Searching (PAVAD- FBI Romantic Suspense Book 18) by Calle Brookes (guided reading books txt) 📗

This was a far cry from the man who had run from her over a little kiss between friends weeks ago.

Jac didn’t say a word about that. He was hurting. Broken.

She hated not knowing why. “Max? Talk to me. Tell me what happened.”

“Inside.” He pulled back and stared at her. Right there on her porch, as thunder boomed overhead, and rain pelted down around them. “I...can I come inside?”

“Yes. But lose the shoes. I just had new carpet laid. And you are filthy. What happened to you tonight?” They were whispering. It somehow just called for whispers, even though they both knew Emery slept like the dead. “Is everyone all right?”

He shook his head. “Andy Anderson, from Seth’s team. He’s dead. Executed tonight. In his home, Jac. Place blew up while we were first on the scene. Andy’s body was burned beyond recognition.”

Terror for her friends and colleagues had her practically choking. “Your team? Are they ok? Anyone else? Was anyone else targeted?”

She’d held Andy’s daughter in her own arms tonight. Thank God the kids had been with their mother instead of their father. Andy and Angie had full shared custody. The girls were with Andy just as much as they were with their mother.

If those girls had been there tonight… Jac couldn’t think of it.

They’d had agents targeted before. She and Max had discussed that before. Had discussed what they had to do to watch their own backs, since a friend had been abducted in back in August. Jac never forgot that.

She knew Max hadn’t either.

No one at PAVAD was forgetting that right now.

The ones responsible for hiring an assassin to go after members of PAVAD hadn’t been caught yet. Jac’s friends Shannon and Cody had almost died by that assassin’s hands.

Everyone had been living on edge, since.

“Not my team. I was with the director. Working on...a special project. Me, him, a few others.”

“Is everyone you were with on scene ok?”

He shook his head slightly. Ash and debris fell from his shaggy brown hair to his broad shoulders. The man seriously needed a shower. “The director is going to be kept overnight at the hospital. He took a hard knock to the head. I’m...not supposed to be telling you this. But...it was so damned close. And I need to see Emery. Before I can sleep tonight. I just need to see her. Make certain she’s ok. Then I’ll head home and get out of your hair.”

“Don’t be crazy. You have a bag here. I found it when I moved last month, at the back of my guest room closet. I’ve been meaning to bring it to PAVAD. I just keep forgetting,” Jac said quietly. That bag had taunted and tormented her for weeks. Now she was just glad she still had it. “I have another spare room. There’s a bed in there. Take a shower. We can talk. You can go home in the morning. I’m off the entire weekend. I can keep her with me.”

He just looked at her.

There was so much pain in the man’s eyes. Jac just said to hell with it. She wrapped her arms around him and held him until the shaking stopped.

There would be time to deal with the kiss that should have never been later. Right now all that mattered was that Max was in pain. And he had come to her.

Jac wasn’t going anywhere.

7

Eugene Lytel had worked for the FBI for fifteen years. He’d seen a lot of dead bodies since then. That he’d seen one all nice and toasty tonight didn’t drag him down.

Far from it.

He was riding a high better than the time he’d done LSD during his undergrad years.

That he’d known the man as a colleague and a friend for over eight years didn’t matter to him. The exact opposite.

That juiced him up even more. He’d walked right in and then watched the life fade right out of a friend’s eyes.

Just like he’d done before.

Eugene didn’t kill for any ideological reasons. Nor was he doing it for strictly cash reasons. Or revenge.

He wasn’t stupid; he’d done his time learning everything he could about what motivated people to do what they did.

Lytel wasn’t doing it just because he couldn’t fucking stand Ed Dennis and his team of perfect boys and girls.

No. He was doing this because he’d learned the first time he’d taken a life while on duty that he enjoyed it.

Oh, he’d wanted PAVAD when he’d first learned of it. Everyone had been talking about the specialized unit. It had started off with eighty-two people. People handpicked by the director for whatever reasons known only to that sanctimonious prick.

He’d gotten that appointment. Two years later. When they needed some cannon fodder and someone to lead those no-name agents to fill in wherever good old Ed wanted them. None of those auxiliary agents were ever going to move up. They hadn’t yet, even though PAVAD kept expanding.

Good old Ed was on a real power trip now.

Lytel had always hated assholes like that.

He’d been digging up whatever dirt he could find on all the key players of PAVAD. Especially the director. The director knew exactly what had happened twenty-three years ago.

Lytel would never forgive Ed Dennis for that.

Lytel knew his way around computers, and thanks to Ed himself, he had access to whatever he wanted to poke around in.

All in the name of duty.

Someone had caught on to him, though.

Maybe he’d sold information to the wrong person—but Lytel didn’t care. They’d offered him far too much cash to refuse.

All he had to do was take care of a few people whenever he was asked to.

Then, he’d get a cool million deposited into his grandmother’s account each time. She was so senile she’d never know any damned thing about it. He had the power of attorney and had been using her accounts to play the stock market for years.

Lytel knew exactly how to make it all work. How to make the numbers all add up.

He’d been outsmarting Ed