Текст книги "Falling for Danger"

Автор книги: Chanel Cleeton

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

We deserved this. Needed it. So we took it, disappearing into each other for the moment, lingering in it, gathering our strength before we had to disappear for good.

Chapter Twenty-one

The funeral of Intech founder and CEO, James Ryan, was widely attended by Washington’s power players …

–Capital Confessions blog

Kate

We met at our hotel again, Gray and Blair still in D.C., trying to regroup, attempting to figure out what came next. I was on my second day of calling in sick to work, leaving another message on my boss’s answering machine, and I had a feeling I was pretty much fired anyway. Hopefully, when we did run, the CIA wouldn’t bother coming after us. I was a low-level employee and my security clearance was the lowest access level at the Agency. I wasn’t exactly a threat to national security.

“So we’re back where we started. We don’t have any proof.” Matt grimaced. “He killed my entire unit, tried to kill me, killed my father and god knows who else, and he’s just going to get away with it.”

No one spoke. He wasn’t wrong.

Matt’s jaw clenched. “How is this possible? How is there nothing we can use to incriminate him? To see him tried for his crimes?”

“He’s good at covering his tracks. He always has been,” Jackie interjected, anger threading through her voice. “I’ve tried for years. The best I could do at Capital Confessions was take some shine off of his reputation. But I could never actually find something to pin on him.”

That was the thing about people like my father. They were slippery as fuck.

I looked at the circle; five grim faces stared back at me. No one wanted to see him win, but it felt like David going up against Goliath. How did you take down someone who had more money and power than you could ever dream of?

You didn’t.

“What are you guys going to do?” Blair asked.

Matt shook his head. “I don’t know. We need to get out of town.”

We’d been prepared for this. Part of me didn’t even mind it. The leaving, at least. But not like this. I wasn’t going to run with my tail tucked between my legs. If we were going to leave, then it was going to be on our terms. I was going to light a match and burn this motherfucker down.

We needed to hit him where it hurt, to find the one chink in his armor …

Oh my god.

“What if we didn’t need proof?” The idea slowly took root. It wasn’t the perfect solution, but it was better than nothing. It was something we could cling to.

“What do you mean?” Jackie asked.

“What if we didn’t need to prove what he did? What if we just needed to make it look like there was something suspicious there? We don’t necessarily need to connect the dots; we just need to prove that there are dots to connect. Let the authorities investigate him. Let public opinion condemn him.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know who he has on his payroll,” Blair pointed out. “What if we take this to the FBI or something, and then they just bury it? How do we know who we can trust?”

She had a point there. I thought about what we knew, how my father operated, mentally discarding options …

“So we don’t go to the authorities.” My gaze met Jackie’s. “We know one person that we can trust. One person who isn’t afraid to print things about our father. One person who has the kind of audience to shine a light on this whole thing, to garner the level of attention we need. The kind that will ruin his career.”

Her gaze narrowed speculatively, and then her lips curved into a smile, ruthless and beautiful. “You want to use Capital Confessions. You think Sean will do it.”

Sean Dell was the editor of Capital Confessions, and while the man wasn’t exactly trustworthy under normal circumstances, Jackie had been his best blogger for years, and even though he didn’t show it in a touchy-feely sort of way, I did genuinely believe he had a sliver of a slightly soft spot for Jackie. We’d both provided him with information and some of his biggest stories, so in a way he owed us. Especially Jackie. Besides, the man would sell his grandmother for a good story, and this one had all the markings of the ultimate scandal—plus he’d get an exclusive.

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do,” Jackie answered. “He’ll have to be careful with how he handles the information, but that’s right up his alley.”

Jackie and I grinned at each other, and I knew that whatever she’d decided when she quit Capital Confessions, there had always been a part of her that craved this. We were a bloodthirsty pair; maybe it was the genes.

My gaze swept the rest of the group. I couldn’t read Matt, but Will and Gray looked resigned, as though it wasn’t their fight, but they would fight it anyway for the women they loved. They’d both had their dirty laundry aired in Capital Confessions, so I figured they had their reservations—justifiably so. Blair looked worried, and knowing my cautious sister like I did, I figured she was already thinking of all the ways this could backfire and blow up in our faces.

And there were many.

For a moment I just looked at my family, my sisters, the men they loved, and thought of the lives they’d built, the challenges they’d overcome. They had bright futures ahead of them, and as much as I knew they hated our father, it wasn’t their fight. Gray and Blair were just starting out, trying to put their baggage behind them. Will’s political future was huge, and Jackie had worked so hard to build her career in an industry that wouldn’t understand her involvement in chipping away at a prominent senator’s power. It would embarrass his party, possibly implicate some of his many political allies. It wasn’t worth it. She had way too much to lose.

I didn’t.

I enjoyed my job at the CIA, but it was just a job. No matter how this played out, we would never really feel safe if we stayed in town, if we didn’t shed our identities. And I knew that my father was just one crooked politician in a long line of many, but I needed to feel like all of this had meant something. That the years Matt and I had suffered had some purpose. I needed this.

“I think you guys should sit this one out.”

Jackie made a face. “Are you joking? After everything? I started this.”

“I know.” My gaze shifted to Will. “If you get tied up in this, how is it going to look for Will’s political career?”

She closed her eyes.

“How’s it going to look for your career? You love what you do. You’re good at what you do. Really good. So is Will. You guys are already making a difference in this town. Don’t screw that up.”

Jackie opened her eyes, and I saw the resignation there. “What about you?”

I shrugged and my gaze connected with Matt’s. “I think I’m ready to try living in the shadows for a bit. I’ve done the spotlight thing and hated it. I’m never going to get to be ordinary. Never going to get to put this shit behind me. Neither one of us can. So instead of trying to force our future into something we can’t have, I’m going to go out on my terms.”

Blair shook her head. “I don’t want all of this to be on you.”

Gray squeezed her hand and I knew that in my absence, Blair would never be alone.

“It is on me. I need you to accept that. Let me handle this. I’ll talk to Sean. I’ll leak the info. And then we’ll leave D.C.”

“Are you sure about that?” Matt asked.

“Yeah. I am.”

Matt

“Are you really going to go through with this?” I asked Kate after everyone had left, when we were alone in the hotel room, still trying to come to terms with her plan, with all that she was willing to risk and give up to be with me. “There might be another way.”

If I were in her place, I’d do the same thing, no question. But it was still hard to be okay with it, to accept that she was going to be closing this chapter of her life and moving on to a future that was a giant unknown. She was putting everything on the line for us, and that scared me more than anything. What if she hated the life I had to offer her? What if we couldn’t stay safe?

She shook her head. “There isn’t. You know that. We’ve looked at everything, and he’s always one step ahead of us, and if anything, he’s shown us that he’s not afraid to do whatever it takes to destroy us. We can’t win. This is the only way to try to make a difference. The only way to take him down.”

“Even if it means we have to run?”

She nodded. “I think it’s best. And I don’t really think of it as running. It’s the only play we have here. The only thing that makes sense. It’s just good strategy.”

She was right. Even as I hated it for her, I saw the acceptance in her eyes and knew it was the only hope we had of having a future together.

“I can work on getting our final documents together. New identities, passports, that sort of thing. Most of it should be complete by now.”

“Have you thought about where you want to go?” she asked.

“What do you think about Indonesia? Bali?”

“Bali?”

“Yeah.”

She grinned. “That seems a little more like a vacation spot than somewhere we’d go on the run.”

“It can be both. Our money will last there. We can get a little place, and it’ll be beautiful. I’m done staying in disgusting hovels. I lived on the run taking jobs that made my skin crawl, saving money for my future. I want to put down roots somewhere comfortable.” I squeezed her hand, shifting on the bed so that she lay on top of me. “Unless you want to reconsider things? It’ll be scary at times, and it’ll be rough.”

“Is this the last time you’re going to ask me?” she asked with a grin.

I laughed. “Fine. Sorry. Yes.”

“I am completely sure. This’ll be good for us. I know it.”

“Okay, then.”

Kate leaned down, pressing her lips to mine. “I love you,” she whispered between our mouths.

I found her hand, linking our fingers together. “I love you, too.”

I reached up, tugging on the hem of her T-shirt, pulling it over her head. My hands drifted up to the clasp of her bra, fumbling with the hooks for a second before I stripped the fabric from her body.

She stared down at me, a playful expression in her eyes that immediately had my dick hard. Or maybe that was just how good it felt to have her rocking over me.

My hands came down to the button of her jeans.

“You have entirely too many clothes on,” I murmured.

I unbuttoned her pants and dragged the zipper down, tugging the denim off of her body. Kate moved away, shedding the remainder of her clothes, and then she was straddling me again, naked, bending forward to kiss me.

My hand stroked down her back as we kissed, tracing the sharp line of her spine, cupping her ass, squeezing, my mouth drifting down to her neck, my teeth scraping the skin there. She shivered, her fingers reaching for the waistband of my boxers, pulling the fabric down. I lifted my hips to help her, until I was naked, my eyes slamming closed at the feel of her against me—slippery and wet. We rocked back and forth as Kate rubbed herself over me, again and again, her head thrown back, fucking gorgeous.

A thin line of sweat formed on my brow, my hands clenching the sheets, the urge to slide into her tight heat nearly overwhelming. And then, as though she took pity on me, she reached between us, taking my cock in her hands and circling it, positioning her hips over me, sinking down slowly, the head teasing her entrance as she covered me in her arousal. Little by little, she lowered herself until she’d taken all of me, and then with my hand at her hip, she began to ride.

We didn’t speak, didn’t do anything but give in to the sensations overtaking our bodies. When I came, I came hard, her body clinging to mine, my arms around her, and then Kate simply collapsed on top of me, her head resting on my chest, her lips over my heart, pressed against the initial I’d had etched there, all those years ago.

Chapter Twenty-two

Get ready for our biggest story yet …

–Capital Confessions blog

Kate

I strode into the Capital Confessions offices feeling like I was about to fire the opening shot in a war. This was it. Everything that had happened up until this point had led us here; this was my final showdown in the O.K. Corral.

And yeah, I was nervous.

Blair and Jackie had tried to come with me, but I’d been serious when I insisted that from here on out, this was my battle. I wasn’t going to let them risk more than they already had.

I waited in front of Sean Dell’s secretary’s desk; her eyes had widened when I gave her my name and said that I didn’t have an appointment, but wanted to talk to him. I’d come armed with everything we had—every tawdry bit of information we’d amassed on my father’s past sins, the tenuous ties we could use to create questions about his involvement in Afghanistan and everything else. It wasn’t proof, but I’d seen what Sean could do with just the hint of scandal, and I had every bit of faith that he could bring the house down with just these scraps.

His secretary returned, a smile on her face. “He’ll see you now.”

I walked into his office, ready to connect the face with the man, the myth, the legend. When I’d given information to Capital Confessions in the past, I’d kept all of my interaction with him remote so we’d never actually met in person. My first impression was that he—and his office—were messy. It sort of looked like a bomb had gone off in the middle, and while I was by no means neat, I had no idea how he could work like that.

He stood as I walked into the room, a wide smile and a predatory gleam in his eyes.

“Kate Reynolds.”

I nodded. “Sean Dell.”

“It feels like we’ve had this appointment for a long time considering how many times we’ve dealt with each other over email. Not to mention my relationship with your sisters.”

“Sister. We both know this isn’t Blair’s style.”

He chuckled. “True. She’s the classy Reynolds, isn’t she?”

“She is.”

“And Jackie, though not an official Reynolds, is the ballsy one. So which one are you?”

“I’m the one who’s going to give you the story of your life and make your career.”

If he’d rubbed his hands together with glee, he wouldn’t have looked more eager than he did now. I’d second-guessed a lot of my decisions lately, questioned whether I really was doing the smart thing. But this? This felt like serendipity, like this man and I had been brought together for the revenge and justice I’d yearned to mete out for years.

“Your father?”

I nodded.

“This is about that mysterious family feud, isn’t it? You’ve been estranged from your parents for what, three years now?”

“Nearly four.”

He gestured to the empty seat in front of his desk. “Sit.”

I sat.

“Is everything off the record?” he asked.

“It’s whatever you want it to be. But I have a few conditions first.”

“Okay.”

“You keep my sisters out of it. Period. That’s nonnegotiable. You make it seem like I’m completely on my own. None of this touches them. And you keep them out of Capital Confessions.”

“Your sisters are popular hits for the blog. That’s going to be a sticking point for me.”

“You can have the first pictures and exclusive of Jackie’s wedding. She and Will are in agreement with that. After that, though, you back off of them. You’ve had enough of a focus on our family. Besides, with what I’m giving you, you’ll have enough to fill your coffers for a very long time. Right now you’re a big blog with a strong regional following, but no one outside of D.C., Virginia, and Maryland really gives a shit about the social stories you focus on because they don’t care about any of the players. We’re small fish to the rest of the country and world. Wouldn’t you rather focus on the power players? The information I’m about to give you will make Capital Confessions the go-to site on a much larger scale. You won’t need to blog about broken engagements and sex tapes with state senators.”

Will was awesome, but it wasn’t like he was a major political player. Not yet, anyway.

“What else do you want?”

“There’s another person whose identity you have to promise to protect in this. I’m not going to tell you who until you promise, but that is another nonnegotiable for me. The biggest one.”

“You just expect me to blindly agree to something without knowing what it is? Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then I walk out and give someone else my story. I chose you because Jackie worked for you, because I’ve given you information in the past, because even though you screwed me with Blair, you aren’t afraid to take on Goliath, and quite frankly, that’s more important right now than the fact that you’re kind of a dick. But I can’t do this if I don’t trust you, and if you don’t make these guarantees, this won’t go any further.”

“You sure you’re not overstating how big this is?”

I met his gaze. “I don’t fuck around. I’ve read your posts lately. You’ve been following what’s happened in D.C. and Virginia—my mugging, James Ryan’s murder, the explosion in my apartment building, the shooting two days ago at the Lincoln Memorial. You’re a smart guy; you wouldn’t have gotten where you are if you weren’t. You know there’s something bigger at play here besides a stupid crime wave.”

He hesitated, and I could see him mentally weighing it out, his greed and curiosity warring with each other until he gave me a nod and my heartbeat slowed.

“Fine.”

Thank god.

I’d totally been bluffing. We didn’t have another option; there weren’t any other media sources that I knew well enough to trust. And I hadn’t been lying before—I didn’t necessarily trust him; he wasn’t really an honorable guy. But he was a guy whose behavior and motivations were predictable. If he was anything, he was consistent. The story mattered to him more than anything, and this was a hell of a story.

“Can I record you?” he asked, opening his desk drawer.

“Yes.”

He pulled out a recorder and hit a series of buttons.

“Is your father behind it?”

I took a deep breath and got ready to bring the house down. “Yes.”

“Do you have proof?”

“Sort of.”

His expression was skeptical. “What kind of sort of proof do you have?”

So I started at the beginning and told him all of it—every single piece of information, everything that had happened to Matt and me—making him turn off the recorder when I spoke of Matt still being alive. I held nothing back. His eyes got wider and wider with each detail I gave him, as I tied my father to every single one of his crimes.

It was a crazy story, the kind of story that if anyone else had sat in his office and made the same claims, he likely would have dismissed them as a crackpot. But he knew me and he knew Jackie, and this was one instance when my last name definitely worked in my favor.

“In addition to all of that, I have stuff that’s been collected over the years on some of the less scrupulous sides of his dealings. It’s not as juicy as what I just gave you, and none of it is criminal, but none of it looks very good, either.”

Sean leaned back in his chair, a gleam in his eyes. “That father of yours is a real sonofabitch, isn’t he?”

“That he is.”

“He know you have all of this? That you’re going to ruin him?”

“Maybe. Probably. He’s been one step ahead of us the whole time, so if you’re going to move, you’re going to need to move fast.” I gestured toward the papers and recording. “And find somewhere safe to put that stuff. He isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, and if you don’t leak it quickly, he’ll come after you, too.”

Sean laughed. “Do you know how many death threats I get on a daily basis? How many times I’ve pissed off a heavy hitter? I have this.”

“I know you do. That’s why I came to you. I’m just warning you not to underestimate him. I have several times and I’ve almost died in the process.”

“Copy.”

I hesitated. “Don’t screw me on this, either. I’m not my father’s daughter, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t take a hell of a lot of notes growing up in that house. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.”

“Noted.”

I rose from my seat, deciding this meeting was over. Matt and I were leaving D.C. tonight, and I still had to say my good-byes.

“When will you have it up on the site?” I asked.

He grinned. “It’s not enough to put them into the ground, you have to see it, too?”

“Something like that.”

“Let me get on the phone with my attorney, sort some stuff out. I’ll rush it. It’ll be up in time for the crowd to get home from work and log on to their computers.”

“Good.”

His gaze ran over me, his expression curious. “So what’s next for you? You can’t plan on sticking around after setting this city on fire.”

“I don’t. I’m out of the game after this one.”

“Smart play.”

Only play.

He hesitated and then he stood, extending his hand to me. Surprise filled me. I reached out and shook his hand as a weird sort of understanding passed between us.

I’d always thought that Capital Confessions was a nuisance, occasionally a means to an end, but more than anything a giant pain in my ass and a threat to those I loved. But now I saw that we were all just part of the same machine, fighting our way through this town. It was more than broken engagements, gossip, and sex tapes. It was a rein on power, a source outside of the system of checks and balances that fought for a justice of sorts. It wasn’t perfect, and I certainly didn’t think Sean Dell was altruistic, but there was something to the work he did, shades of gray in a city that thrived there.

He released my hand. “Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

“And tell your boyfriend I said thank you for his service. And his sacrifice.” He gave me a proud smile. “My son’s a Marine.”

Tears welled up in my eyes, the words so unexpected, the emotion catching me off guard. I nodded and gave him a small smile, and then I turned, walking out of the Capital Confessions offices already feeling lighter. I hadn’t just dumped the files and years of dirt, it felt like I’d passed the baton on to someone else, and I knew without a doubt that Sean Dell wouldn’t let me down.

I walked down the street, the need to take in my surroundings and look for potential threats now as familiar as breathing. I spotted Matt standing on the street corner waiting for me, his head covered in a baseball cap, his eyes obscured by dark sunglasses. He closed the distance between us, coming to greet me, his mouth tightened in a hard line.

“How did it go?”

“Well. He’s going to handle it. I told him everything. I trust him.”

Matt let out a sigh of relief and it looked like his whole body relaxed. “Good.” He held his hand out to me. “Are you ready to go say good-bye?”

I nodded, not sure I would ever be ready to say good-bye, but knowing it was the right thing anyway.

I placed my hand in his, our fingers linked, and looked up, taking a moment to appreciate the D.C. skyline, the view of the Capitol shining in the sun, wondering if I would ever see it again.

And then we went to say our good-byes.