“No. This is where we invite you in and impress you with our culinary talents.” His grin seemed to set Bailey at ease.
“I’m not used to this, and by this, I mean dating. I just haven’t. I already feel things I’ve never felt before, and all you’ve done is hold my hands. So, I’m probably going to second- and third-guess myself. But that will have nothing to do with you. That really is all on me.”
“One day at a time, remember?” Logan brought her hand up and kissed it then looked at Chance.
“Bailey?” Chance waited until she met his gaze. His instincts were telling him that Bailey James was the real deal. He brought her hand to his lips and then kissed it, mirroring his brother’s move. “Nothing happens between us without your consent. We won’t pressure you, either. You need to want us as much as we want you, or it just doesn’t work.”
Bailey met his gaze and then swallowed, visibly. “All right. I’m going to hold you to that promise.”
“Yes, ma’am. Now, come inside and sit with us in the kitchen as we get supper going. We can trade life stories.”
Bailey nodded. “It’s a good thing you’ll be busy doing something so I don’t put you to sleep while I tell you mine.” Then she smiled, and Chance felt something constrict his chest. Other women he’d known had used self-depreciating comments to fish for compliments. Bailey’s words had been simply stated—because she believed them.
Chance became more determined than ever. They would take the time to get to know her, moving, as they’d already promised her, slowly, taking one day at a time. But before they got naked, he and his brother had a decision to make.
Because this relationship wasn’t only about the three people standing on the porch of this pretty little house in a pretty little town. Chance just hoped to hell they could do what had to be done without blowing all three of them up in the process.
Chapter Six
Bailey had just taken the biggest risk in her entire life, saying yes to a date with these two Benedicts. Not a date to the movies or to a trendy restaurant, either. No, she’d said yes to a date at their house! At the same time, a part of her wondered if she hadn’t also just taken her first solid step toward living life, instead of simply existing.
How long would I have continued on in my daily rut if Dirk Townsend hadn’t been murdered? In the next heartbeat, Bailey chastised herself for such a horrible, self-centered thought. The man had died, for crying out loud!
“What’s the matter?” Chance left his chopping board and half-diced peppers and was beside her in an instant. He reached out with a single finger and tilted her chin up, likely so he could look into her eyes. “What thought just put that look of pain on your face?”
Bailey wasn’t used to being noticed like this. Usually, no one spared her so much as a glance, let alone giving her their undivided attention. She felt her face color and wondered how she was going to answer him without sounding completely pathetic.
“Chance is right.” Logan came to stand beside her. It was a puzzle to her how they always knew to do that—to somehow have her between them whenever her emotions took a turn. “That was definitely pain I saw on your face, too.”
Bailey couldn’t seem to come up with the words she needed. Her mind was scrambling for something that would be trite and…and she sighed, because she couldn’t think of a thing to say except the truth. Could she risk that?
“Sweetheart, how can we get to know each other if you erect walls between us?”
Bailey met Chance’s gaze. He was right. If they’d been as evasive with her as she was being with them right now, she’d be suspicious and edgy, and probably gone.
“I was thinking about…my life before I came to Texas. I had a horrible thought a moment ago. For that one moment, I was actually grateful that my boss was murdered because, otherwise, I might have spent the rest of my days on the hamster wheel that my life had become and going nowhere, fast.”
“Your boss was murdered?” Logan’s expression betrayed his alarm. He looked over at Chance.
“Were the two of you…close?” Chance asked.
Bailey’s eyes widened. Did they think Dirk had been her boyfriend? “Um…not in the way I think you mean. Dirk Townsend was my boss, period. I’d worked for him for about five years. He gave me a good job when I’d needed one. When he hired me, I was still spending my free time taking care of my mother, and the position of office manager came with a pretty good salary and benefits package. That all ended upon his death. His lawyer contacted me and told me the business was to be closed immediately and would eventually be liquidated. So his death meant I was out of a job.”
“But he was murdered?” Logan met her gaze as he asked that.
Bailey nodded. “The police thought at first he’d been the victim of a random mugging.”
“At first?” Chance asked.
She felt a little bit the way she had that first day at Lusty Appetites when they were peppering her with their tag-team interrogation technique.
Don’t be silly. Anyone would be filled with curiosity under the circumstances. Most people never met anyone who knew someone who’d been murdered. Bailey set aside her prickly gut reactions.
“Yeah, at first. Then it became apparent that he’d probably been involved in illegal activities. The cops had a couple of theories going. They figured at first it might have been drug smuggling, though they never found any evidence of that. Then they theorized that he’d borrowed money from the wrong people. That theory seemed to be proven when I began getting threatening phone calls from a man whose voice I’d never heard before, demanding that I give him what Dirk owed him, or else. I never did find out what the ‘or else’ was. After the second call, I went to the police. They were the ones who suggested I relocate, for my own safety.”
“So, you went to the police because you were threatened?” Chance looked at his brother. Then he turned back to her. “Of course, you would. I’m not sure their suggestion to simply leave town was the best way to handle the situation, though.”
“I’m not a very brave woman, Chance. You need to know that up front. I’m not ashamed to admit that I got very scared. I hired a real estate company to oversee getting my house cleaned out and ready to sell, after I put everything I wanted to keep into storage. Then I packed my car and headed to Texas.”
“Have you been in touch with those cops since you’ve been here?” Logan asked
When she tilted her head at Logan, he shrugged. “I was just wondering if they’d caught the guy, or guys, responsible for your boss’s murder.”
“They do know I’m in Texas,” Bailey said. “But as for actual contact…” She left off finishing her sentence because her cell phone chose that exact moment to ring.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at the call display. “Huh. It’s my real estate company.” Then she grinned. “Maybe they got an offer on my house!”
She used her finger to “slide to answer” then smiled as she held the phone up to her ear.
“Hello?”
The words she heard were so unexpected it took her a moment for them to make sense.
“Did you call the police?”
That question, along with whatever they could see on her face, made both men tense up.
“Bailey?”
She looked up at Chance and Logan, both of whom looked ready to go to war on her behalf. “Someone’s broken into my house—and they trashed the hell out of it.”
* * * *
Logan used their work cell phone to place the call. He’d excused himself from kitchen cleanup since he’d done most of the cooking and headed up to his bedroom. While the moment would be soon to talk to Bailey about the truth of the situation she was in, it wasn’t quite this moment. He didn’t have a lot of time. It would take Bailey and Chance only about fifteen minutes to set the kitchen to rights. Before they took that irrevocable step—and he and his brother had already decided they were going to do just that—he needed to talk to their handle
r.
His call was answered immediately.
“Benedict.”
“Wells. I have an update for you.”
“Logan, I knew I could count on the two of you, although you’re reporting in a lot sooner than I expected.”
“Hold that thought. Did you know the reason Bailey left New York City was because she’d received a couple of threatening phone calls demanding money after Dirk Townsend was murdered? Why did you leave that part out of the scenario you sent us? The police detective in charge of the investigation into the murder of Dirk Townsend suggested she leave the area.”
Porter Wells swore a nice long streak. “Do you have the cop’s name?”
“No, we’re trying not to appear to pry, and that’s information you can easily get, yourself. But our attitude about prying is about to change—in fact, everything is about to change. Bailey received a call just before supper informing her that her house outside of the city had been broken into. Trashed, the real estate agent said. She just got off the phone with the New Jersey cops who responded to the call. One of them, an Officer Fredericks, said it appeared to him as if whoever did it was looking for something specific. Drawers were dumped, kitchen cupboard contents strewn on the floor, and the two pieces of soft furniture left in the house cut into and the stuffing pulled out.”
“You’re right. That puts a whole different spin on things.”
“Bailey went ahead and called her contact on the NYPD and told him about the break-in. Now, I have a couple of questions for you. I’ve scanned over the background you sent us on Townsend’s import business. Was there a reason you suspected Bailey of being an accessory to whatever Townsend’s latest scheme was? What about the man working in the warehouse, Gary Sharp? It would seem to me he would be more hands-on with whatever shipments Townsend was bringing into that warehouse. And again, why leave out the fact the bastard was murdered?”
“First, we began this investigation when Townsend was very much alive, and the financial data and intro you got was put together before that event. I didn’t think at the time there was any reason to update that fact to your file. You’ll be tearing apart his financials. His death doesn’t come into that. Second, you need to know that we didn’t and don’t necessarily suspect Ms. James of anything.” Porter Wells’s voice had become all business. “We’re trying to cross off all the possibilities. As for Gary Sharp, we’ve been keeping track of him through the usual means.” Logan understood the usual means involved the use of a person’s cell phone and social media accounts to provide a light surveillance and to track their whereabouts.
“Chance and I believe Bailey’s only involvement with Townsend was having had the bad luck of being hired by the man as his office manager.”
Wells sighed. “Personally, that’s what I think, too. I also think there are too many damned police agencies involved in this situation, now.” If Logan closed his eyes, he could imagine Porter Wells rubbing his hand over his head of short, gray-streaked hair. The NSA agent was the only client they met with on a regular basis, and he generally came to them. “All right, I’m going to step this up a level. I’ll have one of my agents contact the NYPD and the cops in Maplewood. Whoever killed Townsend is likely the same person who threatened her, and then broke into Bailey’s house. What did she say about the threatening phone calls?”
“Just that the man on the phone demanded she hand over what Townsend owed him. She interpreted that to be money because the main theory the detectives gave her was that Townsend owed money to the wrong people. That’s why they suggested she leave. According to Bailey, the cops believed Townsend had been dealing with a local entity of some sort—likely a gang or local loan shark.”
“Emphasis on the word local. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have been wrong in their advice to her. Local con men and loan sharks don’t tend to have nationwide reach. Well, this has certainly turned into a clusterfuck.”
“Yeah. Wells, the thing is, Chance and I both think Bailey could be in danger. We think it’s important she knows as much as we can tell her about her late boss.”
“Do what you have to do to protect her. Definitely keep alert and let me know if there are any developments. I’ll wade into the swamp and let you know how many alligators I find. In the meantime, you two accounting geniuses need to get started on that audit. We may need your evidence sooner, rather than later.”
Logan hung up the phone and sat quietly for a moment. He felt better for having made the call, but he wasn’t looking forward to what came next.
His brother always chided him that he had an almost silver tongue. He just hoped, over the next hour or so, that silver tongue wouldn’t let him down.
* * * *
Porter Wells hung up the phone and sat back in his chair. His instincts were shouting out all sorts of warnings to him, and he didn’t like it one bit. He especially didn’t like that he had two men down in Texas who suddenly seemed to be in the center of an impending shitstorm.
The report he’d received that afternoon from his contact at Interpol had given him a name—an erstwhile blade-for-hire suspected in several contract killings, who’d gone on to put his fingers into all sorts of interesting pies by the name of Everett Forrest. Forrest had recently left Heathrow bound for the United States—in fact, he’d arrived in the U. S. just the day before Townsend was murdered.
Along with the name of a leader of one of the ISIL cells suspected to be involved with this man, another name had been brought to the attention of his contacts—Phillippe LeClerc. The European player had been thought to have gone to ground, or been killed by his own people, after the assassination of an undercover former FBI agent a few years before.
LeClerc emerging, and this English born and bred killer coming together with that man, along with the NSA’s prime ISIL target having been in the mix somehow? A shitstorm didn’t begin to describe what might be about to happen down in Texas.
The Benedicts could handle themselves under most circumstances. He’d seen to it they had sufficient training to do just that. But Porter believed the tango who’d slipped a knife between Dirk Townsend’s fourth and fifth ribs without nicking those bones, who called and threatened a woman and then tossed and searched said woman’s empty house, was not the usual kind of villain his two intrepid forensic accountants would ever have encountered. He sure as hell wasn’t, as the NYPD detectives believed, local scum.
Given some of the goods the late Dirk Townsend had been involved with—guns, drugs, and death—it was beyond a doubt the man who had killed Townsend wasn’t a local anything. There was no proof yet that his killer was Everett Forrest, but Porter would bet on it.
Porter would reach out to more of his contacts in Europe and find out if they could put a photo to the blade who’d been involved with the late smuggler, if he could get a secondary confirmation on the man’s identity. In the meantime, he needed someone to touch base with the NYPD and the cops in Maplewood, New Jersey. He also wanted to get someone close to the Benedicts, a backup who could be in place, just in case. He picked up his desk phone and hit speed dial number two. His assistant answered on the first ring.
“Yes, sir?”
“I need two agents—one who’s in Texas and one in New York State. Who do we have available?”
“Sabrina Jarvis is just finishing up in New York City. I can set up a call now. As for Texas, the only one in that vicinity at the moment is Quest. But he’s just coming off a deep undercover.”
Damion Quest was due some time off, and Porter hesitated for a moment. The man had gone above and beyond in Houston against a man who had connections with that same terrorist who was at the top of the NSA’s watch list. But it wasn’t as if he’d be asking the man to go undercover or undertake a long surveillance. He only wanted him close at hand—an insurance policy against a worst-case scenario.
“All right, I’ll take Jarvis first, and then I’ll talk to Quest.”
He hung up his phone but didn’t have to wait long.
As soon as it rang again, he snagged the receiver.
“Bri here, Porter. What do you have for me?”
Porter explained the situation of crossed jurisdictions and that he wanted her to co-ordinate with two local police forces. Bri Jarvis was a seasoned operative, one capable of filling whatever role was needed. While he briefed her, he sent her the file they had on Townsend, absent the financial files the Benedicts had, over their secure server.
“I’ll touch base with the cops, maybe see about getting them all in the same place for a meeting. I think I should take a look at the house and speak to the real estate agent, as well.”
“I also want you to see if you can track down Gary Sharp. I want eyes on him. Data on him is in the file I just sent.”
“I’ve got the file. I’ll spend the rest of the evening acquainting myself with the details, and then I’ll call and set up an appointment with both police entities first thing in the morning. Then I’ll pay a visit to Mr. Sharp.”
“Good. Get back to me as soon as you get a sense of things.”
“Will do, sir.”
Porter wondered, briefly, if Bri would be grateful for the opportunity to wear the face of a bureaucrat for a change, instead of taking on a more colorful persona. He knew she was equally comfortable and competent whether fighting one-on-one with the enemy or donning a pair of glasses and a sucking-lemons expression as a hard-ass bureaucrat.
Porter Wells didn’t have a lot of agents in his own little group, but the ones he had were the best of the best.
He had to wait a few minutes more to be put through to Damion Quest.
“Porter, what does a man have to do to catch a break?”
Porter laughed. “Sorry, Damion. But this is just a simple favor that I need.”
He could hear the man’s sense of humor over the line. “Should I make a note under the heading of famous last words?”
Porter wouldn’t say it, but he imagined just the fact that the focus of Quest’s two-year investigation was now in federal custody had gone a long way toward expunging the experience of crawling through the muck for that long.
Love Under Two Accountants [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 6