A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(85)

“I noticed a stack of papers on the table in the lower cabin. They were lists of names. I flipped through them quickly but none of the names were ones I recognized. They were definitely all female though. I knew Brady would have better luck with them and I didn’t want to risk moving them, so I made my way up to the deck and got off of the boat so I could jog back to the car and get my camera, but I never made it there,” Parker explained.

“Did you see any clothing laying around that you recognized? Anything that would implicate that Milo had definitely been on the boat at some point? Just because he owned it doesn’t mean he was the one using it.”

Even though Garrett had come to terms with his best friend hiding a huge secret, it still didn’t mean he was guilty of anything―yet. There was a maid who saw him in a hotel and paperwork showing he owned a boat. Neither proved, without a shadow of a doubt, he was the one responsible for the disappearances and deaths of those girls. The whole purpose of this mission was to find out why he was killed and so far, all they’d done was uncover more questions. They could wager a guess that Milo’s death had something to do with his involvement, innocent or not, with the missing girls, but they still didn’t know for sure.

“I glanced around but the first things that caught my eye were the papers on the table. Nothing else stuck out as being familiar or something that would belong to him,” Parker explained.

Her knee bounced nervously as they sat in silence for a few minutes at an intersection. Garrett squeezed her hand gently and tried, once again, to lighten the situation and calm her nerves.

“I was hard as f*cking stone when we were on the plane and you stole my gun out of its holster,” Garrett muttered. He tried to inflict irritation in his voice, but the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth gave him away.

Parker laughed and wished for what seemed like the millionth time that they hadn’t been so stubborn and would have done this a long time ago. She didn’t have to work at being happy with Garrett; it just came naturally as it always had from day one. The way they argued, the way they joked, the way they loved, and the way they took care of one another―it all boiled down to the fact that they were just meant to be together like this.

“I’ll have to remember to make an appointment at the shooting range when we get back home now that I know you have a thing for chicks with guns,” she told him with a smile.

“Not any chick with a gun, just you. And as long as we have the place to ourselves, I have no problem with that,” Garrett replied with a mischievous look on his face.

The thought of Garrett bending her over the waist-high ledge in one of the shooting booths while other patrons fired off shots around them and had no clue what was going on made Parker cross her legs and shift in her seat. She could almost feel Garrett’s breath on the back of her neck as he looked over her shoulder while she aimed at the paper target hanging down from the ceiling. She could picture the noise of firearms discharging all around, masking the sounds of him pounding into her and her echoing cries of pleasure.

Parker cleared her throat and her mind from those thoughts before she lost all of her concentration. She needed to spit this next part out quickly before the memories of it threatened to break her down.

“When I stepped off of the boat, I heard a ticking sound. Almost like someone typing on a computer. I actually laughed a little because I figured I’d been spending too much time with you and Brady lately, listening to the two of you bang away on your keyboards. I walked a few feet down the dock and the ticking sound got a bit louder and then suddenly…it stopped.”

Garrett swallowed roughly and kept his eyes on the road. He knew if he looked over at Parker, he’d have to pull the car over so he could pull her against him again to feel the heat of her skin and the beat of her heart, reminding him that she was safe.

“I did a few weeks of training with the CIA’s Special Activities Division, and they were going through bomb diffusion certification at the time. I don’t know how many videos I watched about making bombs, detonating bombs, wiring bombs…it only took me a second to recognize what that ticking sound was. I took off as fast as I could. I probably only made it a couple of feet before the explosion.”

Parker closed her eyes, took a couple of cleansing breaths, and felt Garrett give her hand another gentle squeeze.

“You know those dreams you have where someone is chasing you and no matter how hard you try or how fast you think you’re going, it’s like you’re running through quicksand or marshmallow? That’s how it felt when I heard the ticking sound. Each click seemed to echo in my ears, and it seemed like it took ten minutes for me to turn my head away from the boat and start to run,” Parker explained, opening her eyes and staring straight ahead. “Everything happened so fast after that. I saw some debris fly past me and a lot of black smoke. As soon as everything went dark from the smoke, a huge gust of wind blew my legs out from under me. Before I knew it, something smacked into the back of my head, and I was crashing into the marina and swallowing a gallon of water.”

Garrett squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, and Parker watched the muscles in his jaw twitch. She pulled her hand out from under his, resting on his thigh, and moved it up to the back of his neck. She kneaded his tense muscles and ran her fingernails through his scalp.

“Do you think it was on a timer or did something you touch set it off? Garrett asked, letting Parker’s fingers calm his nerves as he attempted to clear his mind of visions of Parker being swallowed by fire and smoke.