Intrigued, I scooted closer. “Well, then clearly I should have.”

“You’ve never asked about the money.”

“The money. Your money?”

“No, the government’s,” he said with a chuckle.

“Are we going to talk about the national budget? Because I am so there.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth, his long lashes standing at half-mast over his dark, shimmering eyes. “You’ve never asked how much we have.”

“We?”

“We,” he said sternly.

“I’ve never asked because I’ve never needed to. I already know.”

One shapely brow inched up. “Do you?”

“Yep. Kim told me. I know exactly how much you have.”

“We.”

“Or had. That was almost a year ago, and we both know you’ve been burning through the stuff like crude oil.”

Kim was Reyes’s nonbiological sister. They grew up together, fighting side by side just to survive the horrors of the man who raised them, Earl Walker. He would do anything for her, and she for him. She proved it when she’d started burning buildings down about a year ago, all to hide evidence of what Earl did to Reyes. It was the sweetest misguided act of love I’d ever known, but she was on the verge of being a wanted woman, so Reyes set her up somewhere remote. I hadn’t seen her since.

“So, what did she tell you?”

“Fifty big ones. Which was kind of hard for me to wrap my head around. I mean, fifty million? Who the hell has fifty million dollars?”

“Kim was talking about her money. Not ours.”

“Yeah, she said that. But she doesn’t touch it. You know that, right? She only takes a little of the interest to live off of. She told me she would never touch your money.”

“I know.” The muscles in his jaw jumped as he bit down in frustration. “She can be hardheaded that way. Like someone else I know.”

“I wish I could get to know her better. I wish we could hang and share stories about you and talk behind your back like real sisters-in-law.”

“Oddly enough, I wish that, too. I hope you still can someday.”

I felt a current pass through him. A disturbance, though I couldn’t identify it.

“Is something wrong? She’s okay, right?”

He rolled onto his back and threw an arm over his forehead. “I’m not sure.”

I rose onto an elbow beside him. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t find her.”

Alarm rushed over my skin. “She’s missing? I don’t understand. When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“Couple of days ago. She was setting up safe houses for the Loehrs. Scouting locations. Making the buys.”

“Safe houses?” I asked, surprised. “How many safe houses are we talking?”

“At the moment, ten. She was working on number eleven.”

“Ten?” I tried to stop my jaw from dropping. I failed. “We have ten safe houses?” Before I could stop them, tears amassed. “You bought ten houses? For, I don’t know, just in case?”

“Of course.” He said it like I’d grown another head.

“Reyes—”

“I told you. I’m doing everything I can to keep our daughter safe.”

I blinked and turned away. The depths of this man’s convictions astounded me. “I’m sorry. I got sidetracked. Kim?”

“Yes. She was looking at a house on an island south of Mexico. She was supposed to fly out today and get back with me, but she never texted me to let me know she’d made it.”

My shoulders stiffened. Kim and Reyes were close. If anything were to happen to her, I didn’t know how he would take it.

“I’m sure it’s okay,” he said, lying through his teeth. But I got the feeling he wasn’t lying to me so much as to himself. “She probably lost her charger. She does that.”

“Have you, you know, searched?” Meaning, had he searched for her incorporeally.

“Not yet.”

“We could send Angel.”

“We could, but I have him on another assignment.”

“An assignment? Like what kind of assignment?”

He draped an arm over me. “It pertains to one of those secrets I told you about.” He waited a moment and then said, “Go ahead. You know you want to.”

“Okay, seriously, can’t you just tell me one? It’ll be like opening one present on Christmas Eve. Then I’ll be satisfied and can sleep at night knowing that your secret isn’t that you’re really into women’s underwear or that you like Howard Stern or that you watched a snuff film once. If I just had those three things out of the way…”

“Fine.” He shifted to face me again. “You tell me one, and I’ll tell you one.”

I growled and buried my face in a pillow. “I can’t. Not yet. But soon.”

“Same here.” When I started to protest—an act I had zero right to do—he raised an index finger in warning.

I leaned forward. Wrapped my mouth around it. Sucked softly before sliding off it.

Reyes’s gaze didn’t waver. He watched with great interest, and I felt his pulse accelerate.

“Oh, wait,” I said, “what were you saying about money?”

It took him a moment to recover.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m out. I’ve gone through all of it redoing the building and buying the safe houses.”

“Oh, Reyes,” I said, now worried for him. “It’s okay. We have the restaurant and my business. We’ve never actually been in the black for longer than five minutes, but I can turn that around.” I thought about it and cringed. “Or, you know, I can try. I’m always getting lawyers who want to hire me. But they usually want me to get their scumbag clients off the very legit charge of drug trafficking or spousal abuse or cannibalism, but that was only once.” I looked at him, positive we’d be okay. “We can do this. I may have to sell out and get some creep off a couple of human trafficking charges, but we can do this.”

“You would never sell out. And I was fucking with you. I need you to know where everything is should anything happen to me.”

“What?” I scrambled up and sat cross-legged on the bed, the sheet covering my vitals since I’d recently lost my jersey and boxers. “What do you mean? Is something going to happen?” I gasped. “Is that one of your secrets?”