Heated Manipulations

by Aiden Bates

  “Do you think you’re being followed?” I asked, glancing at the surveillance equipment piled on the room’s rusty metal desk. The desk itself made me feel like I needed a tetanus shot just for being in proximity of it, but the electronics were all high-end. Name brand, all of it. Most of it pretty new as well. Carefully, I picked up a pair of what looked like night vision goggles—then placed them back down with just as much care when I realized they must’ve been worth what I made in a month.

  Harper let the curtain fall back into place. “No. At least, not anymore.”

  “Cryptic,” I pointed out.

  Harper only shrugged. “Force of habit. When you’re in my line of work, cryptic is normal. Toss me that phone on the desk?”

  I reached for the smartphone Harper was pointing at, choosing to walk it over to him instead of throwing it. I might not have been as much of a nerd as he’d pinged me for, but even I knew my aim wasn’t to be trusted.

  “Is having two cell phones also normal in your line of work?”

  “Makes it easier to cheat on my husband when I’m out of town,” he deadpanned, glancing up for my reaction.

  “Hilarious,” I said back to him—amused, but unimpressed.

  “Sorry. No husband. Promise. We PIs aren’t exactly known for our senses of humor.” He pulled something small and metallic out of his pocket as he settled onto the edge of the bed, waiting for it to stop groaning beneath him before prying the back of the phone off. “I, ah… borrowed Josh’s SIM card from the police department. Picked up a matching phone at the pawn shop on my way home. Figured I’d try to crack Josh’s backup so I could restore it. Old trick from my more…unsavory days.”

  “Unsavory days?” I paced in front of the bed before him, casting him another dubious glance. “So you were, what—a criminal before you turned legit?”

  “Criminally good looking, maybe.” He grinned cheesily, making me laugh. “See? Sense of humor. Can be a little hit or miss, but…”

  “Where’d you pick up your slick set of tricks, then?”

  “I worked a gig in Miami after dad sold KPS. Celebrity nonsense. Corporate fat cats. You’d be surprised, the kind of trouble they get into.”

  “Worse trouble than a lowly data nerd?”

  Harper chuckled as he slipped the SIM card into the phone, replaced its backing and turned it on. “You’d be surprised.”

  “You’re used to dealing with this kind of thing, then. How come you left it?” I blushed as I realized exactly how much I already knew of Harper’s past. “I, ah, looked you up after you came by earlier. Couldn’t help myself.”

  “Smart man.” Harper looked up at me. He almost seemed impressed. “Even for a data nerd. The firm I was working for…they were powerful people. Well-connected. Lawyers and string-pullers. Not the kind of people you want to piss off—especially not when my job stopped being so much about protecting their clients and started being about collecting intel on them.”

  “Sounds like some shaky moral ground.”

  “Like tap dancing on the site of a landslide. I decided it wasn’t for me. Went private after I cut ties. Now, my line of work is a little more black and white.”

  Harper checked the window several more times as he finished packing up his gear. His suitcase had barely been touched yet—socks, shirts and slacks all still immaculately folded within its confines. I sat on the bed while he bustled around the room, wondering what he expected to see out in the parking lot—and if maybe his work in Miami hadn’t left him just as paranoid as I was.

  “That should just about do it, then. Do you want—” Harper paused, turning and staring at me in a way that brought my blush back to my cheeks—this time, in full force.

  “Do I want what?” I asked, my voice suddenly quiet. Almost…shy. I could be a pretty charismatic guy when I needed to be, but when an Alpha like Harper looked at me like that…

  I’d seen that look in an Alpha’s eyes before. Had seen it in at least a dozen Alpha’s eyes at Coda the night I took that bad pill, went and got myself pregnant. It wasn’t a bad look—if anything, I was flattered. But since I’d realized I was knocked up, I hadn’t had an Alpha look at me with such a hunger.

  Fuck. Did Harper King actually have the hots for me?

  This night was getting twistier and twistier with every passing minute.

  Finally, Harper looked away, breaking his gaze. “Let’s stop by the Sunaco on the way back to your place. I’ll buy you a donut or something. It’s not one of Mrs. Lovett’s pies, but…”

  “I’ll buy you a donut,” I corrected him. “But yeah, sure. Sounds nice.”

  Harper slung his equipment bag over his shoulder and checked out the window one last time before he curled his fingers around his suitcase handle. Grunting and apparently pleased with what he saw—or didn’t see—he nodded for me to go grab the door.

  “What do you keep staring at out there?” I finally asked him, holding the door open so he could pass through it.

  “Exactly what I want to see—nothing at all.”

  “Should we still be…worried?” I asked, recalling the way he’d gotten tense all of a sudden on the drive to the hotel.

  Harper turned, looking me in the eyes again. This time, there wasn’t attraction in his gold-flecked gaze. Just seriousness.

  “Worried? No. Cautious? Always.” He forced a smile before turning and heading down the hall, cocking his head for me to follow. “But it’s all good. Promise. Now—let’s get a donut for that pretty mouth of yours. Ask me any more questions and we’re both going to end up too paranoid to sleep tonight.”

  I followed him down the hall, enjoying the view of his ass in those tight, light-wash jeans of his as we went…

  But there was still that tension in his big, broad shoulders too, and I didn’t miss the way he scanned the lobby before moving aside to let me pass through it.

  Harper might’ve told me that everything was all right—but something else told me that Harper was also a man well-versed in how to spin a good lie.

  9

  Harper

  Half a dozen end-of-the-day donuts and another few cups of chamomile might not have been exactly a dream date—but then again, I had to remind myself that this wasn’t supposed to be a date in the first place. Nick might’ve been one month pregnant and in the same line of fire that had killed my brother, but he was also sweet. Charming. And those eyes of his…every time I found myself staring into them, I had to snap myself out of it before I got lost in the depths of his blues entirely.

  All things considered, he was definitely everything I looked for in a partner—which was exactly why I needed to keep my distance. Emotionally and otherwise. The fact that he’d come into my life under the world’s worst circumstances might’ve seemed like a cruel twist of fate, but I was taking it as a sign not to fuck this up. I needed to think with the head on my shoulders if I wanted to track down whoever had killed Josh—not the head below my belt.

  And if that meant I needed to slip a rubber band around my wrist so that every time I caught myself staring at Nick, I could snap myself out of it, then so be it.

  “I’ll get these,” I told him, sweeping the mugs away as he reached for them to begin the cleanup. “You’ve had a stressful day. You shouldn’t be on your feet any more than you have to.”

  “Yeah, but so have you,” Nick pointed out, following me into the kitchen. “Besides—you’re the guest.”

  As I piled the mugs in the sink and turned the water on, he shouldered me to the side and started working them over with a sponge.

  Stubborn. Nick Paulson was about as stubborn as they came—and that was saying something when you’d grown up in the King household.

  “I’m a shitty guest if I don’t at least help out a little,” I countered, grabbing a towel. “If you’re washing, I’m drying.”

  Nick laughed. “You drive a hard bargain, Harper King.”

  “All part of my charm,” I replied with a shrug.

  We washed up
in silence for a while, tackling Nick’s dinner dishes along with the mugs. It was quick work when we were working together, and despite a little initial bumbling, eventually we fell into a good rhythm. Yet another sign—this one, slightly more positive. We worked well together once we got used to the idea. I could see why Joshua had wanted to team up with Nick in the first place—but another glimpse of those gorgeous eyes of his told me exactly why Josh had started holding off on telling Nick the details of his own investigation as well.

  There was something delicate about Nick. Not in his figure—he had biceps that would make most Omegas cry out of jealousy and a well-muscled chest that could’ve easily made several Alphas I’d known do the same. But his overall demeanor was sweet to the point that it suggested naivety. Adorable to the point that already, I felt protective of him. He’d been done a bad turn by whoever was responsible for those botched birth control pills. The murder of the man who’d been trying to get to the bottom of that mess had only piled on the stress.

  I wanted to tell Nick about the SUV that had followed me to his house. Probably should have, too. But in my experience, the kind of people who stalked men like me weren’t going to just storm in and start shooting up the place. I’d already unknowingly put him in enough danger by leading them to his house. Especially not with Josh’s body fresh in the ground. I wasn’t going to add more worries to his already lengthy list by feeding him information he didn’t need to worry about.

  If I was here to keep Nick safe, then dammit, I was going to make sure he stayed that way. Mysterious SUVs following me around at night were my problem to concern myself with—not his.

  “It’s late, Nick.” I put the last mug back onto its shelf with a glance to the clock. Nearly midnight—far past most people’s bedtimes, especially a pregnant Omega’s. “Too late—and you look beat. Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll hold down the fort here while you get whatever shut-eye you can.”

  “I’m not—” Nick’s sentence was cut off by a long, deep yawn. “…Tired.”

  All it took was a smirk from my lips to take the wind from his sails. “Sure. Right.”

  “I don’t want you staying up all night watching the windows,” he argued, rubbing his eyes. “Let me stay up with you. Safety in numbers, right?”

  “You’ve got three locks on your front door,” I pointed out. “And three on the back—I checked. Windows are all shut and locked. Street outside is quiet. And even killers have to sleep sometime. Trust me, okay? I’ve got this.”

  “But you don’t have to get it alone.”

  I placed a hand on his shoulder, hunching over to meet his gaze. “You’ve got a baby to think about. You need down time. No one is getting in here—not while I’m around.”

  A soft smile spread across Josh’s gorgeous lips. “Can’t pretend I’m not relieved by that. You’re good at making a guy feel safe, Harper. And if you’re sure…”

  He glanced down the hall toward his room. I used my grip on his shoulder to turn him towards it. “Completely sure. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

  “No use arguing with you, I guess.” Nick nodded, padding down the hall and casting a final glance at me over his shoulder. “Thanks for everything, Harper. Night.”

  “Night, Nick.” I gave him a little wave, waiting until I’d heard his bedroom door close and his belt clank to the floor before I made my next move.

  Josh’s SIM card. The phone had rebooted by now, and after a quick rifle through my gear bag, I had it hooked up to my laptop via USB. Settling down on Nick’s couch, I pulled up a program that would run a code on the phone to crack into Josh’s backed up files. Josh had been smart with the way he stored his info—I had to set the program through its paces several times before it finally turned up a password from his social media accounts that I could use to access his cloud.

  AlwaysBringATowel. A little pang shot through my heart as I saw the phrase come up on the screen. Josh had loved Douglas Adams. The stupid, nonsensical, overwrought descriptions in his books. All the clever little asides. The idea that the universe had been shaped through a combination of chaos, improbability and coincidence. He’d even made me go see the shitty movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide with him when it came out.

  “Joshua King, you fucking nerd,” I whispered fondly, typing the password into the backup screen on his phone and watching the progress bar for the backup process spring to life.

  While Josh’s phone restored, I crept down the hall towards Nick’s room, pressing my ear to the door to make sure he was in bed. There was no telltale hiss of running water to suggest he was in the shower. No toothbrush noises. No sound at all.

  All signs pointed to Nick being sound asleep—which was exactly what I needed. Despite my certainty that we weren’t going to be raided by a bunch of neckless nitwits in balaclavas, I also knew that there was a good chance that whoever was in that SUV I’d clocked earlier was probably still lurking just down the street.

  A quick peek out the window told me that, per usual, I was right.

  The locks on the back door were noisy, but I turned them over as quietly as I could. Click. Click. Click. I kept my hand on my gun as I crept through Nick’s backyard, flipping the safety off again and sticking to the shadows until I could get a clear view of the SUV’s license plate from behind.

  The best thing about working for Black-Wolfe back in Miami was all the contacts I’d made along the way. I’d been clever enough—and charming enough—to keep a few of them in my back pocket. The most valuable of them all by far was Ulysses Garcia. A Cuban like Ernesto Alvarez, he’d grown up in an even rougher neighborhood than I had. Taken to the Miami PD with the determination to clean up the city’s streets instead of adding to the body counts and bloodshed.

  They’d rewarded him by putting him on the night shift in the wealthiest part of town. Must’ve figured that someone as hard as Ulysses would be enough of a deterrent to keep the riffraff away from the Miami’s most glamorous and wealthy. All they’d managed to do was give him access to police records and a bad case of boredom for his troubles. My brother Kaleb wouldn’t have run a license plate for me even if I’d paid him to. But when I needed a little inside help, Ulysses was generally more than happy for something to focus on other than rich Alpha teens sneaking over to their boyfriends’ parents’ mega-mansions for a dip in the pool late at night.

  I took down the SUV’s plate numbers and shot them over to Ulysses in a text. In under a minute, he had a reply for me—but it wasn’t the one I was expecting.

  Those are Fort Greene PD plates, asere. What kind of shit are you getting into out there?

  I bit down on my knuckles and groaned before texting him back. The messy kind, looks like.

  With my suspicions debunked—and a whole new load of questions rolling in in their wake—I decided to bite the bullet and get this over with. The note Josh had left with Nick felt like it was burning a hole in my pocket as I approached the SUV and knocked on the window.

  Don’t trust anyone. Not even the police.

  But fortune favored the bold. The tinted window rolled down to reveal Detective Ansel Thomas’ buzz cut, an annoyed expression glaring down at me on his face.

  “Evening, Harper,” Ansel grunted. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “I was just thinking the same, Detective. Something I can help you with?”

  The scowl in Ansel’s brow didn’t budge. “Yes, actually. Your brother’s phone seems to be missing its SIM card. Your name came up when I had a look at who might’ve been messing around with my evidence. Anything you’d like to tell me about that?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck, doing my best to look as aw, shucks as I could. “Can’t say I would, Detective. Unfortunate, your boys losing evidence like that.”

  “Unfortunate’s one word for it.” The scowl deepened. “Hand it over, Harper. I thought we agreed that you’d stay out of this.”

  Dammit. Wasn’t going to be able to talk my way out of this one, then.

>   “Okay. I borrowed it,” I admitted.

  Ansel didn’t look amused. “Borrowed. Another interesting word choice. You’re lucky I decided to keep an eye on you instead of calling you on it, son. Could’ve had you in cuffs for obstruction of justice, you know.”

  “I know. I know.” I let my shoulders slump forward and bit my tongue hard enough to make my eyes glisten with just a hint of tears. “It’s just…Josh had some pictures of me and him on there. I was hoping I could pull them before the phone disappeared into your evidence lockers for good… It’s hard, Detective. He was my kid brother, and now… Now that he’s gone…”

  “Drop it, Harper. That sob story might work on my boys, but I know you. Know all you King boys, for that matter. I’m not buying it.”

  “Well…can’t blame a man for trying.” I cocked my head towards Nick’s house. “Could I interest you in a donut while you continue your stakeout, in that case? Picked some up from the Sunaco earlier—they’re a little stale, sure, but I know how you cops like your pastries.”

  “The SIM card, Harper. Before I change my mind about that obstruction charge.”

  I furrowed my brow, then nodded. “Okay. The SIM card. Right. Back in a flash.”

  Back inside Nick’s house, I made quick work of copying Josh’s SIM over to a fresh card—and wiping everything I could manage off of the original. When I returned it to Ansel, I made sure not to do it with a smile.

  “This is an open investigation, Harper,” Ansel reminded me, taking the card between his fingers and depositing it into a fresh evidence bag. “I hope you’ll remember that.”

  “Of course, Detective. Can’t pull one over on you, can I?”

  “And you’d best remember that.” Ansel sighed. “I know you’ve been through a lot. Lost a brother. Don’t think I don’t know what that’s like.”