Page 51 of Reclaimed

“And now you're paying for the privilege of my company.”

I shake my head. “I’m not paying it.”

“Fine,” he says, throwing his hands up in mock surrender. “Don’t pay me, don’t answer my question, be a fucking tool.”

He slumps back in his seat, a silence settling between us as his attention returns to his phone.

The reprieve lasts all of thirty seconds.

“C’mon, bro,” he groans, the corner of his mouth curling into a smirk. “First, you have me get you access to her Registry file, then the Enforcer in charge of her unit gets killed under mysterious circumstances. And you’ve been binge watching the live feed of her cell.”

I cut him a glare, flexing my grip on the steering wheel as my eyes return to the road.

“Yeah,” he snorts. “I built the ghost door, of course I monitor the traffic. Besides, I wanted to make sure you didn’t get yourself into any shit, which clearly, you have.”

I don’t reply. There’s no point in arguing when he already knows.

I didn’t watch that often, did I?

Most of the time, I only checked in for a few minutes, made sure she was still there, then went back to doing whatever I was before my attention wandered.

Somehow, it always wandered back.

“So c’mon,” Slade presses, reclining back in his seat and kicking a boot up onto the dash. “Let’s hear it.”

“Get your fucking foot down.”

With an exaggerated sigh, he drops it back to the floor. “Better?”

My gaze stays fixed on the road, jaw working as I consider how much to share. Slade already knows something’s off. Not telling him will just give him motivation to keep digging… or tagging along and annoying the piss out of me.

“You remember the night I got this scar?” I ask, my fingers lifting from the wheel to trace the raised skin over my left eye.

He huffs a laugh. “Thought you didn’t remember Austin Miller?”

I exhale a slow breath. “Not him,” I grumble. “Her.”

Slade’s brow furrows. “Who?”

“The Asset he shot. The reason Miller tried to fucking blind me to cover his own ass.” I shift my grip on the steering wheel. “When you gave me access to that file last week, I started digging through it. And what I found…” I trail off, shaking my head.

There are coincidences, and then there’s the fucking cruel twist of fate that put Jersey in my path.

Again.

“I found a report from the night she was brought in by The Registry,” I murmur. “She arrived with a gunshot wound to her lower abdomen, on the same fucking night that shit went down with Miller.”

Slade goes rigid beside me, sucking in a breath through his teeth. “Wait, are you saying…?”

I jerk a nod.

“Shit.” He slumps back against the passenger seat again. “Well, at least this is finally starting to make sense.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You feel guilty.”

“No,” I growl.