Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Of course, there was a lesson in there about checking the contents of a structure before you just tried to knock it down, but this wasn’t really the time for that discussion. In fact, Jason wondered if any of them truly realized just how significant this was. Tex Johnson had made plans to have the five King brothers killed and he had done it using their father’s signature. Tex had willfully deceived a demolitions team and sent them into a dangerous situation for nothing more than his own gain. Obviously Tex had not expected the brothers to live. He had left a trail of evidence leading right to his door, but all of that would have been blown away if this morning had gone according to plan.

  Devon looked around at his brothers and then dipped his chin to the angry construction foreman. “We will be grateful for any assistance you can offer down the road, but I think for now my brothers and I need to confront our father’s business partner and have a little discussion about what exactly he thinks he’s going to do with our company now that dear old Dad has passed away.”

  “And of course we’ll want to give him the good news,” Jason grunted.

  Edward looked confused. “What good news?”

  “The news that we aren’t dead, of course.” Jason stretched his lips into the semblance of a smile, but he knew that it didn’t look happy or pleased at all and that was fine. “Tex will want to celebrate with us that not only are we not dead, but that the house is just fine too.”

  “Right.” Orion seemed to be thinking this over. After a moment he pursed his lips. “You know I never took Mother seriously when she tried to say that Tex was the one who suggested to her that they go ahead and develop the land without Dad’s permission, but now I’m beginning to change my mind.”

  “It’s pretty suspicious, right?” Zane looked around the yard at the mess of machinery and Orion’s ruined SUV. “Tex obviously wanted his revenge on Dad for something. Maybe he just found multiple ways to get it. And to keep passing it down through the generations as well.”

  It was a chilling thought, but maybe it was time for the brothers to stop blaming everything on their mother. Jason wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Maybe he was just going to have to fake it until he could make it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Kings weren’t at work today. If Skye had not noticed this fact while wandering around the King Building in downtown Dallas, she would have heard about it from the dozens or more employees that seemed to be organizing a mass exodus from their desks and workspaces. The elevators were absolutely packed going down, but there wasn’t a single person going up.

  Skye had already stopped on the floor where Jason King was reported to have his desk. The name of the department was Support Services, but it was most definitely an upscale and far more high tech mail room than those of times past. This stop on the way up to the corporate offices was absolutely useless.

  As Skye made her way through the maze of cubicles, offices, copy rooms, storage areas, and break rooms, she did not see a single living soul. It was like the set of a really bad zombie movie. Actually the word eerie really applied. There were coffee mugs on the desks and personal photos still pinned to cork boards as though people had just sort of disappeared.

  Skye checked her phone. It was well after one o’clock. There was no way that everyone in an office would take lunch all at the same time. Apparently the rumors going around town about the workers not getting paid were absolutely true. No doubt the employees were holding their collective breath hoping that something would happen and they would get paid so they could come back to their jobs.

  There was no point hanging around here. Skye would never find what she needed on an empty floor. Heading back to the elevator she pushed the button with the up arrow on it. No light came on. The red button for the down indicator was bright. She looked up at the numbered lights above the door. There were two elevators and every single floor light was lit as though the elevator was having to stop at every single floor above Skye’s position in order to pick up passengers on its way down.

  “At this rate I might as well climb the stairs,” Skye muttered.

  She moved toward the stairwell. Opening the door, she realized that there were just as many people coming down in there as had probably been able to fit in the elevators. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, they moved right on past Skye’s position as though they were racing each other to the floor. It wasn’t as though there were thousands, but even four or five people at a time on each flight of this confined space felt like way too many warm bodies in a confined space.

  “Did you hear that rat bastard when I asked him where our pay was?” A man shouted to someone behind him. Both were puffing from the exertion of keeping themselves at a steady pace within the group. “He told me that if we were really loyal employees we would work without pay until the probate issues got sorted out!”

  “Like hell!” someone else added. “You won’t see me working for free! If enough of us file complaints maybe the state attorney general’s office will get involved!”

  Skye did not want to burst his bubble about that possibility, but there was no doubt in her mind that this was not good. And who was the he they were talking about?

  “I blame those stupid King brothers!” A woman finally gave up and grabbed the railing. She paused just long enough to remove her heels so she could continue in her stockinged feet. “Mr. Johnson says they’re the ones tying up all the money!”

  Ah. So that’s who the he was. Skye steeled herself like a salmon running upstream and pushed her way into the stairwell. “Sorry!” she told someone as they nearly collided. “Going up!”

  “Suit yourself,” a man told her sourly. “There’s nobody up there except Tex Johnson and Mrs. Olivares-King. They’re on the corporate floor.”

  “Thank you!” Skye called over her shoulder as she stumbled up the stairs toward the tenth floor.

  One foot in front of the other, stretching, quads burning, chest heaving, and finally—finally—she made it to the tenth floor. By this point the stairwell was utterly empty. She could not hear a single peep. Moments ago there had been the slam of doors echoing through the cavernous space. But Skye suspected that this sound had heralded the end of the line for the employees fleeing the building because now there was nothing but silence.

  If it had felt like a zombie movie before, this had escalated to one of those post-apocalyptic things where there was only one person left on the whole planet and Skye was it. She opened the door and leaned out into the hallway of the corporate offices floor with enough apprehension that it was almost like she was actually expecting the undead to come limping down the hallway carrying an axe or something.

  But this was not a movie or even a video game. Skye had to keep it together or she was going to make things worse and not better. Not that she really knew how to make them better to begin with. Then she heard voices.

  Sucking in a breath, Skye waited. Directly in front of the stairwell and the elevators was a huge round desk where a receptionist would normally sit. To the right of that was the conference room where Skye had sat on the meeting with Tex Johnson only the day before.

  Holy crap! Was that just yesterday? It actually felt like a million years ago. Skye shook her head and crept forward. She could hear the voices coming from the end of the left hallway. Orion had an office down there. So did Tex Johnson. And Mac King’s office had been down there too. All of that was information available on the directory downstairs. And if that was correct then Tex Johnson was probably in his office, presumably with Mrs. Olivares-King.

  Great. That was just what Skye needed. Tisha Olivares-King hated Skye probably more than just about anyone else in this city right now. But as Skye crept closer and closer to the mouth of the hallway she could hear Tisha’s familiar, and annoying, Southern belle drawl clear as a bell. There was also another voice, a masculine one.

  Skye held her breath as she moved down the hallway. The argument seemed to be a bit off. As if the two people yelling at each other weren’t actu
ally talking about the same topic. Then there was a crash as if something had been shattered.

  “You crazy bitch, what is wrong with you?” Tex shouted. The words echoed down the empty hallway and through the deserted offices. “That was my Man of the Year award!”

  “Yeah?” Tisha shrieked. “Well you’re not even the man of the hour, much less the year!”

  “What is your problem?” Tex was matching her decibel for decibel with the volume. “You’re never happy! I told you that I would help you get rid of that land. You kept going on and on about the land because you thought that if the boys didn’t have a place to run, they wouldn’t want to shift! I told you that wasn’t true! I told you but you wouldn’t listen!”

  Another crash. This one sounded like glass shattering into a million pieces. Crystal maybe. A decanter? As Skye got closer and closer to the office door she could smell the pungent odor of alcohol.

  “That’s imported, you crazy bitch!” Tex sounded as though he were completely fed up with this woman and didn’t know what to do about it.

  There was a derisive sniff so sarcastic that Skye could practically picture Tisha’s caustic expression right now. “Well, now it’s carpet cleaner!”

  “Do you know how much this is going to cost me?” Tex snarled at Tisha. “You’ve cost me everything!”

  “Let. Go!” Tisha made a strangling noise and Skye realized that this had gone too far.

  Giving up any pretext of sneaking, Skye bolted for the open office door. She grabbed the edge of the entryway to keep her balance as she practically spun through the opening. The scene before her was exactly as she had feared. Tex was still wearing one of his western suits, this one was black. But it was rumpled and getting worse as Tisha tried to rip the fabric apart in her panic. Both of Tex’s hands were around her neck and he was quickly squeezing off her air.

  “Stop!” Skye shouted. Without even weighing the odds or worrying about the possible danger, she ran toward the couple and grabbed at Tex’s hands. “Let go of her! Let go!”

  Tex removed one hand from Tisha’s throat, but only long enough to shove Skye away. “Get out of here, you newspaper whore!”

  Skye stumbled backwards, nearly spinning into Tex’s desk as she did. Reaching out at the last second with her hands she managed to catch hold of the corner. Her body slammed into the edge of the desk and a golf trophy of some kind toppled over. It looked heavy and awkward. Skye didn’t care. She was desperate.

  “I should have made sure you were in that house with your sons when they die!” Tex snarled at Tisha. “You could have all gone together and then I would be in the clear. I could sell the company and finally retire! Finally! Do you have any freaking clue how long I’ve wanted to retire? But your damn husband with his stupid werewolf health never even considered it! He laughed at me.”

  A flash of insight made Skye want to groan as she contemplated the stupidity of this entire situation. The golf trophy was heavy in her hand. She turned around and pointed at Tex. “Let. Go. Of her. Now.”

  Tex only laughed as he squeezed Tisha’s throat tighter. “I should have done this years ago. I think Mac would have appreciated the irony since you’d been slowly strangling him for decades!”

  Skye swallowed back the lump in her throat. Holding the heavy misshapen golf trophy in one hand she sprinted as fast as she could toward Tex and Tisha. The couple was grappling as Tisha struggled to move his hands away from her throat. She was choking and gagging and the noise of it was horrible to witness.

  The only thing that Skye could hope for was the element of surprise. Tex would not be expecting an actual attack. But with Tisha’s body between Tex and Skye, she had no choice but to duck around Tisha like some football player going for the ultimate touchdown, which in this case was the opportunity to lift that golf trophy as high in the air she could with both hands. The thing was awkward and Skye could feel it beginning to slip. Cupping it in both palms, she brought it down as hard as she could right against the side of Tex Johnson’s head.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than Tex Johnson shoved Tisha as far away from him as he possibly could. Her arms shot out and cartwheeled around and around as she struggled to keep herself from sailing through the air. But in the end she crashed into a credenza and crumpled to the ground.

  Tex was holding the side of his face. He swung around to face Skye. The golf trophy was slippery with his blood. Rivulets of it ran from the gaping raw wound on the side of his head. A sharp edge had caught against his ear. The heaviness of the trophy had caused it to skid in a downward arc that had ripped the lobe of Tex’s ear right off.

  “You!”

  “Shit.” Skye had just stabbed a bull and now he was about to gore her through the belly and leave her to die.

  Skye yelped as Tex lunged toward her. Twisting to the right she barely managed to elude his grab. The man had blood streaming into his eye and he kept swiping at it with his hand. But it wasn’t going to slow him down for long.

  The stupid golf trophy was too heavy to keep lugging around. It slipped from Skye’s fingers and hit the floor with a thud. She stumbled backwards and rammed right into an overstuffed chair. The chair promptly flipped over backwards and Skye felt as though she were flying. Her feet went up over her head and then all the way over when the back of the chair slammed against the floor. Skye rolled off the big leather cushions and landed on her knees on the floor.

  For just a moment her whole world was topsy-turvy. She could not decide what was up and what was down. And then she heard a grunt and a shout and knew that Tex Johnson was still on the other side of this chair and that gave Skye an idea.

  Pushing her tennis shoes as hard as she could against the carpet, Skye slammed her hands against the seat of the chair. The leather was slick and expensive and immediately started moving. Within seconds Skye heard her makeshift battering ram thud against something soft. A grunt and a curse told her that it was Tex.

  “Damn you!” he shouted, but his next words were cut off by a yelp as something unexpected happened.

  Skye couldn’t see a thing. She was stuck behind that chair, but she was not about to change that. It was like a protective shield and she pushed that thing as hard as she could against the enemy trying to push back. And then all at once the resistance was gone. Skye stopped pushing just as Tisha started screaming.

  The sound was horrifying. It was worse than anything else that Skye could have imagined. The pitch was enough to nearly burst her eardrums and she could not understand a word the woman was saying.

  Ducking out from behind the chair, Skye stared at Tisha and started to shout back. “What is wrong with you?”

  “He fell!” Tisha sobbed the words now. She was jumping up and down and pointing. “He fell. You pushed and he fell!”

  Dread turned sour in Skye’s belly. She almost could not bear to look, but there was nothing for it. She had to. Swallowing back the bile, Skye turned her head and peeked at what was now behind the chair that she had been using as a battering ram.

  Tex Johnson was there. He had apparently fallen backwards during the shove-o-war with the chair. The heel of his foot was lodged against the golf trophy that Skye had dropped only a moment ago and his head had slammed against the edge of his own desk. He was not moving.

  Damn. I might have just killed a man. Carolyn will so enjoy adding this to my story. I’m about to be the most notorious woman in Dallas!

  Chapter Thirty

  Jason could hear the screaming before he even got off the elevator. It was a bit of a push for all five of the broad-shouldered King brothers to scramble out, but Jason was slightly shorter and just that much more leonine that his brothers. He ducked low and bolted for the hallway on the left where Tex Johnson had an office.

  “For shit’s sake!” Orion shouted. “Who the hell is that?”

  Devon was just enough faster that he was right on Jason’s heels, the second to make it to the mouth of the hallway.
“That would be our mother.”

  “Yeah!” Edward snarled. “Don’t you recognize the tone?”

  Jason was about to say something else when he heard Skye shouting. What the hell? “Skye is here! Why the hell is Skye here?”

  The distance from one end of the hall to the other suddenly seemed like miles. Jason stretched his legs and pumped with his arms and finally managed to reach the open doorway of Tex’s office. His momentum was so great that he had to grab hold of the doorjamb to stop himself from flying by. The abrupt change of direction caused him to slam his shoulder into the opposite side of the door. He nearly collapsed into the space, but that did not stop him from taking in the scene before him with no small amount of shock.

  “Skye!” Jason gasped.

  She was on the floor beside a prone and very still Tex Johnson. A few feet away stood their mother with her hands over her face bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet as though she were doing some kind of awkward new club dance. The office was a complete disaster.

  Broken glass littered the floor. The glittery bits of what appeared to be a crystal decanter were interspersed with shards of ceramic from a pot. The dirt and the plant that had once been inside the pot were smeared against the far wall and had sprinkled the bookshelves with their mess. Several pieces of furniture were overturned. One of them was a huge leather chair. Right behind that Tex Johnson lay in a very strange position on the floor with one heel propped up against an old golf trophy that had sat atop the credenza in the corner as long as Jason could remember.

  Someone rammed into Jason from behind. Edward’s shocked inhale was followed by a low curse. “Shit, is he dead?”

  Skye looked up. “I don’t know! I don’t know.” Then she pointed to Tisha. “You should get over here and poke him. He was your lover!”