Mission: Impossible to Deny (The Impossible Mission Romantic Suspense Series Book 7), Jacki Delecki [polar express read aloud .TXT] 📗

sure they returned to a professional relationship before they got in deeper with the investigation. She hated that this trip had become one shock after another for Reeves. He was a good man and didn’t deserve to have landed here. The aftermath of a brief hookup felt irrelevant when Reeves had to deal with so much.

“What are the chances that the detective’s CI was wrong about Charlie?” He didn’t look at her but remained fixed, staring through the front window.

He had dark circles under his eyes, and his beard was already getting stubbly despite shaving this morning. And even drained and exhausted, he still was able to make her stomach flutter. Her resolve to get back to platonic had evaporated the moment he came out of the bedroom for their flight. With his thick hair brushed back, emphasizing his prominent cheekbones, looking incredible in a tailored black suit that showcased his broad shoulders, he looked every inch the wealthy and sophisticated man that he was … and she was neither wealthy nor sophisticated. She sent an imaginary memo to herself. Not the man for you, no matter how gorgeous and wonderful.

“Detective Barley was pretty confident that Charlie is alive and working with the Sureños. Do you believe him?”

She wanted him to talk. Let it all out. Nothing about this was easy. She wanted to comfort him, but it would send the wrong message. He was an asset. And she had crossed the line with him. She owed him an apology.

“Detective Barley is solid and seasoned. And his faith in his CI working undercover in the Sureños gang seemed deserved.” He shifted in the seat and stretched his long legs. “Does this mean that Tex had learned that Charlie was alive?”

Darcy tracked the way the fabric hugged his lean, muscular thighs.

“It’s all too much to take in. Now, Charlie is alive, and Tex is dead. I don’t have a clue about what’s going on,” Reeves said.

She twisted to face him. “You’ve been hit with a lot in the last twenty-four hours. And we don’t have any definitive proof that Charlie’s alive. But if Charlie got in too deep with drugs, he might have staged his death to avoid a drug deal gone wrong. He couldn’t let whoever was after him find out he was alive.”

“Why stage his death if he’s working for the drug dealers? The Sureños are a Mexican drug gang that associates with the Sinaloa Cartel. You heard the same explanation from Detective Barley. His CI reported Charlie because he overheard one of the gang members say the white dude was ‘loco’ because he wrecked his Lamborghini ride. He sold his tech skills for drugs or money. It must be for drugs. He didn’t need money.”

“He might have been forced to work for the Sureños to pay off his debt to them. With a drug habit, he could have run through his money. Did he have a drug problem in college?”

“No. But once we got our first big payout, he disappeared. He might have started self-medicating to either belong to the wealthy, cocaine-snorting Silicon Valley crowd or to escape the isolation.”

“Isolation?”

“Sure. There aren’t many people who can understand the pressures of being ‘gifted.’ Only others with the same talents, and they aren’t always the most socially engaging kind of people. And you know what kids are like if you don’t fit in? Adults aren’t any different.”

She did. But being a genius versus having big breasts didn’t seem like a comparable situation.

The only girlfriends she had in school were the ones who wanted to get to her brothers. Girls came over to her house but not because of a desire to be her friend. She was the chubby girl with big breasts who hid under oversized sweaters.

And the boys only saw her for one portion of her anatomy. If she didn’t have tough-ass older brothers who protected her and cued her into the score, she might not have survived middle and high school.

Had Reeves been bullied in school? He was so confident. Definitely attractive, he must have had tons of friends. Richard Dean liked and respected him. And so did Sophie Dean. She could see Dean wanting Reeves as his son-in-law even if she was with Finn.

“If Charlie works for the cartel, he could have been the one to engineer the ransomware attack on the embassies. He could easily hack the game’s firewalls. But why does the Mexican cartel want CIA information in Africa?”

“That’s what we have to find out. I’ll get my team to start looking for Charlie. They’ll run face rec to see if we can catch him in an airport or in public. He might have altered his face to avoid detection. He’ll have a new identity. And he wouldn’t risk making contact with his old connections. But we’ll find him.”

Now was the time to apologize, with them sharing a common goal. It was on her to set their relationship straight. She had planned to do it on the one-hour flight. Just enough time to set the boundaries and move on to business. They needed to work as a team, not fight over stupid details like who would drive the rental as they had when they arrived in Palo Alto. Reeves conceded when she pointed out that she had defensive and evasive driving skills.

“Before we meet with your professor, I need to apologize. I’m sorry I went off last night.” Her face flushed with her choice of words. “I was really angry about the whole alarm thing.” She didn’t think it was necessary to admit that she believed he had set the alarm because he assumed they’d be having hot sex all night. She would not regret that they hadn’t.

“But in the end, it was a good thing. I’m here on assignment, and if there had been a real threat, I was frolicking in the pool and not doing my job.”

“Your job isn’t to protect me. So, I don’t see what the problem is.”

“The problem is that I’m