Fearing what those rumors were, he managed to spit out a word from between gritted teeth. “About?”
She swallowed, and her face pinkened. “Well, um…that he was involved with your late mother?”
Rowan’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
She nibbled her lip before rushing on. “I’m sorry, like I said, just rumors.”
Rowan’s head was spinning at the claim that his mother had been involved with Harry Baker. If it wouldn’t have been so difficult to explain, he probably would have let a dark, jaded laugh spill from his mouth.
My mother was not his type.
No, she was about thirty years too old for that sick, twisted bastard, who preferred his female companions exceedingly young and vulnerable.
“That is definitely not true.”
“I’m sorry.” Swiping a hand through her silky hair, she muttered, “I’m usually not such a bumbling klutz. I work with words—you’d think I would know how to say something clearly and concisely.”
He could have let down his guard and given her a break. But this was his family she was talking about. His family. Their secrets. No outsiders allowed.
“So be clear and concise,” was all he said, ignoring the slump in her shoulders and the regret in her eyes.
She took a deep breath and obviously strove to be clear and concise in her reply. “I thought that since your family was so close to Baker, maybe you could talk to me a little about his life and his death. I’d hoped you could give me any insights you might have about the man, and possibly share any suspicions.”
“Share…suspicions?” he managed to mumble.
“Yes. I think the story is pretty fascinating, and I included a chapter on it in my outline. I’d really like to dig into the case and see if I can find out anything that hasn’t been discovered yet.”
Like the fact that all three of the Winchester brothers had been in Baker’s house the night he died and had suspected each other of killing the man who’d abused their sister?
Right. Sure. Let me just go ahead and fill out arrest warrants right now.
“Maybe you and your brothers could help me with that?”
Fat fucking chance.
He and his brothers had finally started talking to each other about Harry Baker’s death—his murder. Raine had been as stunned to learn his brothers had believed he’d killed the man as they had been when they realized he had not. No way were any of them going to talk to a stranger—a writer—about it.
“Absolutely not,” he said, stepping closer to her, edging her in between the wall and the bookshelf. He was shaking, furious at himself for having invited this drama into their lives. Out of what, some ideal of nobility? Or was it because he had wanted her from the moment she fell into his arms in that stairwell? “Don’t make me regret trusting you.”
She flinched and jerked back. Realizing he was crowding her—her, the woman who’d been attacked by a ruthless bastard tonight, he staggered back. “Jesus Christ, you are messing with my head.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I have to go.” He needed to get out before he opened his mouth and said words that needed to remain unsaid, either revealing ones or downright rude ones.
“I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to pry.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Again, I’ve been very clumsy about this. It’s just been a strange night.”
True…but it hadn’t been his strangest. Not by a long shot.
Ignoring her, he grabbed Jagger. For once, the cat seemed to recognize that Rowan was in no mood to put up with any crap, and he didn’t try to squirm away as Rowan put him into his carrier.
“Can we please talk about this?”
“No.”
“Rowan, you can’t believe…you have to know this was just a coincidence.” She straightened and said with simple dignity, “I never intended to entrap you or insert myself into your life. I can call a cab to take me to a hotel.”
“Forget it,” he said.
“I can see you’re no longer comfortable having me around.”
He drew a deep, steadying breath. Lowering the cat carrier to the floor, he turned and looked directly at her. “Look, I’m glad you’re okay. I’m fine with you staying here, and so is my brother. But you need to know, some things are off-limits. And Harry Baker is one of those things.”
“But—”
“I’ll pick you up at eight a.m.,” he said, cutting her off. There were no buts about this topic. Not a single one.
Evie Fleming needed to stay out of the Harry Baker case.
Not just because the Winchester brothers were in it up to their eyebrows, but because whoever really had killed the man was still out there. She’d drawn the eye of one murderer in her life and had testified against him in court. Damned if she needed to come onto the radar of another one.
“Rowan, wait—”
“Good night, Evie,” he said.
Without even a glance back, he stalked out of the house to his car, got in it, and put the cat carrier on the passenger seat. He drove too fast down the steep driveway and the windy road as he headed back toward the city. But the speed didn’t distract him as dark memory intruded.
For over six long years, Rowan and Reece had believed their kid brother had killed Harry Baker. Raine had just turned eighteen, was drunk, leaving for boot camp the next day, and he’d found Baker attacking a young girl. Like a sledgehammer bashing into his brain, the memory of Harry fighting with Rachel the night she died had come back to him, driving the teenager a little crazy. It had made sense to the twins that, with such justification, Raine could have done something he never would have while sober or in his right mind.
And so they’d done what they believed family should do.
They’d protected their brother.
They’d cleaned up the scene and hidden evidence of Raine’s presence.
For his part, Raine had wondered over the years if his older brothers had gone over to Baker’s house that night and finished delivering the beating Raine had started…and had gone too far.
None of them had ever confronted the others, until Steve Baker, Harry’s son and Rachel’s teenage boyfriend, had told them things that made them question their beliefs about that night. The fact that a witness existed who’d seen Harry Baker, bloody but alive, screaming on the front porch as Raine staggered away had been news to all of them. And it had proved Raine’s innocence.
Finding out they had all been innocent had shocked the hell out of the three of them, and they’d spent the last few months trying to atone by getting to the bottom of the mystery. Quietly.
Now a famous writer wanted to dig into the case, expose what she found, and blow the whole thing wide open? And he’d brought her right into the heart of the family? God, what the hell had he done?
He honestly didn’t know. He was only certain of one thing.
His brothers were going to fucking kill him.
* * *
Despite what people might think, Raine Winchester was not the strip club type. Yeah, he was former army. Yes, he ran a security firm. He was usually armed, had a few tattoos, dressed in dark T-shirts and camo pants, and usually looked pissed off.
But he didn’t party. He rarely drank. He didn’t particularly like to talk to people other than those closest to him, and he’d never needed to buy anything he desired from a woman. So there was no reason for him to ever come to a place like the Lusty Lady club in southeast LA.
Still, here he was, sitting at a table in the corner that provided a broad view of the garish purple interior of the place, sipping a club soda and trying not to touch anything.
He wasn’t watching the dancer. Nor was he interested in seeing the glazed-over eyes of a bunch of skeevy dudes with their hands in their laps as they drooled over the gyrating thrusts of a brunette who looked barely legal.
He pitied the girl. The men just repulsed him.
He hated places like this and was here for only one reason.
Her nam
e was Marley.
He’d been looking for her for a couple of months now, and this was his latest lead to her current location. Already having ascertained that she was not the dancer performing, nor any of the skimpily clad servers, he knew he would have to ask some questions. Not exactly a popular thing to do in places like this.
His opportunity came quickly. A performer appeared beside him, her legs bare down to her scuffed spike-heeled shoes, and only a string of hot pink satin covered her hip.
“Hey, sexy, my name’s Candy. Wanna buy me a drink?”
He lowered his glass to the table and glanced up at the woman—girl, really—who’d approached him. Her G-string looked like it could be removed with a quick flick of the wrist. Tiny, star-shaped spangles on her nipples were, he supposed, meant to entice clients to pay more for a private dance during which he could see the whole package. Her red hair was dank and stringy, and she was filmed with sweat.
“You interested, hot stuff?”
No, he really wasn’t interested in what she was obviously offering. Instead, he did what very few men in this place probably ever did—he really looked at her.
There was much more to see if you actually took the time to pay attention. Like the purplish-yellow bruises on her hip and thighs, showing through whatever concealer she’d put on to cover them. The shadow beneath one eye was darker than the other—again, a poor concealment job, this time to hide the fact that somebody had punched her in the face. She tried hard to keep her arms bent at her sides, but he’d seen the telltale marks that said if she wasn’t living in heroin-land yet, she was on a fast train to that destination.
He wanted to grab his jacket, throw it over her, and carry her out of here. She should be living at home with her parents while she went to community college or something. Not working for grimy dollar bills held out by the groping hands of men old enough to be her father. Christ, he hated thinking about the desperation that would push a barely-out-of-high-school-aged girl into a life like this. Considering Raine worked day and night protecting children from being used, abused, or hurt in any way, this “exotic dancer’s” precarious position hit him hard.
“You’re hot, baby. I’ll give you a discount if you wanna go somewhere private and let me put on a real special show for ya.”
He said nothing but reached for his wallet and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill.
Her eyes went round, and she licked her lips. “Now we’re partyin’!”
“I just want five minutes of your time.”
She slid her fingers through his hair, bending down to wag her breasts in his face and cooed, “You can have longer than that, sugar. I’ll even let you have a taste.”
Pushing his chair back, he stood up. “Five minutes. And I only want to talk.”
She frowned, and looked around the club. The bouncer was watching them closely. The bartender, who pretended to be drying a glass—as if the things were actually washed between customers—gave her a warning frown that Raine easily read as Close the deal, bitch.
She tucked the money into her G-string and said, “Come on, this way.”
He followed her into a small velvet-draped booth. In it was a chair, a mirrored wall, and some grimy carpet that would probably set off alarms if tested by a hazmat team.
The girl pulled the drape, enclosing them in the five-by-five space that smelled of sweat and other bodily fluids. Reaching for a button on the wall, she jacked up the volume of the song playing on the main floor of the club. She stepped close to say, “What do you want with me, mister? You here to cause trouble?”
He held up his hands—no harm no foul. “No trouble. I’m looking for someone.”
“You sure you ain’t found her?” the girl said, lifting her hands to his shoulders and digging sharp nails into his muscles. “Not often we get hot young meat willing to spend real dough in here. Usually it’s all bachelor party pussies who get too drunk and are thrown out, or flabby old fucks who try to touch without paying.”
“No, thank you.” He reached up and disengaged her hands. “I’m trying to find Marley.”
The girl’s mouth tightened.
“She used to work here,” he continued.
“I don’t know nobody named Marley.”
“I’m sure it’s not her real name; she could have been using another one. She’s young, probably around your age. Petite, pretty. Has a scar down the side of her face.”
Candy’s eyes widened quickly, but then narrowed. Her mouth tightened and she sneered. “Yeah, I knew her.”
Knew. “She doesn’t work here anymore?”
“Nope. Goody Two-shoes wouldn’t give A.J. what he wanted, so he kicked her ass out.”
“A.J.?”
“Owns the place. Samples all the merchandise. But she wasn’t havin’ it, so out she went.”
She’d slipped away again. Every time he thought he was narrowing in on the mysterious Marley, he found she had pulled one step away.
“How long ago was this?”
“’Bout a week or two. She wasn’t calling herself Marley, though. Everybody called her Sugar. But if you ask me, she wasn’t very sweet. Uppity, that one.”
“Hell,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his weary eyes. This off-the-books investigation had been eating up a lot of his time. He’d been putting in seventy-hour workweeks with his regular job at his protection agency and then following leads to track the always-moving stripper during every other waking moment.
Marley—Sugar, or any other fake name she might be using now—was the only one who might be able to help solve the mystery that had been plaguing him and his brothers for more than six years.
The night Harry Baker died remained a mystery that haunted them all. Until it was solved, he didn’t think he, Rowan, or Reece would be able to have a normal life, though Reece appeared to be at least trying to with his new girlfriend. But how could any of them really find normalcy when a sword of Damocles was hanging over their heads?
Although Raine had been the last Winchester to see the bastard alive, he had very little memory of Baker’s final hours. He’d been a teenager, he’d been drunk, and he’d been beaten up by the man he’d always thought of as a jolly uncle.
Mostly, he’d been fucked in the head. His memories of the night his sister Rachel died had exploded back into his mind with the power of a heat-seeking missile.
Because history had repeated itself. He’d awakened to the sound of a young girl crying out for help, just like when he was a six-year-old kid in a hotel room with his teenage sister.
Screams in the night. Awakened from a drunken stupor. Staggering out to see what was wrong. Seeing Uncle Harry hurting a young girl. Rachel? No, not his sister; she’d been dead for twelve years. This was another girl, probably not even fifteen.
She looked terrified. Harry was on top of her. Hurting her.
At that moment, all the repressed memories of Rachel—and what “Uncle” Harry had done to her—had erupted from the hiding place in the corner of his brain where they had lurked for so many years. Raine had been enveloped in a black rage, striking out, fighting brutally with the bigger, heavier, much-older man. Raine had been young and strong, just turned eighteen, but Harry had been a beast and stronger. The girl whose attack had prompted his sudden recall had run out, disappearing into the night…or so he thought.
Bloodied, bruised, and battered, Raine had eventually staggered away from the house, Harry alive and well behind him. Yet no more than ninety minutes later, when his brothers had gone back to confront the man, they’d found him dead on the floor, a bullet in his brain. And thinking their brother was a killer, they’d cleaned up the crime scene for him.
Which was why the case had never been solved.
Harry had been a monster. Not one of them was sorry he was dead.
But they all regretted the part they’d played in letting a murderer get away scot-free.
The three of them were trapped in that secret, wrapped up together in the lie. What had happ
ened in those ninety minutes, who had killed Harry—whether the girl had come back to take revenge or whether it had been someone else—was a mystery that taunted them all. And it had to be solved if they wanted to find any peace and get any closure.
“Listen, baby, Sugar ain’t got nothin’ on me. She didn’t know how to show a man a good time, but believe me, I do.”
The stripper wrapped her arms around his neck and ground into his body. Sliding a leg between his, she humped his thigh, rubbing up and down, faking little sounds of delight. A performer going through her usual act.
Raine disentangled himself, putting her away from him. Then, reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a business card and a fifty. “I know the house will take most of that hundred. Can you hide this?”
She nodded. He didn’t ask where, not really wanting to know.
“Okay.” He handed her the card. “This goes with it. You call me if you hear anything about this Sugar, okay?”
She glanced at the card, reading the name. “Hollywood Guardians, huh?”
“Yes.”
She plumped up her breasts and slipped her fingers under the tassels, popping them off.
“You sure you don’t wanna be my guardian angel, sweetie?”
Feeling nothing more than pity and sadness, Raine shook his head. “Listen, keep that card, okay? Whether it’s about Sugar or not, if you ever find yourself in a bad spot, you give me a call.”
The girl’s mouth fell open, and her eyes rounded. It was as if she wasn’t used to anybody wanting to help. Like it had been ages since anybody had even been kind to her.
God, this city was ruthless.
He left the booth feeling both sadness and anger.
And wondering just how many more places like this he would have to visit in his search for the mysterious Marley/Sugar, who might hold the key to the questions that haunted his family.
Chapter 4
True to his word, Rowan Winchester picked her up promptly at eight the next morning. Although not as dark and obviously angry as he’d been when he left, he seemed in no way like the friendly, upbeat—sexy, oh so sexy—guy she’d been getting to know before she’d spoiled everything by asking him for a scoop.
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