Keep Her Safe(135)

“Oh, I know what you needed to get,” I spit out. “What I had to do that night . . . You cost me one of my very best friends, Silas! Worse, I had to chase that girl away so you could protect your precious job and reputation.”

“Don’t pretend you weren’t helping yourself out, too.” He has the nerve to look smug.

“You are right about that.” I jab him in the chest with my finger. “Your ‘mistake’ could have cost me my future, something I’ve worked my tail off for. But to be honest? I was worried about what this would do to your family. To my son.” That boy thinks the sun rises and sets by his uncle.

The only other man he might adore more is the one I just betrayed.

“I’m going to regret covering for you every damn day for as long as I live.”

Silas flinches. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I don’t want to hear it. If I ever catch you with a girl again, I will not bail you out.”

“I promise, I—”

“And don’t fool yourself into believing you’re outta the woods yet. The only reason Abe hasn’t said a word is because he’s protecting Dina, but if he finds Betsy, this will come out, eventually. And it will ruin all of us.” I turn to leave.

Silas grabs hold of my arm again. “Abe won’t be looking for Betsy anymore,” he says softly.





CHAPTER 59


Noah

Klein eases the car into a parking spot. “Let’s go.”

I grit my teeth against the urge to tell him to go fuck himself, to take me home, to give me back my goddamn phone so I can call Silas and ask him why Klein showed Betsy a picture of Silas and Betsy said, yeah, that looks like the guy she was with that night in the hotel room.

Couple that with the limp, and the fact that my mother was protecting someone that night—someone who she’d put ahead of Abe—and I don’t have to ask Silas anything, because deep down, I already know.

I just can’t believe it.

And so I numbly climb out of the FBI sedan. Unable to meet Gracie’s gaze, feeling as if I might heave my stomach’s contents on the sidewalk.

I’m trapped in a never-ending nightmare that keeps getting worse.

“What is this place?” Gracie asks as we follow Kristian down a narrow path of what appears to be a condo complex, either side walled by six feet of brick and canopied by mature, leafy trees. Behind the walls are pint-sized backyards.

Tareen trails us through one of the small black gates and past a door, closing it behind him to seal us in.

“It’s an agency rental,” Klein finally explains. “Sometimes we use it as a safe house. Right now we’re using it for our case.”

“Against Mantis and Stapley?” Gracie’s gaze takes in the honeyed wood and dove-gray walls. There isn’t much in the way of furnishings—a black leather couch, a flat-screen TV, built-in shelves peppered with books, a teapot on the stove in a masculine-looking kitchen of dark wood and stainless-steel appliances. One abstract painting on the wall directly ahead of me.

I feel Klein’s eyes boring into me. “No. Our case against Silas Reid.”

The air leaves my lungs.

“We’ve been investigating him for five months,” Tareen offers, ducking past us and disappearing into a room.

It dawns on me. “You were after someone else,” I mumble. “That’s what my mother said in that message. ‘Since you’re so hell-bent on arresting someone’ . . . or something like that.”

Klein heads to the fridge, stocked with soda cans and water bottles. He holds up a Coke in offer and when Gracie nods, tosses it to her. Gesturing to the couch, he takes a seat in the chair across from it. The sound of his soda can cracking open carries through the quiet condo, as we wait for an explanation.

“Last November, we were contacted by Amy Bivens.”

I frown. “My uncle’s secretary?”

“Ex-secretary. He’d fired her earlier that week. Anyway, she claimed that she overheard an alarming private phone conversation that made her think Silas Reid was looking for a prostitute for himself. An underage one.”

“He wouldn’t be dumb enough to do that over the phone,” I counter.

Gracie’s face twists with disgust. I can’t tell if it’s at my uncle. Or at me, for defending him.

Klein goes on, ignoring my protest. “Bivens didn’t go to the APD for obvious reasons. We thought it might be a case of a disgruntled employee, but she had the date and the name of a hotel in Houston where he was to meet her. So, we decided to look into it.” He pauses for what feels like forever. “Security footage caught a girl coming to his hotel room.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. This can’t be real. This can’t be real . . .

“She was dressed to not raise suspicion, in jeans and a T-shirt. But she stayed for an hour, before being picked up out front by a car with fake plates. We couldn’t get a good look at her face. This girl was a dead end, but we knew we had a case. So we started listening in on his personal and home phones.”

Gracie makes a sound. “You like listening in on conversations,” she murmurs, as if echoing something Klein may have said. They share a knowing smile. A private exchange between them that I don’t understand, and I don’t like.