“Okay.” Ryan stood, holding out his hands to try to defuse the situation. “Relax. No one’s blaming you for anything, Simone.”
“You’re not, but he is.”
Ryan shot Mitch a scathing look, then turned and gripped Simone’s arms again, forcing her to focus on him. “Why don’t we call the marshal assigned to your case—Holdt?”
She flicked another irate look Mitch’s way, then drew in a calming breath. “I tried. More than once. His phone keeps going to voice mail. I didn’t think it was a big deal before, but after all this…” She swiped a hand across her forehead. “I’m not sure who to trust. If he gave someone my location, who else in WITSEC is compromised?”
“Why don’t you let me try,” Ryan said.
Simone stiffened. “You can’t tell him where we are.”
“I won’t.”
Simone hesitated, looked up at Mitch. But after several seconds, she pulled her phone from her pocket and paged through screens until she found the contact. “Here.”
Ryan pulled out his own cell, dialed, then held it up to his ear. After several seconds, he said, “Yeah, I’m trying to get in touch with Marshal William Holdt. No. Yeah, I can hold.”
As they waited, Mitch crossed to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out at the sparkling lights of the city far below. Witness protection. Mafia. His head was spinning. And every time he closed his eyes, he saw his house being blown to pieces.
“Okay, thanks.”
Ryan lowered the phone, hit End, and sighed. “Well, that’s not going to help us.”
“What did they say?” Simone asked.
Mitch turned from the window.
“William Holdt died yesterday.”
“No.” Simone’s eyes fell closed. Her face paled, and she lowered herself to the couch. “No, no, no.”
“It could just be a coincidence,” Ryan said quickly.
Simone huffed out a sound that held no humor. “Not unless my luck has changed.”
Ryan looked toward Mitch, and in his eyes, Mitch saw the same thing he was thinking. There was more to this than she was saying.
Ryan tapped the phone against his palm and looked back at Simone. “You were right to come here. We’ll figure something out.”
No, Mitch had been right to bring her here. Though at the moment, he wasn’t overjoyed by that decision.
“I don’t feel like it,” Simone muttered. “I feel like I just put you and Kate in danger too.”
“We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. Let me do a little research on Holdt and see what I can find.”
Simone didn’t answer, just nodded and rested her head back against the couch. And in the silence, Mitch wrestled with a mixture of anger and helplessness and feelings of utter stupidity.
The mafia? He really hoped to hell that wasn’t what this was, because he wasn’t giving up his life.
That anger and betrayal popped and sizzled while he pulled out another soda. The door opened before he took his first sip, and Kate stepped back into the room, followed by a smiling Shannon, carrying a large plastic bowl.
Shannon crawled onto the L-shaped leather sectional near Simone and tugged on her mom’s hand, forcing her to scoot toward her. “Mrs. Harrison found popcorn and said we could watch a movie. Can we, Mom?”
Simone looked over her shoulder toward Kate. Kate closed the door and wrinkled her nose. “Thought the movie might help her drift back to sleep.”
“And the popcorn?” Simone asked.
Kate frowned. “Considering you look like you haven’t eaten in days, I figured some kind of food—even popcorn—wasn’t a bad midnight snack.”
Mitch paused midswallow and looked over the soda can at his lips toward Simone. Kate was right, and he’d been so pissed these last few days—last few hours—he hadn’t noticed just how pale and hollow her cheeks looked.
Guilt crept in. A guilt that warred with the anger he wanted to continue stoking.
She’d lied to him, broken his heart, and blown apart his house.
But she’d also been protecting her daughter for years. She’d given up her life, uprooted herself from her friends and family, moved clear across the country and started over. And she was right… She had tried to keep their relationship platonic. But he’d pushed until he’d fallen head over heels in love with the woman and was already planning a marriage she didn’t want.
Her words from earlier sifted through his mind. Words he thought he’d dreamed but now wasn’t so sure.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you. I didn’t mean it.”
Confusion slid back in, replacing the anger and melding with a knot of unease that formed a hot ball of nerves in the middle of his belly. Just which lie was she sorry for? Not telling him about her past? Hiding the fact she’d been in the witness protection program and that people could be trying to kill her? Or what she felt for him?”
Those nerves twisted and rolled until his skin grew tight and tingly.
“Mitch?”
Startled, he looked toward his sister, standing on the other side of the room, watching him with a perplexed expression. Her curly chestnut hair, a lot like his but longer, was tied in a neat tail at the back of her head and swayed when she moved. “Are you okay?”
He glanced around the room in a daze. Simone and Shannon were snuggled on the couch with their popcorn, watching some animated movie on the TV, the lights dimmed and the sound on low. Simone had her back turned his way and didn’t seem the least bit curious about what he was doing. His gaze flicked the other direction, to Ryan’s desk, where Ryan was leaning back against the mahogany surface and Kate was standing in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest, listening to whatever he’d been telling her.
They both stared at him as if his head might twist off and explode.
Good God. How long had he been standing there? Mitch rubbed a hand down his face and set the soda can back on the bar with a hand that was way more unsteady than he liked. “I’m fine.”
The look Kate sent him said she didn’t think he looked fine. She obviously thought he looked fucked. Which was exactly how he felt. “Why don’t you go take a shower and get cleaned up while Ryan fills me in on everything? By then, maybe Shannon will be asleep, and we can all decide what to do next.”
What to do next. Yeah. Like that was a simple decision.
Mitch nodded, barely registering his feet moving as he crossed the office toward Ryan’s fancy corporate bathroom. He didn’t have a clue what to do next. But one thing was certain: he needed to clear his head and think.
Because if he didn’t stop being ruled by his emotions, he wasn’t sure where he’d end up. Or who would be leading him.
“Hey, Counselor. How are you holding up?”
Simone looked up when Kate sank into the chair to her right. Mitch called her that too sometimes—counselor—and she’d always liked it, but right now all it did was make her feel like a fraud.
She lifted Shannon’s head from her lap to the couch and shifted closer to the short arm of the sectional so she and Kate could talk quietly. “I’m fine.”
“It’s okay not to be fine, you know, considering all this.”
“No. I’m fine. Really.”
Kate’s small smile said she didn’t believe her. “I wish you’d told me some of what was going on. I don’t know what I could have done to help, but I do know what it’s like not to have anyone to talk to. I would have been there for you.”