Touch of Betrayal, A (10 page)

Some of the tension faded from my shoulders. Mitch
was
a good guy, and whatever information Annie found had to be wrong. It just wasn’t possible for anyone with the ability to bring me to tears with the profound beauty of his work to be a bad person. Just. Not. Possible. Besides, we’d been married for over a year, and he’d been nothing but kind, generous, and…quiet. Secretive.

Annie sipped her Jameson’s. “I would’ve checked any stranger who came on to you, and I definitely would have done a thorough background check before you dated anyone, but with Hunt...never mind. Excuses don’t matter now.”

“You did check him out.” Had her memory gone screwy?

She sighed. “Yes, but I only dug far enough to find his military connections. It should have been a red flag, except it seemed to make perfect sense.”

I wrinkled my forehead, squinting at her. “Huh?”

“Because of the content of his books. You don’t get photographs like that unless you have an in with people in power. Anyway, I stopped digging. Just let it go.” Regret cut through her words.

She unplugged her laptop from the kitchen desk, and set it between us on the table. “It’ll be easier if I show you.”

We reached for our glasses of Irish whiskey at the same time. The rich, seductive scent tickled my nose with a welcome moment of the ordinary. Annie and me, sharing a glass of the good stuff. Usually we only did that after we’d successfully pulled off a not-so-legal stunt that resulted in proof positive that the bad guys were really bad. Not the case this time.

I held the first taste in my mouth, letting the heady aroma and the honeyed undertone echo on my tongue, sweet and full of life. I swallowed, welcoming the faint alcohol burn as it cut through the dulcet pleasure of the lingering flavor. It left a satisfying sting on the top layer of cells lining my throat. Physical stimulus—the perfect antidote to emotional devastation.

Annie logged on to her computer and pulled up an encrypted file. It took her a minute to adjust whatever to make it readable, and then she turned the screen toward me. And downed the rest of her drink in three gulps.

A flash of terror skittered along my nerves. Annie never gulped alcohol. I braced myself and began to read, my brain clouding with the sheer number of entries, dates, and times of Mitch’s assignments over the past two years. They were listed chronologically, and most of them showed the military as the source for his orders.

I pointed to the page. “This fits with what I’d expect.”

Annie replaced her empty whiskey glass with a full coffee mug. “Uh-oh. You have that look,” she said peering at me over the rim.

“Like I’ve lost my mind?”

“No. Like you think maybe I’ve made a mistake. That Mitch hasn’t been reporting your movements to his boss, that he’s one of the good guys.” She slid forward, tapping a different place on the screen. “You’re right about his regular assignments, but see this thread running under them?”

My brain waded through a bunch of acronyms that made no sense. And then I saw it. My name, places I’d been, stuff I’d done. “Why am I in here? These aren’t the actual orders, right? What are all these acronyms? They’re all dates and places for surveillance on me, some before we even met.”

I faced her. “You must have made a mistake.”

Annie’s moss green eyes frosted over for a second. “I’m a better hacker than that, and you know it.”

She was, and I did.

I glanced at the laptop. The screen had timed out. Did I want to wake it up and keep reading? Hell, no. But curiosity won and I tapped the track pad. I owed it to myself, to Mitch, and to our marriage, to learn all I could, because we’d have to talk about it. I’d have to tell him what I believed. That Pierce and Annie found suspicious documents that looked like someone set him up. Yeah. That was my plan, and I was sticking to it, because it was a whole lot more comfortable than accusing my husband of spying on me, marrying me for…who knew why? I grabbed my iPad to take notes, and then turned to the documents with new purpose.

Mitch was my home. My safe place. I couldn’t let anyone destroy that. Not even Annie.

I read the first summary again, shock hitting me in a numbing avalanche of pain and wiping out my plan in a life-changing second. My lips wouldn’t work. I licked them, then rubbed them together, trying to chase away the vacuum surrounding my heart. “I was…”

My mouth went dry with the taste of despair, and my heart heavy with the desire to escape the ache of betrayal. I scraped back my chair, standing so fast it landed on the floor with the resounding crack of beech hitting bamboo. And the need to pound on something—anything—rushed through me. I made a flying leap for the kitchen counter where I’d plugged in my cell, yanked it off the charger, and frantically punched in Mitch’s number.

It rang loud and grating in my ear. “He’s not answering.”

Annie stood, picked up the chair, then stepped around it, and crushed me in a hug. “He’ll call you back, Everly. He’s probably figured out that you’re here and suspects his cover’s been blown.”

“Yeah, I know he’ll return my call, it’s just that I want to talk to him
now
.”

“Maybe it’ll be better of you take some time to work through this before you confront him. He recognized you, planned your initial meeting, had done his research, and knew exactly what to say to reel you in. The man is a pro at surveillance. Military-trained, and then he honed specific skills with various government agencies.” Her words rang with the absolute confidence that only comes from hands-on knowledge.

I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Gut wrenching sobs shredded my insides. “I l-loved him. Loved. H-him.”

Her hug turned into comforting stability, like a rock. “I know,” she whispered, and started to cry with me. It was a soul sister thing. Her tears soaked through my t-shirt, the warmth of them quickly chilling the fabric against my skin.

The kitchen spun into slow motion.

“I w-was his assign-assignment.” I jerked free from Annie’s arms. “That rat bastard. Damn it all to hell.”

She stepped back, giving me room to pace. But started talking, probably to lessen the shock. “I’m guessing it was an assignment he regretted taking after he met you. Experience tells me the Powers That Be gave him no option because Tony Civitelli’s death made him the perfect candidate for whoever wanted to keep tabs on you. Could be he was shuffled between agencies to bury the source of his orders. I haven’t been able to hack that deeply into the system yet.”

I ran my hands through my hair, tugged on it. “Nope. Not buying it. The kind of people you worked for, they would be able to stage any kind of death they wanted and make it look like a genuine homicide, so why use a real murder they couldn’t control? Especially one connected to a known crime family? It wasn’t long before even I knew Mama Civitelli was notoriously unpredictable when it came to her sons.”

Annie sat, and wrapped her hands around her coffee mug. “Maybe. But Tony’s murder fit perfectly. He lived near you, and the case peeked your natural curiosity without raising suspicion. It wasn’t like you had a history of chasing criminals prior to meeting Mitch, you know.”

“This can’t be real.” I grabbed my empty glass of whiskey and inhaled the fragrance, letting the sensation settle over my brain cells. Oh, yeah. Becoming an alcoholic would have its perks.

I swirled the last swallow of amber liquid, and focused on the way it coated the glass, the pattern it left sliding down the side of the crystal. A sudden burst of rage clawed at me. “The bastard
married
me.”

Annie tilted her head back, focusing on the ceiling fan. “Yeah, he did. You’re not gonna want to hear this right now, but I think he truly fell in love with you.”

My knees wilted.

Gravity plopped me onto the chair Annie’d righted with a muffled thud. “Funny kind of love.” My words croaked. But some part of me knew she was right. Mitch did love me. I pushed it into the hollow space where my mind used to live before everything tilted into crazyland.

I grabbed the table, the edge jabbing into my palm. So this was the kind of anger and pain that happened when your life shattered. The emotion churned in the back of my mind, waiting for rational thought to catch up. I watched myself through a mental telescope, fighting to keep my emotions from taking control.

My hand curled around the tumbler of whiskey and I finished it in one long swallow, setting the empty glass on the table with absolute precision.

Annie’s gaze trailed my actions, her shoulders loose, hands super-spy quiet.

“I’m not going to explode.” It was a lie. My insides had detonated with that last gulp of whiskey.

I made my way across the kitchen, leaned over the counter, and pressed my forehead tight against a cupboard door, my fingers splayed on either side of my head. Nice girls didn’t smash their best friend’s kitchen to smithereens. I pressed my palms tight against the warm wood, but the pressure didn’t stop my shakes.

Maybe I wasn’t a nice girl anymore. I slammed the side of my fist against the counter, the jolt throbbing through my bones. Yeah. That was good. I did it again. And again.

TEN

I’d written two pages of notes
from Annie’s file on Mitch before her kitchen door swung open and Pierce filled the doorway. “You have questions?”

My gut burned where the Irish whiskey had been eating at my stomach. Guess the fries from Mickey D’s hadn’t been enough protection against a solid blast of mid-morning alcohol. I pressed my fist into the ache, and faced Pierce’s blank stare.

“Yeah. Apparently you decided it was okay to leave the relative safety of your car. That Annie had enough time to break the news and pick up the messy pieces without your assistance. Why didn’t you tell me, Pierce? You had plenty of chances—when we found the body, and on the plane. It wasn’t right to keep this from me.”

He sighed, heavy with silence, and something else I didn’t have the heart to probe.

“I thought we were friends, Pierce.”

He dug his hands into the back pockets of his cargo pants, and wouldn’t meet my gaze. “We are. I…figured it’d be easier for you to hear it from A.J. She had the proof. Knew it would be tougher for you to accept without solid backup.”

I leaned back in my chair, and glared at him. “Easier? Nothing could make tromping all over my marriage—my existence—easier. Somebody set him up. Had to. This information has to be false.” I waved my hand toward Annie’s laptop. “And I’m going to trash whoever is trying to make my husband look guilty.”

Pierce cocked his head to the side, his gaze traveling between the two crystal glasses on the kitchen table. “Neither A.J. nor I would’ve tossed this shit at you if we hadn’t checked the source.”

 
His words were layered—control on the top, a flash of raw anger underneath. Made me want to poke the tiger, but I held back. I needed his skills to find the jackass who was behind this, and to find who killed my parents. “The man I know wouldn’t have done this.”

Pierce sauntered into the kitchen, yanked out a chair, and straddled it. “That’s the point, Everly. He’s not the man you know.”

My fist twitched with the urge to hit him.
Deep breaths, Everly. You can do this.
“I need more proof. But better than that, Mitch has to deny this in person.”

“And what are you going to do if he confirms it?” Annie’s voice drifted ghost-like into the kitchen from behind me.

I twisted to face her, my heart beating double time. “I don’t know.” And it was the honest, barefaced truth.

Maddie struggled from Annie’s hold, reaching her pudgy arms toward me, and gurgling a paragraph of sounds that only made sense in her very astute baby mind. “She wants you to let her play with the computer.” Apparently her mother had taken a crash course in gurgles.

Way to break up the tension in the room. Not that it did anything for the riot of pain, stupefying disbelief, and anger raging inside me. I sucked in a breath, and stomped on my emotions. Now wasn’t the time to give in to them. Not in front of this child that I loved, and who wouldn’t reach her first birthday for two more weeks. And not in front of my two best friends who had—albeit with good intentions—betrayed me.

I kept my tone even. “You let Madigan play with your computer?” That could explain how they came up with these lies about Mitch. Or not. I was grasping for a reason, any reason that would make their so-called proof disappear.

“No, she has her own, and fortunately can’t tell the difference between the real thing and a toy. Yet. Here.” Annie handed Madigan to me. “Cuddle her while I get it.”

I inhaled the scent of baby powder and sweet, soft skin as Maddie wrapped her arms around my neck with a grip that would have done Pierce in combat mode proud.

“Uumph. Little on the tight side there, baby girl.” I loosened her arms, and buried my nose against her neck. This was peace. Innocence. And oddly enough it calmed me. Maybe that’s what Annie had in mind when she handed her daughter to me, maybe not, but my heart dipped into a normal beat for the first time since I’d starting searching through the evidence against my husband.

Maddie twisted her fingers in my hair, undoing the knot at my nape. Apparently a baby’s touch is a powerful thing, because when my hair fell free, the tension flowed from my muscles. Could be Mitch had a point about babies. Our baby. I shook my head. Nope. No way was I going there, no matter how cute Madigan’s dimpled chin looked when she pouted. She poked at my earlobe, uttering nonsensical syllables that had to mean she liked my diamond studs. Mitch had given them to me on our first-married-month anniversary.