KATE: MADISON KATE #4

by James Tate

  "All good?" Steele asked as I slid into the backseat beside him.

  I jerked a nod. "Yep, Cass is cool."

  Archer huffed a short laugh as he pulled out of the parking lot, leaving Cass standing over Zane's unconscious form. "Yeah, he's not bad."

  "Hell of a lot better than Zane," Kody added. "We should sort that out one of these days."

  I wrinkled my nose. "Sort what out?"

  Steele shot me a grin. "Zane. He's out-lived his usefulness and is starting to become an annoyance."

  "You're going to kill him?" I don't know why I was startled by that idea. Maybe because he was Archer's brother? Or because he'd once loved my mom? I didn't know.

  Archer was the one to answer me. "Not today," he said, his tone thoughtful. "But one of these days, he'll push me too damn far. The only reason he's alive now is because I'm grateful to him."

  I blinked at him in the rear-view mirror. "For what?"

  He gave a small shrug. "He told you what I was hiding, and I'm glad he did."

  His gaze held mine far longer than was safe, then slowly shifted back to the road ahead of us. I said nothing back, because he was right. Zane had done us all a favor, whether he’d meant to or not.

  19

  The next week was uneventful. Too uneventful. By the time the following weekend rolled around, I was jumping at every shadow, flinching at every beep of a phone or knock at the door. Put simply? I was a fucking mess.

  Which was why it was such a relief when Leon came strolling into the den with his laptop tucked under his arm. For a mercenary, he was awfully attached to that thing. Then again, what the fuck did I know? I'd never met mercenaries before him and Danny.

  "Madison Kate," he greeted me with a short nod. "Your men around somewhere?"

  I arched a brow at him, the spoonful of ice cream halfway to my lips. "Why? You have something wrong with talking to me directly?"

  There was really no reason to take that attitude with Leon, except that I was all kinds of twitchy and snapping at anyone who so much as looked at me. My stalker had been silent ever since the night of the break in. No packages, no notes, no creepy phone calls. It was like he’d just gotten bored and disappeared.

  Leon didn’t take the bait, though. "Actually, I don't want to repeat myself twice. Danny and I have another job to get to tomorrow, so I need to debrief on everything we've sorted out here."

  I sat up in a rush, placing my ice cream on the table. "Shit, sorry, I totally lost track of the days. I'll grab them and be back here in five."

  Leon just waved a hand like he didn't care, and I scurried out of the room. Kody and Archer were in the gym training—my session wasn't for another two hours, which was why I'd been pre-gaming on ice cream—and Steele was swimming laps in the pool.

  By the time we’d all made it back to the den, Danny had joined Leon, and she had a thick folder of papers in her hands.

  "Alright," Leon said, checking his watch as we all sat down. "We have five minutes before the next guard passes by this window." He pointed to the one opposite where he sat. "So we'll keep this short and sweet."

  "Suits us," Archer agreed. "What have you found?"

  "Okay, first of all, you have three members of your security team with fabricated backgrounds," Danny said, handing her folder of papers over to Archer. "Which, as you know, isn't uncommon in our line of work. But we'd suggest removing them as a precaution."

  "Done," Archer agreed. "What else?"

  "Trevor, your missing guard?" Leon said, opening his laptop and tapping a few keys. "Not missing any longer." He turned the screen around to show us an image of a dead man with a bullet wound between his eyes and at least one to the chest. It was hard to tell with the amount of blood soaking his shirt.

  "Murdered?" I gasped.

  Danny shrugged. "Not quite. I located him and went for a chat. He didn't want to chat." I raised my brows at her, and she gave me an impassive stare back. "No one shoots at me and lives."

  I almost wanted to laugh, but she was dead serious.

  "So he could have been our leak?" Archer asked, tapping at his chin thoughtfully.

  "It seems that way," Leon agreed. "There were several items at his crash pad that suggested it, like a collection of women's underwear and some image stills taken from the security feeds around the property."

  "Wait, are we saying that Trevor was the stalker himself?" I blurted out, frowning in confusion.

  Leon gave me a curious look. "You don't think he was?"

  I shook my head. "It's too easy. My stalker is way too smart to be caught with evidence like that."

  Danny nodded. "That was our thought too. We suspect Trevor was just his inside man and the evidence was either planted or given as a payment of sorts. In our digging, we found Trevor has a history of swiping ladies’ underwear from laundromats."

  "Gross," I whispered, horrified.

  "Right?" Danny wrinkled her cute nose in disgust. "Anyway, if Trevor was the inside guy, then at the very least your stalker will have a hard time getting access to the property. He definitely won't be able to override the camera feeds to hide his package deliveries either; Leon's taken care of that."

  Leon jerked a nod. "Your digital print is now tighter than a nun's nasty. Only people with access are you four and Sampson."

  Kody snickered a laugh at that metaphor, and Danny rolled her eyes.

  "Another thing," she said, "we paid a little visit to your obsessive blogger girl a couple of days ago. She's harmless and damn near peed her pants over the whole thing. However, she didn't take her blog site down as requested, so we're going to pop over there now before we leave for Serbia and have another chat with her."

  "Also, we dug up who put the hit out on you," Leon announced like a fucking afterthought. My jaw fell open when he didn’t immediately continue. He shot me a grin like he knew he was dragging out the suspense.

  Danny clearly wasn't in the mood for games, though. She sighed and shook her head at him. "After Archer gave us the information he and Demi Timber had gathered, it wasn't too hard to chase the right threads," she told me directly. "Archer said he thought you had an uncle or cousin who stood to gain in the event of your death, and he was on the right track there. You already knew that Katerina and Abel had twins, Deb and Declan. What was very well concealed was that Abel's considerably younger sister, Josephine, had a daughter, Serena."

  "She's the one trying to kill me?" I asked, dumbfounded.

  "Unlikely," Leon grunted. "Josephine and her husband, Gunther Zukman, died when Serena was three. She was raised by her paternal grandparents in a strict, Catholic household with no contact with the Wittenberg family whatsoever."

  Archer scrubbed his hand over his stubbled cheek. "So, Serena was the one who would have inherited prior to Kate's marriage to me?"

  Leon nodded. "Yep, technically."

  "Technically?" I repeated, sensing more to the story.

  Danny nodded to the folder of papers. "Page forty-seven of the report. Serena Zukman took a nasty fall down a flight of stairs around ten years ago. Left her paralyzed and brain damaged. She was declared mentally unfit, and power of attorney passed to her husband."

  My brows shot up. "Ten years ago? So... just before Katerina and my mother were both killed? As well as the trusted CEO Katerina assigned to run Wittenberg? That's not a coincidence."

  Leon yawned, then nodded. "Our thoughts exactly. Serena's husband is on page fifty-three."

  Archer flipped the report open to that page, which showed a photo of a totally ordinary looking man somewhere in his forties with a receding hairline and glasses.

  "Karl Beymen. Married Serena Zukman three years before her so-called accident. Also goes under the fabricated name Karl Kruger." Leon paused then, his sharp gaze on me.

  I frowned. "Should that name mean something to me?"

  "It should," he replied. "He's the current CEO of Wittenberg."

  * * *

  "It doesn't add up," I muttered after Danny and Leo
n had left. They were paying another quick visit to MrsJones4eva before catching their flight.

  "I agree," Steele said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "Based on the assumption that estates pass to the next living blood relative in the event of a death without a will, then Samuel would be next in line to inherit. He’d be MK’s closest blood relative."

  "Unless he’s not," Kody offered.

  The silence that fell after that suggestion was thick enough to suffocate, and I shifted nervously in my seat. Was my dad not biologically my dad? That might explain his total lack of human emotion toward me and his willingness to sell me off.

  "Bear with me," Kody continued, "we know that Deb did a lot of cover-up to hide MK from her family, right? What if Kruger never knew Deb had a daughter, then came here and killed her—or hired someone to do it—when he found out she was pregnant—"

  "With Zane's baby," Archer murmured, his expression thoughtful.

  Kody nodded. "Then his wife inherits the company because there are supposedly no other heirs. Deb had specifically edited her will to cut Samuel out in the event of her death, but instead of naming MK, she had put blood relative."

  "So what changed?" I pressed. "What caused him to find me six years later and put a price on my head?"

  "Your father," Steele offered. "Your father was up to his neck in debts and might have been looking into how to access your trust fund. It was set up by Deb and Katerina, though, and he had no clue what he was poking around at. Maybe somehow he found out that he wasn't your biological father, and that's why he sold you off."

  "Cutting his losses," I muttered, bitterness coating my words.

  "And alerting Kruger to your existence at the same time," Archer added with a sigh.

  "It's just a theory," Kody added, "and not likely to be something we can ever work out for sure, but..." He trailed off with a shrug.

  I nodded. "You're right. It's a theory, but it's a pretty good one. It makes sense. Except, if Samuel isn't my father... who is? And why don't we just make my marriage to Archer public knowledge. Our pre-nup safeguards my assets from passing to anyone but him, right?"

  Kody shrugged. "So Kruger's guys kill Arch first, then you. Boom, boom, done."

  Archer's phone rang, cutting through the heavy tension of our hypothesizing, and he frowned when he looked at the screen.

  "What's happened?" he asked when he answered the call on speaker.

  "You might want to get over here and check this out," Leon replied. Danny was cursing something wicked in the background, and I shot a worried look at Archer. "I'll send the address and a couple of pics. Dan and I have to get going, but chat to management if you want us to loop back when we get a couple of days off."

  Archer grimaced. "Will do. Thanks Leon."

  "Thank you," he replied with a laugh. "It's nice to be hired for brains over brawn sometimes."

  Danny muttered something to him in the background, and he cracked up laughing, then ended the call.

  A second later, Archer's phone beeped with several incoming messages, and he clicked them open, then groaned and shook his head before handing the phone to Steele.

  "Someone else paid MrsJones a visit before Danny and Leon got there," he informed us, "and left a pretty clear message to claim credit."

  "Fuck," Steele breathed, then passed the phone across to Kody and me. We were sitting together on the couch and could both look at the images.

  Then I immediately wished I hadn't.

  The Kody-obsessed blogger had been brutally murdered, her body duct-taped to her desk chair and mutilated in what looked to be a horrendously painful way. But worst of all was the little brunette Barbie doll sitting on the computer keyboard with crosses drawn over her eyes and the little plastic hands hacked up.

  "Why'd he do this?" I whispered, bile rolling in my belly. "Danny said this chick was harmless. Why'd he kill her?"

  Archer took his phone back from Kody's hand and gave us a grim look. "I guess we're about to find out."

  I swallowed heavily and nodded, rising out of my seat. He was right, of course. We needed to get there in person and investigate any other clues or messages my psychotic stalker had left behind, and we needed to do it before someone reported the murder to the cops. The last thing we needed to be dealing with was some bullshit power trips if Charon or Zane's pocket cops showed up.

  None of us spoke as we headed for the car. We'd been expecting something soon. It simply wasn't in my stalker’s pattern to go dark so long without something explosive as a result.

  The only shred of hope I pulled from this latest message? He hadn't delivered it to the house. So maybe with Trevor gone, his access had been cut off.

  Hopefully, we might be a fraction safer inside our own home once more.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the smell that hit as soon as we entered the studio apartment of MrsJones4eva.

  "Oh wow," I murmured. Using my hand to block my nose, I tried to breathe shallowly. "This isn't so fresh."

  "Couple of days old would be my guess." Steele handed me a pair of latex gloves, then pulled some onto his own hands. I guessed we would leave this crime scene for someone else to clean up when we were done.

  "Didn't Danny say she and Leon visited a couple of days ago?" I asked, my voice strangled as I tried not to gag on the smell of decaying corpse. Not to mention the blood. It was everywhere. I almost didn't want to go any further into the room for fear of what I might step on.

  Kody nodded. "And they said she kept posting on her blog after that."

  "My guess?" Steele offered from where he stood beside the woman's corpse. "Your stalker followed Danny and Leon here the first time they visited, then killed the blogger after they left."

  "The blog posts after she died?" I pointed out.

  Steele reached over and carefully tabbed down the open browser window. "Most likely posted by our guy. Take a look. These aren't her usual Kody obsessed junk; these are specific messages to MK."

  "Stop," I gasped, pointing to an image on the feed. "That's my mom. That's the photo from the gift box with the bra."

  The four of us all peered at the computer screen, ignoring the decomposing corpse beside us.

  "Is that..." I squinted at the photo or, specifically, at the man with his arm around my mom. "Is that groundskeeper James with my mom?"

  20

  Patricia Sparrow. That was MrsJones4eva's real name. Patricia Sparrow had been a twenty-two-year-old girl who'd seemingly formed an obsession with Kody after meeting him at a party when they were seventeen. He, of course, had no recollection of ever meeting her, but she'd kept extensive journal entries detailing the brief encounter that had sparked her obsession.

  Patricia had also been hosting a much more sinister discussion thread on the dark web under the username MadisonSLUTneeds2die, which showed she had a much crueler streak than her Kody fan page suggested.

  It was likely because of that page that my stalker had killed her, considering all her fingers looked like they'd gone through a meat tenderizer and her own hateful comments from the discussion threads had been cut into her skin with sharp, familiar handwriting.

  "He's protecting me," I murmured as we arrived home from the crime scene. I needed a shower and to scrub my skin with a pot scourer, but even then I doubted I'd get the stench of old blood and decaying human from my nose.

  Kody took my hand, linking our fingers together. "In his fucked up serial killer way? Yeah, it seems like that."

  I sighed, scrubbing my hands over my face. "At least that's one person who doesn't want me dead."

  "That's looking at the glass half full," Kody agreed with a crooked smile.

  Archer grunted a sound of disagreement. "Yet."

  I blinked at him in confusion, my brain too fuzzy to connect the dots. "Huh?"

  He shrugged. "One person who doesn't want you dead yet, but whatever he does want to do to you would probably make you wish you were dead. Given how many people he's killed in rather brutal
ways, we know he's capable of some fucked up shit."

  I blinked a couple more times, then shook my head. "And on that depressing note, I need a shower. Night." I untangled my hand from Kody's and hurried up the stairs to my bedroom. It'd been refurbished since the night of the break in, with smash-proof privacy glass installed.

  My shower was quick but scalding hot, and I scrubbed every damn inch of myself with antiseptic wash. God only knew what crazy diseases a person could pick up from decaying human bodies.

  When I emerged from my bathroom wearing only panties and a T-shirt, I found a freshly showered Archer climbing into my bed like he owned the damn thing. Which, I guessed, he did.

  I didn't comment because it'd become a habit for one of them to sleep with me every night since the break in, like they all had an agreement that there was no way I'd actually sleep if I were left alone in my bed. They were right, too.

  Yawning, I crawled into his arms and curled up with my cheek against his hard chest. He stretched out and flicked the lights off, then stroked his fingers through my hair.

  For a while I just lay there, listening to the steady beat of Archer's heart and picturing all the horrible things that had been done to that poor girl. A deep shudder ran through me, and my stomach churned. The pain she must have experienced prior to death was unfathomable.

  "Sleep, Kate," Archer whispered, kissing my hair. "I promise, you're safe tonight. I won't leave."

  I huffed but didn't argue his phrasing. Because he was right. Tonight I was safe. But what about tomorrow? Or the next day? Or the next week? Sooner or later, my luck was going to run out.

  With that depressing thought, I slipped into a restless sleep filled with nightmares of cut-up bloggers and shadowy figures at my window. Yet every time I startled myself awake, Archer was there to soothe me back to sleep. Eventually, though, my mind must have given in to exhaustion because the next thing I knew, I was waking up well past my usual time.

  I was all tangled up with my brooding bad boy, but he wasn't asleep. His breathing was steady, but his fingers traced a pattern down my spine that lit up all my nerve endings and made me groan.