A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(102)

Garrett held head in his hands. All this time, the information was right in front of them and they hadn’t found it. The only thing keeping him from running out of the room to make sure Parker was safe was the fact that he knew Brady wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

After several minutes of Garrett mentally kicking himself and listening to the sounds of stifled sobs fill the room, Garrett finally looked up.

“Just so we’re on the same page, what was your name before you became Margarita Fernandez?” Garrett asked.

The woman across from him wiped the tears from her cheeks and tilted her head to the side as she looked at him.

“My name was Michelle Roberts.”

Garrett closed his eyes and let his head drop down between his shoulders.

“Milo is my son.”





Chapter Twenty-Two



The sound of dripping water and the dank, musty smell of the room she was in were the first things Parker noticed upon regaining consciousness. The next was the fact that she had no idea why the entire left side of her neck stung like a bitch, and lastly and probably more importantly, she was sitting on a stool with her back against what felt like a wooden post with her arms chained together above her head.

Parker blinked rapidly to clear the blurriness from her vision and took in her surroundings in an attempt to piece together how she had managed to get herself into this mess.

She was in a basement of some sort. It was about eight-hundred square feet with standard cement walls. The wetness in the air seeped into her bones and the boxes of clutter all around the room made her feel claustrophobic. A door in the corner of the room caught Parker's eye, but it was closed and she had no idea if it led to another room or a way out.

She looked above her head, wincing as a fresh wave of pain shot behind her eyes and squeezed her head like it was in a vice. She squinted through the blinding pain that felt like the worst hangover ever and slowly looked above her head again. She was handcuffed with standard issue police hardware and then chained to a metal hook imbedded in the wooden support beam. Parker gave the chain a good pull and was rewarded with absolutely nothing. There was no give to the metal hook and no way her hands were going to slip out of the cuffs. They were almost tight enough to cut off circulation. And Parker knew that sitting there too long with her arms above her head would speed that process along. Her fingers were already starting to tingle with numbness and the muscles in her arms were burning from being in the awkward position for so long. She closed her eyes and let her head drop back down slowly, careful not to agitate the headache that was causing pinpricks of pain behind her eyes.

Parker took inventory of everything she could remember. She and Garrett had just come back to the resort after leaving her father at the hospital. Milo had been waiting for them. Milo was alive.

Milo was alive, Parker remembered with aching clarity.

Parker’s heart rate picked up at the memory of rounding the corner and seeing him standing there by the front door. Milo told them he was a double agent. She remembered that part. She remembered how angry she’d been and how she’d punched him in the nose. Garrett had been pissed and walked away from her. Tears pooled in her eyes when she remembered the look on his face when he told her she was on her own.

He had been upset with her, thinking she was choosing Milo over him. She could see it written all over his face. He left and she didn’t even get a chance to explain anything. Garrett jumped to conclusions, just like always. He told her he trusted her, but that wasn’t really true. She’d learned a lot about herself these past few weeks. She knew given the chance to go back in time, she would have done everything differently. She would have chosen Garrett from the beginning and made the decision to be happy no matter what the cost to her heart.

Telling Milo she would give him a chance to help make things right had nothing to do with choosing him over Garrett and everything to do with putting an end to Fernandez, no matter the cost. She just wanted this to be over. She had just wanted to go back home and start her life and her future with the man she loved.

Garrett must have thought she was a complete idiot. He had honestly believed she would jump head first into something like this and take everything Milo said as the truth. If Garrett knew her at all, he would have known she was just placating Milo, telling him what he wanted to hear so she would have time to find out if he was really telling the truth. If Garrett would have stuck by her side and supported her, she would have told him all of this. He would have seen the text she sent while Milo was busy explaining things and understood what she was trying to do.

Now she was stuck in a basement with no recollection of how she got there.

She remembered Garrett walking away. She remembered Milo trying to comfort her and pushing him away… Everything after that was fuzzy and made her head hurt worse than it already did.

Pushing away from the wooden beam with her foot, Parker managed to angle her body to the side and slide off of the stool. Doing so caused something attached to her ankle to slip down a little further towards her foot. She held her breath and calmed her racing heart when she realized whoever brought her down here had failed to search her for weapons. Her back-up .357 snubnosed revolver was still resting comfortably in her ankle holster. Before she could get to her gun though, she needed to get unchained.

She clasped the metal hook holding her to the beam with both hands and twisted around and under one arm, shocked to realize the hook turned with her. When she was facing the beam, she looked up at the hook and noticed that it was screwed into the wood. It would take some effort, but if she continued twisting, she might be able to free herself enough to reach her gun. Her hands would still be cuffed together, but she’d fired it under worse conditions.