Guardian Ranger (Shadow Agents #2)(35)
Author: Cynthia Eden

“The blood’s a little gift from your brother,” Jasper murmured. “Seems he doesn’t like the fact that we’re involved.”

Her brows shot up. “We’re not.” What had he told her brother? Oh, no, did Cale think that she’d been setting him up, too?

Jasper resumed his stalking moves toward her. “We most definitely are.” The last word was bit out. “Or did you forget that you gave me your virginity just a few hours ago?”

He had not just said that to her.

“You waited,” he continued, voice thickening, “because you wanted to be with the right man.”

“You aren’t the right man.” She could barely force the words past her suddenly desert-dry throat. “What you are… You’re a man who lied to me. From the first moment I saw you in that bar, everything has been a lie.”

“Not everything.” He was less than a foot away from her. Not touching. She didn’t want him to touch her. It was hard enough to keep her wall of ice in place. She didn’t want him touching her again and trying to shatter that wall.

“You’re EOD.” She threw that out at him.

He nodded.

“You think my brother is a killer.”

“I know he is.”

“Just like you are.” Her breath heaved out. “He was following mission orders, saving lives. You said yourself that a soldier—”

“I’m not talking about lives taken during battle. I’m talking about murder. About going right up to a man and slitting his throat or stabbing him in the heart.”

She remembered Reed Montgomery’s body. The brutality. The blood. “Y-you’re wrong.”

“I want to be.”

Her eyes met his in surprise. She held his stare. It was the first time she’d looked deeply into his eyes since realizing the truth.

Jasper shook his head. “I want to be wrong about Cale, but the evidence says I’m not.”

“M-maybe the evidence is wrong.” It had to be wrong.

“There’s a lot of evidence, and every bit of it points to your brother.”

Nails in his coffin. Or hers. She forced her hands to unclench. “Why were you sent in?”

“I belong to a special unit at the EOD, a unit some call the Shadow Agents. When the other EOD agents were murdered, the cases didn’t go public. Our boss wanted us to handle this in-house. He wanted my team to find and apprehend the killer.” Jasper’s hand lifted, as if he’d touch her. But when she tensed, his hand fell back to his side. “When we realized exactly who we were after, it was decided that’d I’d be point on the mission because of my past relationship with Cale.”

“And using me, that was just part of the plan, too, right?”

His green gaze glinted. “I knew Cale. I knew how he felt about you—”

“So you knew you could use me.” She tried to walk around him. He grabbed her shoulders. Spun her back to face him.

The ice began to crack.

“I knew that your brother wasn’t just going to cut and run and leave you behind.” His fingers curled around her shoulders, pulling her closer. “I knew that he’d have to come back for you, sooner or later.”

“So all you had to do was wait. Wait, and he’d be here.” Sooner or later. She swallowed to try to ease that dang dryness in her throat. “Why did you have to go so far?” Her voice came out too soft. “Why did you have to make love to me?”

“Because I wanted you, wanted you more than I wanted anything else.”

She wanted to believe him.

“There’s the mission.” His head lowered toward her. “There’s the job that I have to do and then there’s you and me. There’s what we feel.”

He was going to kiss her. The ice was too weak around her. She couldn’t handle this. Him.

Her hand slammed into his chest. “You lied to me.”

His muscles were rock-hard beneath her hand.

I was falling for you, and now I think everything was a lie. “I don’t get close to people easily. I—I can’t.” She’d always held back, was too shy, too cautious. “With you, everything seemed easy.” She’d been too trusting. So ridiculously grateful to have someone finally on her side.

“It can be that way again,” he growled. “Veronica…”

“Are you still working me?”

He frowned at her.

“Because I think you are. I think you and the other agents… I think you’re about to take me in there to see my brother, and you’re going to try and use me to get a confession from him.”

She might be trusting, might be too naive, but she wasn’t stupid.

And Jasper wasn’t denying her charge.

“There’s you and me,” she said, pushing his words back at him, “and there’s my brother. There’s his case. It’s all mixed together, and no matter what we might both want…” Because she did wish things were different. “They can’t ever be separate.”

Because touching him burned through her ice, she pulled her hand away from him. “Now, if you aren’t taking me to see my brother, then I’ll go find someone else who will.”

He growled. No other word for it.

Fine. She started walking for the door.

“This isn’t over,” he warned.

Veronica didn’t look back at him, but she did say, “You’re right. It’s not over. It won’t be over until I prove my brother’s innocence.”

The floor creaked behind her. Then he was there, pulling open the door, leaning toward her. His lips brushed over the curve of her ear as he whispered, “I meant between us. You and I aren’t close to being done.”

The words were a threat. Swallowing, she lifted her chin and forced herself to walk slowly, calmly, down the hallway and toward her brother’s holding room.

* * *

“I’M GUESSING THAT didn’t go so well,” Logan muttered as Jasper followed Veronica out of the room. Logan offered Jasper a white cloth. “For the blood,” Logan said, giving a nod of his head.

Jasper swiped the blood away.

“Focus on the case,” Logan said. “Then go after the girl.”

Because of the case, he was losing the girl. He tossed the cloth into the garbage and followed Veronica down the hallway. She’d stopped in front of Gunner. He was still guarding the door to Cale’s room.

“Is he in there?” Veronica asked Gunner.