Maximus Read online

  “Listen,” he sighed. “I wouldn’t be telling you to move your boys unless this was serious. I have two kids of my own. I know how important stability is.” Tex is a dad? Wow. That kind of explains some of why he helped my kids. “Trust me.”

  His last two words hung in the air—trust me—I didn’t trust anyone.

  I’d blindly trusted two men in my life, both had fucked me over. One royally. The other had screwed me over in a way that I’d never forget—my boys would never forget.

  “Tex, I hate to sound like a broken record, but—”

  “There’s a hit out on you, Eva.”

  Oh, fuck.

  It was questionable which one of us, Max or me, tensed more. It looked like every muscle in his body had frozen, but every cell in mine burned.

  “Wh-what?” I stammered.

  “Who put out the hit?” Max inquired angrily.

  “I’m still working on finding who put out the contract. The payout is low so there weren’t that many bites. But someone finally put in a bid, it was accepted this morning. You have a hitman-for-hire now hunting Eva.”

  “Um… are you sure? You could be wrong, right?”

  Dear God, I sounded like an idiot but my mind was buzzing. A hitman?

  “Wish I were, Eva, but I’m not wrong.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” I blurted out. “I swear it.”

  Max’s glacial stare was still watchful, but now there was a sliver of pity.

  God. I didn’t want his pity. I didn’t want anyone’s. I just wanted to be left alone me and my boys.

  “The boys!”

  “The contract is for one hit—you,” Tex gently told me.

  “But just like before, they’ll use my boys, they’ll hurt—”

  “Calm down, Eva,” Max snapped.

  “Don’t you tell me to calm down. My boys are in danger—again. Because of me.”

  I was up for the worst mother of the year. Fuck that, worst mother in history. Guilt flowed through my body and fear pounded in my chest.

  Not my boys—not again. They’d been through enough because of me.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you or them,” Max vowed. “Tex, how much time do you think we have?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that. I tracked the IP to Idaho, but that means nothing. Though with the low payout, I doubt we’re dealing with a professional.”

  Low payout, oh my God. I’m not even worth the cost of a professional.

  “Keep digging and call us back,” Max told Tex.

  “Stay safe.”

  Tex disconnected and Max set his phone down and studied me. Not that he hadn’t been focusing on me through the conversation, but now he seemed to be working something out in his mind.

  “You’re gonna take a vacation.”

  “What?”

  “That’s how we’re gonna play this with the boys.”

  My boys!

  “I need to go get them from daycare—”

  “We will. But first, we need to have a plan.”

  “I can’t go on vacation. My job.”

  My eyes drifted closed, I sounded like a nitwit, I knew it. But I’d just gotten my life back on track. Liam and Elijah were finally starting to trust me again, they were relaxed, the nightmares were subsiding—now this.

  On the run once more.

  “Call your boss and tell her that one of the boys is sick. You’ll need to come up with something that will keep you out of work awhile. Tonsillitis. Chicken pox.”

  Do kids even get chicken pox these days?

  “Great. Back to lying,” I huffed. “Deceiving the people around me who trust me. Of course. That’s what I do, right? What I’m good at. Lying and running. Putting my kids in danger. Making stupid decisions.”

  “Eva, you can stand here feeling sorry for yourself or you can help come up with a way to introduce me to your kids in a way that won’t hurt them when this is over and I disappear. I’m guessing you don’t want to tell them the truth, which means we need a plan. Lying to your boss is necessary if you want to keep the job. Or you can call her and quit. That choice is yours.”

  Pain sliced like a thousand tiny blades. Was that what I was doing, feeling sorry for myself? Being the selfish bitch I’ve always been?

  I just wanted to be a good person. My whole life had been a series of uncontrollable events. I left home at fifteen thinking I was saving myself and instead I found how naïve I really was. When I was free of that nightmare, I learned how one wrong choice could snowball until you were so buried you couldn’t dig your way out.

  Nothing had ever been in my control.

  “I’d prefer to quit,” I told Max.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call my boss and tell her I have an emergency and I need a week off. She’ll either approve the time or I’ll quit. I’m not lying and saying my kid’s sick. Lulu has been kind to me. She knows I’m a single mom and she’s worked my schedule around daycare. I’m not repaying that with lies. After what happened… never mind, it doesn’t matter. But I’m telling Lulu as much of the truth as I can. I have an emergency and I need time off.”

  Max’s brow pinched and cold eyes took me in.

  “Whatever you feel you need to do. What about your boys?”

  “I don’t want them to see you.”

  “Impossible. I need to be close.”

  “They’ve—”

  “Tonight I’ll stay in my car, out front. I’ll be able to keep an eye on you and they won’t see me. You can tell them you’re going on vacation. Tomorrow we leave, I’ll follow you, and when we stop for the night, I’ll get the room next to yours. But then we need to find a way to introduce me to them.”

  My frustration mounted. I’d have to lie to my kids again. Introduce Liam to another man, and have my son wonder if I’d brought another asshole criminal into our lives. If he’d be hurt again.

  “And who should I say you are?”

  “Fuck, Eva. I don’t know. Tell them I’m your friend. I get it, you’re trying to atone and make up for the past to your kids. But you don’t have a choice. Either you tell your boys you’re going on vacation and I’m a friend that you happened to run into and you let me into their lives, or you make my job harder running the risk of a fucking hitman taking you out. Then what? Where do your kids go then? Who will protect them if you’re dead?”

  “I never have a fucking choice,” I whispered as my insides twisted. “Where are we going on vacation?”

  Max picked up his phone. “What do Liam and Elijah like?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Do they like the beach? Amusement parks? Airplanes?”

  “Liam is obsessed with trains, so Elijah is, too. But I still don’t understand why you’re asking.”

  “You don’t want to lie to them but you cannot tell them the truth. So you are going on vacation, just with a bodyguard.”

  Max started tapping on his phone and tears pricked my eyes.

  “Th-thank you,” I sputtered.

  “You’re welcome. There’s a museum in Tifton, Georgia. It looks like if we stay on 75 north, we’ll run into others. We’ll stay on the move, you and the boys will be safe, and Tex and my team can track down who put out the contract.”

  “And the hitman?”

  “That’s what I’m for—to protect you. But hopefully, he’ll never get close. Like Tex said, the payout is low, a professional would pass. Which means we’re dealing with an idiot with no formal training.”

  “Right.”

  “I can and will keep you safe,” Max told me. “Tex likes you, he wouldn’t have sent me if he didn’t trust I was good at my job.”

  “Tex doesn’t like me. I tried to kill his friend and Zoey. Tex feels sorry for me, but more than that, he wanted to save my boys. Which was confusing why he’d care, but now that I know he’s a husband and father, it makes more sense.”

  “Tex would’ve done whatever he needed to do to help Liam and Elija
h—father or not—that’s just Tex.”

  I’d have to take Max’s word for it, I didn’t know Tex the way he did. The man was a mystery to me. My guardian angel—via cell phone.

  “Thanks again for—”

  “Don’t mention it. My job is to keep you safe. But to do that, I need your cooperation. If stopping at some museums assuages some of your guilt and makes you compliant, then it’s worth it. But I need you to understand, in the future we won’t have time for compromise. When I tell you something, you need to follow directions. And for the love of Christ, pay attention to what’s going on around you. Head up. Focused. Alert. I’ll be there, but there are three of you and one of me. We have to work together to keep the boys safe.”

  Work together to keep the boys safe…the concept was foreign to me.

  Liam didn’t remember his father—the guy had taken off before he was born. But Liam and Elijah both remembered Jay. And my ex-husband certainly never did anything to keep them safe.

  Chapter 4

  “Seriously, brother, you slept in the car?” Brooks chuckled.

  I hadn’t slept. I’d sat up all damn night and watched Eva’s house, where she and her boys slept. I’d done hourly patrols around the property making sure they were secure. And when I wasn’t doing that, I’d been thinking. Now we were driving up 75, me in my SUV following Eva’s car, her boys totally unaware of my presence.

  “We’re headed to Tifton, Georgia,” I said instead of confirming what I’d just explained to him. “I need you to find us a hotel. Two rooms with an adjoining door.”

  “Copy that.”

  “And tonight when we get to the hotel, we’ll go over our route. I’m thinking of staying on 75. There are about five more museums we can hit.”

  “Why the hell aren’t you just bringing her up here? Zane secured a safehouse.”

  Now that was the million dollar question, the one I’d pondered for hours last night.

  Because she’s trying her best to be a good mother.

  A safehouse was the easiest and smartest choice, but I couldn’t force her to do it. I mean, physically I could, but the raw determination I saw when she told me she wasn’t going to lie to her boss or her boys, that hit me square in the gut. I’d expected the lies to roll off her tongue easily. I’d expected her to not care that she was being dishonest with her boss—people call out sick when they’re really not all of the time. But Eva had been adamant she wouldn’t do it.

  “Because she has two boys. And I’m sure you’ve read the report from Tex so you know what they’ve been through. Eva doesn’t want them scared again. This way, the kids get a vacation, and they’ll have no clue they’re really on the run.”

  “It’s unlike you to care what the client thinks.”

  I remained silent because there was nothing to say. Brooks was correct. In the past, I’d never allowed a client to dictate how I was going to protect them. It was my way, period.

  “Fine,” Brooks sighed. “You’ve gone quiet, I know what that means. I’ll look into hotels and get back to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  I disconnected the SUV’s Bluetooth and music filled the cab.

  But I wasn’t paying attention to what was playing on the radio. All of my attention was on the car in front of me. I could see both Liam and Elijah sitting in the back seat. Watching Eva buckle little Elijah into his booster seat hadn’t been the first time I’d witnessed her with her son, but it had been the first time I’d been close enough to see the boy smile at his mom.

  Both kids had looked happy and were letting Eva know it. I couldn’t make out the words, but Liam’s mouth had been moving a mile a minute.

  This was the right decision. I still didn’t like what Eva had done to Bubba and Zoey, but her children shouldn’t suffer for her crimes. They’d been victims, too.

  My thoughts drifted to when I was Liam’s age. That was right about the time I’d realized the hell I was living in wasn’t normal. I understood what was going on around me.

  I’d realized love meant pain.

  No child should have to endure the horrors Liam and Elijah had.

  The music cut off and ringing filled the SUV, pulling me from my morose memories.

  “Tex,” I answered. “Any news?”

  “Yeah. The guy’s a total tool. I easily tracked him. Chris Peters. He’s from California, not Idaho. He’s got some arrests, nothing major. And there’s nothing in his past that makes him qualified to carry out a hit. Which is troubling.”

  Troubling didn’t begin to cover it for a variety of reasons. Chris Peters accepted a contract kill either because he was in desperate need of twenty-K or he had a taste to carry out a murder.

  “How’d someone get a lock on Eva?”

  When Tex didn’t want someone to be found, they weren’t. It was that simple. Yet, someone knew where Eva and the boys were.

  “Because I fucked up.”

  “Come again?”

  “I thought because Jay Dawkins was taken care of, so was the danger. She didn’t want to change the boys’ names, she was adamant. It’s not hard to track an Eva, Liam, and Elijah. She also wanted to be settled some place new so Elijah would be ready to start school on time. I shouldn’t have let her talk me into it. I should’ve given them all new names and they should’ve been kept in a safehouse longer. But—”

  “You don’t have to explain it to me, Tex. I get it.”

  And boy did I. They were on a vacation instead of safely tucked away because Eva had talked me into it.

  Shit.

  “Is there any way she’s playing you?” I asked.

  “No. Eva wants those boys safe. But she allows her guilt to rule her emotions. She didn’t want to explain to Liam and Elijah why they had new names, why her name was changed. She just wanted them to have a normal life. She’s refused every bit of help I’ve offered since being in Florida. That little house she lives in, she pays for. She’s tried to pay me back for the car I bought her. Five thousand dollars. She doesn’t have that kind of money, not working in a grocery store supporting two kids on her own, but she’s offered. Fuck, Max, five grand is nothing to me, but that’s five months’ worth of rent for her. Eva fucked up, she knows it, and I would’ve never helped her after what she did if I didn’t know she had no other options.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “A lot.”

  Tex’s honesty shocked the shit out of me. I continued to scan the road in front of me. Eva and the boys were one car length up ahead, cruising along.

  “I can’t protect her if you’re keeping shit from me.”

  “You don’t need to know what I’m not sharing for you to keep her safe.”

  “You’re wrong. I need to know everything.”

  “Then ask her. I’ve given you what you need to know, what’s important to the case. If you want to know more about her, ask her. She had no problem sharing everything with me. Spilled her guts with very little prompting. I think once you get her talking, you’ll find you have a lot in common with her.”

  That’s what I was afraid of.

  “Did she tell you that motherfucker burned Liam?”

  “Yep. He has six burn marks on his arm.”

  I couldn’t think of that while driving. My anger was always too close to the surface, the past always simmering, making itself known.

  “What happened to Jay?”

  “He’s not an issue,” Tex replied curtly.

  “That’s not what I asked,” I sighed.

  “It’s the only answer you’re gonna get.”

  “Why are you being so sketchy? You deal with facts and solutions. Vague and elusive isn’t your normal MO.”

  “I’m always elusive.” Tex muttered a few curse words before he explained, “Jay is not a threat, mainly because he’s not breathing. His operation was bullshit and easy to dismantle. The only person he was truly a threat to was Eva and those kids. He used the boys to control her. She was his ace, when he lost her, he was n
othing. That’s why he took the boys from her. He knew she’d do anything to get them back. Jay set up the meeting with Bubba’s brother. Did you know she’d already contacted the police? Eva was prepared to work with them, but then Jay hurt Liam and Eva took matters into her own hands.”

  Tex wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t already know from reading his report. Though I was pleased to know he had Jay taken out—it would save me the trouble of hunting down the asshole myself. Though I have to admit, it would have been satisfying.

  Nothing that Tex had said eased the knot in my stomach. We needed more intel on who hired Chris Peters to kill Eva.

  “Where are you tracking down Peters?”

  “I have a team in place. They moved in when you and Eva left her house this morning.”

  “A team? Jesus. Are they in her house waiting?”

  “Yes, three men are in her house, one is waiting at the airport. Peters took a flight to Florida this morning. I want to see what he does, who he contacts, and lastly if he goes directly to her house or if it takes him a while to find her.”

  “Christ, Tex, that’s her home. Her kids live there. She’d go through the fucking roof if she knew a team was in there.”

  “Then don’t tell her. And you know they wouldn’t be in there unless that’s where I need them to be. All of this should be over in a few days, maybe less.”

  Thank God for that.

  “Keep me informed. Brooks is lining up our hotel and I’ll have the rest of our trip plotted out by this evening.”

  “Copy that.”

  Tex was gone, the music was back on, and my mind was racing. Christ, Tex and his secrets. Eva and her unwillingness to cooperate. Between the two of them, they were making this mission damn harder than it should’ve been. But the fuck of it was, I’d given in to Eva. She’d come up with the cover story, the one we were going to use when I just happen to see them at the museum. The truth would’ve been easier, however her need to keep the danger she was in a secret was tangible. I felt the desperation rolling off of her.

  Damn, but the woman was trying her best to give her boys normal after all they’d been through. I couldn’t tell her no. Just like I couldn’t stop wondering what it would’ve been like if my mother, after all the ways she’d fucked up, had tried to make it right. If it would’ve made a difference. Would the outcome of my childhood been different? Would I have forgiven her?