“I knew it was wrong when I started. Everyone including Phantom told me to leave it alone but I couldn’t. I tried, but every night I went to bed and the second I closed my eyes all I could see was Kalee. The tortured look in her eyes when she told me about when she’d first come home and her father hugged her how it felt like her skin was crawling. Her own father. Kalee and her dad are close. She loves him like crazy and it hurt her so much that she couldn’t stand for him to touch her.
“As the weeks went on and Kalee was settling in, and she was—totally. Phantom, Piper, all of Piper’s new friends rallied around her and she slowly came back to us. She’s Kalee but she’s not. I can’t explain it, except to say she is not the same person she was before the rebels took her. And neither is Piper.”
Evette paused and looked at Kyle. “Anaya, too.”
“So, I’m assuming with all of that you looked into what happened in Timor-Leste. Into the rebels and civil unrest,” Kyle surmised.
“I did.”
“Fuck,” Myles muttered, speaking for the first time. “And you found something that you shouldn’t’ve.”
“Yes. And when I was told to stop I didn’t.”
“What’d you find?” Zane inquired.
I watched her body go still. Her hand came up but before she could finish the movement Evette dropped her hand onto the table and started fidgeting. I could take no more so I pulled out the chair next to her and sat.
“Hey,” I called.
And when she craned her head and dipped her chin to her shoulder so she could look at me I decided I didn’t like this new, unsure Evette. I didn’t like the way she worried her lip though I did enjoy looking at her mouth. I didn’t like the way her warm brown eyes were clouded with uncertainty.
“Tell us what’s going on,” I urged as softly as I could manage. “No one’s judging you for looking into what happened to your friends. All of us understand the need for answers.”
“I want them to pay,” she said quietly. “Every last one of them for what they did to Piper, Anaya, and Kalee. I want them to bleed for what they did to all those little girls at the orphanage, for all the people they murdered in the village. Anaya heard that. She heard all those innocent people being slaughtered. And Piper and her daughters hid in a cellar, but Piper, she heard, too. Then she came home thinking Kalee had died and been left in a pit of dead bodies. A pit! I can’t even think about my beautiful, sweet, kind-hearted friend waking up on top of…dead girls,” Evette whispered the last part and my gut clenched at her tone.
“We understand that, too.”
“I don’t think you do. All I can focus on is making them pay.”
I understood, every man in that room understood. Hell, even Ivy understood the bloodlust, the need for revenge and justice, and how those two blurred together until you couldn’t see the difference.
“You’ll have to trust me when I tell you there’s nothing you can say that will shock us, nothing that will make us think less of you. But we need the truth and we need all of it.”
She nodded and reached into a small purse on her lap. Much too little for a woman on the run. Later, not now, but when the time was right, I was going to teach Evette how to properly pack a go-bag. I doubted she had enough cash in that purse to last her a day. She certainly didn’t have a change of clothes, and I’d bet she wasn’t even carrying a weapon. Bad planning on her part.
Evette’s hand came out of the bag balled into a fist so tight her knuckles were white. A good amount of uncertainty and mistrust marred her pretty face.
In an effort to hurry this along I asked, “What’s your plan? You said you wanted them to pay so how do you plan on making that happen?”
“I’m gonna write—”
“No!” Zane interrupted and her gaze shot to his.
“You don’t know what I found.”
“Doesn’t matter what you found. The only thing writing an article about it does is put you out there more than you already are.”
“I found the money trail,” she retorted. “I know—”
“You don’t know shit. What I know is there’s one way to deal with terrorists and rebels and that’s with bullets. Words will roll off them and put a bigger target on your back. No article. What’s in your hand?”
Her eyes narrowed, her spine straightened, and her shoulders snapped back.
“I don’t think I want to give it to you.”
“Do you wanna get dead?”
“Zane,” I interjected.
“What? I speak the truth. It’s not like she doesn’t know someone’s trying to kill her. She’s here for a reason and I can’t protect her if I don’t know what she’s found.”
Evette set a thumb drive on the table and skewered Zane with a stare.
“I don’t want to die.”
The statement wasn’t a confirmation—no, it was a stubborn acquiesce followed by assent when she tossed the thumb drive on the table.
“Who tried to kill you?” Kevin asked and my fingers curled into fists at the reminder.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t recognize the…I’m assuming it was a man?” Kevin pushed.
“Yes, a man. And no I didn’t recognize him. He ambushed me when I unlocked my front door and pushed me into the house. He wanted my computer.”
“That was it? He wanted your computer, you gave it to him, then he let you go?”
I had to hand it to Evette, she didn’t even flinch at Kevin’s question. There she was sitting in a room full of people she didn’t know discussing someone breaking into her apartment and holding her at gunpoint and she was calm, cool, and collected. No outward signs she was going to freak out or break down.
“No. He also wanted my hard drive. I lied and said it was in my bedroom. He told me to go get it and I climbed out my bedroom window and ran.”
“He let you go into your bedroom by yourself?” Myles asked.
“Yeah, he already had my laptop open on my kitchen table and was basically ignoring me so I took advantage.”
“Smart,” I mumbled.
“Can you describe the man?” Cooper asked.
“Sure. Normal-looking.”
Cooper narrowed his eyes and shook his head unimpressed.
“A little more detail?”
“Light brown hair. Not ugly but not good-looking. Average build, not fat but not muscular. I guess his eyes were hazel-ish—kinda brown, kinda green. A few inches taller than me. The only thing about him that stuck out was he has a crooked nose and it was kinda big. Tan skin, like he spent time in the sun.”
“No mask,” Cooper muttered.
Thankfully Coop didn’t finish his thought. No mask oftentimes meant the assailant didn’t care if his victim saw his face because he wasn’t going to leave them alive.
Cooper Cain might be new to Z Corps but he wasn’t new to the game. He was former LAPD SWAT and from the file Zane had provided, he’d been damn stellar at his job. We all knew that already seeing as Cooper was the brother of a Red Team operator, Jaxon Cain. Jax was a friend and a highly respected colleague. We welcomed having his brother Cooper on our team. But the guy had much to learn about the assholes we tracked.