Jewels And Panties: (Book 1-15) Billionaire Romance Series

by Brooke Kinsley

  “You look so much like someone I just met,” I said to the girl.

  She was fiercely beautiful but I was starting to think that all the women around here were.

  “Oh?” she laughed and cocked her head to the side.

  She looked so young but her mannerisms were mature and slightly manufactured like she practiced them.

  I noticed something catch the light and noticed she was wearing a large, sparkling engagement ring. She caught me looking and flashed it in my face.

  “You like it?”

  “It’s gorgeous,” I said.

  She laughed again, this time so loud it made my head hurt.

  “Just engaged,” she said.

  “Lucky girl. Congratulations.”

  “He’s the most handsome man in the world.”

  She continued to laugh and edged away, desperate to leave. The dog continued to drink its water, grunting as it emptied the bowl. I was pretty sure my job was done. Out here with all the other animals it would be perfectly happy.

  “Cool, well I better head home,” I said and stood up.

  But as I did, something hard pressed into my back. The smell of hay and manure returned. I looked up and saw the old man with a shotgun in his hands. He was unsteady and it shook in his fingers but it was still pressed firmly into my spine.

  “Wh… What are you doing?”

  I waited to discover I was the punchline of some practical joke but the darkness in the old man’s eyes told me he was deadly serious.

  “How much money do you think we can get for a billionaire’s girlfriend?” asked the girl as she stubbed out her cigarette.

  Then she presented a wallet from her pocket and began pulling out notes, scattering them across the table like a tarot spread. I recognized it right away.

  That’s Lincoln’s wallet, I thought. What the hell is she doing with it?

  The gun was pressed even harder into my spine and the old man reached for my arm. He twisted it up behind my back and I realized he was surprisingly strong.

  “Come,” he said. “You’re not going home.”

  True Crime

  Jewels And Panties Series

  Book Twelve

  Brooke Kinsley

  © 2017 All Rights Reserved

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses per law

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  "Erotica is literature designed to be read with one hand...”-Brooke Kinsley

  Description

  LINCOLN

  With my new laboratory south of the border, I’m ready to create what I always dreamed of and bring my designs to life.

  But Etta’s mother, Norma is sure something is wrong with her daughter and won’t rest until she returns home.

  Once again, I’m on a quest to find Etta but this time, I’m led down a mysterious path that takes me through the winding alleyways of San Lucrezia.

  An old man shares his wisdom and the mystery deepens.

  He leads me to the secret lair of a dangerous gangster, a man who loves women just as much as money.

  But will he lead me to Etta?

  Or am I further from her than ever?

  ETTA

  I won’t ever be a victim again.

  But will I be a killer?

  That girl is trouble. She’s a dangerous liar hell bent on ruining lives.

  And with the old man certain he’s going to hold me hostage, I only have one choice.

  Fight back.

  But my escape sees me alone and lost in the desert with a murderous vixen on my tail.

  She’s intent on killing me.

  But what she doesn’t know is that I have a bloodier history than hers.

  Will I fight my way out of trouble again?

  Maybe this time my fate is no longer in my hands.

  Chapter One

  ETTA

  No, was the first thing I thought. This won’t happen to me again.

  Still in disbelief, still shaking, I looked over my shoulder. The old man was sweating, looking into my eyes as though he was hungry for blood. He licked a bead of perspiration from his top lip. I kept staring, kept getting sucked into his eyes that seemed to get blacker and blacker until…

  I looked down at the knife. What was he going to do with it? Was it just a threat? Was he actually going to use it? As the glow from the overhead light glinted off the blade, I could make out the reflection of the girl behind me. She was smiling.

  “Do it, papa,” she laughed. “Do it!”

  “No,” he replied. “There’ll be no money if she’s dead.”

  His eyes flickered up to hers for just a moment, just a fleeting second but I knew how much that time meant and I took my chance. Before I even realized what I was doing, my hand was curling into a fist. It reached up, springing to life as my knuckles connected with the brittle jaw of the old man.

  He let out a yelp and staggered backward, his teeth scattering out onto the floor like bloodied pearls.

  “Papa!”

  I spun round and slapped the girl. Then I took the knife and ran.

  The dog raised its head as I rushed by, water dripping from his jowls. There was a brief look of recognition in his eyes but it quickly vanished and he was dipping his face in his water bowl again.

  From the kitchen, I could hear the old man stumble around, clutching at his mouth as he swore through blood that poured from his gums.

  “Get back!” screamed the girl.

  As I reached the front door, I felt her gaze on me. She was only a few steps behind me with pure hatred in her eyes. I’d hurt her beloved papa and now she had to hurt me.

  I ran.

  I ran as fast as I could until my feet were kicking up dust and the sun was scorching the top of my head. The heat dried out everything, my eyes, my breath, my mouth. I panted hard as I ran through the dirt, my legs being torn apart by the clusters of brambles and cacti.

  The blood was cascading down my ankles and running into my sandals. It was being squeezed out from between my toes but I didn’t notice. I just ran.

  Behind me, I could hear the girl’s footsteps as she gave chase but her heels were high and she struggled to keep her balance as she dodged around the ragged rocks. She ripped off her shoes and hurled them at me. One missed my head by a few inches, landing in a bush ahead of me. The other one hit me square in the back. I didn’t realize until the spike of the heel caught the space between my shoulder blades and knocked the air out of me.

  But still, I kept running.

  The girl was screaming, yelling things at me I didn’t understand. She stumbled barefoot over the rocks until her feet were bleeding, crying out with both pain and anger. Yet I was more desperate than her and so, propelled by the desperate urge to never be a victim once again, I ran faster.

  She may have been younger but she was slower and with all the smoke and tar in her lungs, she was no match for me. I left her struggling to catch her breath, bent down sucking up sandy air and coughing.

  The land ahead looked as empty as the land behind it. There were times when I felt as though I was traversing Mars, the blistering heat growing by the second, bleaching everything it touched.

  My tongue was dry and stuck to the roof of my mouth but my hands were damps, drenched with sweat. I ran until the girl behind me shrunk to nothing but a pinpoint of blackness on the horizon.

  Who was she? Who was the old man?

  I didn’t care. All I wanted was to get home. But where was that?

  The desert s
pread far, far into the distance. There appeared to be no end to it. I’d moved around in circles, had walked around and around until I didn’t know where I was. There were no markers, no buildings. What little plants were out here grew sparse until they disappeared and became nothing but shriveled up leaves trying to escape from beneath the rocks.

  Somewhere in the distance, a bird called out. I looked up and shielded my face with my hand but it did little to subdue the heat of the sun. A vulture circled me, or was it a hawk. I couldn’t tell. I was a city girl. All birds were pigeons to me.

  Still, there was something about it that worried me. It followed me, made me feel as though I was being watched. Maybe it knew something I didn’t. Maybe it knew I was close to death.

  My head hurt more and more with each step, the heat dehydrating out my body until it felt as though my brain was trying to force its way out through my skull.

  Home, where is home? It must be over here… Or… Is it back that way?

  Way off, where the sky met the mountains in the distance, I thought I could see someone, a figure shimmering toward me. But when I blinked and rubbed my eyes it disappeared along with the mountains. There was nothing ahead of me, nothing behind me. I didn’t know how long I’d been walking. I didn’t know how long I’d been out the house, or how much further I could walk without collapsing. I was beginning to not even know who I was anymore.

  There was just the pain in my feet and my head and the constant thirst which consumed me. It hurt every cell in my body, made me feel as though everything was swirling in front of my eyes.

  Somewhere behind me, there was a rumble. It was the sound of the tractor approaching. I squinted to focus into the distance but couldn’t see it coming. But I could still hear it.

  I closed my eyes and prayed it was just my imagination.

  “Just a hallucination,” I told myself. “He’s not coming.”

  Chapter Two

  LINCOLN

  “What is all this stuff?”

  I pretended I didn’t hear her.

  “Hey, I said what is all this stuff?”

  Norma was picking up glass beakers and tubes and looking at them as though she’d never seen anything like it in her life. If only she could see what else I had down here, weird things, abominable things she wouldn’t believe.

  “Huh?” I grunted, finally looking up from the box I was sifting through.

  “All this stuff. Is this, like, for all your medical work? Why did you get it all sent down here? You’re supposed to be on a break.”

  “I don’t take breaks,” I said. “Besides, it’s not work to me. I enjoy it. It’s my entire life.”

  She frowned and pulled a Bunsen burner out of a nearby box, slapping the rubber hose across her hand and assessing how much it hurt.

  “You ever think mad scientists get sexy with these things?” she asked.

  This was not the conversation I wanted to be happening with my mother in law.

  “I hope not,” I replied although I knew better.

  I’d always found the rubber hoses of Bunsen burners to be enticing. The smell, the way they squeaked when you pulled them tight and snapped back against your hand when you released them. They were beyond sexy. But as appealing as it could be to slap one against Etta’s bare ass, I suddenly felt a little pang of regret when I realized I hadn’t so much as spanked her with my own hand.

  Yet I’d used the hose more times than I remembered. They made tremendous restraints when secured around someone’s wrists and made better weapons when pulled tight around someone’s throat.

  Those vile, sadistic bitches inBroadwood, I’d killed a couple of them that way. That seemed so long ago now and Normont felt so far away.

  “Bunsen burners are kinda old though, right?”

  Norma was still blabbering, still rifling through my things. She was getting on my nerves but I didn’t have the heart to tell her to leave. She was a sensitive soul and I didn’t want to send her back upstairs to the nearest bottle.

  “Yeah, they’re pretty old. Not used one in a long time.”

  “Why you have one then?”

  I gave up trying to do my own thing and sat back against the wall.

  “I dunno, I guess I like the old timey aesthetic or something.”

  “Remind you of the good old days when medicine was run by body snatchers?” she laughed.

  “Er…. Not quite.”

  Norma sauntered over to another box and began looking through a pile of wires. She pulled out a clump that was tangled together like a ball of spaghetti. Holding it up in front of her face, she squinted as she tried to figure out what it all was.

  “What are you planning to do with all this?” she asked.

  “Stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Just… research I’m working on.”

  She dropped the wires back into the box and walked over. Crouching down beside me, she searched my eyes but I couldn’t tell what for. The truth of what I was doing with all this stuff? The truth about what happened last night? Whatever she was looking for, she never said a thing.

  “I know we’re going through a difficult time,” I said.

  “You’re telling me!” she scoffed.

  I reached out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. It felt weird and I quickly removed it.

  “So, yeah.A horrible time. All this… All this tension between us. The memories, the feeling that…”

  “Something bad is going to happen at any moment,” finished Norma. “The dread won’t go away. Not even when I’m asleep. Craig comes back in my dreams but…”

  She lowered her head and rubbed the heel of her hand into her eyes.

  “But he finishes the job,” she said. “In my dreams he finishes the job and…”

  “Don’t,” I interrupted. “Don’t dwell on it. We’re down here now. Where the sun doesn’t stop shining and the margaritas don’t stop coming. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s all over now.”

  She fell silent for a moment and rested her head against the wall.

  “It doesn’t feel like that,” she said. “It feels like he’s always coming. Like… Like… You know in the movies and you know something bad is about to happen because the bad guy music starts playing.”

  I nodded and gave her a weak, understanding smile.

  “It’s like the bad guy music is always playing but he never shows up.”

  A tear fell from her eye and down her cheek. I watched as it sank into her powdery makeup before dripping into her mouth.

  “It’ll get easier,” I said.

  She didn’t believe me but she patted my arm anyway and wiped her eyes.

  “I trust you,” she said. “If you say it’ll get better then it must.”

  Some part of me was warming to her. We’d not had the chance to bond like people are supposed to with their in-laws. It had all been so rushed and dangerous but increasingly, I was finding that it was just the two of us in this big house, bonded by our sadness and love for Etta.

  Where was Etta? Maybe she came home already but was hiding somewhere. There was no knowing what she was thinking. Well, I could guess that she thought I was a cheat and a scumbag but I had to explain things to her. She had to understand that I didn’t want any of it to happen.

  Or did I?

  I couldn’t get my head straight.

  There were flashing images in my head of remembering Lolita and her body. Of me wanting to touch her over the bar, to kiss her and feel her pressed up against me. But it was all just a fantasy. I never really wanted it. I just wanted to look and daydream. Yet some part of me must have wanted it because it happened. She’d fucked me and I must have let her. But she’d drugged me….

  It was all too confusing. Just thinking about it made the nausea return all over again. I just wanted to be left down here with my things and the dark coolness of the basement. I wanted to start work again.

  “It’s been a few hours,” she said. “Where do you think she is?”r />
  “She can’t be far away. She left her purse here and didn’t take the car.”

  “But it’s so hot out there. Where is she?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I squeezed her hand and she squeezed back.

  “We’ll probably find her out by the pool with her favorite book and a mojito and we would have worried for nothing.”

  I could tell Norma wanted to believe me but there was a skeptical look in her eye.

  “Let’s hope so,” she said. “But a mojito does sound nice. Care to come back upstairs and join me?”

  “No, I’m okay. Think I’ll begin setting all this up.”

  She looked around the room and shook her head.

  “Good luck,” she said. “You scientists confuse the hell out of me with all your bleepybloopy machines. Have fun.”

  “I will” I said as I watched her ascend the stairs. “If you see Etta tell her I’m down here.”

  I waited until she was out of sight and her footsteps were stomping across the floor above me before I began unpacking my things. Turning on the air conditioner, I made it as cold as I could get it.

  It was never too cold here. I’d grown up in the north my whole life and although I’d acted out a glamorous existence and taken vacations in distant, tropical lands, I always returned to the cold. I needed it. It motivated me, made me work harder. It reminded me of being a child and the heat never being turned on, but it didn’t matter because we were throwing a ball around the back yard and we were dripping in sweat.

  I didn’t want to think that far back. I wanted to think about my plans right now, needed to continue my work no matter what.

  “No matter what…”

  I said the words to myself and they hung in the air. They sounded as though they came from someone else.

  Turning the air conditioning up some more, I picked up the nearest box and emptied it out onto the floor. Wires and circuit boards tumbled out, scattering across the concrete floor with the sound of scuttling cockroaches.