Free Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three by Alexi Lawless Page B

Carey replied, his tone dry and impatient.
    “The truth is, I don’t know if they were murdered,” Roman admitted.
    “And you won’t help us find out, will you?” Carey finished, his frustration clear.
    “Carey, before you and Sam go down this road, I’d ask yourselves—what do you really want out of this? And what do you stand to gain by finding out more about Rob Wyatt than you probably care to know?” Roman asked him carefully. “History is set. It cannot be unlived. Anything you uncover cannot alter it. So be careful which stones you choose to overturn.”
    “Just because a group of people agreed to a cover story doesn’t make it the truth,” Carey responded.
    “But what does the truth buy you?” Roman replied. “You can’t get them back, can you?”
    “No, but I can help Sammy close a wound that’s been searing her for over a decade,” Carey answered grimly.
    Wes’s heart accelerated. He folded the newspaper casually, tucking it under his arm as he stood. He figured he’d better leave now before Carey could turn around and see him. He didn’t bother going back out to the waiting room. He knew exactly what he had to do now.
    Wes stepped out of the main lobby and hailed one of the taxi’s waiting in the queue. He issued directions for the hotel before settling back, thinking about what he’d overheard. Jack was somehow out of the picture. His father would have no reason to be in Hamburg if he wasn’t, but Wes didn’t much care about that. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?
    Especially since that gift horse just delivered an unexpected whopper in the form of one helluva twist. Wes knew first hand Robert Wyatt had been a sonofabitch, but murdered? It made a strange, morbid kind of sense though. Wes’d driven that road for years while he’d been with Samantha. The stretch Rob and Ry had been killed on was generally empty and lonely as hell. You’d be lucky if you saw a truck or car for a solid forty-five minutes. And if the CIA had looked into it, whatever had really happened involved something far greater than a reasonless, awful misfortune.
    Wes watched the snow-covered, idyllic streets of Hamburg fly by from the taxi window. He’d get his things, check out of the hotel, and be on a flight back to Texas within a few hours. Because this was it— this was how he could find his way back to her. By using all the skills he’d honed over years of chasing stories to figure out what really happened to Rob and Ry. Wes saw how clearly he’d be able to both help Sammy discover the truth and get over the past hurt. A hurt he’d had a big part in exacerbating. If he managed to figure out the truth about what had happened after all these years, he could finally make amends with her—find his way back in and prove to her once and for all that he was in it for the long haul.
    He wouldn’t leave her again. He wouldn’t let her go through the hurt of revisiting this wound on her own.

Chapter 5

    June 2000
    Houston, Texas
    S A M A N T H A
    “I think you should take the jet. It’ll be faster and less hassle,” her father said from the doorway of her bedroom. They were in his penthouse on top of Wyatt Towers, headquarters to Rob Wyatt’s petroleum empire. He’d popped up to see to her and her best friend, Marguerita Ramos, before they left on their post-graduation backpacking trip through the UK and Europe.
    Sam stopped packing long enough to glance up at her father. “Dad, I’m trying to fit in. Not stick out like a sore, rich-bitch thumb.”
    “But you are a rich-bitch, jaina !” Rita teased as she plopped down beside her on Sam’s bed. “Listen to your dad and let’s take the jet. I’m gonna roll off that plane like a Chicano J-Lo,” she added with a saucy wink.
    “We’re back-packing and staying in hostels, for chrissakes,” Sam pointed out. “‘You were the one who wanted to ‘ honor a time-old college tradition, ’ remember?”
    “Yes, but that was before I realized el