“Are you with Callan?”
The accusation hung in the air. Mack watched her decide whether to lie. She met his eyes across the table. “Yes.”
Blake’s voice changed. Harder now, the smooth veneer cracking. “Alyssa, for God’s sake, he’s using you. You know that, right? This is about that mission he botched. He still wants to destroy me, and you’re the way he does it.”
Mack’s jaw tightened until his teeth ached. He wrote: He’s lying.
“Mack saved my life,” Alyssa said, and Mack heard something in her voice he’d never heard when she talked to Blake—steel. “You were in a room with men who put a bounty on me. They killed Jenna, Blake! Don’t talk to me about who’s using who.”
Good. Mack gave her a nod. Don’t let him spin this.
Blake immediately changed tactics. He switched to the older brother voice—the protective one. “Listen to me very carefully—whatever Mack is telling you, whatever the FBI is telling you, stay out of this. Don’t give them anything. This is bigger than you understand, and if you get in the middle of it, I can’t protect you.”
Alyssa reared back. “Are you threatening me?”
“I’m trying to save your life.” Frustration and anger coated the words. “If you cooperate with the FBI, if you testify—Alyssa, I won’t be able to keep you safe. Do you understand?”
Mack wrote: He can’t keep you safe anyway.
She read it. Glanced up at him. She pressed her lips together, determination in her eyes when she shifted her focus back to the phone. “Listen, Blake. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but don’t tell me what to do.”
He swore under his breath. “Stay out of my business, Alyssa. I mean it. Don’t make me choose between you and?—”
He stopped. Didn’t finish the sentence. The silence on the other end stretched for three seconds, maybe four.
Then the line went dead.
CHAPTER SIX
The color drained from Alyssa’s face. She stared at the phone like it was something that had just bitten her, something she didn’t recognize.
“He hung up on me,” she said, voice full of shock.
Mack set the pencil down and took the phone. “You were calling him on his bullshit. He never liked that.” He took her phone and crushed it under his boot.
“Hey,” she cried.
“I can’t have him tracing this. I should’ve destroyed it last night.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “You owe me a phone.”
“Your life is more important.”
She made an irritated noise but relented and began pacing. Frustration was evident in every step. “He didn’t call to check on me. He called to warn me off. To tell me to stay quiet. To protect himself.”
What could he say? “He did.”
She repeated Blake’s unfinished sentence, testing the words. “‘Don’t make me choose between you and…’ Between me and what, Mack? The cartel? His life? His freedom? What was he going to say?”
“All of the above.” Mack crossed his arms. “He’s in deep with them if he was at the meeting. My guess is, he’s the one who set it up. If you testify, if you confirm he was in that meeting, you’re putting him in the crosshairs.”
“So he wants me to hide. Stay quiet.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Protect him.”
He could see her chewing it over in her mind. He could guess what arguments she was having with herself.
He could lie to save her feelings, but he’d always been honest with her. He wasn’t going to skirt the truth now. “That’s what he’s counting on, because that’s what you’ve always done, isn’t it?”
She pierced him with a look, but he saw something shift behind her eyes. Some fundamental understanding rearranging itself. “You still want me to believe you over him. That he lied about that mission. About what happened to David Morrison.”