“Yeah. I am. I’ll be a lot better when we’re somewhere safe. Ready?”

Fuck. Fine.

“Yes.”

We ran to the point where I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow. I worried we looked suspicious, but no seemed to be paying us very much attention. Besides, I guessed by the way we were dressed we could have looked like a couple going out for a run at night. The blood blended in with my dark clothes, and if you didn’t look too closely—which, thank god, no one did—you wouldn’t spot it.

The image of that man’s dead body, his lifeless eyes, the blood pouring from him, kept flashing before my eyes until finally I couldn’t take it anymore.

I leaned over the sidewalk and heaved, the lunch we’d eaten in the hotel room with Blair, Gray, Jackie, and Will coming out all over the grass.

Matt was behind me immediately, pulling my hair away from my face, his arm wrapped around my waist, cradling me in the curve of his embrace. His hand stroked my back, his touch soothing.

“Sorry,” I gasped, feeling disgusting, tears threatening, my entire body nearing collapse.

He cupped my face, his gaze intent. “There’s nothing to apologize for. Your reaction is totally normal. We just need to get out of here. A little bit longer and then we’ll be safe back in the hotel,” he urged.

I nodded, my eyes welling up. “I’ve never seen someone die before,” I whispered, feeling like an asshole after everything he’d been through, but wanting to give him some explanation for why I was completely losing my shit. “His blood …” My voice broke, another wave of nausea threatening.

Matt didn’t answer me, he just put his arms around me, gathering me in his embrace, his hands in my hair, our bodies plastered against each other as he whispered in my ear, telling me he loved me, telling me it would be okay, giving me the support I needed to keep going.

I was shaking by the time we got back to the hotel, my tenuous grip on whatever strength had carried me this far failing me now.

I couldn’t imagine what I would have done without Matt. He ushered me into the room, his tone calm.

“Let’s get you into the shower, okay? You’ll feel better once you’re cleaned up.”

Considering I’d run in the August heat and thrown up, not to mention the blood on me, I figured it was all up from here.

I nodded, surprised to see that my hand trembled, my legs buckling beneath me.

Matt began taking off my clothes, his touch more soothing than sexual.

“The shock will wear off soon. I promise.”

When I was naked, he sat me down on the bed, stripping off his clothes and setting them in a heap on the floor. He led me into the bathroom, his hands on my shoulders guiding me toward the shower, giving me the support I needed to hold myself together.

Matt turned on the shower spray, and I walked in, lifting my face up to the falling water, closing my eyes, feeling clean for the first time all night. I felt him behind me, giving me the space I needed along with the reassurance I craved.

I saw a man die. He’d bled on me. We’d almost died. Again.

My body shook, my heart pounding as the first sob escaped, then the next one. Matt reached out and held me as I cried, comforting me, the water running down my body, washing away all of the ugliness that surrounded us. When I was finished, long after my tears had subsided and the water began to cool, he kissed me, his mouth replacing my pain with pleasure.

We came together, our bodies finding comfort in this moment, in the break from all of the craziness and fear. Our last lead was dead, we’d had two attempts on our lives, and it seemed more and more like getting out of town was our only option.

We deserved this. Needed it. So we took it, disappearing into each other for the moment, lingering in it, gathering our strength before we had to disappear for good.

Chapter Twenty-one

The funeral of Intech founder and CEO, James Ryan, was widely attended by Washington’s power players …

—Capital Confessions blog

Kate

We met at our hotel again, Gray and Blair still in D.C., trying to regroup, attempting to figure out what came next. I was on my second day of calling in sick to work, leaving another message on my boss’s answering machine, and I had a feeling I was pretty much fired anyway. Hopefully, when we did run, the CIA wouldn’t bother coming after us. I was a low-level employee and my security clearance was the lowest access level at the Agency. I wasn’t exactly a threat to national security.

“So we’re back where we started. We don’t have any proof.” Matt grimaced. “He killed my entire unit, tried to kill me, killed my father and god knows who else, and he’s just going to get away with it.”

No one spoke. He wasn’t wrong.

Matt’s jaw clenched. “How is this possible? How is there nothing we can use to incriminate him? To see him tried for his crimes?”

“He’s good at covering his tracks. He always has been,” Jackie interjected, anger threading through her voice. “I’ve tried for years. The best I could do at Capital Confessions was take some shine off of his reputation. But I could never actually find something to pin on him.”

That was the thing about people like my father. They were slippery as fuck.

I looked at the circle; five grim faces stared back at me. No one wanted to see him win, but it felt like David going up against Goliath. How did you take down someone who had more money and power than you could ever dream of?

You didn’t.

“What are you guys going to do?” Blair asked.

Matt shook his head. “I don’t know. We need to get out of town.”

We’d been prepared for this. Part of me didn’t even mind it. The leaving, at least. But not like this. I wasn’t going to run with my tail tucked between my legs. If we were going to leave, then it was going to be on our terms. I was going to light a match and burn this motherfucker down.

We needed to hit him where it hurt, to find the one chink in his armor …

Oh my god.

“What if we didn’t need proof?” The idea slowly took root. It wasn’t the perfect solution, but it was better than nothing. It was something we could cling to.

“What do you mean?” Jackie asked.

“What if we didn’t need to prove what he did? What if we just needed to make it look like there was something suspicious there? We don’t necessarily need to connect the dots; we just need to prove that there are dots to connect. Let the authorities investigate him. Let public opinion condemn him.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know who he has on his payroll,” Blair pointed out. “What if we take this to the FBI or something, and then they just bury it? How do we know who we can trust?”

She had a point there. I thought about what we knew, how my father operated, mentally discarding options …

“So we don’t go to the authorities.” My gaze met Jackie’s. “We know one person that we can trust. One person who isn’t afraid to print things about our father. One person who has the kind of audience to shine a light on this whole thing, to garner the level of attention we need. The kind that will ruin his career.”

Her gaze narrowed speculatively, and then her lips curved into a smile, ruthless and beautiful. “You want to use Capital Confessions. You think Sean will do it.”

Sean Dell was the editor of Capital Confessions, and while the man wasn’t exactly trustworthy under normal circumstances, Jackie had been his best blogger for years, and even though he didn’t show it in a touchy-feely sort of way, I did genuinely believe he had a sliver of a slightly soft spot for Jackie. We’d both provided him with information and some of his biggest stories, so in a way he owed us. Especially Jackie. Besides, the man would sell his grandmother for a good story, and this one had all the markings of the ultimate scandal—plus he’d get an exclusive.