Page 52 of The Verdict

The picture she’d painted of Merritt Manning had been a complete fucking lie.

She wasn’t a Spanish teacher. She wasn’t innocent or afraid. She was trained. A skilled fighter. A cunning spy. She deftly wove between damsel and deception. Lust and lies. And I’d been the damn fly caught in her web.

I’d been so fucking stunned to see her fight like that—to see the truth of her—I’d just stood there, frozen like a goddamn idiot, until her attacker punched her and she fell into the desk. I’d drawn my weapon just as the glint of the knife disappeared into her side.

And I saw red.

I could’ve killed him.A headshot from ten feet was nothing. But goddamn, I wanted to do more than kill him. I wanted to make him suffer. I wanted to maim him limb by fucking limb for touching my woman.My beautiful, dangerous damsel.

I didn’t recognize him, but I did recognize evil. I’d seen plenty of it in the war. Even without the goddamn bloody smile stretched over his hollow cheeks, I knew a man without a conscience when I saw one.

And then he’d leaped through the broken window, and I only had a choice: chase himor catch her.One look at her and I knew she’d disappear again the second I let her out of my sight. But that wasn’t why I stayed.

She was wounded. I saw the knife she pulled out of her side. Wide and curved and lethal. She needed help, and fuck me, I still cared.I still fucking foolishly cared.

I dragged my fuzzy attention to my side, the glass cube on the floor mocking me with my bloody reflection; she’d knocked me out with a paperweight.

She was skilled. Trained and resourceful.Whoever she was.

“Goddammit,” I snarled and forced myself upright, using the desk to steady myself when my head screamed in protest.

How the hell I’d looked at Merritt and only seen a victim was beyond me.Maybe lust was as blind as love.My mind unraveled memories all the way back to the night we’d first met. The party. The attack. I’d jumped in to save her—I’d killed to save her.And after today, I now realized she would’ve been capable of saving herself.

Fuck, I was a fool.

I forced deep breaths through my drawn lips and went to the other side of the desk, my head throbbing with every step.I wanted answers. And I wanted them straight from her sweet, lying lips. Gone was the man who wanted to protect her; I wanted the truth, and then I wanted to punish her for making it so damn easy to believe her lies.

Wheaton. Merritt. The man she was fighting. They all had to be connected, and the only connection that made sense—the only thread I had to pull on was Wheaton’s damn files. It was why Merritt was here, and it had to be the reason the other man was here, too.

“Rhys!” Dare’s voice bellowed from the front of the house, followed by a series of heavy footsteps.

“In here,” I called, frowning at the blank computer screen as I searched for the mouse. A second later, I spotted it broken in half on the floor just as Dare appeared, followed by Harm and Ace Covington, the owner of Covington Security. “It’s a party now,” I muttered, dragging my hand across my forehead and taking a fresh smear of blood away from my wound.

“Really? Looks like we just missed it,” Ace replied first. The former SEAL, with his Viking appearance and scalp tattoos, had been good friends with Harm and Dare even before their younger sister had married one of the guys on Ace’s team.

The guys lowered their weapons, taking stock of the room that looked more like a war zone. Books off the shelves. A toppled lamp. Papers scattered across the desk and onto the floor, along with keys belonging to the computer keyboard, but no keyboard in sight.

“You alright?” Harm demanded as I grabbed the crushed mouse and tried to bring the computer back to life.

“Yeah.” I was focused on my task until I realized three sets of eyes were staring at me dubiously. “What?”

Dare glanced at his older brother.

“What?” I repeated more forcefully.

Harm stepped farther into the room and bent to the floor for something, saying, “There was a text from your phone.”

My…My hand flattened on my empty pocket where my phone had been.Where—Harm straightened and extended his arm, my cell in his hand; it had been on the floor next to me.And I hadn’t been the one to put it there.

With a low growl, I took it from him, opening it to see a message to Ty.Goddammit.

“She sent this,” I muttered, rereading the message for help three times before I shoved my phone back in my pocket and told myself it didn’t mean she cared.Not like I fucking did, that was for damn sure.

“Where is she?” Dare asked low.

I swallowed over the ball of nails in my throat, refusing to look at him, already knowing what I’d find. He’d warned me. And instead of trusting the man who knew more about deception than most, I’d argued with him. Denied him. And I’d been one-hundred-fucking-percent wrong.

“Gone,” I croaked, my fingers reaching for my tattoo, scratching at the numbers.

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