Page 6 of Inevitable
Wyatt pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I have a few photos of Emma that I took the last time I was visiting in Cherry Cove.”
He enlarged a photo and turned his phone around so I could see it.
My heart nearly stopped as I glanced at the picture of a beautiful, blonde woman manning a barbecue grill with a water view in the background.
The smile on her face and the mischief in those ocean blue eyes as she looked at the camera were unmistakable.
Fuck!Emma was a common name. I’d never dreamed that we were discussing a woman I’d known intimately a long time ago.
Maybe it had been fourteen years since I’d seen her face, but itwasEmma.
The woman I’d never forgotten, no matter how hard I’d tried over the years.
“Hold off on leaving for Lania,” I said hoarsely. “I’ll hop the first plane I can get to Cherry Cove after I get the intel you need. I’ll be in touch tonight.”
Chapter 2
Marshall
“Tell me what’s going on, Marshall,” Wyatt insisted after we’d wrapped up the video conference with Brock and Nate.
I closed my laptop after logging out of the meeting room. “I’m not sure what you’re asking,” I said innocently, but my mind was racing with all of the things I needed to do.
I grabbed my laptop and started to get up, but Wyatt put a strong hand on my shoulder to keep me from standing as he grumbled, “We’ve known each other for years, Marshall. I respect you, and I’ve always respected your privacy. But I would like to think that we’re friends. You don’t leave San Diego because you always want to be near the headquarters in case something comes up. And you sure as hell don’t volunteer to go out of state to find a missing person. It’s completely out of character for you, and I want to know why you’re doing it now. Something about this situation is personal for you. It would have to be to get you away from headquarters. I get that you don’t share much personal information about yourself with anyone, but I have to call bullshit on this one. I am your friend, whether you want that friendship or not. Level with me this time, Marshall. You helped me when Shelby’s life was in danger. I’d like to help you. Hell, you know every single one of us would help if you’d let us.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my partners with anything personal. Truth was, I didn’t have a personal life to speak about.
I worked as a contractor for the federal government, whichnobodyknew because most of my intel work involved black ops. I didn’t talk about that job, but I had a feeling that they all suspected that I had some pretty high connections within the federal government for some reason.
All of my spare time was dedicated to Last Hope and our operations here.
I lived and breathed intel and technology almost every waking hour of my day, which made me a pretty boring, reclusive kind of guy.
Hell, I probably owed Wyatt the truth about Emma, even though the brief fling had happened a long time ago.
He and the four other billionaires who helped Last Hope operate at its current level were the closest things I had to friends.
Wyatt was probably the most like me, which is why we understood each other so well.
Before he’d met Shelby, he’d been almost as reclusive and standoffish as I was now.
Wyatt would also end up being in charge of Last Hope headquarters operations while I was gone, so I probably did owe him some kind of explanation.
There were no hostage rescues brewing at the moment, but things could pop up in a hurry.
“What do you know about Emma?” I asked grudgingly. “And how exactly is she connected to our Michigan team?”
I’d spent five incredible days with her, but I didn’t even know her last name, much less anything about her current life.
He lifted a brow. “Why do you want to know about her personal life?”
Dammit!How could I tell him that I needed to know that she wasn’t the love interest of one of the men on our Michigan team or that I wanted to know everything about her now that I knew exactly where she was located?
That was just out of curiosity, of course.
My need to know wasn’t exactlypersonal.
Honestly, it shouldn’t matter if she was involved with one of the guys from the Michigan team.
