“Taking the younger three and Matthew and Evalyn to Dr. Jones’s. Emery has invited them all to her party. I think Jamie wants to go. I’m not so sure about the other three. Except for the cake and ice cream.”
James, one of their younger twins, was extremely sports oriented. He and Emery Jones had become good friends playing soccer recently. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
He had doubled the number of guards on his family since Andy’s murder.
His children, those beautiful, wonderful boys he had been blessed to love after marrying their mother, would go to a birthday party guarded by four armed men.
To the boys, that had become normal. To Ed, it would never be.
To lose her or one of the boys or Georgia and her two children, even his pain-in-the-ass son-in-law, to lose one of them would devastate him. Completely.
“Ed?” Marianna said, grabbing the four younger boys’ coats—they had Matthew and Evalyn for the weekend again. “Try to relax for the day. The rest of the boys are around. Try to forget that you have the entire PAVAD on your shoulders. At least for a few hours, ok?”
Ed nodded. “I’ll try.”
“Do more than try. You’re starting to worry me.” Marianna had the most intense blue eyes he had ever seen. Blue all seven of her boys had inherited. Blue that was now worried—for him.
That worry hadn’t left her eyes since the explosion.
“Once we have the people responsible for threatening the division, I will.” Ed kissed her one more time. When he pulled back, he looked into her eyes again. “You and me, we’ll take the boys and go away for a while. During school break. While we still have the older boys here. We’ll see about getting Georgia and the rest of them to go with us. We’ll just pretend PAVAD doesn’t exist for a while.”
She touched the scar at his temple that was still fresh. The hair was just now starting to grow around it a fraction. Neither had missed how close he had come to serious injury.
He hated the worry in those blue, blue eyes. The fear.
Marianna had lived with enough fear to last a lifetime.
Ed waited until his family was on their way and grabbed his phone. He had the printouts from those memory cards here. He needed someone else to take a look at them. From what he knew of his agents, the list of those who could crack such a code was slim. There was one name at the top of his list now.
24
Jac pulled into Max’s driveway ten minutes after the party had started. She’d just finished up a phone consult with Ed Dennis.
The call had delayed her, and had her consumed with confusion.
She’d been told to report to Max that the director wanted her on something Max had found. A code.
No one but she and Max were to know she was working on it—and Sin Lorcan.
She pulled into the spot closest to the road. Most of the vehicles far eclipsed her little SUV. No surprise. The properties Max owned and rented out provided a steady amount of passive income for him and his daughter.
Max and Emery were perfectly at home in this neighborhood.
It was an infinitely more comfortable home than the wealthy show palace where she and Nat had been forced to grow up.
She had enough money in her bank account; she could have bought a house here, too. She’d considered it—until the kiss.
The trust she’d inherited from her mother when she’d turned twenty-five ensured that she wouldn’t have to worry about living expenses. She made a good yearly salary from PAVAD. Her house had been a cash purchase, as had the upgrades she’d made.
She probably could afford to have bought Max’s house, too. Outright. The kind of people her stepfather had forced her to interact with were far different from the upper-middle-class ones she would most likely find inside Max’s home.
They were real people. Jac sometimes struggled to find ways to connect with real people.
Awkward. That was the word.
She could fake her way through a state function in Washington, DC, but a kid’s birthday party made her feel like a fish out of water sometimes. Like she was on the outside just looking in.
Even Emery’s.
Jac clutched the big box in her arms tightly, as she pushed open the door.
In a child’s scrawl in dark-purple crayon on pink construction paper was a welcome sign bidding people to enter without the need to knock.
Emery. That child had gone a bit overboard with glitter and what looked to be scratch-n-sniff stickers.
Jac placed the gifts on the foyer table with all the others.
Then she turned as someone yelled her name. Emery had spotted her. “Jac!”
The little girl left her friends and came running. Jac laughed, all nerves instantly forgotten.
It was about this kid. Always.
Her arms wrapped around Emery. “You’ve gotten taller. I think you’ll be as tall as your dad by next month.”
“Silly. Daddy says I can sign up for spring soccer this week!”
“That’s great, sweetheart. I want a copy of your game schedule, ok?” She’d watched as many of Emery’s softball and soccer and swim meets and basketball games as she possibly could. No matter what happened between her and Max, Jac had no intention of not continuing that. Unless he flat out told her to stay away.
But she didn’t see him doing that. Not to Emery.
Or to her, for that matter.
“Ok. I’ve missed you. You stayed away too long.”
Jac went down to eye level with Emery. She didn’t have to go far. Emery had gotten taller. “I would have been here if I could. But your dad and I aren’t on the same team any longer. They sent me to Vermont for six days, kiddo. There was snow taller than me. I thought I was going to turn into a snow-woman before it was done.”
A pout hit the pretty little face. “That’s what Daddy said, too. But maybe you can come over even when Daddy isn’t here?
