Mine to Crave (Mine #4)(66)

He knew he’d have new nightmares when he slept. Anna Jean wouldn’t haunt him any longer. Jasmine would.

She would always haunt him.

“I get that you’ve done a few favors for the FBI,” Victor said as he shoved a laptop case onto the table. “But I don’t see why a civilian should get access to classified—”

“Screw the civilian crap. Play the tapes,” Drake snapped.

Victor opened his laptop. Booted it up. “This is material that will be used in an ongoing investigation. This could compromise my case—”

Drake stalked toward him. “You mean because Maxwell wasn’t in that building when it blew to hell?”

Victor jerked back a bit.

“Yeah, I know,” Drake snapped at him. “We can get our own intel. Word is that the coroner recovered the remains of two people in that warehouse. A man and a woman…and according to leaks in your office…” Leaks that Trace had exploited with his Weston Securities contacts, “You think the dead man was one of Maxwell’s men, a guy named Saxon. Not Maxwell.” Just an underling.

Victor’s gaze slid to the closed door, then back to Drake. “Yes,” he said softly. “We do believe that Maxwell Case escaped from that blaze. He set the bomb—the fire as a distraction so that we’d be thrown off…but we know he got away, and we’ve launched a search for him.”

“The guy might not even be in the country anymore,” Noah muttered. Like Drake, Noah had been…different since the fire. Quieter. Harder.

“His assets are frozen. Thanks to our…inside man…we were able to learn about all of his off-shore accounts. Maxwell Case is running on his own. He’s desperate, he’s broke, and we will take him into custody. It’s just a matter of time.” Victor seemed so confident.

Jerk. This confident prick had been the one who was so sure Jasmine would be all right. “It’s your fault,” Drake accused.

Victor blinked.

“You left her in there too long.” He wanted to punish the bastard. He would punish him. “You knew where he was holding her. You should have gotten her out—”

“Easy.” Trace. Trying to be the voice of reason as he carefully positioned himself between Drake and the FBI Agent. Trace just didn’t get it. There was no “easy” for Drake anymore. There was just darkness. A void. A fire had taken Jasmine—heat and an inferno, and now, all he felt was…cold.

Victor leaned forward and tapped a code into his laptop.

Drake’s hands fisted. “You’re going to pay,” Drake told him.

Victor glanced up, his eyes narrowed. “You think you can threaten me?”

“I’m promising you. You’re going to lose everything that matters.”

Victor’s laugh was bitter. “Now you sound like Maxwell Case. Maybe there’s not so much difference between you guys—”

Even Trace couldn’t slow Drake down when he lunged for the bastard. “I’m nothing like him!” He slammed Victor into the nearest wall. The guy’s crutches fell to the floor.

The agent didn’t fight back. He just stared at Drake. “Aren’t you?”

“You don’t have to hunt Case,” Drake managed to force out from between his clenched teeth. “The FBI is done with him. The guy’s a dead man walking.” Even before he’d gotten confirmation from Victor, Trace’s intel had told them that the SOB had escaped. Trace and Drake were already hunting the man. When they found him, there would be nothing left for the FBI.

But Victor’s jaw hardened. “My man inside gathered enough information to put Case away for life. Case is going down, and it’s going to be handled the right way.”

The idiot didn’t get it. “There is no right way. He killed my Jasmine. He’s going to suffer.”

Victor’s brows rose. “She wasn’t yours. She was just a woman you picked up for a night—I’m sure you pick up plenty of women and forget them the next day.”

Drake leaned in close to him. “She’s not the others. Do you understand? There is no forgetting her.” There was no moving on for him. She was inside of him, where his heart should have been.

Drake had known the risks. He’d seen what love could do to a man. Trace and Noah had both fallen hard. Gotten in too deep. There was a danger in loving too much. When you loved too much, you had too much to lose.

I lost everything.

“Let him play the recording, Drake.” Noah’s flat voice. “I want to hear what went down.”

Because they’d finally gotten access to the last moments of Jasmine’s life. The FBI’s “inside man” had been wired, and they’d applied every bit of pressure they could to get this access.

Drake stepped away from Victor. Trace handed the guy his crutches. Then Victor shuffled toward the table. “There’s no point in this,” he said again, but he tapped on the keyboard once more.

And…

“I expected more from you.” Drake tensed when he heard that mocking voice.

“Maxwell Case,” Victor said. “Asshole extraordinaire.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Jasmine’s voice—and that voice hit Drake like a punch to the gut.

Noah inhaled sharply.