Free Wounded Courage (Lucky Thirteen) by S.M. Butler Page A

mention that I’d been living in the house with him for almost eight months. A girl had needs.
    “I wasn’t a fucking nun, if that’s what you want to know,” I snapped. “What else would you like to know about it? How many times? How good it was? Did he fuck me from behind? Was I on top? Did he do me in the ass?” I laughed, even more when Chris’s groan ended on another curse. “Maybe you’d like to know about that time he tied me to the bed. That was a good one.”
    Oh, the look on the man’s face was gorgeous. Like I’d ever have let Alex tie me down. But the result of my words nearly had me rolling on the floor. I restrained myself nicely.
    “Addison—” Collins raised his hand when Chris stepped forward.
    “It’s fine. She’s been cooped up here for a week, son. I don’t blame her for being a bit… surly.” His eyes cased over me.
    I glared. “I’m sitting right here.”
    “Maybe we’re going about this wrong.”
    “Oh, you think?” I quipped. “Maybe you could be honest with me, for once.”
    “Petty Officer Hardy, have a seat next to your sister.” Chris frowned, but he did as his boss said without a word in protest. “Let’s talk real things.”
    “Master Chief?”
    I leaned forward, even as Chris hesitated, holding Master Chief Collins’ gaze. “Real things? What do you consider real things?”
    He flipped open the folder and slid a paper clipped sheet to me. I glanced down at the paper, reading over the words. I swallowed the lump turning in my throat. “You can’t be serious.”
    Chris grabbed the paper from me and read over it. Quiet, unsettled anger fell over him. “Master Chief… really?”
    “Oh, yeah. I’m serious as a fucking heart attack,” he replied. “You’ve done some unlawful things, little Addison Hardy, from Oak Creek, Texas.”
    I froze, watching the man as he folded his hands together in front of him, the smugness in his demeanor terrifying.
    “Addy?” Chris’s face crushed me.
    “Alex and I did a lot of things together.” I told them. “I was trying to get him free of his family. Everything we did was toward that goal.”
    “So you stole from the Giroux family? No wonder Rene shot Alex.” Chris said. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”
    “It wasn’t exactly stealing. That money was being funneled into their trafficking enterprises.”
    “So you two funneled it into something else?” Collins said.
    I paused.
    That wasn’t exactly it. Most of that money was sitting in a vault where no Giroux could touch it. But no one knew that except Alex and me. That was my most important secret. We needed it untraceable, unfindable.
    “Yes.”
    “Into what?”
    I paused again. How much could I tell them?
    “Addison, help us out here,” Chris said. I glanced at him, and saw the pleading in his eyes. “You’re looking at prison. Please don’t make me watch you go to prison.” I studied his face, thinking over the last year or so. My world was either about to crumble around me or grow exponentially. I wasn’t sure which. And I wasn’t sure which choice would land me where. So I took a chance.
    I cleared my throat. “We funneled it into cash.”
    “Cash?” Chris blinked at me. “Why cash?”
    “Because banks are traceable. And we needed to be invisible. It’s all hidden in a vault.”
    “Where’s the vault?”
    “I don’t know,” I lied. One of the keys rested on a chain around my neck.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, I don’t know where it is. Alex didn’t want me to know. But I had to be there to unlock it. It took both of us to unlock the vault.” Another lie. It was just flowing now.
    Collins leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms. The master chief’s eyes narrowed at me, like he was trying to see deep into my soul, only I wasn’t sure he believed in souls.
    I said. I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable, and revealing a secret that I’d held close for many months didn’t make me any happier about it.
    “Maybe