Mine to Crave

Noah’s face went slack with shock. Drake pulled from his hold. “We can’t,” he whispered and then he ran into that building. He’d just cleared what was left of the entrance when the ceiling collapsed.

***

“Mr. Archer?”

Drake cracked open one eye. “Jas…mine…”

“Mr. Archer, you’re all right. We got you out.”

He cracked open the other eye. Saw an EMT staring down at him, shining a light right at his face. Drake swatted the light away.

“Sir, sir, I’m going to have to insist that you stay calm and remain still. I think you’ve got a concussion—”

He remembered the rush of fire. Something heavy hitting him. And—

Drake grabbed the EMT and twisted the man’s shirt in his fist. “Did she get out, too?”

“Sh-she?” The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Jasmine!”

“I-I…you were the only one recovered.”

No. Drake shoved him away. He was in the back of an ambulance. How the hell had that happened? The last thing he remembered was the fire.

“Sir, you have to stay—”

Drake jumped out of the ambulance. He would’ve fallen right on his face then, if Trace hadn’t appeared and grabbed his arms.

“Dragged you out of a fire once already,” Trace groused. “Don’t make me do it again.” He put himself in front of Drake—and Drake could see the flames still reaching for the sky behind his friend.

“She’s in there,” Drake said, voice rough.

“The firefighters said the flames were too hot. No one in that building has survived.” Brutal words, but said softly, sadly.

Drake shook his head. “She was…she was alive. She was with me just hours ago.”

I’ve never loved anyone, Drake, but I think…I really think I came close with you.

Trace’s eyes were grim. “I’m sorry.”

Drake tilted his head back. Stared at the flames. They’d consumed the building.

“You’re lucky you aren’t dead, too. Those boards that hit you were on fire.”

Drake realized that a big, thick bandage covered his arm. He lifted his hand. Another covered the side of his head.

“I dragged you out. Noah and I…we pulled you out of there.”

“You two are always saving my ass.” He couldn’t pull his gaze off the fire. “But maybe this time, you should’ve just left me in there.”

His chest didn’t burn. It didn’t ache. He just felt numb. Drake could barely even feel his heart beating. He looked at that fire, and he just saw Jasmine.

Curling her finger at me in the club…inviting me down to her.

Laughing in New Orleans…licking away powdered sugar as she savored her beignet.

Crying out my name in an elevator…holding me so tightly…so tightly that I never wanted to leave her.

“Was she…” The gruff voice came from Drake’s right. It was Noah’s voice. “Was she really my sister?”

Please, Drake. I don’t want him to know. There’s no point in it. Drake didn’t speak.

“Was she?” Noah pressed.

Drake stayed silent.

Noah grabbed him. “Did my sister just burn alive in that place? Did she?”

“Noah…” Trace hauled him back.

“I wanted my family.” Noah’s words shot out fast and hard, like bullets. “I always wanted to know—and you knew. You knew she was mine and you didn’t say a word…”

The firefighters were closing in now. Because the flames were finally dying down? Cops were all over the scene. FBI agents.

“She wasn’t yours,” Drake heard himself say. That numbness was spreading. Consuming him. “She was mine.”

And she was gone.

Something deep inside of Drake splintered then.

I could have loved you, too, Jasmine. Fuck…I did love you.

I did.

Chapter Thirteen

“There’s no point in this exercise,” Victor said as he marched into the small office in the New Orleans Police Department. An office that Trace had commandeered with the guy’s army of contacts.

Drake stood near the room’s lone window. Noah and Trace were already seated, but he couldn’t sit. His body was too tight with tension. With fury.

Grief clawed at him every time he closed his eyes. So for the last three days—and it had been three long, wrenching days since he’d lost Jasmine—Drake hadn’t slept.

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.

“It was a simple job.” Maxwell was speaking again. “Get close to Archer. Use him. Help me to wreck him.”

He was wrecked without her. She didn’t use me. She never did. Jasmine’s voice trembled when she replied, “You-you shouldn’t have set those bombs at the Arrow. Innocent people could’ve died—”

Maxwell’s voice cut through her words. “Do you think I give a shit about those people?”

A beat of silence, then, “I don’t think you care about anyone.”

“You screwed that up for me. The Arrow should’ve burned—the place was meant to blow—”

“Because of you.” Jasmine sounded both terrified and furious. He hated her fear and as for the fury…it was just driving up Drake’s own rage. I should have saved her. But he hadn’t. She’d burned.

“Because of me.” Maxwell was gloating.

“How many others have you attacked?” Jasmine asked him. “With your bombs…with fire?”

Trace shifted then, moving closer to the computer. “What the hell? It sounds like she’s interrogating him.”

Yes, yes, it did.

Maxwell laughed. “Oh, Jazz, I don’t always need those tactics. Destroying a man’s life is easy these days. A matter of business. I use tools. Tools like you. I hack into accounts. I learn secrets. I use them.”

Victor paused the recording. “As you see, he was incriminating himself. My man did his job perfectly and—”

“Jasmine is dead.” Drake’s heart was pounding. Her voice hurt him. “He fucked up his job.” I fucked up.

Victor’s eyes glinted. “You feel guilty, I get that. Jasmine…she was different. Maybe it was her eyes or those damn dimples. Whatever it was, she had a way of getting beneath your skin.”

Drake caught Trace studying the agent with a thoughtful expression. “Did she get beneath your skin?” Trace asked him.

Victor’s head tilted as he continued to study Drake. “This whole bit is about you getting closure, isn’t it? Here. Listen to this, okay? Jasmine didn’t blame you, not for anything.” He typed again and Maxwell’s voice filled the small room once more.

“Does Archer care about you?”

Drake stopped breathing when he heard that question. Then Jasmine replied and his whole body shuddered.

“No.”

Had she truly believed that? It’s not just fucking to me. Her words. They should have been his. They should have been his. “Will he come for you, try to save you?”

No hesitation as she replied, “No.”

Maxwell cursed and demanded, “Then what good are you to me?”

“I’m not.”

Drake shook his head, helplessly. No, no, no!

“As you just heard, Jasmine didn’t expect you to rush in, guns blazing, and save her. There’s no need for you to feel guilty at all.” Victor leaned forward to close the laptop.

Drake caught his hand. “Who was the inside man?”

“I’m not at liberty to say—”

“He’s in the room, but he’s not speaking. That means he’s one of Case’s flunkies.”

“He speaks…but you aren’t going to hear him. Revealing his identity would just compromise other cases that the man worked for us—”

“So this guy,” Trace broke in, “he made a habit of working undercover for the FBI? For you?”

Victor’s chin shot up. “I think we’re done now.”

Hell, no, they weren’t. “Play the rest.”

“I don’t—”

“I want to hear it all.”

But Victor shook his head. “There’s no point.”