Chapter Thirteen

 

 

“Do you ever listen to anything I say? Anything?” Kyle stood in the living room, a mug of coffee in one hand as he pointed to the clothes on the floor.

Hutch bit back a grin and scooped up Noelle’s clothes. He had to stop tossing her underwear around every time she slept with him or she would get the wrong idea. “My living room in my house is a perfectly safe place.”

“It’s not safe for me.” Kyle shook his head and moved to the windows that overlooked his front yard and driveway. He stood there staring out. “And tell your girl she’s not very quiet. I need earplugs.” He turned slightly, one side of his mouth curving up in a half smile. “Congrats, though. I take it you two are now solidly together? Or are you playing it by ear?”

“Together. I’m not playing at all.” He tossed Noelle’s laundry in the basket with his own. Being here at his place had some drawbacks, but having a full washer and dryer he didn’t have to go two floors down to find was not one of them.

And having access to his kit hadn’t been one of them either. Tonight he would introduce her to the crop, and maybe some handcuffs. She seemed to like being bound.

“Excellent, because having spent time with her, I think she would be good for you,” Kyle said quietly. “I think she’s a good woman.”

“You think?”

Kyle shrugged. “You can never be a hundred percent sure. People can trick you.”

He knew that better than most. “Yes, but only some people. A woman like Noelle would never trick me.”

“I hope so.” Kyle sighed and then moved to the kitchen. “So why do you not have dishes? You have coffee mugs and a bunch of barware, but you seem to run on paper plates.”

“He had a crazy ex. She tossed them at his head when she found him playing video games with the guy she was cheating on him with.” Noelle walked out of the hallway looking sunny in a yellow dress and white flats.

“That’s a good explanation,” Kyle said with a laugh. “You have a creative mind.”

“She does, but not about this. I really did have every plate and bowl I owned tossed at my head because I wasn’t sad enough,” he admitted.

“I still don’t think she was your worst.” Noelle grabbed a mug. “He was friends with benefits with a woman CIA operative who threw knives at him after she realized he only considered her a friend.”

“Kelly with the knives. Good times.” He’d been grateful she’d only been trying to make him pee his pants.

“You told the new girlfriend about the old ones? Isn’t that something you shouldn’t do for a couple of years?” Kyle asked, pouring Noelle some coffee.

They’d been up most of the night. When he hadn’t been on top of her, they’d lain in bed and talked. They’d talked about sex and their previous relationships and how sad his had been. He probably should have glossed over a couple of those, but he’d been honest with her. She’d told him how hard it had been to date in college, how hard it still could be because being in a relationship with her meant adapting to moving slower, to planning out every date to accommodate her needs.

His heart had clenched because she’d been trying to warn him.

She didn’t understand that making things comfortable and easy for her would be one of his favorite things in life. He liked planning. It was a thing no one understood about him. He enjoyed the notion that he could be important to someone he cared about. Hell, once he’d given up a year of his life, walked willingly back into hell because a man he thought of as a brother had asked him to. He wasn’t about to be scared off at the prospect of not being able to take Noelle on a particularly rugged hike.

He got into her space because it had been a whole ten minutes since he’d kissed her last. “We move on our own time.” He brushed his lips over hers. “You want some breakfast? I’ve got frozen waffles and maybe some eggs.”

She sighed, a happy sound, and wrapped an arm around him, hugging him close. “Tempting, but I think I’ll grab something on my way in. Pete texted me and he’s got the experiment ready for me. I’m hoping to run it a couple of times today.”

He didn’t want her to work at all. Well, he didn’t want her working at Genedyne until they figured out what was going on. The thought of her going into that building alone scared the shit out of him. Kyle would be somewhere close, but he wouldn’t be standing over Noelle making sure no one could get to her. “I’ll be there at five.”

She stepped back. “Hutch, I might need to work late.”

“I’ll be there at five, and you can work right here in this house.”

She stared at him as though trying to figure out how far to push him. She finally grimaced. “Fine, but I have to have this report done by Monday.”

“I would rather you worked on Saturday than late at night.” He would bet a lot of people worked Saturdays at a place like Genedyne. She wouldn’t even be alone in her lab, which he knew was part of the attraction of working at night, but he couldn’t let her do it now.

She frowned but still went up on her toes to kiss him. “Fine. But I better get to the office. Are you coming with us? Your car is still dead, right?”

Yeah, he hadn’t even thought about the fact that he’d fucked up his battery. But he had a plan in place. “Theo and Erin live a couple of doors down, and whichever one isn’t on kid patrol can give me a ride.”

They switched off carpool duties for their son and daughter, and whoever had the day off had an hour alone in the house. He still had forty minutes until he needed to head into the office.

But maybe he should go with Noelle. He could take a train from Genedyne to the McKay-Taggart building.

“Let’s head out if we’re stopping somewhere to pick up breakfast.” Kyle put his mug in the sink. “I’m getting to sit in on some fun meetings today, and I’m supposed to cover a dinner date tonight. I might end up at Jessica’s, so you should pick Noelle up. I’ll leave the car and take an Uber back here because I don’t want Jessica’s driver to know we’ve switched locations.”

“I’ll come in with you.” He should take a shower. Big Tag had a famously sensitive nose, and he could smell sex on a dude from five miles away. And he did not stint on the sarcasm.

“I’ll be fine. Kyle is an excellent driver, and he’s learned how to make small talk.” Noelle took a long swig of coffee before her mug joined Kyle’s.

“I have to talk about stupid shit or she starts in on her relationships. All of them,” Kyle admitted. “I know a lot about her feelings. So we talk about dogs and TV shows I pretend I watch so I don’t have to know more about her feelings.”

Kyle was an asshole. “Fine. Take care of her. Text me when she’s safe in the lab.”

God, he hoped she would be safe in the lab.

Noelle kissed him again and then walked off, her cane in her right hand. Stretchy sex seemed to have done wonders for her.

It sure had done wonders for him. Noelle made her way out to the garage, and Kyle glanced back as he walked after her.

“Dude, take a shower. You smell like sex.” Kyle shook his head and the door closed.

He was surrounded by assholes. He found his phone and texted Theo, who promised to pick him up in half an hour and made fun of him for his nonfunctional car. Hutch was making his way to the bathroom when the phone trilled.

Michael. Hutch slid his thumb across the screen. “Hey, Mike. You heading out?”

Michael had been assigned to watch the house overnight.

“I thought I might follow them to work. Just in case. What’s going on? I don’t buy the story about testing Kyle,” Michael said over the line.

Big Tag was slipping. “It’s probably coming from the bodyguard unit. You know Fisher is always trying new things out.”

“And when I ask Fisher about it, what do you think he’ll say?” Michael asked.

Hutch sighed. “Please don’t.”

“All right. This is one of those things I shouldn’t ask about so I won’t. But I don’t feel right tailing one of our own,” Michael admitted. “He left the house last night.”

Hutch stopped. “He turned my security system off?”

“He must have because I watched him go for a jog. That was all he did. He ran around the block for almost an hour, made a phone call and talked for about twenty minutes, and then slipped back in the house.”

Hutch fisted his hand, anger and fear curling in his gut. “I’m going to check the logs on the system. If he left us vulnerable, I’ll kill him myself.”

What the fuck had he been thinking? And who did he call at that time of night? It might be time to take a hard look at Kyle’s phone and computer and his presence on the web. He hadn’t because he rather thought Tag was being paranoid, but now he had to consider the fact that Kyle was putting Noelle in danger.

“You’re worried about him?” Michael asked. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m only trying to figure out how to handle this detail. I’m supposed to hand the reins over to Boomer this afternoon.”

Boomer wasn’t good at blending in, and sometimes he got distracted by food trucks. Or ice cream trucks. But he would be useful if Hutch decided to snipe Kyle. “I think you should bring in Jamal. He knows how to not be seen, and he won’t talk.”

For a six-and-a-half-foot heavily muscled Black dude, Jamal moved like a ghost, could oddly blend in when he needed to, and was absolutely one of the most solid guys McKay-Taggart had hired in the last couple of years.

“I’ll talk to him, and I’ll talk to Wade as well. We can watch Kyle for a few days, rotating shifts. Damn, I like him. I really like his brother. If he’s doing something he shouldn’t, Grace is going to be devastated,” Michael said with a long sigh.

“Hopefully he’s just a dude who likes to jog. He didn’t meet anyone?”

“I couldn’t follow him closely at that time of night,” Michael admitted. “Don’t you have a tracker on his phone? Give me access.”

He did. Hutch opened his laptop and did not like what he saw. “He must have a second cell because according to my report, he didn’t leave his room all night. Damn it. I do not want to tell Sean Taggart his stepson is doing shady shit.”

“Have we considered he’s an Agency plant? He was Navy. It would have been easy enough to recruit him, and they would look at him because of his ties to Big Tag.”

Well, it hadn’t taken Michael long to get there. It didn’t surprise Hutch since Michael used to be on the same CIA team he’d been on. They knew all the hallmarks of an undercover operative. “I hope that’s all it is. I hope he’s reporting back to the Agency and that’s the extent of it. But we need to know.”

“All right. I’ll follow them and then Jamal can take over this afternoon. I’ll see you at the office?”

“Yeah, I’m coming in with Theo.” Hutch pulled up his security system. His shower was going to be a quick one. “We can talk more there. I’ve got a tracker on Noelle’s car, but Kyle knows about it.”

“I’ll let Jamal know. See you in a couple of hours.” Michael hung up the phone.

Hutch set down beside his laptop and stared at the report on the screen. According to that report the system had been engaged all night with no disruptions. Either Kyle had found a way out without setting off the alarm or he had some skills he hadn’t mentioned when he hired on.

Had he hacked the system and changed the report? He hadn’t told Kyle the password to disarm it. He’d taken care of that himself. The system had been locked down tight when he’d gotten up this morning.

He would have to look into the reports but he could do that from the office. He could access his home server from there. A shower was necessary, and he needed to talk to Tag. Things felt like they were getting dangerous, and he didn’t want Noelle in the way.

He shut his laptop and started for the bathroom when he heard the doorbell ring. He considered ignoring it but caught a glimpse of who was standing on his porch through the half-open drapes.

He caught sight of a blue uniform. Police.

What had happened? He rushed to the door, a million bad thoughts going through his head.

“Officer?” Had something happened to Noelle? Had there been an accident? He wasn’t being reasonable, but he couldn’t in that moment.

So much of his life had been a tragedy. He couldn’t handle it if something happened to her. She was the one thing he needed. He knew it in that moment. He was in love with Noelle LaVigne, and it wasn’t going to go away. This feeling couldn’t be placated by sleeping with her a thousand times. She was in his heart, and she would be there forever.

“Greg Hutchins?” The officer stood in front of him, his partner close. His squad car was parked on the street.

“Yes, what’s happened?” Please let her be okay. He could handle anything if she was all right.

“Greg Hutchins, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent,” the big officer said.

Yeah, he hadn’t expected that at all.

 

* * * *

 

“Where exactly are you taking me? I want to talk to my lawyer.” Hutch was still in shock twenty minutes later as he was ushered through the hallways of the Jack Evans Police Headquarters. It wasn’t where he’d expected them to go. There was a district office far closer to his house, but they’d blown right past it and come to the main building downtown. If this was about what had happened with that asswipe Jeffrey, they should have gone to the nearest district to book him.

“Where you need to go,” the smaller of the two officers said.

And now that he thought about it, something was wrong with his arrest. He’d thought he was getting hauled in because he’d beaten the crap out of an overly privileged douchebag, but now he suspected something else was going on. “What exactly am I under arrest for?”

No one had mentioned that. They’d simply thrown handcuffs on him and hauled him out to the car. It was lucky for him his door locked automatically or his house and all its contents would have been vulnerable.

Was that what was going on here? Was he being drawn away so someone could attempt to get a look at his system?

“I think they’re calling it impeding a federal investigation,” a familiar voice said as they rounded the corner. “They got me as I was dropping off the oldest kids at the middle school. Tash and Kenzie got real upset, but Kala taped the whole thing on her phone and laughed her ass off. Do not have kids.”

Ian stood outside a door marked Conference Room, his hands cuffed. Unlike Hutch, someone had been nice to Tag and his hands were in front rather than behind his back. 

Still, someone was probably going to die. Big Tag had deep ties to DPD. The chief was a member of Sanctum.

The conference room door came open and another familiar face walked out. Chris Taylor was dressed in a suit this morning, his badge around his neck. He didn’t look like he’d slept much, but then he wouldn’t have if he’d actually worked a full shift at his “second” job. He glanced down at the cuffs and sighed. “Get those cuffs off them. Who the hell told you to bring in Ian Taggart in handcuffs?”

The officer standing near Ian immediately went to work. “It was not my idea, Detective. I realized who I was supposed to arrest and damn near crapped my pants. Luckily, the big guy was in a pretty good mood.”

“My arresting officer showed up with coffee and lemon donuts,” Ian said as the cuffs came off his wrists. “What did you get?”

“Potentially syphilis, since I don’t think anyone’s cleaned the back of that squad car in forty years.” Hutch winced as his arms were free to move again. It was so unfair. He hadn’t even gotten a cup of coffee this morning.

“Donuts?” Taylor asked.

The officer shrugged. “Everyone knows the big guy likes them, and I am hoping he understands I was merely following orders. The fed told us we had to arrest them and put them in handcuffs. She wanted to put the fear of God in them. I tried to tell her about Big Tag, but she did not get it. Hence the lemon donuts, and you should know I let him call his wife. Write me up if you want to but this whole assignment stinks.”

“What does my guy have to do with McKay-Taggart?” The officer who’d arrested Hutch put his cuffs back on his belt.

“He’s my cybersecurity expert,” Big Tag explained. “He’s the guy who your cybercrimes head calls when he needs help. Hutch, are you going to feel like helping the next time the lieutenant calls?”

It sucked that almost no one was scared of him. Tag got donuts and phone calls, and Hutch got a stain on his jeans that might never go away. “Definitely not, and I will mention why. I’m also feeling a little hack coming on. Maybe it’s a cough from whatever I picked up in that car, or maybe it’s the kind of thing that gets an officer’s name on a no-fly list.”

The officer held his hands up. “Man, I was following orders and I will clean the car.” He looked to the other officer. “Donuts? You’re an asshole, Jones.”

“I’m a motherfucking genius, since I know not to piss off the dudes who work with brass,” Jones replied. “You were trying to show off for the feds.”

The officers walked away, still bickering.

“Please don’t hack him, Mr. Hutchins. I’m sorry it went down this way, but you stepped in the middle of something big, and I can’t have you busting up a six-month multiagency investigation,” Taylor explained. “Come on in. We’ll do what we should have done the minute you walked into the building with Noelle LaVigne.”

Finally they would get a debrief.

It struck him forcibly that this meeting was him and Ian, and only him and Ian. He walked into the conference room and sat down at the table, leaning over to whisper Ian’s way. “Why didn’t they bring in Kyle?”

Ian’s jaw tightened. “Because I suspect they’re investigating him, too.”

Taylor sat down across from them. “I am truly sorry she decided to bring you in this way. You need to understand that DPD isn’t the lead in this investigation.”

A whole lot of things fell into place. “Cara is the fed, right? She’s got impeccable credentials. We even looked up her socials and they go back at least ten years.”

“The FBI knows how to put together a cover.” Cara moved from the back of the room. She wasn’t in the boho clothes she normally wore. She was in a power suit, her blonde hair in a neat bun. “And we know when all our hard work is about to get blown out of the water. Mr. Taggart, I’m Caressa Thompson. I’m with the Dallas office in the criminal investigative division, and I’ve been investigating Jessica Layne and Genedyne for over a year. How did you become involved with Noelle LaVigne? I have to assume Mr. Hutchins is working and not playing her for some reason.”

Tag looked his way. “She got through your cover? Did MaeBe fuck up?”

“Oh, Chris recognized him,” Cara explained. “The cover was actually quite good. If Chris hadn’t seen you before I would absolutely believe you’re just a guy Noelle brought from home.”

Chris nodded. “You gave a talk last year at a conference I went to. It was about how local police departments can use new facial recognition tech.”

Hutch frowned Tag’s way. “See, I told you I shouldn’t do that conference.”

Tag’s eyes rolled. “You wanted to sit at home and drink beer. Next time I’ll remember to send you in with a disguise. I’ll let my girls dress you up. With a haircut and some glitter no one will recognize you.”

“So I would like an answer to my question.” Cara seemed unfazed by Tag’s sarcasm. “How did you get involved with Noelle LaVigne?”

“I’d like to have not been dragged out of my house,” Hutch replied. “We can’t always get what we want.”

“Mr. Hutchins, I need to remind you that I don’t have to let you go at the end of this meeting,” Cara said with an impatient sigh. “You truly are impeding an investigation.”

“By protecting my client? I’m involved in this investigation because Noelle is a client of McKay-Taggart, and I think you had something to do with that.” He wasn’t a fool. “First of all, I need to remind you that I’m not some kid from a small town who’s going to buy your line of bullshit. You’re pissed because you’re the one who turned on my client’s monitoring system when I turned it off. You’ve been watching and listening to Ms. LaVigne, and you better hope that you have a warrant authorizing it because I intend to challenge it.”

Cara’s face flushed slightly, proving she wasn’t as cold as she wanted him to think. “Ms. LaVigne is part of an important investigation.”

“She better be because I suspect you’re the one who got on her system and downloaded confidential files.” His initial confusion was rapidly becoming anger. “You stripped her of her privacy, and you’re potentially endangering her life’s work. You know damn well she’s not involved in whatever you’re investigating Jessica Layne for. You’re using an innocent young woman and placing her in danger without even giving her a warning about it. I find your investigation dangerous and cynical, and if you push me, I’ll talk about it publicly.”

“Hutch,” Tag began.

Hutch shook his head. “No. She wants to arrest me? I’ll show her how I can really impede an investigation. You think I haven’t done it before?”

“I am well aware of your arrest record, Mr. Hutchins,” Cara shot back.

“Then you’re aware that he was a kid who did the right thing and got his ass thrown in juvie for it.” Tag leaned forward, his eyes narrowing in that way that let Hutch know he was ready for a fight. “He went to juvie because the DA’s office refused to do their job.”

“I don’t know any of this,” Chris complained. “Juvenile records are supposed to be sealed. What don’t I know and how will it affect this investigation? We can’t have a criminal close to such an important player.”

Cara softened slightly and looked Hutch’s way. “He’s not a criminal. He was a kid who broke the law to try to do the right thing. A girl at his high school…she went to a college party and got drunk and some football players took advantage.”

“The word you’re looking for is rape.” He wouldn’t sugarcoat it, and he’d been fucking happy to set his ass in jail. “They taped the whole thing, and then their parents worked with the DA to cover it up. I was in a smaller town then, and no one wanted to lose the conference championship. So I hacked the system and I sent that tape to a couple of reporters.”

“Hutch did more time than the football players,” Ian explained.

“Yeah, but they didn’t play again, and their names are still out there.” He would circulate the story every few years. Every time one of those fuckers thought it was gone. “I was sixteen and I barely knew that girl. What do you think I’ll do for a woman I care about?”

“Your prior arrest doesn’t concern me or my bosses. But I do have something that does concern me.” Cara’s spine straightened and she leaned toward Ian. “Do you know that your…what do you call them…your operative is sleeping with the client?”

Ian chuckled. “Yeah, if I fired them all for that I wouldn’t have any employees. It’s kind of a perk of hiring my firm. McKay-Taggart. Serving your security needs and getting you off. It’s our new slogan.”

Hutch couldn’t help himself. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand it was hypocrisy. “Does your boss know you’re sleeping with the locals? Or was that scene in the lobby for show?”

Ian was the one sitting up straighter now. The boss loved some gossip. “The detective’s doing the fed?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hutch said under his breath. “Blew their cover wide open last night.”

Cara looked like she was ready to breathe fire.

Chris put a hand on her arm. “Don’t. You know he’s right and that’s why you’re angry.” He looked Hutch’s way. “Special Agent Thompson and I used to be engaged. We broke it off two years ago when she joined the FBI. Working on this assignment together brought back certain feelings, and we allowed them to cloud our judgment last night. If we’d had our heads in the game, this wouldn’t have happened. We would have known to keep you in the lobby until that light went off. It takes about a half an hour to cycle on that system, right? The light was still on when you got up to the apartment. That’s why you packed her up and left.”

“Yes. I assume you’re the ones who turned it on, and you did last night because you knew we would be late.” He remembered Cara specifically asking about that night. “She thinks you’re her friend, you know.”

Cara seemed to soften slightly. “I am. At least I hope I am. She’s involved in something criminal, and she doesn’t know it. Or I could be wrong and she’s a big part of it. It’s precisely why I can’t tell her I’m with the FBI. We’re at a delicate time, and I’ve got to figure out how to handle this.”

“What exactly are you investigating? The death of Madison Wallace?” He wanted to know what concerned the feds most.

“I was investigating Layne and her company before Madison Wallace was killed,” Cara explained. “She’s not the first mysterious death around Jessica Layne.”

“You’re talking about her business partner?” Ian asked.

Cara nodded. “And last year a business rival of hers died in a mysterious car accident. They were fighting over rights to patent a process concerning a new leap forward in eye tracking tech. Genedyne’s case was considered the weaker of the two. There have been rumors for years that what Layne really does is bet on tech. She decides something is going to be big, and by either corporate espionage or clever trickery, she forces a legal fight for the patent. In this case, she was going up against a much smaller firm, and when the lead developer died, the firm’s investment cash dried up.”

“Hence, they were unable to fight the legal battle,” Chris continued, “and Genedyne won the patent. The investors quickly found their way to Jessica Layne. There’s a pattern of what I would consider fraudulent use of the legal system to better her company.”

“I haven’t heard anything about new eye tracking tech.” Hutch kept up with everything that was new in the industry. He oftentimes collaborated with Adam Miles on how to perfect facial recognition methods. Eye tracking was in its infancy, and like many new high-tech things, had its start in video games. But the uses were wide and varying.

“That’s because she hasn’t used the patent yet,” Cara explained. “She’s sitting on it, using it to gain capital, but we’ve seen no attempts to actually bring it to market. It’s one of the reasons I need to look at her financials. There are other reasons. I believe she might be working with some other tech firms to steal ideas, patents, even actual money from smaller firms. If I can prove that they’re working together, I can charge them with a number of crimes. I can also force a wider investigation into what I think is collusion amongst a group of tech firms.”

“I don’t see how you could possibly think Noelle is involved in that,” Hutch replied.

“I don’t know that she is. I know she seems perfectly innocent, but there were files on her system that make me worry.” Cara sat back. “And that’s all I can tell you right now. I have decisions to make. If you were who you said you were, it would be simple since I would let things play out. But you aren’t, and I have the added complication of your partner.”

Oh, now they were getting somewhere. “What’s your problem with Kyle?”

Cara looked back to Ian. “It’s not something I’m willing to discuss with the man he considers his uncle.”

“I know everything you know, probably more.” All of the sarcasm had left Ian’s tone. “I’m concerned about Kyle and his previous attachments, both professional and personal, and I’m definitely worried about the ones he refuses to talk about. So why don’t we cut to the chase. You need to explain what you want from us or let us go. I’ll let you in on a secret. The officer who helpfully allowed me to use my phone doesn’t realize what a paranoid bastard I am. I have protocols in place. I didn’t call my Charlie. I called my lawyer, and he should be here…”

There was a knock on the door that proved Big Tag had impeccable timing. Chris went to open it. He stared a hole through Cara when he looked back. “Mitchell Bradford is here, and my chief is, too. The lawyer said something about the DA being on speed dial.”

Ah, Maia Brighton, the gift that kept giving, even if it sometimes bit a man on the ass. Literally. She was the duly elected Dallas district attorney and a long time…associate of Tag’s. He wouldn’t call them friends, but Maia was part of the community and would close ranks if she had to.

Tag grinned. “You gotta love a good lawyer. Mitch will have called my Charlie, and she’ll be down here soon. You want to let me give her a ring to tell her to pick up some breakfast for Hutch on the way? We can still make this friendly. It’s been a while since I was in handcuffs, and honestly, it’s good to keep the kiddos guessing about whether their dad is a good guy or a bad guy. Keeps ’em on their toes. So you can have Charlie come in as a helpful partner or as a raging bitch whose man has been done wrong. I know which way I’d go. Also, I suspect you’re going to need Hutch to cooperate or you’ll both be off this case, and he honestly does think better when he’s not hungry.”

Cara stood and walked to the back of the conference room, Chris following behind her. They started in on a whispered discussion.

Big Tag sat back. “It’s not a bad day. I’m going to get donuts and a breakfast sandwich. Charlie lets me off the cholesterol leash anytime I get arrested. I should do it more often. I haven’t had a burger in a while. Hey, you know if we keep them talking, we could get lunch out of this.”

Hutch frowned his way. “Noelle is in trouble. I don’t know that I want Kyle around her. He snuck through my security system last night, and Michael says he called someone early in the morning. From a burner phone.”

Ian groaned and let his head fall back. “Damn it. What has Michael figured out?”

“Pretty much everything we suspect,” Hutch admitted. “He thinks he worked for the Agency and he might be reporting back to them. You know you shut Drake down hard after that last mission.”

It hadn’t been a mission so much as survival. Some of the team had been forced to put down a rogue CIA operative named Levi Green, and it had caused a wide rift between Tag and a man named Drake, who served as a sort of liaison between McKay-Taggart and the Agency. Drake seemed to be a good man, but he was a company man first and foremost, and that might mean using Big Tag’s nephew to spy on him. It wouldn’t be the first time the CIA had planted an operative in the office.

“Well, I should have suspected that, but Michael will keep his mouth shut,” Ian replied. “We need to make a big decision, Hutch. I think they’re about to ask you to work for them.”

“I work for you, and I’m not going to do anything that might put Noelle in danger. I won’t cross that line. Not even for you.”

A ghost of a smile hit Ian’s face. “Then Charlie did good. But Hutch, if they have even a sliver of evidence against Noelle, they’ll have leverage. We can blow their investigation up and then Noelle likely loses her job and perhaps her reputation, depending on how bitter the feds want to be. Her boss won’t help her. She’ll probably end up getting sued, and she doesn’t have the money to fight Layne in court. Or you can step in and do the job they were setting her up to do.”

His gut clenched as the truth hit him. They’d always been ready to use Noelle. They’d simply been looking for the leverage to force her to do it. “They want someone to hack Genedyne’s systems.”

“Of course they do,” Ian replied. “So this is your call. You want to blow it up, let’s do it. You want to try to give Noelle as much cover as possible by making a deal with the feds, we can do that, too. It’s up to you.”

“What about Kyle?”

“Kyle is my problem,” Ian replied. “And I have to figure out how much time I have to solve it before I’m the one who has to blow up my brother’s whole world.”

Noelle wanted to work late tonight. Kyle would be working late, too, because Jessica Layne had a date. If he did his job properly, he could have Noelle out of this in a matter of a couple of hours. “I want it in writing that if I do this, they won’t prosecute Noelle for anything they find.”

He knew she wasn’t guilty, but a good prosecutor could twist things to suit the investigation. He wanted Noelle out of this.

Cara stepped back to the table. “All right. I’m ready to lay everything on the line.”

Chris held her chair out, a seemingly habitual move. Hutch didn’t miss the way the detective glanced down at her as he moved to his own seat. “I’ve convinced her you’re trustworthy. Please don’t make me a liar.”

The door came open and Mitch Bradford strode in, a fierce frown on his face as he pointed at the detective and special agent. “I’m going to have both of your freaking badges. You arrested my client falsely and in front of his teenaged daughters’ school? I’m going to sue the fuck out of this department and the two of you personally.”

“Mitch, don’t have a heart attack.” Tag had his cell in his hand. “We’re making a deal to keep Noelle safe. You hungry?”

Mitch set his briefcase on the table. “Noelle? My sister-in-law’s stepdaughter? What the hell is Noelle into?”

“Nothing, but our friends here dragged her into some fairly wretched business,” Hutch complained. “So I’m going to get her out. And tell Charlotte I need something sweet.”

He did think better when he wasn’t hungry.

Tag leaned over and whispered. “Dude, you should have taken a shower. You smell like sex.”

He groaned and sat back as Mitch started to do his thing and prayed Noelle would forgive him for what he was about to do.