Proof (Targes Executive Protection Book 1)

“Tell Sully to get his fucking ass down here!” I snapped the second I yanked the front door open to reveal the Targes lobby.

Michael jumped to his feet behind the reception desk. He backed up so fast that his head hit the bottom of the Targes logo sign which was made of a combination of metal and glass. I knew I should apologize for scaring the kid, but my blood was boiling and it felt like every nerve ending was raw and exposed.

What the fuck had I done?

I’d kissed JJ, that was what I’d done. Worse, I’d let him kiss me back. If I thought I’d just wanted to bury my dick inside the man one time so I could be free of him forever, JJ had just proven to me that I wanted to do so many more things to him. I wanted him to do those things to me too. I just… wanted.

“Fuck,” I muttered. I looked up in the direction of Sully’s office. The building was a renovated warehouse, so it was mostly open space except for the few offices that were on the second floor, much like a loft layout.

“Sully!” I yelled. I could still taste JJ’s sweet flavor on my tongue. I could feel the way he’d taken over the kiss… and me.

I could also still hear the ice dripping from his voice as he’d described the way I’d supposedly killed a little girl and her mother.

I had no fucking clue what kind of game Sully was playing with me, but I was done. I was out. Fury clung to every part of me. It was now a constant, painful itch beneath my skin. God, I’d been so sure that JJ would admit what had really happened that night—that he’d have some kind of reasonable explanation for locking me in a cell for two years of my life.

“Sully—”

“I’m here,” Sully said quietly. He appeared from a side door, presumably one of many that led up to the offices as well as down to the lower level where the training equipment was located.

Sully’s voice and movements were calm and slow.

Like he was talking to a cornered wild animal.

An injured animal that only wanted to escape.

“Mikey, why don’t you go take a break,” Sully said softly, easing his big body between mine and Michael’s. The kid was shaking like a leaf, and I could see silent tears sliding down his cheeks. Jesus, the kid hadn’t been as freaked out the day I’d pointed a gun at him. What the hell must I look like to warrant the dramatic response?

I wanted to apologize to the young man. I really did. But no words came.

“What happened?” Sully began once his assistant had left the room. I hadn’t even noticed that several men had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. They were all large and fit with a few of them dressed in crisp black suits and a couple who’d clearly been sparring, based on their shirtless bodies and taped hands.

Most of the men looked at me with disgust. After all, they had a murderer standing in their midst.

A part of me wanted to take them all on. I wanted to cause pain just like I wanted to feel it. Anything to escape the emotions JJ had stirred up inside me. Emotions I’d been so sure that I’d had under control.

Sully waved the men away. They disappeared as silently as they’d come.

“Find someone else because I’m done!” I snapped. I began pacing back and forth in the large lobby.

Despite the high ceilings and long hallways, the place still wasn’t large enough. All my senses were on alert and adrenaline was spiking through my veins.

“I’ll go to my grandmother to get the money to pay you back,” I continued. Then I was striding for the front door.

“You talked to him,” Sully said quietly.

I laughed out loud. “Talked” wasn’t exactly the word I would have used to explain what had happened on that canyon road.

“You knew what would happen,” I said accusingly as I stood where I was, hand on the door that would lead me outside where I could once again feel the sun on my skin and breathe in the smog-filled city air; things I’d taken for granted before being locked up.

When Sully didn’t answer, I spun around. “Was all this a game to you? Some kind of fucking setup?” I snarled. I kept scanning my surroundings as I waited for Sully’s men to attack me from all sides.

“It wasn’t a game, Cass,” Sully responded sadly. He slowly moved to the reception counter and leaned against it. “It was… a test.”

“Test?” I asked in disbelief. “I haven’t spoken to you in two years and yet you go and mortgage your house, the only thing you have left of your parents, and pay some camera-hungry criminal defense attorney to get me out of prison for a… test?”

I found myself striding forward. “You intentionally put me in your debt so you could get me to follow your brother around for a fucking test?” I growled. I was nearly chest to chest with Sully. “What was the plan, Sully? To have some of your guys shadowing me so they could take me out the second I got near your brother? Make it look like one of them shot me in self-defense? You didn’t need to waste your money to do that. It would have been a hell of a lot cheaper if you’d paid off someone on the inside to get rid of me for good. Hell, if you’d just left me there, I probably would have offed myself inside a year, tops!”

When Sully didn’t respond, I turned on my heel and went for the front door. The bastard waited until I was once again on the verge of escaping before he spoke again.

“The test was for JJ.”

His words brought me to an abrupt halt. “What?” I asked dumbly because I was sure I’d heard him wrong.

“Come to my office, Cass. I’ll tell you all of it.”

“Tell me here!” I growled. I forced myself to turn but I remained near the door. I could feel the walls closing in on me. I could hear the soft hiss of the cell door sliding shut.

Sully dropped his eyes and took in a slow breath. “You haven’t read any of the papers since you got out. You haven’t watched the news about your case, have you?”

“Why the fuck would I? I lived it, you asshole,” I responded. I pointed in the direction Sully’s men had gone. “You saw the way they just looked at me! Why do I need to see that on every paper, cell phone, and TV screen from here to the fucking North Pole?”

Sully went to sit in one of four large leather armchairs. He motioned to the chair opposite him. If I sat, we’d be looking straight at each other with only half a dozen feet separating us. “Move it closer to the door if you want, Cass, but I think you’ll want to sit when you hear what I have to tell you. You can leave at any time. There’s a doorstop to the left of the door. You can use it to prop the door open if you want.”

The harsh reminder about my inability to be in a room when the door was closed was another punch to the gut. As much as I hated the need to do it, I went to the door and propped it open, then returned to sit across from Sully. I wondered if he’d put the doorstop there just for me. Son of a bitch was too fucking observant.

I hated that I had no fucking clue what words were going to come out of his mouth, but I was desperate for answers because nothing made sense. It hadn’t since the night I’d been physically dragged away from JJ’s body and placed in cuffs. I’d been driven off in a police car as paramedics had begun the task of trying to save JJ’s life.

“Hiring Hutch to get you out of prison and asking you to shadow JJ were two separate things,” Sully began. “From the moment you were charged, I was trying to find some way to get you out but then things just got… complicated and⁠—”

“Why?” I interjected.

“What do you mean ‘why,’ you dick?” Sully responded angrily. “Because I knew you didn’t do it. And before you ask me how I knew that, the answer is because you are and have been my best fucking friend for more than half our lives. JJ has been in your life since he was a little kid. You treated him like a little brother from day one. You protected him, you encouraged him, you comforted him when he wished he could remember our mother.” Sully shook his head like he couldn’t believe I’d ever think the worst of him.

“You never reached out to me while I was in jail waiting for my trial. You let me sit in a cell for two days not knowing if JJ had lived or died. My piece-of-shit lawyer was the one who told me JJ had pulled through!” I shouted.

“Fuck, Cass, would you just shut up and listen?” Sully responded in frustration.

“I don’t need to listen, Sully, because there’s one glaring fact that you can’t explain away. JJ was my alibi for that night, but he never spoke up. He never once came to my defense, and based on all the shit he just said to me, it’s obvious why he didn’t.” I climbed to my feet. “Because he believes all of it. Despite everything that happened between us before that night—” I let my words drop off as I realized what I’d been about to say.

“I knew what was happening between the two of you,” Sully said.

This time, there was no escaping his words. I sank back down into the chair, suddenly grateful for its support.

“How? When?” I managed to get out.

“A blind man would have been able to see the way you two looked at each other when you got home after your last tour was over. The way you were both conveniently busy at the same times those few nights before the shooting…”

“Fuck,” I muttered as I ran my fingers through my hair. “Sully, nothing happened. We talked. We kissed once. JJ, he wanted to come out to you before anything else happened. He was afraid because he knew⁠—”

“He knew our father wouldn’t have approved,” Sully finished. “JJ was right. Dad read that Bible of his every night, and he made sure we were at mass every Sunday. He came from a family of Irish Catholics who lived by the word of God. I want to believe that he would have tried to accept it… that he wouldn’t turn his back on his own son. Back then there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room for kids like JJ and you.” Sully paused before adding, “And me.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “I never knew,” I murmured.

“I didn’t know about you until you got home and saw JJ all grown up. JJ tried to hide it from me; he still does. We were all under the same illusion that if we said anything, we’d lose everything. I’ve never confronted JJ about it because it’s not my right. He’ll tell me if and when he’s ready,” Sully said firmly.

“So you knew about us,” I prodded since I figured our sexual identities weren’t really a top priority. I still needed answers. “So why the fuck does JJ believe⁠—”

“He doesn’t remember, Cass.”

“What?” I said laughingly as I tried to make sense of Sully’s words. When he dropped his eyes, I realized he wasn’t fucking around with me. “What are you talking about?” I asked even as my mind started putting pieces of the last two years together. I felt like I was on some crazy roller coaster that had lost its brakes.

“JJ doesn’t remember anything from the night of the shooting or several months of time before it. He doesn’t even remember you coming home that last time. Everything he believes about the shooting has come from the papers or the news, and he didn’t see any of that until six months after you were convicted.”

I shook my head. “No… no.” I had no idea what exactly it was that I was trying to deny.

“After the shooting, he ended up in surgery for eight hours. The bullet was a through and through, and while all the doctors and nurses considered it a medical miracle that it hadn’t killed him, there was nothing miraculous about what came after. Yes, the bullet missed several vital parts of his brain by centimeters, but it still left behind a lot of damage. JJ was put in a medically induced coma for months to give his brain time to heal. When the doctors tried to bring him out of it, he didn’t wake up. They weren’t sure if he’d ever wake up. That was one of the reasons I didn’t reach out to you. I was afraid of what you’d do if you found out he was barely clinging to life. I wasn’t sure how deep your feelings went, but I needed you to believe JJ had turned on you.”

“Why?” I asked. I felt like I was going to be sick. “I should have been at his side. I should have been holding his hand and telling him about all the things we were going to do when he woke up,” I said absently, not caring at the moment about my original question of “why.”

I didn’t know how long it was before Sully answered me. It felt like seconds and days at the same time. I’d nearly lost JJ not once, but twice. Sully’s voice sounded overly loud when he suddenly answered my question about why it needed to look like JJ had turned on me.

“Because I don’t believe those witnesses were the real target. I saw the police reports and took a look at the crime scene myself. I knew a guy who could hack into the police radio logs. The district attorney who’d stashed that lady and her kid at that apartment had an FBI agent on them twenty-four seven, but he’d also asked the police chief for a plainclothes officer to provide additional support. JJ never would have left his post until his replacement had arrived. According to the logs, his replacement got there two minutes before JJ left the scene. JJ’s replacement never radioed in after that. Turns out the officer who was supposed to relieve him never even made it to the scene. He was killed in a car crash four miles away and ten minutes before the call came in from the so called ‘replacement’ who relieved JJ.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The shooting had started after JJ had been relieved of duty. His replacement should have seen or heard something. He sure as hell would have called in the “officer down” code once he’d seen that JJ or the federal agent had been gunned down.

“The apartment was clean. Execution-style bullets to the two victims inside. Same for the agent. He never even made it out of his car. Gunman used a silencer. Only part that didn’t make sense was JJ. He’d already left his post. His car was found around the corner, far enough away that he wouldn’t have heard the shots. There was no radio call about shots fired at the scene.”

“I didn’t hear them either,” I murmured. “JJ and I were supposed to meet up so we could go to a diner that was just up the block and talk about how to tell you we were seeing each other.”

“What did you see?” Sully asked.

I didn’t want to relive the moment because it was the worst one in my life. I’d had nightmares about it every night afterwards. I still did.

“Um, I had parked a few cars down. I was leaning against my car while I waited for him. I didn’t see his car or anything but a few minutes after we’d agreed to meet up, I saw him walking toward me. He was walking in the street, not on the sidewalk. I started to walk toward him and then I heard the pop,” I explained. I could feel the tears stinging the backs of my eyes.

“I saw JJ go down. I just… I froze. It seemed like everything was happening in slow motion. When I did finally start running, I couldn’t get to him fast enough. It was dark so I couldn’t really see much but I… when I pulled him onto my lap, I could feel the blood running down my arm. I kept telling him to wake the fuck up.” I shook my head because my throat was closing off, making it nearly impossible to speak.

A warm hand covered mine where I had it clenched on my thigh. I hadn’t even noticed Sully move while I’d been telling him what I remembered.

“I can’t prove it, but I don’t think that mother and her child were the ultimate target. I think they were just a cover to throw off the cops. My theory is that either you or JJ were the target,” Sully explained.

I shook my head. My brain couldn’t comprehend anything but what it had believed for two long years. “No, that doesn’t make sense.”

“The kid and her mom, along with that agent, were shot after JJ was. Why bother to go after JJ at all? He was already around the block. Even if he’d somehow managed to hear the shots, he would have called out to you and run back toward the scene. By then the killer would have been long gone.”

“Jesus,” I said in disbelief. “You think JJ was targeted either because he knew something he shouldn’t or because someone was setting me up?” The truth hit me like a ton of bricks. “Either way, he wasn’t supposed to live,” I realized. The sensation of his hot blood running down my arm put me right back in the middle of that street. JJ had literally been dying in my arms and I’d done nothing.

“No, he wasn’t,” Sully confirmed. “While he was in surgery that night, I asked some friends to join me at the hospital to help keep an eye on JJ. There was no way I could keep the fact that he’d survived the shooting out of the news, so I didn’t try. I played the role of the protective older brother caught up in the mystery of why my best friend would try to kill my kid brother. When JJ finally woke up from the coma, he couldn’t talk, walk, feed himself… nothing. He had to learn how to do all those things over again. When he finally started to get better, he asked⁠—”

“He asked what happened,” I said bleakly as I processed how I’d treated JJ less than an hour earlier.

“The doctors said the damage to his memory could have been caused by the bullet, but it also could have been a psychological response to protect his mind from the trauma. They weren’t sure if he’d get his memory back or not. As devastated as I was, I knew I had to use it to my advantage. I let it leak to the press that he didn’t remember anything about that night and never would. I told JJ that I believed you had tried to kill him.”

“You needed to take the bullseye off him,” I murmured.

“I didn’t know how else to keep him safe. I’ve had him shadowed around the clock for the last two years. I only used guys I trusted with my own life.”

“And you left me in prison,” I said.

“Fuck, Cass, I’m so sorry but as fucked up as it sounds, I knew you were safe in there. Safe from whoever might have been trying to set you up. I knew what prison would do to you but⁠—”

I shook my head because it was all I could think to do. Sully had no idea that prison hadn’t been just prison for me. Yes, my military training had prepared me to keep my body safe, but the damage done to my mind… that was a whole other thing. It didn’t matter, though. JJ’s life had been at stake and Sully had done the right thing by focusing all his efforts on keeping his little brother safe. I was grateful for that, which warranted keeping the truth about my imprisonment from him. “You knew I was strong enough to survive it,” I responded.

“I waited over a year before I started quietly trying to find a lawyer who’d take your case. Hutch was the only one who would. I’d already sunk all my savings into this place, so I mortgaged the house. JJ was still pretty fucked up. His injuries meant he couldn’t go back to the force, which was another thing he blamed you for. He spent months going to shitty bars and clubs, hooking up with random guys night after night and drinking enough that he could forget everything he’d lost.”

I know you took something from me that night. Something you had no right to take. I know that I wish you’d had better aim because leaving me this way…

JJ’s mysterious words now made sense. I’d taken his trust that night, or so he believed.

Just like I’d believed he’d betrayed me.

“So you asked me to shadow him because you wanted us to come face to face at some point,” I said in understanding.

Sully let out a harsh breath and stood. This time he was the one pacing like a wild animal. “I’ve spent the past six months getting him back on his feet. The cop in him is still there. He’s got great instincts, he’s the best shooter I’ve got… he just needs to get his focus back. He needs something that’s worth waking up for every morning. The one thing holding him back is⁠—”

“Me,” I responded. “You were hoping if he and I confronted each other, he’d remember that night. He’d remember it, but he’d also know that he had to keep playing the role of not knowing what happened. You need him to fill in the blanks.”

“I need you both to fill in the blanks. Yes, I wanted him to remember you, but I also wanted you to remember him. To remember who he truly is… and was. Especially with you. I know you better than you know yourself, Cass. No one can protect him better than you. My guys are skilled, but they don’t have any kind of connection with JJ other than a professional one. Both of you deserve to know the truth about what went down that night, but there’s no chance of that happening if you walk away. But I also can’t force JJ into remembering. He can’t know the truth until he remembers it for himself, and that’s assuming he even will remember. I know I’m a selfish prick who doesn’t deserve your forgiveness for doing this, for letting you rot in that place⁠—”

“Enough,” I interrupted with a wave of my hand. My brain was misfiring with too much information.

It was all just too much.

“I’ve gotta go,” I said evenly. Everything was so jumbled in my head that I didn’t know left from right or up from down. My body cranked into autopilot because I had to get away. From Sully, from JJ, from the truth, the lies… all of it. The only thing I knew how to do was the same thing JJ had asked me to do.

Leave and never look back.