Page 24 of Burning Secrets

He swallowed, and even in the dim light, he seemed almost…embarrassed?

“It can’t be that bad.”

“I was in jail.”

Oh.

He met her gaze. “I stole a car.”

“Why?”

He frowned, gave a huff. “Uh, they never really asked me that, but the answer is, my cousin Aaron said it would be fun. It was my neighbor’s Corvette. He never drove it—it just sat in his driveway, a vintage car getting moldy. He was out of town, and Aaron said, ‘Let’s take it out.’ And I was a stupid eighteen-year-old kid with no brains, and I said yes. So we broke in, hotwired it, and took it joyriding.”

“Doesn’t sound like a jail-worthy offense.”

“I crashed it.”

Her mouth made an O.

“Yeah. It was actually drivable, and I returned it to Ben and promised to pay for it. And I thought we were good, but a prosecutor caught me on camera and decided to make an example out of me. Ben wrote a letter to the court, and they only sentenced me to three months, but it was a felony, so yeah. Not a great start to life.”

She didn’t want to think about him, eighteen years old, in prison. “Is that where you learned to fight?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“‘They’ll have to go through me.’” She finger quoted the words.

He gave a short huff. “Yeah. No. My dad taught me.”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah. He was a Marine. Cool. Broken. Came back from Iraq all screwed up. Did some local boxing for cash. Ended up in a bar fight, killed a man, went to jail for manslaughter.”

She stared at him. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. Funny thing was, when I went to jail, he was there. So we had some father-son bonding time.” He shook his head. “That’s where he taught me to fight and pretty much looked out for me. Introduced me to Rio.”

Her mouth opened. “Skye’s husband.”

He dropped his voice, glanced at the door. “He’s my handler.”

Right. She nodded, also dropped her voice. “No wonder Skye sat with me such a long time at Northstar Pizza. Did you have a meet?”

“Sort of. We’re trying to figure out what the endgame of SOR is. We know they’re developing a biochemical weapon. We just don’t know the plan.”

“The nightshade greenhouse—do you think they’re using it to make a bioweapon?”

“I’d like to take a look at it. I have a plan to sneak out tomorrow.”

His words sank into her. “How dangerous are these guys? If they find us missing?—”

“Very dangerous.” He made a grim face. “You saw how they came after your team, right?”

She nodded. “They remind me of the guys who killed my father.” Oh—what? She hadn’t quite meant for that to emerge, but?—

“Killed your father?”

“Poachers. He tried to stop them from killing a pack of wolves.” She shook her head. “I was nine years old. He was my whole world.” Wow, that was probably way too much information. But sitting here in the semidarkness, wrapped in ablanket, Crew quiet and listening, his earlier words lingering in her mind—I’m one of the good guys—it felt easy.

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