by Lexi Blake
Thank god for dead bodies.
Owen sat back in his chair. “I don’t seem to like breakfast.”
He had to smile. “You rarely used to eat before noon. You would pound the coffee, but skip breakfast. Now if lunch came and went, you became very difficult to live with. Some days I would shove a sandwich in your face so you would stop whining.”
Owen stared down at his coffee. “You know more about me than I do.”
He shouldn’t have mentioned it. “We were partners once. That’s why I know. Ariel thinks you should figure these preferences out on your own. You never know. They might have changed.”
“Were we friends?” Owen asked. “You said we were partners, but that doesn’t mean you liked me. I get the feeling there are a couple of people around here who don’t, though I’m unsure of why.”
“Again, that’s something Ariel feels is best left up to you. But I can tell you that you’re not going to get anywhere with Teresa.” He felt bad watching Owen chase after the sub.
Owen winced. “Ah, I thought I might have screwed that up in another life.” He straightened up. “You know what? I’m still going to try. That woman has an arse to die for and I think there’s a tender heart in there. I’ve been practicing me puppy eyes. She’ll give in. Your girl’s a pretty one.”
Nick went back to staring at the report. “She’s not mine. She was Desiree’s cousin. Now she’s my client.”
Who had been tired the night before and that was why she’d said the things she’d said. This morning she’d seemed much more sensible. After she’d had some sleep and a shower and had straightened herself up, she’d been quiet and seemingly reflective. She was probably embarrassed by what had been said the night before.
I would get safety from murderers and I would get orgasms. I’m sorry, Nicky. You’re going to have to explain how that’s a bad deal for me.
He was going to make sure she understood that his protection wasn’t based on whether or not she slept with him.
Because he wasn’t sleeping with her. He couldn’t hurt her that way again.
“So she was your old lover’s cousin,” Owen mused. “The lover you weren’t exclusive with and who wouldn’t marry you. The pretty girl who looks at you like you’re the sun in the sky is her cousin.”
“She looks at me like she would look at a man who can save her.”
“I can save her.” Owen’s eyes lit up, his brows waggling. “Maybe she’ll look at me like that.”
Anger flared through his system. “Don’t you dare. I told you I would take care of her.”
Owen’s arms crossed over his big chest and Nick knew he’d been had. “Well, that answers the question with more honesty. You can pretend, but you like the girl. And if you honestly don’t then you need to know that the boys got a good look at her last night. If she’s going to be hanging about, she should be ready for some serious male attention.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The lads talked it over last night and decided there’s no dibs on this one. They all saw her at pretty much the same time. They looked over that dead body and saw her walking out in the hall and that was when the fighting started. We all sat down and decided no dibs on her. She’ll get to pick. You should know that Sasha and Jax have decided if she picks either of them, they’re willing to share. I don’t play that way. That’s something I do know about meself. No need for you to be telling me that tale. If there’s going to be some sharing in the bedroom, it’s going to be the traditional kind between a man and a woman and her stacked best friend. That’s what I say.”
“You tell those boys to stay away from her or they will be dealing with me. They will not like to be dealing with me. I will put up with many things from them. They can poke all the corpses they like. They can punch each other. I do not care. They touch Hayley and I will be caring.”
“Wow, now you do sound Russian. A scary Russian. Still, I think if you don’t want the girl, shouldn’t she be allowed to choose? Think about it. It could be fun.”
“Are we talking about the lost boys and their battle for the new chick?” Kayla strode in, her hair in a high ponytail. It bounced as she walked, a testament to her seemingly ever-sunny personality. “I had babysitting duty last night and they kept talking about her even after lights out. Bad boys. I had a plan though. I think we make them compete in a beauty pageant. Hayley gets to judge.”
“I’m judging a beauty pageant?” Hayley followed behind Kay, and both women were followed by Charlotte Taggart and Penelope Knight. It looked like the women on his team were rapidly accepting Hayley.
That was not necessarily a good thing. The women on his team could create chaos like no others.
“That sounds like fun,” Charlotte said with a smile. “I think we should require Speedos for the bathing suit competition. No boring board shorts. If Hayley’s picking a lover, she needs to see some booty.”
Hayley stopped, her cheeks going the sweetest color of pink. “Wait. What?”
Penelope put a hand on her arm. “They’re teasing you, dear. Don’t worry about it. The lads will be polite. Though you should expect some suitors while you’re here. Especially if you come down to the dungeon.”
Now Nick was the one flushing. “Excuse me?”
Hayley shook her head as she joined him at the table. “It’s nothing. I was just talking to the girls. Did you get the report? Penny said the Dallas office had found something.”
He was all too aware that they weren’t alone. Damon and Ian walked in with Brody Carter and Walter Bennett. The four men settled into chairs as they joined the women. Nick held out a chair for Hayley. He would have to remember that he couldn’t leave her alone for a minute or someone would be whispering in her ear, giving her ideas she shouldn’t have.
Like visiting The Garden on a play night.
It wasn’t happening.
“Good morning, everyone, and it’s good to know the place didn’t burn down while we were gone.” Damon sat at the head of the table, Taggart to his right.
“Damon, you know they always do a wonderful job while we’re gone,” his wife admonished.
“Well, darling, I wasn’t talking about Brody and Nick and Walt,” Damon replied. “I was referring to our guests.”
“Hey, I stayed behind, too,” Kay protested. She winked Nick’s way. “I held down the fort and watched the boys.”
“You’re practically their leader,” Damon said with a shudder. “You’re the one who let them watch Dumb and Dumber and introduced them to illegal fireworks. You’re the Mother of Pranksters.”
Kay grinned. “They’re so much fun. Can we keep them forever?”
Ian gave her a thumbs-up. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re yours.”
Damon held up a hand. “That’s a discussion for later. Let’s focus on the present. Most of you have met our new client. Nick, can you tell us what you’ve learned about Hayley’s situation? I assume you stayed up late to discover the details.”
“I told him everything I knew,” Hayley said quickly.
He didn’t need her to defend him. He also didn’t need to think about how nice it felt to have someone try to come to his rescue. “I did. If you look in the folder in front of you, you’ll find the police report on what happened to her house. I’ve pulled the record on the two police officers who were in charge of her case. There’re also copies of the media reports surrounding the explosion.”
Taggart thumbed through the report. “The police offered to put her up for the night? Not her insurance company?”
He hated that she might feel embarrassed, but he couldn’t lie about what everyone around that table would know. “They did. There’s no record of them calling in a social worker or of her filing an insurance claim.”
“I didn’t have time to,” she said. “Also, all my insurance records were kind of in the house. I was going to call the next day, but I was almost murdered…oh. The police don’t offer that kind of service, do they? I should ha
ve been directed to a shelter if I didn’t have anywhere to go. Not unless there was something wrong or criminal with what happened. They don’t protect homeowners from random gas explosions. Wow. I wasn’t thinking at all.”
There it was, the dawning that she’d been played all along. He’d come to that same conclusion around three a.m. this morning. “No, they don’t typically put citizens up at motels. There’s no record of the department approving your motel for the night. The cop who put you up for the night paid cash. Do you recognize the police officers in the photographs?”
She stared down at the pictures he’d included in the briefing folder. “I remember them. I dealt more with the fire department, but these two were nice to me.”
“Was either one of them the officer who showed up at your motel room?”
She shook her head. “No, he was a different officer. Officer Harris. Jeremy Harris. I told you that. He was the last officer I dealt with. I was actually really surprised because I thought I was going to have to find a hotel myself, and I was so stupidly numb at the time I wasn’t sure I would be able to figure out where to go. The other officers I dealt with asked where I would go and I told them I would figure something out. When Officer Harris showed up, I figured they knew I didn’t have anywhere to go.”
“There’s no Jeremy Harris at the precinct that responded to your call. I don’t think he was a cop at all. I watched some of the news coverage and he was in some of the shots. I managed to pull an image before he turned away from the camera. Turn to page five.”
She gasped as she found the picture he’d carefully pulled with Walter’s help.
Walt leaned in. He was a physician by trade, but he was kind of their go-to for all things technical. He was an all-around genius. “It’s grainy, but I was able to clean it up enough that Adam could use his facial recognition software.”
Kayla held a hand up. “Wait, before we get to identities, I want to know why we think someone’s after her. What would a college professor have that could be worth killing over? This seems an extreme way to protest a bad grade. I would have kept it to some light vandalism.”
“I don’t think this is about her work.” He’d briefly considered it and discarded the idea. There was no such thing as coincidence. Not in his line of work. “She received a shipment from Desiree’s estate roughly eighteen hours before her house was destroyed. It was a matter of public record so I can’t pinpoint who might have known from there.”
Penny sighed. “So you think this is actually about Desiree. If it is, why would they still be coming for Hayley?”
Damon was staring at Hayley as though he could figure her out strictly through study. “They think she knows something. Did you have an alarm on your home?”
Hayley shook her head. “No. It wasn’t the kind of house people burglarized, and alarm systems don’t come cheap. I put up a beware of dog sign. Apparently that only works if you have a real dog.”
“So we can’t tell if they went to her house first and couldn’t find what they were looking for,” Ian began.
“Or if they panicked and got rid of everything they could,” Brody continued in his thick Aussie accent. It had taken Nick a while to get to the point he understood what the man said, but Nick could never question his devotion to the team. Brody Carter was a good man to have at his back.
“I think that might be the most likely scenario. From what I can tell, her neighborhood isn’t exactly quiet,” he explained. “I looked it up on a couple of sites and it’s known for being a part of the college campus scene.”
“If you’re asking if it’s a quiet place, then no,” Hayley explained. “It’s why I was so shocked they didn’t kill someone. There’s always something going on. A party or people out exercising or protesting something. I’m only a few blocks off campus so I’m surrounded by students.”
“It was probably done by a professional,” Ian said. “Did you ID the man who tried to kill her? Was he a pro?”
“He was a known associate of a criminal organization here in the UK. You’ve heard of the Clerkenwells. They’re based in Islington and work primarily in drug trafficking, extortion, and prostitution.” This was what concerned him. “Adam identified him for us. His name is Martin Donaldson. As far as our contacts at MI5 and Scotland Yard know, he’s a mid-level drug dealer. He’s not a known assassin.”
“And the man in Seattle?” Damon asked.
“What we know about him is on page ten. He’s connected to two murders. Both victims were involved in high-profile lawsuits. They would have been considered whistle-blowers. The FBI suspects he’s killed at least three more, but they can’t directly connect him.”
“So we have Desiree sending her something and at least one known assassin and one mobster after her,” Charlotte mused. “What was in the shipment? Has Hayley made a list?”
“It was the contents of her Tokyo apartment. It was a bunch of boxes.” Hayley bit her bottom lip as she thought. “I only opened one of the smaller boxes. It had some stuff from her desk, I think. Some pens and a couple of cell phones. I looked through a few of the notebooks.”
Damon sat up in his chair, leaning toward Hayley. “What was in those notebooks? Did she keep a log of the missions she worked?”
“Or was she writing a bloody memoir?” Penny sighed. “I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t put it past her. She joked about it often enough.”
“She wasn’t joking, love,” Brody interjected. “That was her version of a threat.” He swung his gaze to Nick. “Sorry, mate. Only being honest.”
He held up a hand. “No need. You couldn’t shock me if you tried.”
“Why would she threaten to write a memoir?” Hayley asked.
Hayley, on the other hand, could be shocked to her core. He didn’t want to hurt her. She’d hero-worshipped Des through her younger years, but she needed to know what they were up against. “Des liked to make sure she had a way to keep everyone in their place. If she couldn’t get some dirt on someone, she would use casual threats like joking about writing a tell-all about what we do here.”
Hayley stared down at her clasped hands. “Well, there wasn’t anything like that. Not that I understood. There were three notebooks. One was completely empty. One was written in Cyrillic, and the other was a bunch of numbers. The only other things in the box were pens and some CDs and a couple of pieces of jewelry. There was some cash stuffed in a travel pouch. It was in yen.”
“Why did you only open one box?” Ian asked. “What happened to the ledger? I would like to see that.”
“Was there a ledger of what the other boxes contained?” Damon spoke over his partner.
“And don’t discount the empty notebook,” Walt insisted. “There are plenty of ways to cover ink. I’d like to see it.”
He hated those clipped tones, the quick questioning, as though if they could fire enough words her way, they could trip her up and force her to make mistakes. “She’s not being interrogated here. She’s not the enemy.”
She held a hand up, her face strained. “It’s all right. They’re trying to help. I was busy at the time and honestly, I didn’t want to deal with all the…emotional baggage that came with memories of Des. I put it off. The only reason I opened the small box was I looking for the letter from the lawyer. My intention was to donate everything to a local charity.”
Damon turned a bit pale. “That could have been a disaster in the making.”
“So you’re saying that Des sent me something and that’s the reason these assholes are after me? All that’s left is the necklace I’m wearing, some of the cash and…a letter she sent me.”
Something about the way she cut off her words made him wonder if she was lying, but he wasn’t going to call her out here. “What did the letter say?”
“Can I see the necklace?” Kayla asked. She looked over at Walt. “We should take it to the lab and make sure there’s nothing extra in it.”
Walt nodded. “It would be like Des to hide information in something sh
e could wear.”
Hayley’s hand went to the heart around her neck. “No. It was a sentimental thing, I think. I gave it to her on her birthday one year. She kept it because it came from me.”
“Is that glass?” Walt asked.
Hayley nodded. “It’s not expensive, but I thought it was pretty. She liked it. She kept it all these years so she must have liked it.”
Damn Des. He knew her. She didn’t do anything out of sentimentality. He looked down at the necklace. It was small, but he could see the chain was held by a hook that went down into the heart. It would be simple to take it apart. “I think you should let Walt and Kay look at it.”
Her hands moved up and around her neck and she quickly undid the clasp of the necklace, handing it over. “I don’t see what she could do with it. It’s just a necklace.”
Oh, but he knew. She would have found it funny to use the cheap piece of jewelry to hide some of her secrets. He didn’t want Hayley to think about it. He passed the necklace to Walter, who started examining it as Nick tried to dodge that particular issue. “Can I read the letter?”
“There’s nothing in the letter except some advice. I would like to keep it to myself.” When she’d walked in the room there had been a happy vibrancy about her. Now she seemed to pull back into herself.
“Hayley, I don’t want to invade your privacy, but this is a serious matter. Whoever is after you managed to follow you from Seattle all the way to London,” Damon pointed out.
“From some of the things he said, I believe he had inside knowledge. It’s in my report about the incident in the alley. He said he had a head start. I think that means more like him will be looking for her as time goes by. We need to put out some feelers to our contacts and find out if they’ve heard anything at all.” It went without saying that they would have to be careful. He didn’t want anyone at all to know Hayley was here. “We could file her as a missing person. Perhaps we could get a feel for what’s happening in Seattle that way.”