by Vanessa Vale
She looked me over, her sandy eyebrows going up. Yeah, I was a thug, but I beat people up in the ring. With rules. I never hurt a woman, but I wanted answers. Now.
“Garage. Putting leftovers in the freezer for the client.”
I offered a slight head nod of thanks, spun on my heel. I made it to the hallway again when the door to the garage whipped open and Harper came barreling through, not looking where she was going. Stumbling, she slammed into me, and I gripped her upper arms to steady her.
She stifled a scream and tugged at my hold. She was freaked. Seriously freaked.
“Harper. It’s me. Leo.” I gave her a little shake, and she looked up at me. Her face was as white as a ghost and her eyes...fuck, she was petrified. Looking over her shoulder, I didn’t see anyone following her. Had someone come onto her? Groped her? Or worse?
“What’s the matter?”
She was practically hyperventilating. “Body. There,” she whispered, as if she couldn’t get the words to come out louder.
“What?” I asked, now looking behind me as well. There was a threat here, and I didn’t know what it was. My adrenaline kicked in, honed my attention.
I turned her, pressed her against the wall. Felt her tremble. Breathed in her scent. Coconuts? Something tropical. “Stay here. All right?”
She nodded and I stepped back, made sure she could stand on her own.
Confident she wasn’t going to fall to the floor, I went to the garage door, peeked in. All was quiet. The overhead lights were on and I could see four stalls, fancy cars in three of the spaces. Along the back wall were shelves for storage, an older model fridge and a freezer chest.
I remembered what the server said, that Harper was putting leftovers in the freezer. That was why she’d been in there. I stepped down onto the concrete floor. I wanted to pull my gun, but thought better of it. I didn’t need to draw attention to whatever the fuck was going on with the guests in the other part of the house.
Still, I squatted down, looked beneath the BMW for anyone hiding down the line. Nothing. I stood, listened to the soft murmurs of the party guests through the door, the hum of the fridge. I walked toward it and the freezer next to it, saw the strewn containers of leftovers on the floor where Harper must have dropped them.
I glanced back at the door, saw a sliver of Harper through the opening. She was right where I’d left her, although I could see the stiff backbone she seemed to have all the time was definitely gone.
Not wanting to leave her alone for long, I lifted the lid on the freezer, stared down. Fuck. They called these things dead body freezers for a reason.
Lying stiff on top of frozen pizza boxes, Tupperware containers, a tub of ice cream, and bags of frozen vegetables was a dead guy. Based on the bullet hole in his forehead, he’d been offed. As recently as today, because his skin hadn’t turned a papery white yet from days of sitting in sub-room temperatures. Put on ice, literally, until whoever did this could enjoy the party then do something with him.
I didn’t recognize him. Forties. Salt and pepper hair. Receding hairline that accentuated the hole into his brain. Black suit. Well dressed.
He was in there for a reason. To keep him hidden. If dead guy here was shot today, it must have been fucking inconvenient to get rid of him in broad daylight. Could be that this spot was just a temporary measure.
I dropped the lid, glanced back at Harper. She’d seen him. Knew he was there. Knew he—whoever the fuck he was—was dead. And those little bowls of Harper’s finger food leftovers were evidence she’d been there. Evidence that she’d seen what she shouldn’t have. No fucking way could they go in the freezer. Squatting down, I stacked all the containers she’d brought to the garage and carried them back into the hall, making sure I left nothing behind.
She looked at me with wide eyes as she wrung her hands. Shit, she was in trouble. She was witness to a crime in the O'Sullivan house. This was a big fucking deal. Really big. Really fucked.
She might not have seen who’d pulled the trigger, but it was definitely murder. Bullets didn’t accidentally end up dead center between the eyes. What Harper saw could put Shamus O'Sullivan away. For a long, long time. If they found out she knew about the dead guy, she’d have a matching bullet hole of her own. And so would I if they had any idea I’d been in the garage and saw what I just had, too.
I leaned down so we were eye level, looked at her until she focused on me. “Here’s what we’re going to do, sugar. Give these to the server. Tell her to load them into your van because the freezer was full.”
She laughed then, an almost delirious burst of sound.
“Tell her to take the van and leave.”
Nodding, she went into the kitchen, did as I said. I stood in the doorway and watched, scanning the space again, making sure no one got near her.
While the server looked at her oddly, she did what she was told and took the containers, grabbed the keys from the counter beside a purse I assumed was Harper’s, and left. The other servers weren’t there, so I had to assume they were already gone. They were irrelevant.
Harper was all that mattered.
She looked around the kitchen, but I could tell she was in shock. She couldn’t see anything in her state. Barely moved. I went to her, took her icy hand. “The kitchen looks good. Anything left to do before you’re done for the night?”
Her eyes focused briefly, then she shook her head.
“Good girl. Let’s get out of here.”
She came to then. “Out of here? Where will I go? Leo, I just saw—” She bit her lip, glanced around.
I stroked her hair back from her face, felt the silky strands. I’d wanted to fuck her before, but now I felt something more. Protectiveness, too.
“You’re coming with us, sugar.”
“But—”
“You’re in way over your head here. You have no idea who Shamus O'Sullivan is, do you?”
Just as I’d thought, the shaking of her head told me she’d not known.
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.”
Dane came into the kitchen then. Harper jumped, and I pulled her behind me, reaching my hand under my jacket for my gun.
“Jesus, Leo. What the fuck?” He studied me closely, then Harper. “What’s happened?”
“I’ll tell you later. We’ve got to get out of here. Our girl’s in trouble.”
Dane didn’t question me, only came up beside Harper, wrapped his arm around her stiff shoulders as I led them through the discreet safe exit. One I’d never thought we’d really need. Sure, I’d planned on using that exit, but never thought it would be because I needed to get her away from a murder scene.
Four
HARPER
Dane led me into an apartment, but I had no memory of getting there. He’d escorted me to his car and Leo had climbed into the back seat, holding my hand with his left and a gun with his right. That was it. I didn’t remember conversation, stop lights, where we were going, even the elevator ride, just looked at the gun in his lap. But I snapped out of my trance when I saw the view of the East River and New Jersey beyond from the floor to ceiling windows. The room was warm, but I rubbed my bare arms.
God. I’d seen a dead body. Not an older person who’d died peacefully in their sleep. No, this had been something else entirely. Murder. Up close and personal. And whoever killed him had the audacity to shove the guy into a freezer. I bit my lip, and couldn’t help but shudder as I thought of Mrs. O’Sullivan’s brightly colored bowls of packaged food stored beside a dead guy. When most husbands brought their work home with them, they didn’t stuff it in the garage freezer.
I sucked in a deep breath, my heart skipping a beat. “My leftovers!” I said to no one, remembering I’d dropped them onto the concrete floor when I’d found the dead guy.
“We gave them to your server, remember?” Leo asked, coming up to me and spinning me about, gripping my upper arms. He studied me with his piercing green eyes. Why hadn’t I noticed the color before? “Don’t
worry, there’s no trace of you in that garage.”
There might not be any trace of me, but I would never forget it. The sight I’d seen was forever burned onto my brain.
“Want a drink?” he asked, and I noticed he was no longer wearing his suit jacket, the crisp white dress shirt practically molded to his perfect physique. He was all hard muscle, not an ounce of fat anywhere on him.
“God, yes.”
“Whiskey?” Dane called from across the room.
It was then I broke Leo’s concerned stare and stepped back. I nodded, then took in my surroundings. The apartment was stunning. Besides the views, the apartment had twelve foot ceilings, dark mahogany floors, thick carpets and well-appointed furniture. It was masculine, but warm.
“This is your place?” I asked Dane.
He poured two glasses of whiskey from a decanter on a wheeled stand used as a mini-bar. When he turned to me, he gave a small smile, held out the drink. “Yes. You’re safe here.”
I took a small sip of the drink, let the liquid burn a path down my throat and warm me from the inside out.
“You don’t think this is my style, sugar?” Leo asked, a wicked grin on his face as he dropped his large frame onto the huge sectional. It faced a fireplace and a flat screen TV mounted above it. He tugged at the knot on his dark tie, loosening it enough so he could lift it over his head before tossing it onto the coffee table. Next, he undid two shirt buttons at his throat, then sighed.
“I...I don’t know you.”
And with that, I realized I was alone with two men, two strangers. In a high rise—probably penthouse—apartment I only had a general idea of where it was. No one knew my whereabouts. For all I knew, they could have killed the guy in the freezer.
I walked quickly to the little bar and set my glass down, the amber liquid sloshing onto my hand. Shit. I wiped it on my dress and saw my purse on the table by the door. “I should go,” I replied, my voice soft. “Thank you for being kind to me, but I—”
“Harper, we’re not going to hurt you,” Dane said. Although he came toward me, he didn’t get too close, as if sensing how skittish I was. “Call a friend. Or the server from the party. Tell her where you are”—He rattled off an address —“and that you’re with me. Dane Crawford. She can look me up online. I’ll get you my driver’s license too, if it’ll set you at ease.”
I stared at the door knob. Just one turn and I’d be out of there.
“You can’t go home,” Leo said. He must have moved from the couch because his voice came from a few feet behind me. “Not yet. Not like this. You’re too shaken up.”
“I’ve never seen...a, um...dead body before. Not like that. Not so...disrespected, like a piece of meat, not a human being. God, that was awful.”
The sound of my own voice made me cringe. This wasn’t like me. Weak. There was no time for weakness in my life. I’d learned that the hard way in the cutthroat world of business. This world was for the resilient. The survivors. For those of us who never gave up. I was like the military, doing more before 9:00 a.m. than most people did all day. I was a success, and there was no room for failure, even in this. I couldn’t let this bother me. I needed to figure out how to get it out of my head, or relegate it to just a small crisis on a job. Like the time I’d found the bride being fucked by the best man at her wedding reception. That was something I wasn’t supposed to see. I kept my clients’ secrets.
But this? This wasn’t adultery. This was murder.
A different beast altogether.
“I should go to the police,” I said.
“Come sit down, sugar,” Leo said in that soft tone. I’d heard it hard and commanding, but he seemed to save this one just for me. “When you’re feeling better, we’ll take you home. For now, take a minute. Drink your whiskey and we’ll talk this through.”
I had no idea why I was doing as he said, but I turned around, walked to the couch, settled into the plush comfort. Dane handed me my drink again as he came to sit beside me, taking off his suit jacket first and tossing it over a nearby chair back. Leo settled on my other side, and while I barely knew them, the feel of both their thighs pressed against mine was somewhat comforting.
“You said earlier you didn’t know who Mr. O’Sullivan is,” Leo continued.
I shook my head. “Just as a client, although, I hadn’t met him before tonight. His wife was the one who handled all the arrangements. She’s a pit bull when it comes to this kind of thing. I was hired to do the party, plus the rehearsal dinner and the wedding reception in a few months.”
“A big contract,” Dane said, his voice sounding impressed.
“Yes. It’s the big break I’ve been after.”
Not only would it give me a big reserve of cash, it was a boon for my client list.
“Mmm,” Dane replied, agreeing. “Do a good job for him and you’ll be set. He and his wife have tons of connections. But working with people like that eventually comes at a price.”
I glanced at Dane, saw the start of dark whiskers on his jaw. His eyes were almost as black as his hair. They held none of the heat from earlier, only a mixture of gentleness and concern.
“A price?” I asked, then took a sip of whiskey.
“O’Sullivan’s a made man,” Leo said.
When I turned to look at him and only stared, not sure what he was getting at, he added, “Mafia.”
“Mafia?” I asked, reaching forward and plunking my glass down on the coffee table. Holy shit. This was bad. “So the body...it was, what, a mob hit?”
Leo shrugged. “Dead is dead. But you can’t go to the police.”
“Why not?” I asked, my voice shrill. “He was obviously murdered. I mean, I’ve never seen someone with a bullet hole in their forehead before, but I’ve seen enough movies.”
“And you’ve seen enough mob flicks to know that if you go to the police and they search the freezer, there won’t be a body to find. O’Sullivan’s men are probably getting rid of the evidence as we speak.”
Leo’s words had me wondering just how they were going to get rid of the body. I shuddered.
Dane wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulled me into him so I settled in the crook of his arm, my head on his shoulder. He was warm, and I breathed in his clean, spicy scent.
Leo took hold of my calves and lifted them up, tugging off my heels and set to work on rubbing my feet. His thumbs pressing into my arches made me bite a lip to stifle the whimper. It felt so good, especially after being on my feet all day then wearing the too-high heels all night. If I’d known I would have been shorthanded, I would have worn my flats.
“I still feel I should do...something. I mean, isn’t it also a crime not to report it? Obstruction of justice?”
“O’Sullivan doesn’t play by the rules, which means neither can you. If you want the job, you’ll keep quiet. But more important than that, if you want to stay alive, you need to forget everything you saw.”
“I get it.”
“No, sugar. I don’t think you do.”
“But can I let my client get away with murder?”
Dane’s fingers stroked my upper arm, and I felt his lips nuzzle the top of my head. “If you come forward, he’s sure to find out that you’re the witness. Then that dead guy won’t be the last guy he gets rid of. You’ll be next.”
I stiffened in their hold. Dane was right. What had I gotten myself into? It was supposed to be a small, intimate engagement party at a client’s house. That was it. No dead bodies. No mafia. Just finger foods and cocktails, dammit. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Shh,” Dane continued. “You’re safe now. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Just relax.”
“Relax? I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon,” I countered. My best client turned out to be a mafia kingpin, and I was a witness, albeit somewhat tangentially, to a murder.
“What do you do besides run your catering business, sugar?” Leo asked, his thumbs still working their magic on my fe
et.
“Please don’t change the subject.”
He smiled, his gaze raking down my body. I didn’t feel all that sexy right now. Not with...dead body cooties. There was no way I was going to get into any kind of sex, not with that image stuck in my head. Those empty eyes. That almost transparent skin. I didn’t care how good these guys were, they weren’t going to erase that image tonight.
“Talking about something else can get your mind off what you saw. And we’re asking because we want to know more about you”—Leo’s hand slid up my leg, to tease just under the hem of my dress, then slid back down. His intention was clear, but he wasn’t doing anything about it. Now—“only a dead body got in the way.”
“I’m going to ignore your suggestion because it sure sounds like you’re saying you were cock blocked by a dead guy.”
I felt Dane’s laugh rumble in his chest.
“Something like that,” he said. “We won’t deny that we want you, Harper. It’s clear to me there’s a strong chemistry here, and I know you sense it too. So, yes, I’ll state the obvious. We want to share you. However you want to interpret it...taking turns fucking...fucking you at the same time. But not now. Not like this. We want you willing. Eager.”
Oh, um. Wow. Suddenly all the air got sucked out of the room and the temperature rose to sweltering. I wasn’t sure how to respond to Dane’s comment, but hell, my body sure reacted judging from the heat that spread from my core to the electricity coursing through me.
“Begging for it,” Leo added, and I could hardly imagine what they’d do to me to get me to the point of begging. Well, maybe I could.
“Answer my question,” Leo said after a few moments.
“What do I do besides work? You mean like hobbies? Knitting or painting landscapes?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you want to tell us.”
I sighed, realizing I was content with the distraction, and Leo was truly interested.
“Not much. I work. All the time. Seven days a week. Other than that, I run to burn off steam.”