by Becky McGraw
“You’re both insensitive asses,” she corrected, remembering Patton’s words and the argument that happened between the brothers beforehand. She leaned up on her elbow and realized she was in a bedroom, probably his bedroom. “How did I get in here?”
“I carried you in here, and you’re staying in here until you feel better.” His alpha tone she’d found charming and quirky earlier was beginning to irritate her now.
“I need to find my sister, and I need to find her now,” Grace grated, sitting upright, remembering Patton’s words about the funeral home.
“I’m on that right now, and finding out about that hearse too.” The word hearse and its connotation caused the acid in her empty stomach to burn a hole there. She groaned, and clutched her middle. “Patton said you didn’t stop to eat today, so I’m ordering room service. Logan can be pissed or not. He and Susan went out to dinner, but we need to work.”
“I don’t want to cause any more problems for you, Bren—um, Dex,” she said, sitting upright again. “I’m more than able to pay for my own dinner. Just order a pizza or something and tell me what my cut is. I’ll pay my share.”
Dex’s lips tightened and he ignored her. “Patton left to go back out to the studio to do more surveillance and we need to restart my search script for Jones. I also need to tap into the surveillance cameras at the studio so I can patch that feed into Patton’s phone. We have a lot to do and you’re wasting time here, arguing over money.”
His words circled her frazzled brain, but did not compute. “I’m with Patton on your computer jargon, Brennan. I’m afraid there is no we in this equation. If you get carpal tunnel in your cyber-sleuthing activities, I’m the woman to help you. Otherwise you’re on your own.”
She slid her legs off the side of the bed and reached up to cup Brennan’s beard-stubbled jaw. Emotion and need filled her along with something else she didn’t want to identify, because she knew if she focused on it, let it take root, she’d probably regret it later.
“You really are amazing, you know that?” she asked with a sigh, and his smile curved against her palm, causing a warm, oozy feeling to sweep through her. “Thank you so much for helping me.”
“I’m just doing what I know how to do to help you,” he replied, nuzzling his face into her palm, his stubble exciting her nerve endings all the way up to her elbow. That sensation sparked memories of how that stubble felt against her body earlier, between her legs, and she shivered.
With a deep sigh, he stood and took her hand to pull her to her feet.
“Now, what you are going to do to help me, Dr. Wentworth, is eat something and then take a nap. I’m going to continue my research into the puzzle that is Master Tim, and maybe by morning, I’ll know more than his last name.”
“It’s Harlow,” Grace informed, and Dex looked shocked.
“How do you know that?” he demanded, his eyebrows crashing together.
He wasn’t going to like this, and Grace knew it. “Well, I found it out from the police warrant that was issued today. I also got the studio address from them while I was at the station, and that’s how Patton and I found it.” Grace pulled her arm away and reached for the phone on the nightstand. “That reminds me, I need to call Mr. Harlow.”
Dex’s hand landed on top of hers and he squeezed until she released the receiver. “You are not to call that sonofabitch, or get within a hundred miles of him. Is that clear?” His eyes were as deadly as his voice when she looked up at him.
“The last time I checked, you aren’t my commander, Brennan. I’m a grown woman and I’ll do whatever I please. Is that clear?” Grace said in an equally lethal tone.
“What warrant are you talking about? The one they used to charge me? Why were you at the police station today?” he demanded.
“They arrested Tim Harlow on assault charges after I showed them my rear end and they took photographs. It was not a pleasant experience, so the least you can do is say thank you and get out of my way to let me finish putting him in his place.”
“I’m going to kill my bro—” he growled.
“You’re not going to kill anyone. It was all my idea. I insisted Patton take me to the station with the officers first so I could file a complaint,” Grace said, as she nudged his hand from hers to pick up the receiver. “Now, I’m going to make Master Tim an offer he can’t refuse.”
Her bravado fled as soon as someone answered at Silver Chains and she asked to speak to Master Tim. The instrumental jazz music that played in her ear while they kept her on hold became a cheese grater ripping away the lining of her brain. When he finally answered, that grater gouged deeper when she heard soft whimpering in the background.
“Yes? I told them I didn’t want to be disturbed, but I guess my wishes don’t matter, so what do you want?” he snarled.
Gathering up her courage again, Grace cleared her throat. “Mr. Harlow, this is Grace Wentworth. I’d like to speak to you about some kind of resolution regarding the charges I filed against you today. I have a proposition.”
He laughed harshly, and Grace flinched. “Perhaps you’d like to make that proposition to your sister, Ms. Wentworth?” he said in that smooth, smug tone that raked over her nerves. A pained moan preceded short, sharp breaths on the line.
“Marcy?” Grace asked, her insides twisting into a tight knot. How in the hell had he figured out that Marcy was her sister, she wondered, as her hand went numb from her tight grip on the phone.
He had your phone, with your real name. Marcy was listed as her emergency contact, along with her stage name, and vice versa. He was most likely in possession of Marcy’s phone too.
You also filed a police report using your real name, dummy. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to connect the dots between them, or Einstein to figure out she’d made huge mistakes that could cost her sister her life.
A gurgling grunt was followed by a relieved breath, and it sounded to Grace like he removed a gag from Marcy’s mouth, before she came on the line. “Oh, God—help me, Grace.” She slurped in another breath, then sobbed. “The films…I didn’t know…he tricked me in—” Marcy never finished, as a loud slap produced a pained moan, followed by sobbing. A short struggle followed, then whimpering.
“Please don’t kill her…she has a child,” Grace begged, her voice trembling over the words. “Just let her go, drop the charges against Dexter Buchanan and you will never hear from us again, I promise.”
“I’m not going to kill her, for now. I’m just going to make her wish she was dead, so you both remember not to ever fuck with me again. I might go easier on her if you drop those charges.” Grace could almost feel his hot breath on her face as he breathed heavily into the phone for a second. “Be sure to tell your friend Lowell that Thom knows he’s in town.”
“Thom?” she repeated, gripping the phone tighter. She knew this monster fed off of fear, so Grace fought to keep it from her tone. “Who is that?”
He laughed loudly, and she cringed. “Trust me, he’ll know who Thom is—and tell him the General isn’t happy.”
“But he’s not in the military—” Grace said confused.
“Just tell him, bitch. And tell him if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stop snooping and run like the coward he is, because the General has friends and they’re looking for him.”
“Nooooo!” Grace screamed, but it turned into sobbing when the line went dead. She was shaking so badly when Dex took the receiver from her that her teeth chattered. He sat down on the bed beside her and held her tightly until she settled.
“If you’d have given me a chance, I would have told you why that wasn’t a good idea. Tim Harlow isn’t a normal man, honey, and he’s not a normal kinkster either. They’re usually a pretty regimented group with steadfast rules. From what I’ve seen so far, he’s just an abusive asshole, who gets his jollies from torturing women. This isn’t the first time assault charges have been filed against him either—there have been at least seven other incidents, but they’ve all been dropped. I wond
er why?”
“We have to find her tonight,” Grace said, then gagged as bile shot up to her throat and she swallowed hard. “He gave me a cryptic message for you, too.”
Brennan’s body tensed. “What kind of message?” he asked gruffly.
“He said to tell you that Thom knows you’re in town, and the General isn’t happy,” she related and his body jerked.
“What else did he say?” he asked, his voice gravelly.
“He said that Thom has friends who are looking for you…but who in the hell is Thom?!?” Grace demanded, pulling away to stand and glare at him.
Was Thom involved in the studio somehow? Was Brennan for that matter, since Tim and Thom seemed to know him? Her heart lurched with fear and she took a step back, then reached behind her to feel for the grip of the pistol in the waistband of her pants.
“I have access to their phone bank with the key logger,” Dex informed, instead of answering her question. “Let me see if I can trace back that call to where it was transferred, before a hundred more calls come in to the main trunk line.”
He all but sprinted out of the bedroom, and Grace would’ve followed but she was too weak to stand and felt sick at her stomach. Instead, she laid back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling because she was too afraid to close her eyes and she needed to think, to decide if she’d made a huge mistake trusting Brennan—no, Dexter Buchanan.
***
Dex almost didn’t hear the knock on the door, he was so focused on trying again to get an address on the call he traced from the resort. It was a fucking unlisted number, a cable subscriber provided number that had not been registered with the 911 system. That made it much harder to pin down, but no less than he expected.
According to his research on the corporation earlier, Harlow knew how to cover his tracks. He’d been doing a good job of it for seven years, since he first opened the resort. Gray hadn’t gotten back to him with the rest, but he texted him and asked that he check into Thomas Sheridan too, to see if he was an investor.
A second series of harder knocks came at the door, so he dragged his eyes from the computer screen to answer it. A waiter stood behind a white room service cart, and Dex waved him inside, then walked back to the table.
“You can lay it out here,” he said, shoving the printouts covering the table aside. When there was no response, he turned around to see if maybe the guy was still at the door, but found a pistol pointed directly at the center of his chest.
“Where is the woman?” he asked, his eyes hard and steady on Dex’s.
“She went out to dinner,” Dex lied, forcing his eyes not to dart to the bedroom door, which was cracked open. How in the hell had this guy gotten up the keycard only elevator to this suite—with a dining cart? In a hotel-issued uniform?
He wished the man was just a smidge closer to him, because he might try one of the moves that Susan had been trying to teach him. It had worked on Tim Harlow, but he hadn’t had a gun, so the stakes were much higher. All he could do was try to bluff his way out of this.
Please don’t let him look at my laptop screen or those printouts. If he did, Dex knew the gig would be up and he’d be dead.
“You’re lying,” he said calmly, his eyes darting to the bedroom door and Dex’s heart stopped.
There was no question in his mind then that this was one of Tim Harlow’s minions. Or was he? Thom has friends, and they’re looking for you.
But why would Sheridan be after him? He was off the hook legally, so Dex posed no threat. Unless the investigation wasn’t closed and Thom knew if Dex testified, he’d definitely be going to jail with Berger. Just because Congress closed the hearings didn’t mean the DOJ or FBI investigation wasn’t ongoing. Dex had no way of following that thread because it was classified and he lost his clearance when he resigned. Not that he’d have been privy to it as a Sheridan employee anyway.
A better question was how did he find out he was in town? Everything he’d done here was under Dexter Buchanan—even his arrest.
When the police asked if I knew you, I gave them your real name.
Fuck—that’s how he knew! He would also probably bet it was on the police report which Tim Harlow had to sign and was probably given a copy of.
Coming to Vegas might be the single biggest mistake in his life, next to agreeing to help Grace Wentworth. Maybe his last.
“I’m not lying—she went out to get us dinner,” he insisted, but the man shook his head.
“Walk toward that bedroom,” he ordered, and Dex swallowed hard. He had to do something to stop this guy from getting to Grace, but what?
Dex turned toward the bedroom and took a step, but stumbled when he saw the door open wider than it had been before. That meant Grace had to be awake and aware of what was going on, but Dex couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing as he took another step toward the door. When he was at the doorway, a hand grabbed his arm in a firm grasp and yanked him inside the bedroom. The door slammed shut, and in a flash, Grace flipped the lock and pulled him away.
“I called hotel security, so they should be up here any minute,” she whispered, but squeaked when wood shavings flew and a round hole appeared in the door near the lock, with only a ping to announce the bullet. Dex looked on the other side of the bed and saw a matching hole in the wall.
“Well, they better fucking hurry,” he growled, dragging her to the bathroom. He pulled her inside and locked that door too, then took her into the huge shower. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and sighed when it wasn’t there. Another ping echoed through the suite, then someone kicked the door, and it crashed against the bedroom wall. “He’s in the bedroom,” Dex whispered, his stomach tightening.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Grace replied with a head shake. When she produced a pistol from the waistband of her yoga pants, Dex felt lightheaded.
“Where in the hell did you get that?” he choked out past the lump of fear in his throat. And where in the hell did you learn to handle it so efficiently? Awe filled him as he watched her expertly flip off the safety with her thumb and pull the slide back.
“Your brother,” she replied, her voice shaking as another ping sounded, this time on the bathroom door.
“I’m going to use it to kill him when we get out of here,” Dex snarled, wanting to take the gun from her, but knowing he’d be useless with it.
“No—you’re going to thank him,” she grated, edging her way to the opening of the shower to put her back to the wall. She leaned out and aimed at the center of the bathroom door with every muscle in her body tense.
Another pop echoed through the bathroom and sent wood shavings floating to the ceramic floor like confetti, but instead of a boot kicking the door, there was a shout, then a scuffle outside the door before it exploded inward. The thug groaned as he hit the tile floor hard, face first, and Logan landed on top. His gun skated across the floor toward the tub, and Susan ran inside to grab it.
Logan held the man down, then lifted up to jerk his arm up behind his back just as a hotel security guard ran into the bathroom.
“Do you have cuffs?” Logan growled, and the man shook his head.
“Wait just a second,” Susan said with a grin. “I bought a pair yesterday at the resort.” She ran out of the bathroom and came back with the silver restraints dangling from her fingers. With a roll of his eyes, Logan took them and quickly cuffed him, then yanked him to his feet.
He glanced at the name badge on the assassin’s uniform and frowned. “Where’s the man you stole that from?” he asked, but the man clenched his jaw. “Who do you work for?” Logan demanded, twisting his arm up between his shoulder blades, but all he got was a flinch.
“I called the police, so they should be here in a few minutes,” the security guard said, stepping forward to take the thug’s arm. “I’ll take him downstairs and send up maintenance and the manager.”
Susan popped the clip out of the thug’s gun, unchambered the next bullet that would probabl
y have killed one of them, then handed the pistol to the guard.
“He has to work for Harlow…” Dex huffed a breath as he moved out of the shower when the guard led the assassin out of the bathroom. Or Sheridan, which he couldn’t mention because then he would have to explain who Sheridan was to Logan.
“Who in the hell is Harlow?” Dave asked frowning.
“Master Tim Harlow,” Dex informed, his fear turning to anger. That had been a damned close call. “Former Army Staff Sergeant and the owner of the Silver Chains Corporation, a la Silver Chains Resort, Silver Linings Love Line, Silver Charms Escort Service and Liquid Silver Films.” And according to Gray’s email earlier, possibly a holding of the East Coast mob, or at least several known mobsters.
“He knows she’s connected to me now, so we need to find her fast,” Grace said stepping up to Dave. “I’m afraid if we don’t find her quickly, he might kill her.”
“Why do you think that?” Susan asked moving beside her.
“He told me so on the phone tonight,” she replied. “He also threatened, Bre—um—Dexter…”
Oh, God please don’t spill it, Dex prayed, with every muscle in his body strung tight. At least she’d corrected herself from calling him Brennan. He had to tell her to always call him Dex—never Brennan. Or maybe he just needed to come clean with Logan now that Thom Sheridan might become his issue too.
“Looks like we missed a lot by going out to dinner.” Susan laughed as she glanced at Logan. “Let’s get busy and find her, then. That hitman says there’s more to it than meets the eye. For some reason, having us on his tail is scaring him. We need to dig deeper and find out what the reason might be.”
Oh yeah, if you dig deeper, you’ll find out exactly why a hitman showed up here tonight, and realize it probably had very little to do with Grace. I’ll be out of a job and humiliated in front of my family again.
Not happening. Dex was going to find Marcy Wentworth fast, so they could all go back to Dallas and he’d stay there where he belonged. Nobody would be the wiser, and he could resume his nice, safe life.