Page 24 of Mess With Me

“So you knew she was going to be there and you took it upon yourself to intervene?” Lionel asks. “May I ask why you couldn’t have spoken to this grapevine to nix the date before it happened?”

This is where it gets tricky. Until now, we’ve only gone over the transcripts every few days, since Creelman’s not the main focus of this job. Our whistleblower thinks there’s a stronger connection between his company and another criminal syndicate we’ve got our eyes on. It’s the one Lionel wants us to focus on. But Ford and I didn’t feel good taking eyes off Creelman, Macklin, or anyone this company had dealings with.

Unfortunately, due to our main focus on the other organization, I only found out about Sasha ten minutes before she was due to meet him, and only because my eyes landed on her name in Creelman’s transcripts.

It wasn’t enough time to keep her out of danger. But it was enough time to keep things from going much, much worse.

Luckily, the simple truth works best. “I found out about it too late.”

For a second, I’m taken back to that terrible moment. While I tore through the city in our discreet company van toward the restaurant, Ford and I volleyed ideas back and forth for how to intervene. I wanted to storm the place and knock Creelman’s teeth out. Ford had calmly reminded me that we can’t show our faces—we’re supposed to remain in the background. It’s a speech I’ve given new recruits for years, but I was seeing red.

We finally came up with the idea for the fire alarm when we passed a fire station a block away. I dropped Ford off to sort out getting an outfit—still not quite sure how he pulled it off—while I ran up to the sushi restaurant to get eyes on the situation.

Seeing Sasha had sent relief coursing through me. That is, until I saw that piece of shit clamp down on her hand with his.

Once again, my stomach turns as I think of what might have been if we’d been there only a few minutes later.

“You should have consulted with me before taking action,” Lionel says.

“There was no time. We don’t leave people in danger.” My voice is steely.

“And you don’t go rogue just because you feel like it!” Lionel yells.

Ford and I exchange a look.

The Lionel we know never would have questioned this.

“Lionel,” I say. “You need to tell us what’s going on. You’ve built a career—a legacy—on protection. That’s why we’re all here.”

Lionel’s jaw snaps shut. He knows I’m right.

Our company’s motto isYou’re safe with us.He cares about protecting the innocent so much he even has the best family protection policy I’ve ever seen—employees and their families are given all the same protections as our clients should they ever need it: fail-safes, safe houses, special surveillance. The works.

But he meets my gaze.

And then my heart fucking sinks.

Because the look I see flash in Lionel’s eyes is one of deep, heavy pain, and though I swear I can pack that pain in a box most days, it cracks open for the barest second now. The one person neither of us could protect is the albatross that stands between us now.

I don’t know if Ford sees it or if he’s just trying to get to the bottom of things, but he clears his throat and asks the question we should have asked from the beginning. “Are you in some kind of trouble, Lionel?”

For a moment, no one says anything.

I look back at my boss, the man I used to look up to. The one who now it sometimes takes all my strength just to look at. “If you’re in trouble, we can help.”

Lionel puts a hand to his jaw, then rethinks it, pulling his hand away and laying it on his lap. He shakes his head, uttering no words. Then, to my utter shock, he says grimly, “We’re in a bad place, boys.”

Ford shoots me a look. I give an imperceptible shake of my head. I don’t know what this is about either.

I pull out a chair at the table and sit down next to him, across from Ford. “What are you talking about, Lionel?”

He sighs. “Some of our big-ticket clients haven’t come through in quite the way we wanted over the last year. Our accounting team—” He squints at the file on the desk as if it’ll give him the words he needs. “They say we can keep going on the operating funding if we stick to domestic clients for the next few years to keep costs down. And if we trim down some of our biggest operations. Like All-Ways Construction.”

That’s the operation Ford and I are working on.

Money. It’s a money issue. It makes sense—it checks all the boxes for why he’s been telling us to tone down our surveillance on Creelman. Why he’s gone ballistic over what happened at the restaurant. Still, something about it doesn’t fit perfectly. But it could just be I’m still stuck on the issue of Sasha Macklin.

“Wait, so what if a client needs protecting outside the US?” Ford asks, his face lined with deep concern.

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