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Kate watched a host of emotions play across Jonas's face, none of them nice. The anger and frustration of the man she'd brought in from the storm had resurfaced with a vengeance, and she realized just how little she really knew about him.
How little she wanted to know.
Hell.
She tugged the elastic from her hair and slid it into the pouch at her waist, then ruffled her curls into a semblance of order. In all honesty, her avoidance of Jonas this week hadn't been entirely due to unruly hormones. Part of it had been simple self-preservation. A certainty that she hadn’t wanted to learn more about him or his story or the mess he'd landed himself in. And now they were here.
"You'll have to come with me,” Jonas announced.
Kate couldn’t help but bristle at the peremptory tone. “Excuse me?”
“Just until I can find somewhere safe to stash you," he added, as if she hadn’t spoken.
"You're not stashing me anywhere."
He scowled back. "Well, I'm sure as hell not taking you with me. It's too—"
"Dangerous," she interrupted. "Yes, you've told me. And I've told you: I'm not some fragile piece of pottery that needs to be wrapped up and stored away somewhere. I'm a cop, Jonas, and a damned good one at that."
Refusal darkened his expression—as if it needed darkening—and she sighed, waving away the words she saw forming on his lips.
"Enough," she said. "I get that you don't want help. Hell, I don’t particularly want to give you help. But if you're right about me being a target now that your friends have shown up, then I'm up to my ass in this—whether either of us likes it or not—and that changes things."
She caught the waiter’s eye and held up her mug for a refill. He headed in their direction. She turned her attention back to a tight-lipped, simmering Jonas.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” he hedged.
“Then tell me.”
“Damn it, Kate...” He trailed off, cradling his head in his hands, elbows resting on the table.
The waiter refilled both their mugs and departed. Kate regarded Jonas’s bent head. Was it really that hard for this man to accept help? As if he heard the thought, he raised his head and met her gaze, his own diamond hard.
“Fine,” he said. “You want the story? Here it is. Six months ago, I was assigned to infiltrate a weapons ring in New Jersey. We'd received intel that a small-time arms dealer, Joseph Quinlan, had a new client in the works, someone with a lot of money, and that his business would be growing exponentially as a result. My usual handler had been sidelined with an injury, so Lewis and Ramirez were assigned to work with me. Once I had Quinlan cold, they were responsible for—"
"I know how a takedown works."
"Right. Well, when it came time for the buy, the only ones who showed were Quinlan, me and my two partners." Jonas’s mouth twisted. "There was no buyer, no money, and no backup. Just us. Lewis and Ramirez shot Quinlan first, then me."
“What about the money they said you took?”
“As fictional as the buyer, I’m guessing.”
“Wait.” Kate frowned. “You think Lewis and Ramirez set up both you and Quinlan? But why?"
"My guess? Me, because I was nosing around too much. Quinlan, because he was bad for business."
Her jaw dropped. Cops on the take was one thing, but what Jonas suggested? Holy shit. “You think they’re dealing,” she said. “Agents in the ATF.”
“Yes. And not just them.” Jonas took a swig of coffee and set down the mug again, staring into it. "About eight months ago, I started digging into some old files at the Bureau in my spare time. One of my deals had gone sour at the last minute a few weeks before—something I thought I'd tied up tight. Not only did the perp come out squeaky clean at the takedown, but the shipment never surfaced again. Anywhere. It was the third time it had happened since I transferred to the New Jersey bureau."
His gaze returned to hers. "I'm not a careless man, Kate. Before Jersey—in fourteen years with the Bureau—I'd screwed up exactly once. I found it hard to believe I'd become that sloppy almost overnight. Then, when I started digging, I found a lot of deals in Jersey had a tendency to go bad."
"Hell," she breathed. "You think someone higher up is involved?"
"I think it's possible. That's why I haven't called in. I don't know who I can call."
Kate sat back, digesting the impact of his words. Their enormity. Her brain churned. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized, she’d been considering the possibility that Jonas would turn himself in to the RCMP after all. She’d been prepared to guarantee his safety if he did, certain she could ensure he was handed over to the custody of someone other than Lewis and Ramirez. Someone who could carry out an investigation, who would make sure Jonas stayed alive for a fair trial. But this...this changed everything.
Regardless of Jonas's story, the force would have no choice but to turn him over to the ATF, because refusal to do so would do untold damage to the working relationship between the two agencies—not to mention cause serious political waves. And if Jonas was right about having stumbled into a whole nest of dirty cops, then it wouldn't matter which agents took actual custody of him. It would just be a matter of time before some kind of "accident" resulted in his death. Guaranteed.
And if he died, any loose ends would die with him.
Kate tucked her hands under the table, clenching them in her lap. Hell, hell, hell. There really was no way to extricate herself from this, was there? For better or worse, until this whole mess was sorted out, her future had just become inextricably linked with Jonas Burke's.
And her career was about to be shot all to hell in the process.
God. Laura was going to kill her for this. If Kate lived long enough.
She swallowed against the lump in her chest and tried to think past the paralysis of panic. They needed a plan. They. Jonas and her. Together for the foreseeable future. She forced herself to take a long, slow, controlled breath.
"All right, then," she said. "I guess we'd better figure out what we're doing. I assume you have proof of all this?"
"Not here, I don’t."
Of course. Any evidence that existed would be in New Jersey, which was about as accessible as the Antarctic at the moment, given that Jonas had no passport or ID with which to make it past the border guards. Kate drummed fingertips on the tabletop. There was no way around it. They were going to have to bring someone else in on this. Someone they could trust. Someone who would trust them.
Jonas so wasn't going to like this.
She stood abruptly and held out a hand across the table, palm up. "I need a quarter."
Blue eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"So I can get us across the border."
"How—"
"Please don't ask," she said, "because I really don't want to fight with you. Just...trust me."
His expression went flat. Unreadable. She suspected it had been a very long time since he'd trusted anyone. Was he even capable? She waited.
The bell over the door of the restaurant tinkled. A second later, a cold draft hit the back of Kate's legs and her bare arms. The hand she'd extended wobbled as she shivered, and a shadow crossed Jonas's eyes. His jaw like concrete, he dug out one of the coins she'd given him earlier from his pocket and placed it, warm from the heat of his body, in her palm. His fingers closed over hers.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry you've gotten messed up in this, and I'm sorry I don't know how to get you out of it."
"Me, too," she said. "But let's remember that it's not your fault, shall we? I could have turned you in anywhere along the line, Jonas, including now. My decisions put me here, not yours."
She tugged her fingers free of his, resisted—only just—the urge to smooth away the scowl between his brows, and headed for the pay phone at the back of the restaurant.