by Casey Hagen
“Inside—I might be able to help. You don’t seem to have any interest in my abilities, but I’m another head working the problem at the very least.”
If only her head in the mix didn’t distract his. “Jasmine, you’re not licensed, and you’re not insured through our company.”
She paused with her hand on the doorknob. “Neither was Lily.”
“Shit.”
“Looks like you’re stuck with me,” she said, before sailing into the office as if she owned the place.
He caught her just inside the door and grabbed her arm to stop her. “Fine, just do me a favor and keep your mouth shut,” he said in a harsh whisper as he caught the curious glances of the staff. Brenda, Dante, and Callie all worked in cubicles nestled in the center of the office, while Mason, Luca, Garrett, and Talon each had an office in one of the four corners.
“Yes, sir. Jeez.”
He took the lead and headed for his office. When he entered he found Jasper standing in the corner, sipping from a cup of coffee, staring warily at the weeping mother tucked under the father’s arm.
“Good afternoon. I’m Luca Devlin. I’ll be the lead investigator in your son’s case.”
The father stood and reached out a hand. “I’m Eric Mishler. This is my wife, Stella,” he said, guiding his wife to stand.
“Oh, no. Please sit,” Luca reassured her, shaking her hand briefly. “Just let me get settled, and we’ll get started.” He dropped into his chair and pulled out a pad of paper and pen. “Okay, so why don’t you fill me in on the details. Your son’s name?”
“Tyler Mishler.”
“Okay, and his age?”
“Thirteen,” Stella answered, her voice wobbling.
Luca saw no signs of a woman raging. Whatever had been agitating her when she arrived seemed to have morphed into full-blown grief. “And how long has he been missing?”
“Three days,” Eric said.
“And you’ve gone to the police?” Luca asked.
Stella’s gaze shot to his, and her face flooded with heat, the kind that you see when someone is enraged. “They won’t help us. All because he ran away a few times. And now they have it in their heads that he’s a serial runaway and unworthy of their time,” she snapped.
Great, a kid who made a habit of running off. The parents sat here in nice clothes, kempt, and they could afford to reach out to Team Alegra, so they weren’t exactly destitute. What reason could this kid really have to run away? He didn’t like the curfew? “So, he’s run away a few times? How many instances, and when?”
“Oh, no! Not you, too, dammit. He did not run away this time!” she said, slamming her fist on the table.
Luca glanced up to Jasper, who took that opportunity to duck out of the office.
Bastard.
“Listen, I know you’re upset—”
“Upset? No, I’m way beyond upset. My son has been out there for three days, suffering God knows what, and all anyone can do is label him a troublemaker and dismiss him, and us!” she yelled.
“He didn’t run away,” Jasmine said quietly from where she stood leaning against the wall.
“Jasmine, this is not the time—”
She straightened and shot him a hard look. “This is exactly the time. He didn’t run away.”
He never should have brought her into the room. She had said that she had no interest in being anything more than just another head running the possibilities, and now she pulled this. Worse, she pulled it in front of Tyler’s parents, and now that she had, he had no choice but to roll with it. When they were done, he was going to entertain 101 ways to make her pay for her interference.
“And how do you know that?” Luca shot back.
She held his stare with a stubborn tilt to her chin and crossed her arms over her chest. “I just know. Ball is in your court, Luca. Are you going to dismiss me like everyone else, or are you going to be different and trust me?”
Chapter 2
Jasmine resisted the urge to tap her foot, but just barely. He’d made it seem like she should be using her gift, but then all but shunned any attempt for her to use it in relation to what he was doing.
Which made him an ass.
A hot ass, with the Led Zeppelin T-shirt stretched across his broad chest and Levi’s that hugged all kinds of mouth-watering parts, but still…an ass.
Clearly, he had some sort of middle-child issues, indicated by the underlying terseness when he spoke about his older brother and the way he tried to protect his position within the company the minute she offered help.
It wasn’t like she had the power to swoop in and steal his thunder.
But her gut was all but screaming at her about Tyler. An overwhelming sense of dread filled her, as if she could feel the boy’s fear, propelling her to speak up for him since he had no voice in this.
His jaw locked with tension. “Fine, I’ll entertain the possibility. For now,” he said, giving her a heavy-lidded glare.
“Thank you,” she said, giving him a smirk. She rounded the table and dragged the chair from the corner, pulling it up next to him. She took a seat, grabbed the cup of coffee in front of them, and glanced over to find him staring at her slack-jawed.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head, closed his mouth, and turned back to the Mishlers. “Okay, so do you know where he was when he went missing?”
“When he was taken,” Stella said.
Eric lay his hand over Stella’s. “The last place he was seen was at Leo’s Arcade in Druid Heights, about five blocks from Druid Hill Park,” he said.
Luca raised a brow. “You guys live near Druid Heights?”
Jasmine didn’t know the area, so she didn’t know what to make of the skeptical look on his face, but she knew damn well that he needed to work on his poker face.
“No, he has a friend who lives there. And, despite the less-than-desirable area, Kelan is Tyler’s best friend and a good boy, so we trust Tyler to spend time there when he wants,” Stella said.
“And the places he ran away to in the past, where were they?” Luca asked.
Jasmine kicked his foot under the table.
Luca kicked hers back.
Stella gasped. “I don’t know how many times I have to say it…he did not run away!”
Luca laid his pen down and leaned back in his chair. “Why did you come here today?”
“What do you mean?” Eric asked.
Jasmine bit her tongue, but the need to diffuse the situation had her shaking with barely restrained energy.
“What was your goal in coming here?” Luca asked, glancing back and forth between Eric and Stella.
“We want to find our son,” Stella said.
He tapped his fingers on his legal pad. “So, why did you choose us?” Luca asked.
“You came recommended by a former client of yours from three or so years ago. He works at my company now, and when he heard the news he gave us your number,” Eric said.
“And you know how much we charge?” Luca asked.
“Yes,” Eric said, furrowing his brow.
Luca leaned forward and folded his hands.
Jasmine found herself doing the same, wondering where he was going with this. She kept her foot ready to kick him again if he earned it.
“You want to find your son, and we come highly recommended. You know we aren’t cheap. And I’ll add that our recovery rate is ninety-four percent. Live recoveries, eighty-nine percent. No one, not even the police department, can claim those numbers. We know what we’re doing, and if you have hopes of finding your son, you’ll trust us to do it.”
Jasmine’s tension eased, and pride filled her as she watched Luca put away his smartass persona and turn into a leader right before her very eyes. Not that she had a right to be proud. He wasn’t hers, and they weren’t friends, but at the very least he put aside his anger toward her for interfering and focused on the client. She admired that.
“We don’t want anyone focusing on hi
s history of running away,” Stella said.
“And I heard you. But I need to know all the details. I don’t know for sure where Tyler was taken from and neither do you. I don’t know if whoever took him met him at Leo’s or in one of the spots he ran away to in the past. For all I know, it was a random kidnapping. Or, he could have been under watch. It could have been planned. If that’s the case, I need to know everywhere he spent time in the past three months at least.”
Stella and Eric visibly relaxed. The tension in their shoulders, which had them bunched up almost under their ears, eased.
Eric glanced down at his wife and took her hand. Jasmine watched the wordless communication between the two of them, their connection so strong that it made her wonder what had Tyler running away in the past.
She doubted it was the parents, but he was running from something; her gut told her he had run from someone.
“We understand,” Eric said. “We’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
Luca asked them question after question. He filled at least twenty pages of his legal pad with notes.
Jasmine found herself mesmerized by the way his hand flexed as he scrawled detail after detail over the lined, yellow paper.
She absorbed all the details, cataloguing them in her head for later. By the time he finished, Tyler’s parents looked wrung-out. Their skin had gone pale, their eyes drooped, as if purging the details and finally having someone listen had been both a heartbreak and a relief.
Luca stood, rounded the table, and opened the door. “I won’t tell you not to worry, because you will anyway. But go home, try to get some rest, and know that we’ll throw every resource we have at this starting now.” He shook hands with Eric, and Stella reached around and hugged him.
Jasmine smiled as he patted her back. He met her eyes with a pleading ‘save me’ look on his chiseled face.
“Why don’t I walk you out?” Jasmine offered, in an attempt to rescue him.
“That would be wonderful. Thank you,” Stella said.
Jasmine offered Stella her arm. “It’s my pleasure.”
She walked them to the door, where Eric took his wife’s arm and led her down the steps to a sleek Volvo.
Jasmine headed back in the minute they rolled away from the curb and found Luca in the middle of the room, issuing orders.
“Jasper, I need all the usual information on the parents. Bank balances, taxes for the last ten years, credit reports, all of it,” Luca said.
“You’ve got it, boss,” Jasper said.
“Why do you need all that?” Jasmine asked.
Luca shot her a glare. “You need to close your mouth!” he barked at her.
“Hey!”
He spun back to his team, who stood there exchanging glances with one another. “Callie, I need you to take Tyler’s picture to the I-83 underpass and ask everyone there if they’ve seen him in the past three days. Brenda, check Bread for the City and see if he’s been seen there in the past three days. Dante, I need every bit of camera footage you can get for those places, plus the area around Kelan’s house, Tyler’s house, and Leo’s Arcade. Keep me apprised of anything you find.”
The team chorused, “You got it, boss,” and headed off in a flurry of activity.
Luca spun on his heel and pointed at her. “You. My office, now!”
Everyone froze at his order, and all eyes landed on them. “I’m not on the payroll. You can’t tell me what to do,” she said, her hands on her hips.
“Oh, you insisted you could help, so you bet your sweet ass I most certainly can. You and I are going to get a few things straight. Now, go,” he said, pointing to his door.
Four sets of eyes slid away from the scene he created with his outrageous demand. She would go into his office all right, because she had a few things to say, and he was going to listen.
She marched through the doorway, the sound of his footsteps hot on her heels. Five feet inside the door she whipped around, ready to give him hell, but instead the air whooshed out of her lungs when his arms surrounded her, his hands cupped her ass and he lifted her clean off the floor, plopping her indelicately onto the top of his desk.
“Ouch, what was that—”
His lips landed hard on hers, his chest expanding under the hands she slapped against his pecs as he sucked in a ragged breath.
His mouth slanted, and his tongue slid between her parted lips. The flash of heat between them burned away the temper that simmered below the surface, and with the nip of his teeth to her bottom lip, her hands slid around his ribcage and her fingertips curled into his back.
His taste filled her, her blood raced, and she squirmed at the shot of heat flooding between her thighs.
This was a damned kiss. She had spent years kissing men who had thought she wanted gentle, polite, or super-sensual.
She wanted raw.
She needed the all-consuming fire that took over and made two people tangled in gasps and moans crave not only the crafty dance of lips and the perfect fit of two hot bodies straining toward one another for release, but also the awkward gnash of teeth like teenagers navigating their first bout of passion.
Luca dove in, and that clash of their teeth made Jasmine burst out laughing into Luca’s mouth.
He pulled back a fraction and swiped his lip with his thumb and glanced down. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” She pressed her lips together and smiled in sheer delight.
He slapped his palms on either side of her hips and leaned into her. “Bullshit. I think you’re laughing at me and my lack of grace when kissing you.”
She grasped his chin and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “Shows how well you know me, handsome. That was the best part of the kiss.”
He snorted. “You’re weird.”
“I know, but perfection bores me to tears. Now, if I recall, you had some words for me.”
His smile slipped, and he backed away. She said it in a flirty way, trying to keep things light, yet he took a step back in the direction of where he’d left his foul mood. “You’re fucking up my case,” he said.
She crossed her arms and kicked the leg she had crossed over her knee. “Or maybe I’m just what you need to solve it.”
He stepped up to a cabinet in the corner and pressed his thumb to a keypad. The sound of a locking mechanism sliding free punctuated the air. “You don’t listen for shit,” he said, before pulling open the door.
“Of course not. I’m an adult, not a child. I make my own decisions.”
He pulled out a gun, popped out the clip, and slid it back in. “And I’m lead on this case. Even my brothers would defer to me on this one, and they’re actual Alegra employees.”
“So, you’re saying I need to butt out,” she said, uncrossing her arms.
He put on a shoulder holster and slid the gun into the sheath. “That would be great.”
“And it’s not going to happen,” she said.
He grabbed a flannel shirt out of the closet and put it on over his T-shirt, concealing the gun. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He turned and approached her, stopping just shy of touching her. “Look, why is this so important to you? I mean, I can see you being the kind of woman who has ‘Be a general pain in the ass’ on the to-do list, but why in this situation? You don’t even know this kid.”
“Because my gut tells me that, no matter what you told his parents, you still think he’s a runaway.”
The muscles in his forearms jumped as he balled his hands into fists and glanced away, telling her all she needed to know. “So what if I do; why does that matter to you?”
“Because I’ve been a runaway. There are reasons for a kid taking off from home, and it’s not because Mom didn’t buy him the Pop-Tarts he likes or getting grounded for coming home a half-hour late,” she said quietly.
His eyes flashed, and his jaw clenched. “Why did you run away?”
She shook her head and glanced toward the door, noticing for the first
time that the outer office had gone silent but for the click of fingers flying over a keyboard. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
She didn’t want to hash this out with witnesses—but if she was going to make a case for Tyler, now was the time. “My gut told me to.”
He raised a brow. “That’s it?”
“That’s plenty. The one time I didn’t listen to my gut, my uncle tried to rape me. He came far too close to succeeding.”
Both hands shot behind his head, where he linked his fingers, flexed his elbows forward, hung his head, and blew out a breath. “Christ.”
She didn’t know why, but she needed to touch him. She reached out, running her fingers through the brown waves brushing his forehead. “Yeah. And I was labeled a serial runaway. But I had a good reason for what I was doing.”
He dropped his hands to his sides and sighed. “So, you think something might be happening to Tyler at home?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. At home, at school, at the hands of a neighbor…anything is possible. But someone has to be a voice for him in this. You have your position. His parents have theirs. It’s all very mechanical. They want their son back. You want a successful outcome, to maintain those percentages that so easily flowed from the tip of your tongue.”
She pushed herself off the desk and brushed the thighs of her jeans before meeting his gaze. “I want to know why Tyler keeps running away.”
“Is that the kind of dickhead you think I am? That I only care about our numbers?”
“I know that’s what you used to sell yourself to Eric and Stella, when you could have used your story, Alegra’s story—so, to some degree, the numbers are right up there.”
She reached over to the stack of pics that Eric and Stella brought in with them and picked up Tyler’s most recent school photo. She looked at the fair-skinned, smiling boy with unruly auburn hair. He’d be a looker one day; he was already well on his way. “Tyler isn’t just a number.”
He took the photo from her fingers and laid it on the table, his eyes lingering over it before meeting Jasmine’s once again. “No, he’s not.”