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  I’d know that eye-fuck glare anywhere. He gave it to me plenty of times when we were surrounded by other guys in the desert.

  The heady mix of Him wanting to kick my ass before fucking it.

  Always a win-win.

  “I take it I don’t need to introduce you?” Jace snarks.

  Carter glares at me. “Did you lie to—”

  “Stop,” Jace orders, and his tone hardens my cock.

  I’ll just let him handle this.

  “Carter, I know full well who he is.” Then his voice drops to a warning whisper. “And I know who he is to you, too. Rather, who he was.”

  For the first time I’ve ever seen it, Carter’s struck speechless.

  Before his little brother can hurl more accusations, Jace continues. “Long story short, can’t go into all the details, but let’s just say it’s a damned good thing his path crossed with mine late last year and not someone else’s, or he wouldn’t be standing here right now. Besides, Dray did say he sent him an invite. But now that he and I are together, we have a common goal and a common enemy.”

  “Don’t you fuck up Susa’s—”

  “The colonel.”

  Carter’s mouth snaps shut and his face goes white as his lips press together in a narrow, thin line.

  When Carter draws a deep breath to try to speak, Jace cuts him off again. “And this boy here now belongs to me.”

  I would laugh at the audible click Carter’s teeth makes when his jaw snaps shut except this is no laughing matter. Not really.

  His gaze widens as he starts to process Jace’s words.

  He continues. “I’m gay, Carter. I’ve hid it all my life.” He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “Not ready to come out to everyone, either. But the two of us have decided once we take care of one final unfinished task, we’re going to buy a place together and figure out what we have and go from there.”

  Carter runs a hand through his hair and looks like he’s about to rip it out at the roots. “What do you hope to accomplish, Jace?”

  “Vengeance. For Tom and Pete. That fucker is the reason they’re dead. He nearly got you and Eddie killed by deploying you in retaliation. Then there’s the matter of the other stuff he did. And before you yell at Eddie for telling me everything, you should know that I’m not a software guy. For the last several decades, it was my job to learn things by making people tell me stuff, using unpleasant means to elicit that information, if necessary.”

  Jace is a master of burying the lede for maximum impact and distraction. “You were intel?” Carter asks, stunned.

  “Yep. And call him Tom tonight, all right?”

  Carter stares at us for a moment. “So why are you here, tonight, Jace? That guy isn’t here!”

  “I need an intro to Senator Samuels. Her friend, Bradenton Rexley, is who I need an intro to from her, to get into a private meeting here in Tallahassee later this month.”

  “The PAC speed-date.”

  “Yup.”

  “Jesus, Jace!” He realizes he’s getting too loud and drops his voice. “Why are you doing this?”

  He shrugs. “Because it’s long overdue.” He nods to me. “And I promised him. Hey, you took care of her. I get this one. Either get me the intro, or I’ll introduce myself to her. It’d be better if you do it, though.”

  I spot the moment Carter knows he’s going to give in. And when he’s distracted, that’s when I take the opportunity to grab his left hand and shove up his shirt sleeve.

  He does have the same tattoo.

  As his gaze meets mine, I see it there, the truth. I see the anguish, the regret.

  I see the love.

  I see everything that could have been mine had I only been braver back then.

  Releasing him and stepping away, I turn from him and let Jace deal with it. A moment later, Carter exits and Jace’s hand squeezes my shoulder.

  “Come on, pet,” he whispers. “Let’s get back out there. We won’t be here much longer.”

  Later that night, when we return to our hotel room, I’m deep in thought and not expecting it when Jace slams me against the wall and pins me there, kissing me and totally derailing my brain.

  It’s only later, as we’re both falling asleep after having made love, that I realize he was trying to distract me, refocus me.

  Despite the emotional bruising I suffered tonight, we have the invitation to the meeting.

  We’re one step closer to our goal.

  And me?

  I feel lost, in a way. Not that I’ll leave Jace, because I won’t.

  But it doesn’t mean my brain will stop revisiting What-If Land anytime soon.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jace

  I secure the invite. And, meanwhile, we plan.

  Our preparations kick into high speed and when we attend the event, I disguise Eddie and I’m not sure which one of us is trying to keep the other in check as we watch the fucker schmoozing people all evening long. We present ourselves as representing a third-party who can’t risk publicly attending even a private event, and who needs absolute secrecy.

  Two days after the meet-and-greet, we get a call from Cunningham himself. I take that call and set it all up. While we doubt Cunningham would remember Eddie’s voice in particular, we take no chances.

  Not when we’re this close.

  The private meeting can’t happen for two weeks, because he’s already booked plane tickets to visit his grandkids and doesn’t want to disappoint them.

  I hope they enjoy their last visit with their grandfather.

  However, that gives us two weeks to finalize our arrangements, now that we have a meeting time and place with the colonel. We’re using a short-term vacation rental house and he’s arriving alone because I told him there were others who also wanted to meet with him, but because of how their PACs were set up, they wanted discretion and anonymity.

  We won’t be there long.

  Just long enough to drug and move him.

  And we’re going to set it up to look like he met a lover at the house. The rental isn’t traceable to any of us, and it was rented online through a booking app, using a fake name and ID to secure it.

  A fake name and ID through which we set up false trails to easily lead back to Cunningham.

  After so many years spent dreaming about this date, two weeks feels like an eternity to me. I know Eddie must be enduring even more emotional turmoil considering what he suffered at the hands of that monster.

  Our final preparations speed along at a breakneck pace. We practice over and over again. Not just our plan, but different contingencies. We map alternate routes. We time different routes over several times of day.

  We fuck like horny high schoolers every night, like it’s our last night on Earth, because we know there will soon be a night that it just might be.

  There’s a sweet irony knowing the money I’ve been paid by my government to hunt others will be used to permanently remove this rabid apex predator from the jungle once and for all, and it’s a culling that’s long overdue.

  I’ve waited a long time for this moment. Before Eddie, I never understood how much the former colonel deserved to die.

  Savoring it will have to wait until we’ve successfully completed our mission.

  One thing I didn’t expect was having someone like Eddie at my side when I finally avenged Pete and Tommy and Carter. I don’t even mean romantically or sexually.

  I mean someone with similar training and skillsets as I possess. Someone I don’t have to second-guess their every step, because they’re as careful and exacting as I am. Someone who I know I don’t have to watch over their shoulder while we take our revenge.

  This will be glorious.

  We’re three days from the meeting with Cunningham when I receive a text from Carter, who’s been silent ever since the night of the ball.

  Need to talk. Call me, Sig.

  Followed by what I suspect is a burner phone number.

  No way will Carter rat
us out. Especially considering what I know he endured.

  I wonder if this is him trying to talk us out of our plan in a misguided attempt to keep us safe. Right now, Eddie’s out scouting our kill locations again. We have four potentials, because we wanted contingencies. We need to make sure there are no surprises once we make our move.

  This means I’m alone and able to speak freely.

  On a burner phone of my own, I call Carter using the Signal app after tapping into a VPN. “What’s up, little bro?”

  “When is this going down?”

  “When is what going down?”

  “You fucking know what I mean.”

  I hesitate. I don’t like communicating this way so close to our operation. The app’s not nearly as secure as people think it is, which is why I usually use several layers of safeguards. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You mean you don’t want me involved.”

  That’s not inaccurate. “You know things are better when kept small and…intimate.”

  What he says next totally takes me by surprise. “You’d better protect him. Protect him with your fucking life, Jace, or I will never forgive you, and you will be dead to me, brother or not.”

  This makes sense and I drop my act. “I will. I promise.”

  “Do you love him, or are you just using him?”

  “Loving him and using him are not mutually exclusive, baby bro.”

  “Goddammit, Jace—”

  “Yes, I love him. No, I’m not just using him, but he knows he’s being used and he’s okay with it because it serves his purposes, too. His eyes are wide open. He is a full and willing partner in this venture.” Well, he is now. Maybe he didn’t start out that way.

  “What happens after?”

  Indeed. “We’re still talking about that. We want to focus on the task at hand, but I have no intentions of letting him go later. What form our relationship takes after that will be up to him.”

  Technically.

  “I want to talk to him. Alone. Now.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Carter. Not yet. I’ll arrange something in a few weeks. Besides, he’s not here right now.”

  “Then give me his number, and—”

  “No.”

  “Jace—”

  “No. Either you trust me to own the pet, or you don’t. If you don’t, we don’t have anything else to talk about. If you wanted to worry about the pet so badly then you should have tried to figure out a way to get him to come home with you when you left. But you didn’t, and he’s lived an entire lifetime since you officially owned him. I recommend you focus on your pets, and let me focus on mine, ’kay?”

  “Swear to me to protect him.”

  “I will protect him. I promise.”

  Another ragged sigh. “I didn’t want to leave him behind. I didn’t know how to make him follow me. I think he thought he was protecting me, but I never stopped loving him. Never stopped worrying about him.”

  “I know. He still loves you, too, but he also knows that chapter’s closed. He doesn’t hold it against you.”

  “Bradenton Rexley hinted there’s a new PAC or three looking to fund Cunningham.”

  Goddammit. “So?”

  I hear the evil, bastard smile in his voice. “Well, since you froze me out and refused to loop me in, I wrangled myself an invite to the private meeting through my own sources. See you there, big bro. I wouldn’t miss this for anything. If you don’t want me fucking this up, I suggest you add me to your plan and give me the deets, or I’ll do to you what I did to you and Gene’s plan to take off to Paris for a weekend that time when you were in high school.”

  Fucker hangs. Up. On. Me.

  “Motherfucker!” I scream and force myself not to throw the goddamned phone.

  Eddie

  I don’t understand why Jace is enraged when I return from my scouting mission, and I’m terrified for a moment I did something to cause it until he pulls me in for a hug, apologizes, and explains his conversation with Carter, which apparently ended just moments ago.

  “So now what?” I ask.

  He groans. “I call him back and talk to him and loop him in. Otherwise, he will blow it.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he’s an obnoxious little shit of a brother, that’s why.”

  I…honestly don’t know what he’s talking about. “What?”

  He sighs. “Gene and I had set up what we thought was a foolproof plan to take a weekend trip to Paris with some friends of ours. When we first asked Mom for permission to go months earlier, she said no, end of subject. So we all arranged with our friends to alibi each other and set it up as a local camping trip, which was allowed. We spent plenty of time griping and whining about not being able to go to Paris, like we were trying to change her mind, because we knew if we didn’t mention it again it would be fishy.

  “Carter was the youngest and had a habit of eavesdropping if he thought we were trying to keep shit from him. Which, of course we were, a lot of the time. There were times we didn’t want him tagging along. He wasn’t a narc or anything, but sometimes he was just too young to go with us for whatever reason.

  “Somehow, and to this day I don’t know how, he knew we weren’t really going camping. And keep in mind he despised camping. Which is the main reason we used that as our cover story, so he wouldn’t whine to come with us. Because Mom would have made us take him with us if he wanted to go.

  “Motherfucker, the morning we’re packing to go, Mom says we need to take Carter with us. Gene and I expect Carter to beg not to go, right? And Mom would have let him stay. And damned if that little fucking shit doesn’t drop me and Gene a wink, cheer like he’s just hit the lottery, and run out to the garage to get his hiking pack and camping shit.”

  I snort. “Then what?”

  “We had to fucking go camping. And we didn’t even end up spending one night there because a storm started rolling in, so we headed home. It would have looked weird if we’d tried to tough it out.”

  “How’d you get him back?”

  “We didn’t. Our friends got busted on the way to Paris for speeding, and then arrested for having weed in the car. Back then, it wasn’t legal. Somehow, Carter had found out not only that we were going, but that some of the guys planned to bring weed with them, which they didn’t tell me and Gene they were going to do because they knew we wouldn’t go if that happened. Carter being an obnoxious little brother saved our fucking asses, and he never would tell us how he knew it. Pretended he didn’t know what we were talking about when we tried to figure out how he got the info.”

  “That’s…spooky.” And totally the Carter I know and loved.

  “Right?”

  “So…now what?”

  “Now you and I finalize the plan, and I’ll meet with Carter and go over things with him so he’s looped in.”

  And that’s exactly what happens. The night before, Jace leaves me at our rented condo—a short-term vacation rental under a different fake name—and heads out to meet up with Carter outside of Tallahassee. When he returns late that evening, he pulls me in for a long hug but won’t discuss the particulars of their conversation.

  That night, when Jace makes love to me, it’s tender and gentle with just enough bite and pain to keep me grounded and present and distracted from what we’re both thinking.

  That this could be the last time we have this together if we aren’t successful tomorrow night.

  The next morning, neither of us speak as we go through our final preparations. We put everything in place four days ago, including backing the SUV into the rented house’s garage, so that hopefully its presence won’t raise any interest on any of the surveillance videos that might be reviewed by law enforcement later on.

  When we leave the vacation rental, we drop the rental car at the storage unit and pick up another throwaway car purchased for cash under a fake name just over the state line in Georgia, with Georgia temp plates on it. That�
�s the car we drive to meet with Carter on the far east side of Tallahassee, at a busy shopping center parking lot there.

  I sit in the back seat as the three of us silently head west again, to the rental property.

  A dark, thick, borderline eager air fills the vehicle when we park in the driveway, on the same side where the SUV is parked in the garage.

  When Cunningham arrives, he knows the garage door will open and he’s to park inside, to help conceal his car and to ensure enough parking spaces in the driveway for the “others” who will be attending the meeting.

  His wife is out of town still, with the grandchildren. He knows not to tell her anything about tonight, that the potential donors are hella skittish and will bail on him to back other candidates if they even think he might be about to reveal their identities to anyone.

  Again, this is nothing new to politicians.

  The three of us await his arrival inside the house, which is perfectly staged. Roses, chilled champagne, lube and condoms. I snagged a woman’s long hair pulled from a hairbrush from the dumpster behind a hair salon several weeks ago. We’ve placed some of that in the trashcan in the master bathroom, along with a piece of toilet paper smeared with blotted lipstick, which matches a smear of lipstick on a glass in the sink. The bed in the master bedroom has been rumpled, and a used towel hangs in the bathroom.

  We’re all wearing full Tyvek bunny suits over our clothes, which we donned in the garage, so we don’t leave any DNA in the house.

  Carter stands watch. When he sees the car pull into the driveway exactly at seven p.m., with one occupant, he softly calls out to me. “Now.”

  I hit the button on the clicker I hold where I stand next to the door leading out to the garage. We purchased it and programmed it to match the opener, because one didn’t come with the house rental, obviously.

  Once the door closes behind Cunningham and he’s shut off the car’s engine, Jace will wait to emerge from behind the SUV, where he lays in wait, and will come up behind Cunningham to subdue him.

  My heart thuds in my chest as Carter joins me at the garage door to wait.