Searching (PAVAD- FBI Romantic Suspense Book 18) by Calle Brookes (100 books to read in a lifetime txt) 📕

He wanted her to check in with him, give him an update on the girls. Talk to him. He needed to make certain she was ok with what had happened between them last night.

He had a ring in his pocket. His grandmother’s. Pamela had never been offered it, but Jac—it would be perfect for her.

As soon as he figured out the best way to ask her.

They had waited long enough.

Hell, Max knew it—he was just wanting to see her.

Confirm that things that had changed between them were real. Corny, but until he had her in his house, married to him, and at his side where the woman belonged—a part of him would be afraid it wouldn’t happen.

Not until it did.

He wasn’t willing to take any chances she’d escape him.

He opened his email account. He had work to do. As soon as every loose end with the Sturvin case was tied up, he would clear his schedule.

It was time to hit Andy’s case as hard as he possibly could again. To find the traitors threatening them all.

PAVAD was still being hunted. It was time they doubled the guards, armed the sentries and prepared for attack.

He was going to be a part of that.

There were still answers out there. Max just had to find them.

He read what was there in the first email and swore.

Max jumped to his feet, and grabbed his phone.

All thoughts of finding Jac were gone. The attackers were closer than any of them had realized.

He dialed Sin Lorcan’s number quickly. When the other man answered, Max just had one thing to say.

“We need to find Todd Barnes now. He has all the answers we’ve been looking for.”

“I’m on my way.”

“I’m heading to the director’s office now. Meet me there in two minutes.”

108

Eugene waited. He’d been good at waiting for years. One of his skills. Waiting, and following orders.

That was apparently what he was known for—waiting and doing what he was told.

He’d done what he was told twenty-three years ago.

It had gotten a woman he actually had cared about killed. Hard to forget that.

He was just a damned grunt. A year away from mandatory retirement—unless he was given special dispensation by a director—he had spent thirty-two years doing what he was told.

The quintessential yes-man of the FBI.

He didn’t have much to show for it. The investments that were paying off so well were investments he’d made himself. Not like he’d gotten rich working for the bureau.

He had just enough for one man to retire to a Caribbean island and live the good life. Without any worries.

He’d joined the bureau because it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Because Ed Dennis had given him a recommendation and had promised the bureau would serve him well.

In a way, Eugene had followed orders back then, too.

He’d had three kids to support, after all. Then the job had just become habit.

His damned security blanket. A way for him to have some fucking excitement in his life. Something beyond diapers and school plays and kids who whined all the damned time—then only came around once every few months when they were adults.

Eugene was done with all of that.

If it hadn’t been for that bastard Boyd Jones and what had happened fifteen years ago, he wouldn’t be just a lowly grunt. He’d have moved up years ago. Would have had a higher position in the bureau than PAVAD auxiliary supervisor. That everyone in the auxiliary department reported to him mattered little.

Boyd had been dogging Eugene since the day they’d buried Boyd’s wife all those years ago.

Felicia Jones’s funeral was the last funeral Eugene had ever attended where he’d actually felt something more than boredom.

Boyd had been insinuating himself in Eugene’s career from a distance.

Screwing him over.

When he’d been offered a chance to get back at Colonel Boyd Jones for all the man’s sins, of course Eugene had jumped at it.

He had four men that he trusted fully to do what he was telling them to do. And he wasn’t even the one paying him for their loyalty.

Eugene wasn’t stupid; Young, Harris, Garbison, and Fallow would sell him out in a heartbeat to save their own skins.

He’d finish this one thing, mostly because he despised that son-of-a-bitch Boyd Jones. Then he was out of there.

He had enough blood on his hands. It was time to retire.

109

They weren’t going to get any answers from Todd Barnes. Within half an hour of receiving Barnes’s email, Max had mobilized whomever he could find and tracked Barnes down at a hotel.

He’d been too late.

Max looked down at the man as the paramedics tried to get him stabilized and bit back a curse. He should have looked closer. Should have watched what Barnes was doing a bit more.

There had been a reason Barnes was brought in right now. They should have realized that.

That they hadn’t was on Max’s conscience.

Barnes wasn’t conscious. And from the looks of what had happened to his head, he might not ever be again.

Max looked at the other men surrounding where Barnes had been found. “What do we know so far?”

“We found him like this,” Ken Chalmers said. He had blood on his hands and his shirt. “Thought he was gone, until his hand moved. Looked like he was dialing a phone. Or had one clenched in his hand when he was shot.”

Max swore.

He didn’t personally care for Barnes, but that he’d been shot in his hotel room like this sickened him. “We need to find what he’s involved in.”

“Someone took his laptop,” Knight said from behind Chalmers. Max wasn’t certain why the man was even there. He bit back a curse.

Knight hadn’t looked all that different the day he’d been shot in the head in his own apartment a few years ago. Max had seen the other man for himself that day.

Not an image he was going to forget. No doubt, this was bringing that back to the surface for