Well, besides unbelievably sexy that is.
There had been a look in his eyes, a glow of satisfaction, as he turned that little girl safely over to her tearful mama that Kris would never forget. Since that misty, late evening, she had been thinking about this.
Alyssa Morgan had apparently been thinking something similar, planting little seeds along the way. She had arrived on their doorstep a few weeks after Codi had been brought back, with an easy smile and a sheaf of papers, some pictures.
A cute, towheaded blond boy with sparkling green eyes that made Dylan’s mouth tighten and his eyes darkened.
Kris had thought she would have to talk him into that one--looking at that little boy hurt him. The little guy reminded him of somebody, she suspected. She could feel that in her gut. But Dylan had taken the papers, nodded politely to Officer Alyssa Morgan, asked about Codi, quite politely, before he rudely slammed the door in the state trooper’s face.
Beacon Investigations had been born as an online site four month ago, and since then, Dylan had returned two Kentucky children to their parents, one from Tennessee and had helped a federal marshal break up a drug ring. The federal marshal had come to him via the Sheriff, Alex Danelaw. He had turned down far more jobs than he had accepted and was working a half dozen right now.
Four kids returned home, a drug ring broken, and he didn’t know if it was the right thing.
“Dylan, this is right,” she murmured, moving to stand in front of him, catching his face in her hands and pressing her lips to his mouth.
Deepening the kiss, Dylan searched out her tongue as he wrapped his arms around her waist, backing her up against the desk as he cuddled his sex against her belly. His scent, strong, clean, male, flooded her senses, overpowering the smell of pine cleaner and new paint. He stroked one hand down to palm her ass, gripping her firmly, steadily as he slowly withdrew, kissing his way along her jaw line to her neck, scraping the pulse there with his teeth before nudging her shirt out of the way with his chin.
“Now this,” he purred roughly. “This is right.”
“This…doesn’t keep you occupied twenty four seven.”
“It could,” he responded, sulkily, lifting his gaze, staring at her under a thick fringe of lashes. “You’ve never let me try.” He rocked against her as he spoke and Kris whimpered as a hot wash of need flooded her belly, making her nipples tightened and her blood sing.
“This doesn’t pay you, boy. Although, damn, it could…” Kris groaned as he slid his hands up her thighs. “You’re distracting me.”
“Damn straight.”
The telephone and Dylan sighed, letting her skirt fall as he rested his forehead against hers. “I love you,” he murmured softly. “I don’t think I’ve told you that before.”
Her eyes flooded with tears. “Umm. No. No, you haven’t.” When he started to turn away to reach for the phone, she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Not so fast, hot shot. I love you, too.”
The answering machine came on and Dylan’s voice, slow, confident easy voice rolled out, “You’ve reached Beacon Investigations. Leave your name and a number.”
Nikki’s voice, light and easy, filled the room, “Hey, guys…just wondering how you were settling in. Just wondering how tricks are going in Lexington. Hope the new office is as good you two were planning. Gimme a call.”
Kris tuned her out. “That’s how I know this is right, Dylan. I saw it in your eyes, each time you closed a case, each time you took a child home. And when you helped that federal marshal break the drug ring and close his case. I saw the satisfaction in your eyes. You haven’t been that pleased with yourself since you left the Rangers. I know it.”
Catching his face in her hands, Kris rested her brow against his and whispered, “This is right, Dylan. It’s right.”
“Not just me, though, is it,” he said quietly, stroking his fingers through her hair. “You do know you’re an editor, right? You aren’t supposed to be trailing any of my people, asking questions, nosing around…or acting as a tag. Although I do have to admit, you’ve gotten pretty good at it.”
She fluttered her lashes at him. “It must be my very own tag,” she said. “Speaking of which, do I ever get to lose mine?”
Dylan grinned. “Sure. When we find Blessett,” he said, slapping her butt lightly. “And I’ll be sure to let Luciano and Ethan know how much they shouldn’t have been teaching you. But this means a lot to you. I know that. That last kid, she threw herself at you and I didn’t you’d ever be able to let her go. Although I could have paddled your ass for sneaking along. You are not supposed to tag...”
Shrugging, she fought the blush that crept up her neck. “Well, hey…grooming the next Stephen King has merits, but every now and then you have to take a break and do something different, you know?”
“Hmmm, something different.”
Kris shuddered as he knelt in front of her, pushing her skirt up, pressing his mouth against her through the fragile lace of her panties. “Let’s see what all we haven’t tried,” he whispered gruffly.
Kris was still gasping his name sometime later but whether or not they had discovered anything new, she wasn’t sure. Her mind had stopped functioning after the first earth shattering climax.
Dylan held her against him on the couch, resting his chin on her hair, breathing in the scent of her body, the smell of her lotion, her perfume, the scent of his sweat mingling with hers. Damn it, he still couldn’t believe he was with her--Kirsten Evress.
She pushed him.
If she hadn’t told him to do this, yeah, outright told him, he wouldn’t have done it. Oh, Nikki might have nagged him into it sooner or later. It wasn’t that Dylan hadn’t considered it. But he was more likely would have gone and hired on with somebody else. Taking on shit cases, skip tracing, divorce cases, spying on people cheating on each other, instead of what he really needed to be doing.
Kris pushed him into this place, the place he really wanted to be, making the choices he wanted to make, but usually would have put off.
She didn’t understand the fear of failure. And she didn’t understand how to not succeed. Hell, she had never done anything outside the world of editing, but that hadn’t stopped her from going out and asking a million questions with this last case. Or the one before that. He suspected eventually she was going to nose her way in further and further.
But she had nosed around, asking questions of the neighbors, listening about acquaintances of those neighbors.
And of those acquaintances that had taken the boy.
The neighbor had long since moved, but the other neighbor, an old woman, one everybody thought was senile, had taken Kris inside, talking slow and loud, and forever... Kris had sat there for two hours. Listening. Actually, she had been having fun-the little old lady reminded her of her grandmother. Then she mentioned the other neighbor, the one who had moved about three weeks before the boy had disappeared. The lady had returned the day before the boy had been kidnapped while walking home from school, just visiting…
Kris had strolled into the small cramped office that Dylan had set up with a cat’s smile and an address three states away, dropped it on his desk and walked away, tossing his smile as she said, “You might want to check that out.”
Brat. Nikki was rubbing off on her.
“You’re thinking so loud, you woke me up,” she muttered.
Dylan laughed softly, glancing down at her. “Mind reading now?”
“No. You just aren’t sleeping,” she mumbled, cuddling against him. “If you aren’t gonna sleep, I can’t.”
“Why did you talk to the old woman so long?” he asked out of the blue. “You homed in her like a pigeon. And stayed for too long.”
“She’s a sweet old lady,” Kris said, rolling her eyes.
“And you don’t even need to ask which lady,” he murmured, frowning. “What about the dad? How did you know he didn’t take the little girl? How did you know his ex-girlfriend took off w
ith her?”
“Lucky guess,” Kris said, arching a brow.
“Ahhh.” Dylan closed his eyes. Thinking of a blue chemise she had worn last night, he asked, “What color am I thinking of?”
Kris snorted. “Are we playing twenty questions?” she asked, before yawning into her hand.
“Humor me.”
She snickered. “Royal blue.”
Dylan opened his eyes. “What color would a woman call that nightie you had on last night?” he asked casually.
“Royal…blue,” Kris replied, her eyes meeting his. “What are you getting at, Dylan?”
“I’m curious how a woman who has never had any kind of security training at all what questions to ask… and what people to talk to. All the time.” Threading his fingers through her hair, he shifted her until her weight was on top of him and he met her gaze. “I think a part of you just automatically knows. But I think there’s a little more than that. Dallas Conroy, one of my friends from the unit, he…he didn’t want to go on that last assignment. Told Jerry something wasn’t right. Said something was just plain wrong with the whole damn thing.
“And the entire time, I remember he was staring at Max. Part of Dally knew. If he had pulled out, he’d be alive now. You’ve got something inside of you that knows things. Just like Dally had a part that knows things.”
Kris started to snicker, but Dylan laid a finger across her lips. “Don’t laugh. It’s a part you oughta listen to. If we had listened to Dally…well, we should have listened.”
“Like I’m wondering now why I didn’t listen to you when you told me to take the back door in when I went to get that little girl the last time,” he drawled. “You remember. The time you tagged along. In a separate car. Twenty minutes later. When you know damned good and well you aren’t supposed to. If you hadn’t, the little girl would have died. But the back door was a security risk…of course, we weren’t expecting the guy to lose his marbles…” Dylan met her eyes levelly and arched a brow, reminded her of what had happened. Just a month ago.
“I…I’ve kinda blocked that out, babe,” Kris said, a bright false smile on her face. “Something about seeing a gun swinging in my direction makes me queasy.”
“You had him fooled. He was pretty certain he was dead. How did you know, Kris?”
Dylan watched as her pretty green eyes darkened to near black in the dim room, as she swallowed, ran her tongue over dry lips. “I don’t know. I just did.”
****
The ad in the phone book read
Beacon Investigations
Missing Persons, Specialty Cases.
No Divorces Handled.
She’d called the number, even started to leave a message, but she was afraid when she told him that she didn’t have any money he’d laugh and hang up on her.
But something about that simple ad…Beacon Investigations. Well, it had been a beacon out of all of the other in the phone book. Tearing it out, she had slipped out of her parents house, against her dad’s express order’s orders.
He didn’t care that Vanessa hadn’t been seen in months. Didn’t care that she was missing. “Came to a bad end, I told her she would. Not listening to her father, not following the Good Lord’s word,” he had ranted, pacing up and down the aisle at church.
The Good Lord wanted Vanessa home and safe. Jackie knew that much. Closing her hand around the cross her mother had given her, years ago, before she had died, she studied the wooden door and took a deep breath. Slowly, she reached for the door knob.
****
Dylan sat in his chair, eyeing the girl through the security camera link on his computer. She had been pacing in the lot for about twenty minutes, circling slowly closer, slowly, slowly, until she was finally at the door. Grinning, he shook his head as her hand slowly lifted for the third time before falling away. But before it reached her side, she gritted her teeth and reached up and closed it around the handle and turned the door knob.
Lifting his face to the door, Dylan blanked his face so that when she got past his newly hired secretary, he’d be able to talk her and send her on her way without letting her see the amusement in his eyes.
Dylan did have to wonder though, what on earth the kid wanted with a private investigator.
What was she? All of fourteen?
But the look on Pat’s was rather grim when she led the girl into his office. Her normally laughing brown eyes were not laughing at all. As she escorted the kid into the office, she had an odd look on her face and Dylan grimaced.
Hell.
He wasn’t going to be sending this kid home, was he?
At least not right away.
“The young lady has a problem, Mr. Kline. One her father has not reported to the police. Miss Duncan did, but they have not done much to pursue it, Miss Duncan tells me,” Miss Halie said quietly as she led the kid to a seat. As quiet as her voice was, it didn’t hide the underlying fury there.
“My sister is missing,” the girl said softly. Her eyes moved all over the room, cataloguing everything, filing it away. There was a sharp mind behind those eyes, one that didn’t miss a damn thing, Dylan mused. “She…she ran kinda wild this past year. She was settling down some, though. Met a new guy, was going to school, stopped doing drugs…but then one night she didn’t come home. But Dad wouldn’t tell the police. He said she’d come to a bad end. I’ve talked to everybody—nobody has seen her. Jake is going nuts—he doesn’t know where she is—”
“Jake?” Dylan asked, interrupting for the first time.
“Her boyfriend. The police talked to him, but he was out of town at a basketball game the night she was missing. He’s a senior on the team, a good guy. Nessa couldn’t believe it when he started acting really interested in her, said all he wanted was to bang her, that was all guys ever wanted from guys like her.
“But Jake was different,” Jackie said softly. “He liked her, a lot. Called her a lot, stopped by to see her. Then one time he came by the house, argued with her, told her she deserved better than she gave herself. I was upstairs and heard them…she …um, I think she tried to get him to sleep with her and he wouldn’t. He told her he wanted her, but he wanted to be special and he didn’t wanted her strung out when it happened.”
Jackie looked up, tears in her eyes. “Nessa hadn’t ever had somebody tell besides me tell that she should be special.”
Dylan glanced at Pat before looking back to the girl. Alright. The kid wasn’t going anywhere.
“Can you tell me how long she’s been missing?”
* * * *
Dylan flipped his wallet shut after holding the ID up the peephole and waited for the door to open. He hadn’t exactly been expecting this. Jacob T. Warner lived just shy of the crème de crème of society in Lexington. In the few short months since he and Kris had moved here, he had only taken one case from anybody who had lived in this income range.
The missing child had been kidnapped by her mother and lover just before the custody hearing. Dylan had found the kid, all of seven, alone in a hotel in Tijuana, Mexico, while the mother and her twenty year old boyfriend were getting in on in another hotel.
Needless to say, her custody rights were terminated.
The door opened slowly and the boy, a tall, sandy haired kid, eyed Dylan with narrow, distrustful eyes. “I already told the police. I didn’t do a damn thing to Nessa—I love her, damn it. I wish you all would get that through your heads and actually start looking for her, instead of hassling me,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Well, I guess it’s safe to assume you’re Jake,” Dylan drawled as he tucked his wallet. “Relax. I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator. Her sister, Jackie, came and talked to me today. And face facts. First suspect with teenaged girls is usually the boyfriend. So let’s get you out of the way so I can go looking for her.”
Dylan suspected his matter of fact speech was something the boy hadn’t heard before. Snapping his mouth closed, the kid, hell, he already looked like a man, settled
back and studied Dylan again before turning over his shoulder and hollering, “Hey, Dad!”
Then he glanced at Dylan. “Dad’s a lawyer. I’m not talking to anybody without him around. Not after the hell they gave me at the station. They just wanted to pin something on me and sweep it away. But then, after they couldn’t, they just stopped looking.”
Dylan saw the impotent anger and decided on the spot Jake was innocent. He knew it in his gut. But that didn’t mean he was walking away. He still had questions to ask.
The man approaching down the hall saw Dylan and instantly tensed, though you wouldn’t know unless you knew how to look. His face stayed easy, his smile polite. There was just a flicker in his eyes, a grim tightness in his shoulders for the quickest of seconds before he reached out, offering his hand. “Hello, can I help you?”
“This is a private investigator. Dylan Kline. He’s here about Nessa. Jackie hired him.”
“I’m surprised that old bastard father is willing to do anything.”
“He isn’t,” Dylan replied, shaking the offered hand. “Jackie is my client, Mr…?”
“Beau. Beau Warner. You say Jackie hired you?” he said. Silver eyes crinkled at the corners and he smiled, brilliant white teeth flashing. “Oh, man. That’s…very Jackie-like.”
Jake laughed. “He wants to talk to me about Nessa.”
Beau’s face sobered. “Jake doesn’t know anything, Mr. Kline. She’s been missing for three weeks and Jake’s been through the wringer. I’m afraid—”
“Doesn’t she deserve every chance to be found?” Dylan asked, meeting Beau’s eyes. “If it was your kid, wouldn’t you want every question asked a thousand times? Poor kid has a dad that doesn’t give a damn, but she does have a sister who’s got a heart of pure gold. Let me do what she’s asking. Work with me.”
“It’s just a few questions, Dad,” Jake said softly. “I want her home. I need her home.”
Beau sighed and shook his head. “She’s a sweet girl. Had such a rough time, with that dad of hers. Crazy son of a bitch. All right, come on in.”
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