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“I’m sorry,” Six said, her voice quiet in the room. Gavin looked over his shoulder at her. Their gazes locked and held. There was so much more to this man than she’d given him credit for. No, that wasn’t quite true. Someone like Gavin didn’t lead the life he’d led without having substance and depth. He was far more than the average foot soldier, and he was well beyond just following orders. She just hadn’t let herself consider, really consider,him. Him as a person, him as a man with a past, with ghosts, with loves and losses. It had been much easier to see him as someone assigned to her.
Being honest with herself, she wasn’t sure shewantedto know much more about him. Because with that came complications. But that horse had left the barn, and it wasn’t going to be led back in and forgotten anytime soon. Or ever. In fact, she was pretty sure the image of a nine-year-old Gavin watching his brother commit suicide would remain with her for a long time.
His eyes were still locked on hers when the first car drove up, her phone alerting her to the arrival.
“Cyn,” she said, recognizing the sound of the engine. “Devil and Nora will be here soon, too. If you need some time, take it. I’ll catch them up on what we both already know, and I’ll wait until you’re back to go over what else I found in Jeremy’s account.”
He gave her a conflicted look. She rose from her seat and walked over to him. “Go,” she said, placing a hand on his arm and brushing a kiss on his cheek. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “We all need space every now and then. Take it. Trust me,” she said, pulling his words from the night before into their conversation. She wanted him to trust her to take his words and his grief and hold them safely, to trust her to let him be human and feel pain without judgment.
His dark eyes searched hers, then finally he nodded. “Just a few minutes.”
She let a smile touch her lips. “If you head south along the water, sometimes the seals come out to play. They won’t fix everything wrong in the world, but they are pretty damn cute.”
At that, he smiled. A real smile. “Thanks,” he said, then he took his leave, walking out the back door as Cyn walked in the front.
Chapter Sixteen
“His name is Victor DePalma,”Violetta said when Gavin returned to her house after his walk. She’d been right—the seals were what he’d needed to bring his mind back from those dark memories. The animals really did have adorable doglike faces. He knew that despite their appearance, they were kind of assholes, but that didn’t make them any less fun to watch. They barked at each other, rolled over a lot, and generally looked like drunken blobs of sausage with flippers and cute eyes.
“The fourth man?” he clarified. Cyn, Devil, and Nora were all standing behind Violetta as she sat at her desk, intently reading something on her screen.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“We all know Julia Newcross’s story,” Cyn said.
“Raised by her mom until her mom died of cancer,” Nora started.
“Then into the foster care system until she aged out,” Cyn chimed in.
“Then clawed her way into college on a scholarship,” Devil said.
“Where she learned all the science that she needed to start her company,” Violetta finished.
Now that he was sure a video was no longer playing on her computer, Gavin walked over and joined them. His eyes skimmed the report and though he shouldn’t be surprised, he was.
“Well, imagine that, she lied about her background,” he said.
Violetta cocked her head. “Technically, it’s all true. She just never mentioned that the foster home she went into was a family friend. Or, with the exception of losing her mother, that her life was hardly a hardship.” As Violetta spoke, she flicked through a few pictures of a young Julia with, presumably, her foster family. She paused on one—a family picture. The five people in the photo were standing on a manicured lawn in front of a huge house. Julia wore a cap and gown and judging by her age, he guessed it to be a photo of her high school graduation. The older woman in the picture wore a sundress, heels, and plenty of diamonds while the man—Gavin assumed he was the father—and the two teenage boys wore suits and ties. A Mercedes was visible in the driveway.
“Her foster family?” he asked.
Violetta nodded. “And that,” she said, pointing to the older of the two boys, “is Victor DePalma. Her foster brother.”
“Anything we should know about the family?” he asked. “They look like a country club set to me, but of course, dark things can hide under a glossy sheen.”
Violetta glanced up at him, then returned her attention to the screen and opened a document. He leaned forward and scanned the contents. “Where did you get this?” he asked. It was an active file from an ongoing investigation into the entire DePalma family. If the FBI was on the right trail, it looked as if Victor’s activities in Indonesia were the tip of the iceberg.
Cyn cleared her throat. “From a friend.”
Gavin looked over at her. She cocked a brow and grinned. “Well, needs must sometimes,” she said, confirming his suspicion that he didn’t want to know how they got the FBI file.
“Does he work for Shanti Joy?” he asked.
Violetta shook her head. “Not officially. Officially, and conveniently, he works for a security firm tasked with accompanying precious cargo while in transit.”
“Such as?” he asked.
“Art,” Devil said.
