I've had someone so willingly obey me.

Just thinking about it has my dick hardening.

The memory of his breath hitching in his throat, or the curves of his perfect sinewy body is there, in the front of my mind, overshadowing everything else happening around me. It's been two days since our encounter and my fingers still tingle from the sensation of him solid and aching for release.

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