You Are Mine(135)
There was a silence as the others digested this.
“What about your crew, Zac?” Gabriel said at last. “What’s the angle on the cleanup they did?”
Zac put his hands on the back of the couch and leaned forward. “They got rid of the henchmen in the lobby. As for the guards upstairs and Fitzgerald himself, they planted enough evidence to point to a professional hit. With any luck the police will start investigating and perhaps they’ll turn up the evidence we haven’t been able to.” He glanced at Eva. “You made certain no one would be able to tell you accessed his computer?”
Eva straightened in her chair. “Of course I did. I’m not an idiot.”
“So we can’t take this to the CIA?” Alex asked. “Seriously? There was nothing at all we can use to pin anything on him?”
Eva shook her head. “No and believe me, I looked.”
Another silence fell.
She didn’t look at Zac. His presence felt like a pressure, like someone was squeezing her. Squeezing all the air out of her lungs.
“What about Elijah?” Katya said, glancing up at Zac. “Did you find anything on him?”
“I have some contacts keeping an eye out for him, but, and I may have mentioned to the others, he’s not in any databases I have access to, not even on the ones I don’t. But it seems he was working for Fitzgerald.”
“Not entirely,” Eva murmured. “He let me go, remember?”
Zac’s golden eyes met hers, the look in them entirely impersonal. “And he was not happy you killed Fitzgerald either. He wanted to do it himself.”
“A man out for revenge,” Alex said quietly.
“Well, that sounds fucking familiar,” Gabriel commented. “He must have been pissed with you, Eva.”
Her arm ached at the memory of Elijah’s fingers wrapped around her arm, the cold fury in his black eyes as Fitzgerald lay dead on the floor.
“He was mine, you bitch.”
“Kind of an understatement,” she said. “But … he saved me.”
Honor shifted on Gabriel’s lap, frowning in Eva’s direction. “What exactly happened up there? How did he save you? I mean, I think we need to work out what his intentions are, don’t you think? The problem when a man like Fitzgerald dies is that there’s—”
“A power vacuum,” Gabriel murmured, interrupting. “And that motherfucker is gonna leave one hell of a power vacuum.”
The expression on Zac’s face was tight and hard. Cold. “What happened,” he said, his mild tone completely at odd with the look on his face, “was that Fitzgerald was using Eva as leverage to get to me. To us. He wanted us off his back and wanted my skills personally. He told me Eva would be the leverage he’d use to get us to back off and me to work for him.”
The rest of them were quiet, all staring at Zac.
But Zac only looked at her. There was almost accusation in his eyes, as if it was her fault she’d been used the way Fitzgerald had used her.
She seen him look that way before: when he’d told her about Theresa.
He was a man for whom being in control was everything, and yet nothing he could do had saved his sister. He must have hated that. No wonder he’d been so angry up in Fitzgerald’s office. He’d been helpless yet again while the life of yet another woman hung in the balance.
Let her die. God will find his own.
She’d hadn’t let herself think about what he’d said, because surely he couldn’t have meant her. He’d been protecting her for too long for him to think that.
But maybe it hadn’t been her. Maybe he’d meant Theresa. Maybe that’s who he was angry with. The sister he couldn’t save.
Eva’s heart clenched tight. “Zac couldn’t kill Fitzgerald,” she said quietly.
“I was going to—”
“No, you weren’t,” she cut him off, meeting his cold, golden stare. Willing him to believe it. “You wouldn’t have done it. You would have lowered your gun and we both would have suffered in the end. But Elijah let me go and I still don’t know why. All I know is that it was enough for me to grab your gun and kill Fitzgerald. So that’s it. That’s what happened.”
The others were silent, watching the pair of them. And what they thought she had no idea, but she didn’t want to do this anymore. Didn’t want any more secrets. Didn’t want “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
She was tired of being alone. Of being isolated. Of holding herself at a distance.
Zac didn’t want her, but there were the others. The only family she’d ever had.
She slipped off the chair, standing in front of the fire, pulling off her beanie and letting it drop on the floor. Her hair fell down around her shoulders, her hands falling loose at her sides. Open, without her usual defenses.