Timber (Hades Book 4) Page 12

  Zed arched a brow as I sat down on the leather sofa beside him and took a large mouthful of liquor. I was steering clear of opioids, not joining a convent.

  "You're not taking the painkillers, huh?" he murmured the observation under his breath, even though he already knew the answer. He also knew the reason.

  I clicked my tongue, then swallowed the rest of my drink in one huge mouthful. Cringing at the alcohol burn, I held my empty glass out, and he refilled it without complaint.

  "Rehab," I croaked, dabbing my lips on the sleeve of my shirt.

  Zed knew what I meant and nodded. "Yep."

  I drew a long breath, letting it swell my lungs, and winced at the press on my ribs. "They put you through some kind of crash course in how to be a snake in the grass or something?" My words dripped with bitterness, but Zed didn't shy away from it. "Three months isn't long enough for standard FBI training."

  "Something like that, yeah. Special exemptions or some shit, I figured, seeing as I wasn't being trained to be an agent, just to do one specific job." He gulped his own Scotch and refilled it. "Hindsight tells me the whole thing was completely unauthorized, but at the time"—he shrugged—"I guess I turned a blind eye to it. I convinced myself I was doing the only thing that could keep you safe."

  I scoffed at that. "Don't act like that was all for me, Zed. Nothing involving Chase could ever be for my benefit, and you damn well know it. I don't know what else you were getting out of this, but—"

  "Nothing," he snapped, cutting me off. "There was nothing else to be gained. I didn't even barter for my own immunity, but my mom offered it up unprompted. Turns out, her word isn't worth the oxygen in her breath."

  I bit the inside of my cheek, forcing myself to hold back the cutting remarks that I already knew were totally false. We wouldn't get anywhere if I just hurled insults, and I really wanted the whole picture.

  Zed took another gulp of Scotch. "Let's hit the important points," he muttered, "then we can circle back for details when you need it."

  I arched a brow. "Suits me. Tell me how you got tied up with Chase. Was it before or after you saw those tapes? Did you partner up with him already knowing how badly he'd abused me?" Because I doubted I could ever come back from that if he had. If he'd knowingly joined my enemy with full knowledge of what he'd done to me in my darkest hours...

  "I didn't," he huffed. "The first time I suspected he was even still alive was at the same time as you did, when we dug up his empty grave."

  I frowned, confusion pausing my fury and outrage. "Huh?"

  Zed gave me a pointed look. "Dare, I never colluded with Chase. I would never. If your car hadn't pulled away when it did, you'd have seen me deck him then almost get shot for it. That sick fuck was playing us all, but I swear to you, I had no clue he was FBI until that moment."

  That made me stiffen in surprise. In all the possible scenarios I'd played out in my head, none of them had considered the possibility that Zed honestly had no clue he was working with Chase. But... that was exactly Chase's MO wasn't it? Head games. Constant head games. What utter delight he must have taken knowing Zed had no clue he was actually working for the villain himself.

  "The second I walked back into Timber, Lucas fucking basically told me to stop being a little bitch and to come help him plan your jailbreak." Zed gave a small smile, like he couldn't help being proud. "I was well into the depths of despair, though, thinking about that look on your face when that nutty bitch Jeanette outed me. Fuck me, that chick had totally cracked undercover."

  That was something we could agree on. "Did you know about her?"

  Zed shook his head. "I really wasn't an agent. The only contact I had with the FBI was through my mom. She was my handler. Sure, they slapped the title on my name for the paperwork, but I was little more than an informant. And a bad one at that. More often than not, I turned the wires off and conveniently forgot to turn them back on again."

  "They let you do that?" I frowned.

  He shrugged. "Like I said, it was an arrangement as dodgy as they come. I would be surprised if anyone even knew what was going on. In the last few months, something changed, though. My mom became more demanding that I turn in something, like her own ass was on the line if I couldn't deliver. So I gave them little pieces here and there. Things that wouldn't impact us. Innocent conversations that would lead them nowhere."

  I sipped my drink and the alcohol buzzed in my veins. Mixing it with antibiotics wasn't strictly the best idea, but given everything else my body had been through, it was far from the worst.

  "That's how they got that recording? Of me talking to Maxine?"

  Zed nodded. "My mom admitted to that. After Maxine was attacked, she pulled that sound bite and submitted it. For a promotion, can you believe it? When I confronted her, she wasn't even sorry. All those years, thinking I was protecting you... and she never intended to keep her word."

  Well shit. I'd only met Zed's mom a couple of times before she "disappeared," but she hadn't seemed like the cold, calculating bitch type. Then again, she also hadn't seemed like the deep-cover FBI agent type.

  "Why didn't they get me sooner?" I asked, gritting my teeth against all the heartbreak. "I've done a hundred things worse than that weak link to Maxine's attack. Why were none of those used?"

  Zed gave me a pointed look. "I never gave them any of that. I guess I always had a suspicion that there was more going on, so I just... deleted everything. Any time you and I were directly involved, I deleted the files before she got them. This was the closest she had to dirt, and she took it and ran."

  I blew out a long breath. "What a bitch."

  Zed barked a sharp laugh. "Understatement."

  "Why didn't you tell me, Zed?" I asked softly, my eyes on my drink. I didn't want to see whatever emotions were on his face, since he'd apparently stopped shielding them from me. "I get why you didn't at the time—there was so much going on. But... it's been five years. Surely there was at least one opportunity to tell me."

  He was quiet for a long moment before responding. "You're right. I had a thousand opportunities to tell you, but I didn't. Then it was like... the longer I went without telling you, the more I convinced myself you'd never forgive me. I got it into my head that so long as I was protecting you, then you never needed to know. I couldn't..." He trailed off, his words drying up. Taking a swallow of his drink, he leaned his head back on the sofa to look at the ceiling for strength or something. "I was scared, Dare."

  That admission was a rough, heartfelt whisper, and it struck a chord deep inside me.

  "You're not scared of anything, Zayden," I muttered back.

  He grunted and shook his head. "Not true. I was scared I would lose you. I watched you harden after that night—the way you closed yourself off from the world, from your own emotions. You did everything you needed to do to survive your new role. But I was scared that it meant you wouldn't forgive me for lying. For deceiving you. For being the fox in the hen house. I was so fucking scared that if I told you, then that'd be the end of us. So I convinced myself the only thing to do was keep my mouth shut and... keep going as I was."

  I said nothing. What the hell could I even say back to that?

  "I didn't give a crap if you shot me," he continued, his voice low and quiet. "I just couldn't stand the thought of... not being us. I didn't want to lose us, because even though you’d seemed to have forgotten what you’d said to me that night when I was bleeding out and heading toward the light, I never had. I was just biding my time, waiting until you were ready to let your walls down again."

  Somehow, I got the feeling I knew where he was heading. "And then I met Lucas."

  He gave me a lopsided smile. "You know, I started to tell you everything so many times after you met Gumdrop that I lost count. But every damn time, I came up against the exact same problem. You were letting your walls down, so I needed to confess everything. But..."

  I groaned. "But I thought you were trying to confess feelings and totally derail
ed everything, didn't I?"

  Zed wrinkled his nose. "A little bit. Because then I could see a future for us that rivaled even my most farfetched fantasies, and I had an even stronger desire to never fuck it up."

  "Until you did."

  His shoulders sagged, and he swirled his drink in his glass. "Yep."

  We sat in silence for a while, drinking our Scotch. After Zed refilled our glasses again and the haze of intoxication was seeping into my brain, I decided I needed to hear more.

  "What happened after I was arrested?"

  Zed scrubbed his hand over his head. "Uh, let's see. I stood there in shock as Jeanette pushed you into her car, then Chase slithered up to me all smug as fuck. I turned around and decked him, had four agents pull their guns on me..." He was ticking off the points in the air, then rolled his eyes. "Apparently Chase has been spreading his unique brand of poison in his division of the feds for a while. They defer to him as a director, even though he's not."

  My stomach churned, remembering how I'd felt in that moment when Jeanette had called him director and stupid, shellshocked me had actually believed her.

  "Lucas gave me a dressing down and told me he didn't believe I'd really sold you out and that we needed to get to work on breaking you out. Oh, and he punched me pretty damn hard, too." That proud smirk was back, and I rolled my eyes. Only Zed would be proud of someone punching him in the face.

  "Good," I muttered. "I hope it hurt."

  "It did," he confirmed. "Then I had an unpleasant interaction with my mother where I told her I was done being her puppet and threatened to shoot her in the head if she didn't fuck off."

  My brows shot up in surprise. But also... relief.

  "Anyway. After I drank a whole bottle of bourbon and trashed Timber, I passed out. Then got woken up with a bucket of ice water dumped over my head and Cass snarling in my face." Another hint of a smile. Zed liked Cass way more than he ever admitted. "Turns out, even as pissed as they were, they didn't give a fuck about the how or why, they just wanted me to help get you back. So... that's what we did."

  I peered into my glass, a niggling question on my mind. "How did you find me? Twelve days is a long time. The trail must have been cold."

  "Stone cold," he confirmed. "Chase had put a lot of planning into that abduction. I'm guessing he drugged you right from the back of Jeanette's car?"

  I cringed, badly not wanting to examine what had happened to me. Zed took the hint and continued talking without waiting for me to reply.

  "Well, we tracked you as far as the Montana border. Then you just... disappeared. We figured he had to have a hideout somewhere in that area, so we stayed close and searched extensively. There's a whole lot of wilderness for him to hide in, though."

  I took a huge mouthful of Scotch, needing to do something to distract myself, despite the way I could already feel my hand shaking. "You tracked me?" I repeated, shooting Zed a puzzled look. "How?"

  His eyes widened, and he looked uncomfortable for the first time since we'd started talking. "Uh, I thought you knew. Wow. Cass implanted a GPS tracker under your skin."

  I choked on my drink, and Scotch sprayed everywhere.

  "What?" I shrieked between coughing fits. Lungs really don’t like Scotch, in case anyone was wondering.

  Zed reached out and patted me on the back as I spluttered and cringed. "Dare, I honestly thought you knew. He never said you didn't, and I couldn't imagine that was something he’d done against your will... but look, it was a fucking good thing he did. We spent all that time searching the wilderness of Montana and coming up blank, then all of a sudden you were back on the tracker. We piled into the helicopter, Cass almost killed us a couple of times flying too close to trees, then when we got close to your location, he dropped me down to try and find you on foot."

  I slammed my glass down on the table and covered my mouth with my palm, stunned. Cass had chipped me. When? How?

  "Holy shit," I murmured. "I'm gonna kill him." But the timeline clicked in my brain. "Chase must have had a blocker on his house. Or on the cell, anyway. He's so fucking paranoid he would have done it just to protect himself. If he'd known there was a chip on me, he never would have let me out."

  Zed arched a brow. "He let you out?"

  A deep shudder rolled through me, and cold sweat broke out on my palms. "I don't want to talk about it."

  "Fair enough," he murmured. "Anyway... I think that's all."

  Leaning forward, he topped up our drinks and handed mine back to me while I sat in stunned silence for a while.

  "Did you kill Agent Hanson?" I asked after a while, looking up at him through my lashes. "When she called to warn me that there was a mole in my organization, you weren't answering your phone."

  Zed frowned, shaking his head. "No. I was at Club 22, beating the ever-loving shit out of those pricks that tried to threaten Max. Rodney witnessed it all if you need to check my alibi."

  A small sigh of relief slipped out of me. I didn't even like Agent Hanson, but the thought of Zed killing her had been eating away at me.

  "What about Alexi?" I asked. "Is he a fed?"

  Zed shrugged. "If he is, I never knew about it. My instincts say he's not... but I guess no one is above corruption these days."

  "Did you... did you tell anyone what I'm planning for Chase?" This one question made my pulse race harder than ever.

  "Not a soul," he replied, his tone rough with sincerity.

  This time when I exhaled, a huge chunk of anxiety flowed out of my body, leaving me lighter. I nodded, intensely relieved, then unfolded myself from the couch. The booze hit me hard, and I wobbled a bit, but waved Zed away when he reached out to steady me.

  "I'm fine," I mumbled. "Just need to go lie down for a while."

  "Not a bad idea," he agreed with a lopsided smile.

  I started to leave the living room, but he called out after me, making me pause and look back.

  "I hope you know how sorry I am," he told me, his eyes shining with emotion. "If you let me, I'll spend every day for the rest of our lives apologizing for this fuckup. If I could go back and do it all again..." He trailed off, his expression tightening.

  "If you could go back in time, you would still take the deal," I finished for him, my tone neutral and nonjudgmental. He gave a slow nod, anguish creasing his features. But I just shrugged. "So would I, Zed. I'd have done the exact same thing for you."

  Swallowing hard as the room swam, I made my exit back up to the illusion of safety in my bedroom. But I meant what I'd said. How could I judge his actions knowing I wouldn't have done anything differently?

  Right down to keeping it all a secret. Faced with the same choice... I'd have kept my mouth shut too. His love meant that much to me.

  15

  I slept off the worst of the alcohol and woke up feeling dusty enough that I took the Tylenol beside my bed. There was also a glass of water and a freshly baked banana muffin on a plate waiting for me. Fucking Zed still managed to create mouthwatering food while half-drunk.

  I inhaled the muffin, then went hunting for some pants. Earlier, when I'd gone downstairs to talk with Zed, I hadn't bothered. His shirt was long enough on me that my ass was covered, but if I wanted to exercise, then I probably needed pants.

  Except the ones I'd left in the bathroom were the ones I'd been wearing for several days, and I had no desire to put them back on.

  Shrugging to myself, I left the bedroom dressed in just Zed's shirt and my sling once again. It was midafternoon, and I was hungry enough that I needed a proper meal.

  Apparently, I wasn't the only one with that idea. I followed my nose and the scent of frying bacon into the kitchen where Zed was plating up a couple of gourmet burgers with all the trimmings.

  "You're awake," he commented.

  Suddenly uncomfortable, I wrapped my free arm around myself and shifted my weight. "Yeah."

  I hadn't really thought things through since our conversation. I hadn't even taken a minute to consider where the fuck
the two of us stood with each other. Was I still holding a grudge? Probably. I lacked the emotional maturity that Lucas seemed to have in spades and didn't find it so easy to let bygones be bygones.

  But... what the fuck was I waiting for? He'd already called my bluff on shooting him. So, were we okay again? Friends? More than friends? Or just people who used to be so crazy in love that it physically hurt?

  Who was I kidding? That love hadn't faded. Not even a little bit. It was just clouded by heartache, betrayal, and confusion. Most of all by anger. Anger which had all but fizzled out with the clarity of context and open communication.

  To think, so much could have been avoided if Zed and I had worked harder on our relationship years ago.

  That didn't mean I was ready to forgive and forget, though. Just because I could understand why he'd done what he'd done didn't make it okay. At the end of the day, he had done it. And now he needed to kiss my ass until the end of time if he wanted to have any hope of redemption.

  Starting after I got that burger in my belly.

  Without speaking, I parked my ass on one of the barstools, and Zed slid one of the plates in front of me. Then he grabbed a couple of cold waters from the fridge and pulled up a stool beside me to eat his own burger.

  Not a single word passed between us while we ate our lunch and let the food soak up the last of this morning's breakfast Scotch. It wasn't even uncomfortable. Just... different.

  Zed finished before me—it was hard to eat a burger one-handed—but just hung out in silence while I navigated my meal. When I was done, he cleared up the plates, then turned to me with an arched brow.

  "Coffee?" he offered, an edge of hope clear in his voice.

  Despite my need for caffeine, I shook my head. Things weren't automatically back to normal now that he'd given an admittedly good explanation for his betrayal. And lingering for coffee would definitely send the wrong signal.