1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Five

by Julie Kenner

  And how should she go about it? He’d told her she couldn’t go to the safest place. Then told her she couldn’t go anywhere else either. She was trying to figure herself out. If she meant those words, how could he hold her back? Didn’t she deserve the same chance he’d had?

  No. Laurel is supposed to be normal. Laurel is supposed to not need the rough stuff because she’s a sweet princess. Wake up. This is what you do. You put a woman on a pedestal. You aren’t sexually liberated. You’re still the same pathetic boy who wanted his father to take two seconds with him.

  Now who had daddy issues?

  “Mr. Bradford?” the man asked.

  “Laurel,” he said, more softly this time. “Can we please discuss this further?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no need. I’ll keep my private life private from now on.”

  “Hey, I’m serious about needing to talk,” the man said, his shoulders straightening.

  “In a minute, buddy.” He needed to talk to Laurel. He didn’t like the look in her eyes. In that moment he realized the only thing worse than having Laurel around was not having her around. If she quit, he wouldn’t be able to watch out for her. He wouldn’t know where she was or what she was getting into—like offering herself up on the fucking Internet. “Laurel, let’s talk.”

  “No. I need to talk, damn it.” The thin man had turned a brilliant shade of red and sweat had broken out on his forehead. “You have to listen to me, Bradford. My brother is going to kill you. Harvey has sworn to not stop trying until you and everyone you love is dead.”

  The room seemed to chill.

  “Okay, then. Why don’t you sit down?” It looked like his talk with Laurel was going to have to wait.

  * * * *

  Thank god for crazy people and their death threats. Laurel Daley sat down and was very aware that most people wouldn’t be happy that their boss had been threatened, but it was a well-timed announcement. She’d been about to cry and she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do that over Mitchell Bradford anymore.

  Besides, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone had threatened to kill her cantankerous boss. Hell, she thought about doing the deed herself about ten times a day. She was thinking about doing it now.

  What right did he have to tell her she couldn’t go to Sanctum? Asshole. Selfish prick.

  She’s a bright light, Kai. She’s one of those people you can’t help but adore.

  Selfish prick who said the sweetest things when he thought no one was listening. He was also a selfish prick with serious insecurities, with a truckload of baggage it looked like she wasn’t going to be able to plow through.

  “I understand your brother is angry with me,” Mitch was saying. He was back behind the massive desk he hadn’t allowed her to get rid of. It was a refugee from the 1960’s, when apparently men compensated with large oak desks instead of sports cars. At least she’d been able to get rid of his crappy chair and replace it with one that wouldn’t mangle his spinal cord. “I’m a lawyer. A lot of people get angry with me.”

  “It’s in his job description,” she quipped.

  His dark eyes moved her way, and it took all she had not to fall to the floor in a submissive pose. But she wasn’t going to. Nope. Not for him.

  “As I was saying, my line of work tends to bring out the worst in people, but I’ll admit I don’t remember your brother. You said his name was Harvey? Harvey Dixon?”

  “We don’t have a file on him, sir,” Laurel said, knowing damn well that the “sir” would get his motor running, and that was why she merely meant it as a politeness. She wasn’t even thinking of capitalizing the word the way she would with Master Ian or Master Liam. If Mitch wanted the relationship professional, then he better get used to a lowercase s.

  He frowned at her, his handsome face going all gruff in a way that somehow managed to make him look more masculine. “How do you know? Do you have the files memorized now?”

  She could have them memorized if she wanted to, but that would cut into her reading time. “Nope. I checked my tablet. I scanned in all the files and where they’re stored about a month after you hired me. We’re fully automated.”

  His brows formed that V he got whenever something confused and disturbed him. “No one told me. I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  He was often like the old guy on his lawn shaking his fist at those young people. For a superman of not even forty, he was very adverse to change. “And that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  She often had to go around her gorgeous grump in order to get anything done. Mitch had a smoking body and the finest legal mind she’d ever met, but he also had a few quirks, and he could be a massive ass when he wanted to be.

  “You can’t go around destroying my files.”

  “Good god, Mitchell. I didn’t destroy the files. I scanned them in. Please tell me you don’t think that involves the computer eating the files or something.”

  “Of course not.” The look in Mitch’s eyes told her he would have a discussion with her after this was over. Which was good since she intended to have a discussion with him, too.

  He turned back to their guest. “Why do you believe your brother intends to kill me?”

  Patrick Dixon shifted in his chair, his hands nervously moving along the arms. “Well, my first indication was when he told me he was going to spend the rest of his life trying to rip your heart from your chest, eat it and then…well, the rest is all digestion but he used much more crude language.”

  “He wants to shit my heart out?” Mitch asked, his eyes rolling. “Like I never heard that one before. Is there a reason he wants me in his bowels?”

  “He shouldn’t given how much red meat you eat. It might be harder to pass than he thinks.” She tried to force him to work a salad in every now and then.

  Dixon ignored her. “My brother considers himself quite the inventor. Over the years he’s been awarded twenty-two different patents. He’s a brilliant engineer, but he prefers to work for himself, and the patents have never panned out, if you know what I mean.”

  “Just because you patent something doesn’t mean you’re going to make money from it,” Mitch replied.

  “Exactly.” Patrick sighed as though this was something he’d thought about long and hard. “Some of his inventions didn’t have much use or purpose in the real world. We managed to get a few of his ideas to market, but it wasn’t enough for Harvey. He always thought about the ones that got away. A few of his more brilliant ideas were taken by large companies.”

  Mitch shook his head. “Was he working for them at the time? Are you trying to say they stole his patents?”

  “No. While my brother is very smart, his processes can be a bit convoluted, difficult to understand.”

  “Ah,” Mitch said with a nod. “So someone swoops in and refines the idea, changes the process so it’s easier to produce the wanted effect.”

  “It’s not fair,” Patrick said, his hands forming fists.

  Mitch shrugged. “A patent applies to a process for bringing about a result. It doesn’t apply to the result itself. Otherwise, we’d have monopolies all over the place on manufacturing. If someone took your brother’s ideas and made them simpler, easier to get to market, then they win the prize. It’s Edison vs. Tesla.”

  This was why she’d hung around. Mitch was brilliant and all that law knowledge seemed to have taken up the majority of space in his brain. He didn’t have a whole lot of tact. He obviously couldn’t see that Dixon was on the edge of an emotional outburst.

  Laurel leaned forward and patted the man’s arm. “I’m so sorry to hear that. It must have been very frustrating for him.”

  Dixon immediately calmed, his eyes sad now but resolute. “It is, Miss Daley. It’s hard to watch someone you care about struggle. I have to admit that my brother isn’t the most stable of people. He’s brilliant but not stable.”

  She couldn’t say that about her boss. Yes, he was gruff and he obviously didn’t pu
t any stock in chemistry and wouldn’t know the prefect sub if she bit him in the ass—actually she hadn’t tried that—but Mitchell Bradford was stable. Since the day she’d met him, he’d been the man who walked her to her car every day, even if it was afternoon, even when he wasn’t leaving himself. He was the one who wanted a text to make sure she’d made it home all right. Mitch was the one who flipped out when he realized her car had a warning light that had been blinking away for six weeks. He was also the one who took her car down himself because he didn’t trust mechanics to not take advantage of her.

  “None of this explains why I’m his target. Or why he has a target at all,” Mitch said gruffly.

  Dixon leaned forward. “You have to understand that Harvey has always had big dreams. He would make a little money and then spend it all on the next invention because he didn’t want to simply be comfortable. He wanted to be rich, famous. He’s had many offers over the years for stable employment but he turned them all down because his wealth was always right around the corner.”

  Laurel understood the type. “He was always swinging for the fences because getting on base wasn’t enough, right?”

  Dixon nodded. “Exactly. That seemed to work during his twenties, but he got involved with drugs at some point and it went downhill. He became paranoid. He worked less, but was angrier about the failures. Then two years ago he started working on a way to store solar power.”

  “The Bentley Industries project.” Laurel immediately pulled up the file. As solar energy became an actual option for individual homes, the issue of storage had become a problem. Engineers had been trying to find a way to store up energy for longer periods of time so the houses with the capability could be more self-reliant rather than having to switch back to the electricity grid. So sunny summer days could be saved to power winter days. Bentley Industries had recently filed for a patent on a system that would allow for solar storage of up to a month and had confidence they could refine the process to go much longer.

  Mitchell Bradford was their attorney and stood to gain a percentage of the profits. He’d also been the spokesman for the company when they’d done the talk show rounds.

  “Yes,” Patrick agreed. “I don’t even think Harvey was close to anything, but he’s decided this was his last shot. He’s back on drugs and he believes that Mitch somehow stole his idea. I tried to go to the police, but they said there was no proof and when they talked to Harvey, he was in one of his lucid stages. He can be very convincing when he’s like that. I’ve been his partner for twenty years and I’ve never seen him so angry.”

  “What makes you think this isn’t just talk, Mr. Dixon?” Mitch asked. If it bugged him that someone wanted him dead, he didn’t show it. His gorgeous face was as passive as it was when he talked about the weather.

  But once it had been animated and fierce. She couldn’t forget the possessive look that had lit those dark eyes as he’d lowered his lips to hers and devoured her like a starving man.

  She shook her head because every time she thought about their one and only kiss, the room seemed to heat up. It had been months, but she could still feel the way his hands had tightened on her body as though he would never let her go.

  He had, of course, and now he was quite good at evading her web of seduction. Or maybe she wasn’t any good at the seduction part.

  “It’s a feeling,” Patrick was saying. “I know that something is off with him. I truly believe he’s going to make an attempt on your life. You have to be careful. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop him.”

  The poor man was shaking. Laurel leaned over and put a hand on his. “It’s all right. We’ll look into it. Thank you so much for telling us about the threat. I can’t imagine what it cost you to come in this afternoon.”

  “He’s my brother.” Patrick sniffled slightly and that sent Laurel running for a tissue. Naturally Mitch didn’t have any. He tried to pawn off anyone who looked like they would get even vaguely emotional on her, so she excused herself. She kept a box in her office.

  That was when she saw the man in the lobby. A hoodie was pulled down over his face. He stood in the hallway outside their doors. The building housed several businesses. This particular floor was shared by their office, a dentist, and an accounting agency.

  He was probably looking for the dentist. He was dressed too casually for business.

  She grabbed the tissues off Sharon’s desk and was about to turn when the man suddenly shifted toward her.

  The hoodie covered his eyes, but she wasn’t really looking at him anymore. Nope. She was standing stock-still at the sight of what was in his hands.

  A gun.

  She managed to scream right before he pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Two

  “Derek, I want this asshole found. Do you understand?” Three hours later, Mitch could still feel his heart pounding.

  Harvey Dixon had taken a shot at Laurel. He’d shot at her through the ceiling to floor glass windows the real estate agent who had sold him on this building had sworn gave the place a professional feel.

  They gave the place a clear line of sight to shoot into it. He was done with that shit. Steel-enforced walls. He would have them put in as soon as possible. Surely Big Tag knew some crazy doomsday preppers who could outfit his office with everything one would need to keep out people who shot at his paralegal.

  “He understands, Mitch. You’ve yelled at him for an hour,” Laurel said with a sigh.

  Derek Brighton, a lieutenant with the Dallas Police Department, merely shook his head. “He can yell all he likes. He’s had a scare.”

  “I was the one who nearly got shot and no one even offered me a lollipop.” Laurel looked sulky at the thought.

  The EMT had offered her more than a lollipop, Mitch was sure. The kid couldn’t have been much past twenty-five and he’d flirted like mad with Laurel before declaring her perfectly fine.

  “And I want another EMT. She needs to go to the hospital.” That was what people who got shot did. She’d almost been shot. Maybe the kid had spent so much time flirting with her that he’d missed a gunshot wound. It could happen. Adrenaline could make a person ignore pain.

  He wanted to run his hands over her himself. It had been his first instinct. He’d needed to feel her skin under his palm, to make sure she was warm and alive. He’d pulled her up, but before he could get her in his arms, she’d stepped back, keeping a professional distance between them.

  “I think I might send you to the hospital, buddy. You look like you might have a heart attack. Why don’t you sit down, Mitch?” Derek was a friend from Sanctum. He’d shown up with the first responders, having recognized the address. “You’re going to wear a hole in the carpet.”

  “I don’t want to sit.” He still might have a damn heart attack. Since that moment he’d heard the glass cracking and realized what that sound had really been, his heart had kicked into overdrive. He’d run out into reception only to find Laurel on the ground. It had taken him a moment to realize she wasn’t hurt. Before she’d turned over and reached a hand up, he’d thought she was dead.

  Hollow. The world for a moment had been so utterly hollow.

  “All right, well, I think we have what we need. I hate to tell you this, but it wasn’t Harvey Dixon. I just got a report that he’s in a rehab facility and has been for the last two weeks. I informed his brother and he’s already on his way over. Turns out he hadn’t talked to him lately. He found some stuff Harvey had written in a journal a couple of months back. Besides, we’ve got this guy on camera. He’s a good twenty years younger than Harvey Dixon. The dentist next door says he’s had some trouble with break-ins. Kids come looking for drugs. He claims to have complained to the landlord but apparently the landlord is a difficult asshole. His words, not mine.”

  Mitch sighed. He was the freaking landlord. “Trust me. I’ll have a new security system complete with those eye scan things. No one’s getting in here again.”

  “That could be bad for business,
” Laurel said with a sigh.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t care about business anymore.” Except he better because until his new ventures started coming in, he had one ex-wife who would haul him in front of a California judge if he missed her alimony check.

  Derek held out a hand. “I’ll get this kid. He was probably high. I already have some officers canvassing the area to see if he’s local. I’ll check with the other buildings. I saw some security cameras up and down the street. We might be able to get a better view of him. You want me to give Big Tag a call?”

  Big Tag had recently had a set of twins. Another reason to never get a woman pregnant. Sometimes they gave birth to litters. “Nah. If Harvey Dixon is actually locked up in rehab, I suppose we’re all right. Can someone inform me if he checks himself out?”

  “I’ve already asked the facility to let me know. He’s there on court-ordered rehab, so he can’t leave unless he wants to spend his time in prison instead. I’ll monitor the situation and let you know what I find out. I’ll also check phone records and see if he’s called anyone, but Dixon was fairly certain he was after you, so I don’t see why he would take a shot at Laurel.” Derek gave Laurel a smile. “I’m thrilled you weren’t horribly murdered. If you’re still up for it, Karina and I will be at your place at eight on Friday, okay?”

  Laurel paled. “Oh, actually I’m not going to be able to go, but thanks. Please tell Karina hello for me.”

  Derek’s eyes narrowed. “You all right?”

  Laurel nodded. “Yes, something came up. I can’t go on Friday.”

  “Okay, but if you change your mind or you want to go on Saturday, we’ll be there. With Will and Bridget at that conference of hers, you call me if you need a ride.” Derek nodded and strode out.

  Everyone had known about Laurel’s foray into submission with the exception of him.

  Sharon walked in. His secretary was in her mid-fifties and was much more worried about her grandkids and their myriad of social activities than she was about working, but every time he tried to fire her Laurel intervened. She was his tenth secretary in the last four years and it looked like he needed a new one. “Okay, I called the glass company and they’re sending someone out tonight to fix the glass. He can’t be here until after six and I have to be at Afton’s school play, so someone’s going to have to stay to let them in.”