Read Online Prescription: Makeover by Jessica Andersen - Free Book Online

minute, then said, “I’m sorry.”
    “Be sorry for her, not me.” William closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cool windowpane. “I was six, maybe seven feet away from her. I could’ve stopped it. I
should’ve
stopped it.”
    “You were on the job.”
    “So was she. Turns out she was DEA and the doctor was with HFH. It’d been Grosskill’s bright idea — a multi-agency op where the left hand didn’t know what the right one was doing.”
    “Then her death is on Grosskill, not you,” Max said.
    “It’s on both of us,” William said quietly. “I let it go on too long, thinking I could stop Trehern without breaking cover.” He exhaled on a curse. “Not five minutes after the shooting, the DEA came in with guns blazing. Trehern slipped out ahead of the bust, and a couple of us got snagged, but Grosskill decided to keep me under. He let one of Trehern’s lawyers get me out, figuring it’d confirm my loyalty if it looked like I’d been put through the wringer and kept my mouth shut.” He grimaced. “That was one of the few times the bastard did the right thing, though I didn’t thank him for it at the time.” He turned away from the window and met his partner’s eyes. “I was in nearly another year after that before we finally closed the net.”
    Even then, Grosskill had managed to screw it up, costing two good agents their lives. By the end of it all, William hadn’t given a damn about the presidential commendation. He’d spent a month lying on a beach on the FBI’s tab until the nightmares died down and then handed in his resignation. He’d wandered for a bit and ended up back in Boston, where it had all begun. He’d met Max there and he’d found a new purpose, but the work had brought him right back to the same place — watching out for a woman who intrigued him when he damn well knew better.
    Sharilee had been Trehern’s woman — he hadn’t known she was a fellow agent until too late, thanks to Grosskill. And Ike…Ike was her own woman, William knew, and that wasn’t a good thing. He couldn’t trust that she’d follow his instructions when her own instincts were telling her to do something different. Hell, she’d already come close to getting herself killed. He’d be damned if he sat around while she tried again.
    “That’s what happened at that meeting the other night,” Max said, nodding as he made the connection. “You didn’t want Ike to turn into another Sharilee, so you broke cover rather than risking her.”
    “Yeah,” William admitted. “But I didn’t get the timing right then, either. Don’t tell Ike I said so, but she might’ve been right when she said I jumped the gun. If I’d played it cool and bluffed it out, I might’ve gotten her out safe with my cover intact.”
    Because he hadn’t, she was going to be in worse danger than before, going undercover unarmed, untrained and without direct protection, damn it.
    Max was quiet for a moment before he said, “Do you want to swap and have me go to the Markham Institute with Ike while you stay here and protect Raine?”
    Part of William wanted to leap at the chance, wanted to divorce himself completely from all contact with Ike. But he shook his head. “No, we already discussed that. Raine needs you here — we can’t forget that she might still be a target if Odin goes out for revenge. Besides, I’m better with the surveillance stuff.” He was better with the hand-to-hand, as well, if it came down to it, but Lord knows he tried to keep that to a minimum these days. It was too easy to let the violence inside him loose, too difficult to rein it in. Still, he sighed before he said, “It makes more sense for me to be the one backing her up.”
    “You going to be okay with that?” Max asked.
    William lifted a shoulder and said, “I’m going to have to be. Vasek & Caine is going to go under if we don’t nail this bastard, and Ike’s already proven she’ll go after him on her own if we