Free Dangerous Protector (Aegis Group Book 5) by Sidney Bristol Page A

already stolen, and Fiona would never be the wiser.
    Except he had to lie to her face. Keep her mind off what was going on. And that was the hard part. He could do it. But he didn’t like to. He’d wound up on more covert gigs than he wanted to in the SEALs. He’d faced down some bad motherfuckers in those days. Fiona was an innocent and that changed the game.
    This was a shitstorm.
    He should turn the truck around now, come clean, bring in the cops, and let the chips fall where they may.
    This sort of crap was why he’d gotten out and gone to work for Aegis. People hired their team for a job, they did a job. It wasn’t often that things got hairy or deviated from a plan. And he liked that. He was good at it. And if he got caught because of the spyware, if the cops decided to charge him with any number of crimes, he’d get fired, and his parents wouldn’t get their cut of his check and…
    Fuck.
    He was stuck.
    His parents relied on him and the money he sent them every month. His baby sisters needed more help with the kids every passing month, thanks to deadbeat dads. If he didn’t see this through, it wasn’t just Marco who’d pay the price. It was his whole family. They’d already lost so much. He had to do whatever it took to make this work out well for everyone.
    “You always grind your teeth like that?” Fiona asked.
    “Hm?” He glanced at her in the passenger seat.
    “You’re grinding your teeth. Thinking about Danny?”
    “Yeah.” Shit. He did not want to go there, either.
    “It’s great you care for him like this, but you know you can’t save him if he doesn’t want to be saved?”
    “I am well aware of the fact. We tried too hard to save his brother. Danny’s got to hit rock bottom on his own.”
    “And it’s going to be tough. On you. Your family. His family. I take it your families are close?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’ll shut up.”
    “No.” Damn it. He had to at least pretend to be friendly, or she’d catch a ride back to Denver before all of this was sorted. He had to manage the situation, and her, just right or it was going to blow up in his face. Ghost would vanish, and the whole mess would be on his shoulders. He had to make nice. “Your…dad? Right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You and your mom, you guys okay…after?”
    “Not really. Mom…she tried to move on. She really did. But she was never the same after. I think she blamed herself for not loving him enough or not helping or…I don’t know. She said so many things over the years I just don’t think she ever really stopped blaming herself.”
    “How’s she doing now?”
    “She’s dead.” Fiona glanced down at her hands. “Irony of ironies, she was carjacked by some guy high on a meth-PCP combination. He drove them into a concrete pillar, one of those underpass supports, you know?”
    “Christ, I…” Marco’s mouth worked. He knew death. He’d held the hands of men while they breathed their last on the battle field, in field hospitals, their blood slipping between his fingers. A joy ride like that would be…hell. The adrenaline. Seeing the end coming. It would have been painful, too.
    “She died on impact. Or at least that’s what they told me. I was seventeen, so who knows? They might have lied to me. If that hadn’t have happened, I’m not sure what she’d be like today. Probably not the same woman dad married. His actions changed everyone around him.”
    “Yeah, I know what that‘s like.”
    “I bet that’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through though. All I mean is…this? With your cousin? I get it. And it sucks any way it goes down.” She sighed and leaned against the door.
    “You can say that again.” Marco blew out a breath.
    Damn. How the hell she’d come out of that mess and not been screwed up was beyond Marco. She was…amazing. The drive to move on, to pick herself up? She was stronger than a lot of people he knew. He would have never guessed her history based on what he’d seen of