The Dom Who Loved Me (Masters and Mercenaries #1)(61)

Grace felt like her whole world had turned upside down. She heard the words CIA and ecoterrorist, but couldn’t come up with a single way either would have a connection to her life. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

His gorgeous lips quirked up in a disbelieving smirk. “Really? We know about your arrest record.”

“I was a kid. I got arrested for protesting on private property. My dad paid the fine, and the judge said the record would be sealed because I was sixteen. I never got arrested again. It was supposed to be expunged from my record.” Grace remembered the day like it was yesterday. She remembered how both her parents had shown up at the jail. Her mother had cried, but her father had been royally pissed off. He’d died the next year, and she’d been married and pregnant shortly after her eighteenth birthday. It was her one and only attempt at civil disobedience.

“Nothing is ever really expunged, Grace. My group can find out anything. You can’t hide from us. Did you meet Patrick Wright because he works with subversive underground groups? Are you affiliated with the Earth League? It’s his cover. He’s been hiding in what the Agency would consider plain sight. He’s had many names, but then someone of his supposed nature would. From what I can tell, he’s used his subversive activities to gather corporate and government secrets to sell to foreign agencies. He goes into corporations or buildings that house government entities and causes trouble. No one thinks anything beyond what he wants them to think. He copies the information he needs and everyone is so upset by the damage his ‘group’ has caused that they don’t consider what really has occurred.”

Grace’s mind was racing. “Patrick Wright? Like Matt?”

“Yes, it’s his brother.” This came from Adam, who spoke softly, as though trying to soften the blows that had come from every angle since she’d walked into the damn parking garage.

“Matt’s involved in this? I’ve never met his brother.”

Sean was as sarcastic as Adam had been sweet. “Sure you haven’t, sweetheart. We suspect that Patrick Wright had a great deal of plastic surgery after his time with the Agency was done. He would be going under an assumed name. You would know him as Evan Parnell.”

“Oh, God.” The secret meetings. The contracts that didn’t make sense. What had Matt gotten them all into? “The Bryson Building.”

“Yes, I believe we’ll be talking about that.”

“Sean, I don’t know anything.”

His eyes alone told her he didn’t believe her. “That’s why your computer is littered with surveillance and information a thief could use. Listen to me, you’re going to tell us everything. You’re going to give Parnell up, and then you’ll be out of this.”

Frustration was building inside her. How could he think she had anything to do with this? He knew her. She’d been more intimate with him than she’d ever been with a man. “I don’t know anything. Evan Parnell is just a guy at work.”

“You pay his bills. It’s your name on the security deposit box he keeps.”

“I am Matt’s admin. I don’t recall helping Parnell with anything, but if I did it was for the company. It’s part of my job.” For the last several years she’d been writing checks for all the things Matt needed. It was a bitch to keep up with considering everything else she had to do. Now that she thought about it, Matt had started asking her to pay for things out of a miscellaneous fund right around the time Evan Parnell had shown up. She didn’t always ask questions when Matt asked her to write a check. It was never more than a couple of hundred dollars, maybe a thousand. Could she have been used to do something illegal?

Sean seemed to think so. “All of the evidence against you will be on the table when we get to where we’re going. You’ll see the case we’ve made, and then maybe you’ll drop this ridiculous act. It will all go so much smoother if you’re just honest with us. You’re a little fish. Patrick Wright is the shark.”

He was so cold, so unlike the warm man who had become her lover. It made sense. That man hadn’t existed. He’d been a cover to get her to talk. It seemed incomprehensible to Grace that she found herself in this position, but there was no disputing that she was in a car in the custody of someone who didn’t care about her, who would use her to his own ends. She looked at the man she had fallen in love with and didn’t know who he was. She had been so stupid. What had she been thinking? How could she have thought for a single second that someone as gorgeous as Sean Johansson…Taggart could ever be interested in her? She was forty, and while she was still reasonably attractive, she wasn’t anywhere close to his league.

“It will go so much easier on everyone if you just confess, Grace.” His judgmental tone was the last straw.

Grace retreated. She sank into herself and let the world around her become background noise. She curled her hands into her lap and made very sure she didn’t touch Sean Taggart at all. It wasn’t easy. He was a ridiculously large man, and he didn’t seem very interested in respecting her space. Grace moved slightly so she was against the side of the door.

Sean’s hand came out to grasp her forearm. “Don’t try it. The doors are locked, and you can’t open it from the inside.”

She started to protest that she wasn’t about to throw herself out of a moving vehicle, but kept silent. She didn’t have anything to say to this man.