He was already there.
“Hey! I thought you were leaving town.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Tommy looked like shit. He had big bags underneath his eyes and he looked like he’d lost ten pounds since the funeral.
“Are you okay?”
“As okay as I can be,” he said, vaguely. He had a package in his hand. He handed it to her. “That’s what Greg wanted you to find. I took it from the crime scene before they could take it into evidence.”
Paige wondered why he was waiting until now to give it to her, but she didn’t ask. Instead she said, “Do you know what’s in it?”
“I have an idea,” he said. “I need to go Paige. Be careful...please.”
“Okay. Thank you, Tommy.”
“Don’t thank me. I should be discouraging you from doing this instead of helping you. Keep yourself safe Paige and whatever you do, do not get sucked into their world.” Tommy hugged her then and took off towards the backside of the zoo. Paige looked down at the package in her hand. She wanted to see what was inside of it...without Damien looking over her shoulder. She tucked it into her backpack and went the way Tommy had. As she suspected, there was a small gate at the rear of the zoo where you couldn’t enter, but you could exit. She slipped out and took off jogging. She jogged about two blocks before she stopped and hailed a cab....to Greg’s apartment leaving Damien waiting.
Chapter 14
Once Paige was inside Greg’s apartment she opened the envelope Tommy gave her. There was a USB thumb drive and a small audio drive. She pulled out her notebook and plugged in the USB. When she brought it up there was a list of files on it in chronological order. She clicked on one of them and a manifest opened up.
The manifest read, “Trans Paine Inc.” at the top as the shipper. Under the area that read, “Port” New York was listed. The name of a ship was listed as well and the name of the captain and where the shipment was coming from...and Kramer Construction was listed as the receivers. There were over twelve of these manifests, different dates, but otherwise very similar. One notable was that the shipments all came in on the same ship under the authority of the same captain. The captain’s name was Seth Vickers. Paige made a mental note to call Tommy and see if they had any background on him.
The USB also held a list of names. The names were all Columbian and Greg had put in parenthesis at the bottom: Cartel.
Paige wasn’t sure yet what to do with all of this, but she knew that this was good information to have. She had to wonder however why it would be enough to kill for. Surely Lucas Kramer and Jackson Paine had a safety net in place in case their manifests ever went public. Surely they had a legitimate shipment come in as a cover for whatever else...likely drugs, was brought in along with it.
Paige took out the USB and put in the audio. She waited for it to load and pressed play.
“Do we have a deal?” The voice was male and heavily accented. Paige would say Columbian, considering the source.
“Yes, I’ve already given you my word. What more do you want?”
That voice didn’t sounded familiar to her. “I want what Jackson Paine has, Mr. Kramer.” Lucas Kramer!
“This will be our start. The July shipment is one of his biggest yet. If this goes south for him, he’ll lose customers and he’ll lose respect and he’ll lose millions...”
“And that’s your reward. My reward will be that I’ll have the product waiting for me out on the island. I’ll move it back to Columbia and sell it and I will make the millions he loses. It will make a very happy man to see him suffer for it.”
“Mine as well,” Kramer said. “It’s all set. The captain is set to run the ship aground. You’re men will need to be there and ready to unload it as quickly as they can. The ship will then sink and the captain will be assumed dead.”
“What about the crew?”
“They will do what the captain tells them to do.”
“You’re sure? We can’t afford any wild cards.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? I don’t do wild cards. I wrap up my loose ends and tie them up in a bow.”
“Like the two DEA agents last year?”
“That was Jackson’s doing...mostly, but yes, like that.”
“That was...”
Paige heard a noise that sounded like the door opening. She pulled the file out and shoved it into her pants. She turned toward the sound and saw Damien standing behind her. It was the first time that he actually looked scary to her. She looked up at his large frame and his eyes had that cold hard edge to them that his brother’s held all the time.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I needed to pick up some more things...”
He reached down and pulled her up out of the chair. He held her up off the floor, close to his face. Paige felt her breath catch in her throat. She was torn between “How dare he touch me?” and “Oh my God his lips are so close.”
“You took off on me at the zoo. I had no fucking clue where you were...”
“Obviously you found me, so put me down and calm down.”
He let her down on her feet but he still didn’t let go of her arms. She felt dizzy being so close to him. She wanted to touch him so badly that she had to ball her hands into fists to keep herself from doing it.
“Do you know what he would do to me if I let anything happen to you?”
“He? Your own father? Don’t you think your well-being would be more important to him than mine?”
“You would think,” he said, letting go of her. She fell back into the table, losing her balance and sliding down into the floor.
“Jesus, fuck Damien!”
He reached his hand down to her and she hit it away. A murderous look crossed his face and for a second she thought maybe she had gone too far. She was pissed at this point and didn’t care.
“Get away from me.” She pulled herself up and said, “Why do you and your father want to keep me away from here so badly? Is there something here that you’re afraid I’ll find? Do you know something about my brother’s death?”
“I’m supposed to watch you, period. I don’t know shit! Now get your stuff and let’s go.”
“No! Stop telling me what to do!”
“I should just leave you here then and let you end up dead like the cop.”
She stepped back up close to him. She was seeing red now. She pushed her hands into his chest and said, “That cop was my brother! He was my big brother and now he’s dead and I’m the only one who gives a shit!”
She pushed him again and he grabbed her wrists. She was breathing heavy, fighting off the tears again. She was well aware that this man could kill her right now for putting her hands on him, but she was so pissed she couldn’t think clearly and right now she just didn’t care.
“Let go of me,” she said through gritted teeth.
Damien let go and when she looked up at his face she saw his eyes had softened.
“I’m sorry about your brother.”
Paige was shocked. An apology? From a Paine? Hell must have frozen over. She didn’t know what to say at that point and she was afraid if she tried that she would lose it completely and start to cry. So instead of saying anything, she grabbed her pack off the table and said, “Let’s go.”
Damien followed her out. When he turned to lock the door, she fished the USB out of her pants and stuffed it back into her pack. She would have to look at it later.
*****
Damien alternated between being pissed at Paige and feeling sorry for her. If anyone else had put their hands on him like that...there would have been hell to pay. As it were, his blood was still roaring from the heat of her touch. It had aroused him for her to touch him at all and his cock twitched in his pants even now at the memory of it. She’s such a pain in the ass. He can’t begin to imagine why she affects him the way that she does, but he felt powerless to control it. This morning when he’d been naked and he knew she was watching him... the weight of her star
e shot heat through his veins and he had been right on the verge of taking her. He knew that he had to keep himself in check. Paige was not part of their world no matter how tough she liked to pretend that she was, or how much she wanted to believe she was in control. She didn’t belong here and Damien could never leave...so taking this damned attraction anywhere would be a mistake. She was destined to be a doctor and have a family in some nice little suburb of New Jersey and he was destined for a life with someone like Kelsey...a hot fuck whenever he wanted it, but nothing beyond that.
When they got home, Paige disappeared into her room and he didn’t see her again until dinner time. He’d made some spaghetti and seemingly subdued, she fixed herself a plate and sat down and ate with him. Dinner was silent, but afterwards she thanked him before cleaning up her plate and going to get ready for work. He thought he had his desires under control until she came back out of the room.
She was wearing a white pencil dress that didn’t leave one single curve of her voluptuous body to the imagination. The neckline was high but there was a hole cut right over her cleavage area in front and the back was open to the small of her back. Her long shapely legs ended in a pair of “come fuck me” white heels and her hair was in wild dark curls across her shoulders and down her back. Damien’s pants were instantly too small. All he could think as he followed her out the door and to the elevator was...Fuck Me!
He drove her to work and after dropping her off, he headed over to his father’s restaurant. He walked in past the hostess who was trying to greet him and the tables full of people he would normally talk to. He found his father, Alex and his Uncle Kevin right where he knew he would...at their private table in the back.
“Damien, you’re just in time to join us for dinner,” Jackson said.
“Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have me following this angry, impetuous little woman around twenty-four-seven. I deserve to know what is going on.”
Jackson glanced at his brother and then looked back up at Damien. “Sit down Damien. Now!”
Damien sat down next to his brother. The waiter rushed over but Damien warned him off with a look. “What happened to her brother?”
Jackson sighed. “I care about Paige,” he said, not for the first time. “I cared for her brother. When I married Crystal I really thought that it would be forever. I thought of them as my own.”
Alex and Damien exchanged a look. They both had issues with all of the years they spent without a father. Neither of them has ever brought them up to Jackson. “Greg never liked me. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get close to him. But, I never stopped caring about him. I would never have killed that boy. I knew he was here and I knew what he was doing...and like Paige, I didn’t blow his cover.”
“But you know who did kill him, don’t you?”
Jackson looked around to make sure no one else was near and he said, “Yes, I know. I’m not going to tell Paige so that she can run off half-cocked and get herself killed.”
“And you’re not going to do anything to him because his father is your close friend and business partner...do I have that right?” Damien suspected he knew who killed Greg.
His father proved him right as he said, “Yes. That’s not why I’m doing “nothing” as you put it. It’s not that simple. If I killed Caine Kramer it would start a war not only with Kramer’s crew, but with the Columbians. My relations with the Cartel are shaky. Kramer actually holds that together for us and he would easily be able to bring them in on his side if he needed to.”
“So what are you going to do? Why are you keeping her here, acting like you’re helping her?”
“First to keep her safe,” Jackson said. “She has no idea what she is doing here. Caine found out that Greg was undercover. He tried to get Greg to tell him what he had on him. What Greg did tell him was that it was enough to put him away. Caine freaked out and killed him. He would just as easily do the same to Paige. We have to find out what Greg had and if anyone ended up with that information, it was his sister. Then, we can decide what to do with Caine.”
“So you want to use her as the bait? You think she has this evidence already?” Damien was thinking about her meeting with her brother’s partner. Was that what that was about?
“I think you need to find out,” his father said. It wasn’t a question or a request...it was a direct order.
Chapter 15
Paige breathed a sigh of relief that Caine wasn’t at the club tonight. Kelsey wasn’t either and it actually just felt like a normal job for a change. They were busy and shorthanded, so she was on her feet and moving all night. That made the time go by quickly and for that she was grateful. Damien was there right on time to pick her up.
On the ride to the apartment he actually asked her how the night went. Surprised that he was trying to be nice, Paige told him it was good, but busy. The rest of the ride was quiet with her wrapped up in her thoughts of figuring out how to use the evidence Tommy gave her and Damien appearing to have things of his own on his mind.
As soon as they got to the penthouse Paige went to her room, closed and locked the door behind her. Then she changed out of her work clothes into a white cami with spaghetti straps and soft yellow pajama pants. Before going back out to the kitchen she pulled her hair up into a ponytail and looked up at the vent. Earlier when she was getting ready for work she had dug the USB and audio files out of her pack and looked around the room for a place to hide them. She had spotted a vent above the dresser. She wrapped the two files in a t-shirt and climbed up on top of the dresser. Reaching up, she opened the vent and put the t-shirt up inside the vent before closing it back. Everything looked untouched.
When she walked out of her room she found Damien leaning back against the counter, drinking a beer. She felt the searing heat of his eyes as they moved over her body, practically leaving her panting.
“You want a beer?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Damien pulled one out of the refrigerator and twisted off the cap before handing it to her.
“Thanks.”
He nodded. Paige took her beer and began to head for the living room where the television was already on. As she stepped out of the kitchen onto the cool marble floor of the dining room she heard the newscaster on the television say, “Once again, this has been a special report. If you missed it, the body of a New York City detective with the vice squad, has been identified as the body of Tom Halton and has been found in a dumpster in the Bronx...” The room started to spin and Paige didn’t remember letting go of the beer. She didn’t even hear it hit the marble floor and shatter and she didn’t feel the beer splash back onto her.
“Paige, what’s going on?” Damien was at her side, but she didn’t see him or hear him. The newscaster was still talking about Tommy. She walked towards the television as if in a trance.
“It appears that the officer was brutally beaten. His body was then stuffed into a dumpster behind an Italian restaurant. He was discovered by an employee of the restaurant taking out the trash. As of now that is all the information we have, but we’ll have more updates when they are available.
“Paige?”
“What?” She screamed tears streaming down her face.
“Did you know him?” Damien asked not hearing the name.
“Tommy...He was my brother’s partner. He was supposed to leave town! Why the fuck didn’t he leave?”
She could hear her voice becoming louder and more high-pitched. She felt herself hurtling towards the edge of a cliff and she couldn’t stop it. She turned her anger on Damien.
“This is what people in your line of work do! Is this what you do? Do you beat people to death?” She felt sick to her stomach. Damien wasn’t speaking. He was just looking at her dumbfounded. “Do you put needles in people’s arms and shoot them up? Is that what you do for a living Damien? How do you fucking live with yourself? How do you look at yourself in the mirror? I hate you. I hate all of y
ou!”
The tears pooled in her eyes and starting streaming down her cheeks and then she lifted her hand like she was going to hit him. Damien didn’t flinch; he just grabbed her wrists and pulled her to his chest so she couldn’t hit him.
“I’m so sorry Paige. I had nothing to do with this.”
Paige pushed him away with such force she stumbled back a little and the look on his face as she continued to scream obscenities at him was positively deadly...and more beautiful than ever. Paige’s heart was pounding inside of her chest like it was trying to hammer its way out. Damien’s eyebrows were low and his eyes seemed to be focused intently on her lips. His own lips were held tightly in a straight line and his hard jaw was set tight. It was if he was trying to keep himself from kissing her. She could feel her breaths coming in ragged gasps.
Paige offered absolutely no resistance as he planted his lips against hers. Fireworks actually exploded inside of her head as he kissed her, pushing his tongue between her parted lips and seeking hers out. She brought hers up and let it slither across his. As they kissed, he wrapped his strong arms around her and pulled her as tightly into him as he could. She could feel how hard he already was as his cock pressed hard into her side. It only served to fuel her own desire. She pressed one hand into his hard bicep and curled the other into his chest. He felt every bit as good as she knew he would and she couldn’t wait to feel more as they continued to kiss for several minutes. Their tongues tangled and slid and danced across each other. When their lips finally parted so they could breathe, Damien seemed unable to stop.
He planted kisses across her tear stained cheek towards her ear and Paige leaned her head to the side to give him access. He sucked her earlobe in between his lips and flicked it with his tongue. Then he kissed down her neck and when he reached the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder, he bit down gently eliciting a whimper from her lips. He reached back and took the band out of her hair, letting it loose so that it fell down across her shoulders and back. Taking a handful of it and tugging her head even more to the side, he continued to kiss and suck and bite at her neck while she wiggled and whimpered up against him. She loved the feel of her breasts crushing into his hard chest and the feeling of him working his lips back up to her mouth and sucking her bottom lip in between his teeth before he began kissing her hard again, letting his tongue plunge in as deeply as it would go.
House of Paine - (A Romantic Suspense - Book 1) Page 8