by Desiree Holt
Because all I could focus on was my sister herself. I didn’t care about stupid plants.
Well, she’d come back tomorrow, if she could, and see what could be salvaged and what had to be thrown out.
“This is a shame.”
For a moment she had forgotten that Blaze was behind her.
“You have no idea. Brianne loved these plants. She loved this room.” She waved at the two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows. “On nice days it was flooded with sunlight, so bright and cheery you had to feel good just sitting in here.”
Blaze pointed to a desk set up where the walls met, angled into the corner.
“I’m gathering this is where she worked?”
“Uh-huh.” Peyton frowned. “She said all the sunlight made her feel happy. And on stormy days she’d light the fireplace on that opposite wall. Said it made the room cozy.” She swallowed back tears. No time to cry now. They had work to do. “Her computer’s missing, too.”
“Desktop or laptop?”
“Laptop. She said it was much easier for her. Besides, she could take it with her if she wanted and have everything she needed. So maybe there were computers in that car.” Then she shook her head. “No, if they were going out for a late dinner, neither of them would have computers with them. They had very definite lines between business and personal.”
“Someone was damn sure one or both of them had some kind of information that couldn’t see the light of day.” Blaze rubbed his jaw as he took in every bit of the sunroom. “This room’s put together, but a little more casual than the den.”
“Because Brianne was a more relaxed person. Not that Dane was uptight,” she hurried to correct herself. “She just didn’t care as much about coloring inside the lines.”
They went through everything in the sunroom, then, to make sure they didn’t miss anything, checked out the rest of the house. At the end, however, they didn’t find anything that set off alarm bells. Nor did they find Dane’s cell phone.
“It was just a wild chance, anyway.” Peyton smoothed a stray hair back from her face. “My guess is it would have been with him in the car. He never went anywhere without it. God only knows where it is now. Probably in the trash. The car, too.”
Blaze started to answer her when his cell rang.
“Hey, Viper. How goes it? Yeah? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, well, keep at it. There’s a link somewhere. Okay. I’ll be there in about forty-five.”
“Did he find out anything?” Peyton tried to keep the anxiety out of her voice.
“Not yet, although he said he’s dug up a ton of information about the law firm where Dane worked. They’re apparently one of the top in the Southeast, with a client list that reads like a regional Who’s Who. He’s still at my townhouse working, which by the way, kudos to him, because he’s not a desk kind of guy. But when he gets his teeth into something, he never lets go.”
“So he had some results?”
“Not a lot, but enough to keep digging. He wants to go over what he’s turned up. He’s pretty sure the link is with the law firm, but he says he needs a fresh set of eyes on it. We just have to figure it out. And maybe Eagle will call with a report on Dane’s car. Let’s lock up this house and get out of here.”
“I want to show you the pictures in Brianne’s phone, too, along with a note she made that I don’t understand. Maybe you can figure it out.”
“I’ll do my best.”
He stopped her at the door, cradled her face in his palms and lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss was a sizzling combination of heat and passion and tenderness, and unlike any other kiss she’d ever had. When he slipped his tongue between her lips, she welcomed it gladly, sliding her own over it and gently scraping it with her teeth. They stood that way until she was sure neither of them could breathe. She sensed his reluctance when he lifted his head at last.
“We have some unfinished business here.” His voice was rough with hunger.
“Do we?”
“Yes.” Heat flashed in his eyes. “You know it, too.”
She just nodded, mesmerized by the hunger in his gaze.
“But we have other business first,” he went on. “Just wanted to let you know I haven’t forgotten what that kiss tasted like. Come on. Let’s go.”
She was surprised that he took her hand and held on to it as they walked out of the house, considering Frank and his crew were all over the place. It made her feel safe and secure, something she desperately needed right now.
She waited while Blaze handed the house key over to Frank and confirmed that nine in the morning would be a good time to hook up and walk through the new system.
“They’ll be working all night,” Peyton whispered as they walked to the car.
“Nothing new for them. Really. It’s all good.” They made a quick stop at a takeout barbecue place before finally heading to Bayshore Boulevard and Blaze’s townhouse. They parked in the garage and she followed him inside, wondering as she looked around what she’d expected. It certainly wasn’t this.
Polished parquet covered the floors and sleek yet comfortable-looking furniture filled the rooms. The kitchen was efficient and high tech, and in the living room a floor-to-ceiling window wall gave an unobstructed view of Hillsborough Bay. With darkness lowering its curtain over the city, she could see the lights of downtown sparkling and flashing. As much as she’d loved staying at Brianne’s, Peyton thought she could sit in this room forever and never want to leave. What a great place to write a book.
Better watch it, girl.
She needed to keep telling herself that no matter the chemistry between them, when this was over, it was over. Whatever was happening between them—or didn’t—couldn’t last. They might as well live on two separate planets, as different as their lifestyles were. How on earth did this all pop up, anyway, when she was in the middle of such a critical situation?
To keep her mind from straying any more, she took out Brianne’s cell phone and opened the Message app.
“Holy crap.” She stared at the number of messages that popped up.
“What?”
“There’s a ton of messages and voice mails here, not to mention the emails. It’ll take me forever to go through them.”
“Not to worry. I have a program to sort them. Then we can peg the important ones.”
Of course he does. Is there anything these men can’t do?
Blaze’s townhouse was a reflection of the man himself, not one wasted inch, everything designed for maximum utility. The open floor plan gave the feeling of well-utilized space, with the dining room between the kitchen and the living room. The furniture had sleek lines but was designed for comfort. A floor-to-ceiling window wall looked out at the view of Hillsborough Bay. Across the stretch of water, the lights of downtown sparkled in the night. It could have been a picture from a magazine.
And there, seated at the dining room table, was another Blaze clone focused on a laptop in front of him, studying the screen. He looked from one of them to the other, eyes slightly narrowed as if assessing the situation. Could he sense the electricity between her and Blaze? Would he make an issue of it? What if he did?
I’ve already made a mess of things. Damn it!
“Let me make the introductions here. Peyton West, meet Matt ‘Viper’ Roman. Peyton’s our client. Better treat her with kid gloves.”
Viper looked at her and winked. His dirty blond hair was a little shaggy, but other than that, he had the same lethally quiet air of power and containment that she’d felt the first moment she’d laid eyes on Blaze. Whatever was going on, these men would handle it and keep her safe.
He held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Miss West.”
“Peyton. Please.”
“Okay, Peyton. And I’m Viper.” He stood and shook her hand. “I can promise you Galaxy will get to the bottom of this mess.”
“An appropriate name for people to help me,” she told him, “since my life’s been in retrograde since I got the call about Brianne. Eve
rything’s moving backward and I can’t seem to stop it. No forward motion in anything.”
“I’m sure we can reverse that motion.” Then he grinned and switched his gaze to Blaze. “Providing, of course, you feed me.”
Blaze laughed. “It’s in the kitchen. I’ll dish it up right now. Then you can fill us in on what you found. After that, I want you to unload the messages from her sister’s phone so we can sort them and see if there’s anything we need to save. After that you need to download some specific pictures from the same phone and see if you can do a facial recognition match.” He glanced at Peyton. “My software for that isn’t too bad, but it’s standard. Viper’s got one that’s much better.”
“Good. I’m all for that.”
Chapter Eight
Peyton watched as Viper sat back in his chair and stretched his neck from side to side. She had to will herself to sit quietly and not ask him if he’d found anything.
Then he smiled at her. “I’ve got a match.”
“Really?” She leaned forward. “You actually found one?”
She’d been skeptical at first, until she discovered that the program Galaxy used was more sophisticated and cast a wider net than anything the police used.
“That’s incredible! How did…”
“We had someone design it for us,” Blaze told her.
Her lips curved in a tired smile. “Of course you did. I won’t even ask you for the details because I know I won’t understand them. It’s not important. I just want to find out what you discovered.”
“Okay. Come sit here next to me so I can show you.”
She moved to the other side of the table and took the empty chair next to him. Blaze pulled one up on the other side. Viper clicked his mouse and the screen filled with one of the pictures he’d downloaded from Brianne’s phone. It was one of those taken on Gandy Boulevard, obviously, from the lighting, taken just before dark. Where had Brianne been going by herself at that hour? Or had she been coming from someplace and been inspired by the images? Peyton knew she was really getting into her landscape photography.
This first picture showed a building by the water with Seaside Marine painted on it. Even at what was obviously a late hour, there were several cars in the parking lot. Four men stood next to one of the cars and it was easy to see from their body language that this wasn’t a friendly meeting. Three of them stood in a posture very threatening to the fourth.
“The question,” Viper told her, “was why did your sister care so much about pictures of these guys? You said she was getting into landscape photography, but that doesn’t include people.”
“Right. And she took several of them. And made a note to tell Dane. So why?”
“Because two of these men work for Hayden Kellerman, president of Bistro Hotels.”
Peyton frowned. “Is that what came up on their identifications?”
“But more importantly, referred to as the head of the Tampa Mafia.”
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “The what?”
“You heard me. The Tampa Mafia.”
“Sounds like something out of a movie. It’s real? I thought the Feds got rid of it ages ago.”
“Not so.” Viper shook his head. “Although it’s morphed a lot from the days when Santo Trafficante ruled it from Ybor City with an iron fist. Besides loan sharking, murder, extortion and corruption of public officials for their own benefit, it now includes gambling, drug smuggling and sex trafficking. It might not be discussed as widely as it used to be, but according to what I found, it’s well-known in the right places. The reach of this particular group extends throughout South Florida and into the Caribbean. Even to parts of Europe.”
“How on earth does something like this connect to Brianne and Dane?” She rubbed her forehead. “This is giving me a headache.”
“I have no idea,” he told her, “but you can bet we’ll be digging into it with a deep shovel. Today they hide behind rich, respectable businesses and that may have been the connection to the firm. They may have wanted representation in a lawsuit, and that firm is one of the best in the Southeast.”
“My god!” She rubbed her face. “But that still doesn’t tell me what made my sister stop and take their pictures. How did she even know who they were?”
“I think it’s the very unhappy guy that caught her attention. His name is Owen Kendrick. He’s the son of Dane’s boss.”
She stared at the picture. “Are you kidding me? I know she’s met Owen and his wife, but she couldn’t have any idea who these other guys were.”
“No,” Blaze agreed, “but I’d say your sister was a very smart lady and her intuition told her something was wrong. That’s why she wrote a note to herself to tell Dane and show him the pictures.”
“But then what?”
“Any number of things,” Blaze said. “Dane could have told Peter Kendrick and showed the pictures to him. Asked him why Kellerman’s thugs were hassling Owen. Maybe Owen had a gambling problem that no one knew about. Kellerman’s deep into high-stakes gambling, and he’s noted for sucking people into debt that he can then manipulate to do things for him. Or he could have gone to Owen first and asked him what the hell it was about. My guess is that somehow Kellerman’s got his hooks into Owen Kendrick. If he told him where he got the pictures, Owen could have panicked. Maybe he thought Dane or Brianne would tell people about it.”
Peyton shook her head. “Dane would have gone to Peter if he couldn’t get anywhere with Owen. His concern would have been for the firm and what effect, if any, this would have on it. That and nothing else.”
“But what if Owen thought he could control Dane’s reaction, except he was worried about Brianne? Worried she’d say something to someone.”
“You think that’s what this is all about?”
Viper nodded. “I think there’s a good chance this is a big part of it. However, I suggest we need to find out more about the kind of person Owen Kendrick is. About the firm itself and if that’s where the connection to the Tampa Mafia is. Like Blaze said, it’s possible they wanted to hire the law firm and there was a problem. All of that. Anything. I don’t know, but we damn sure need to dig deep.”
“You’re checking into Peter Kendrick’s personal connections, too, right?”
Viper gave another nod. “There’s some stuff I dug up that smells a little bad, but I don’t want to say anything until I know for sure.”
“Don’t let us stop you. Add this to your list of things to find. Any connection whatsoever could give us a thread to pull. And sooner is always better than later.”
“Your personal motto, right?” Viper teased.
“Damn fucking straight. It’s what kept the Team together, except for…” He stopped and shook his head.
“Except for what?” Peyton asked.
“I’d rather not say. Maybe another time. Right now, you’ve got enough heavy stuff to deal with.”
Peyton rubbed her forehead, doing her best to ignore the tiny headache brewing.
“Do you think it was one of these people who called the security company and had the service discontinued? After they fried it with the EMP?”
Blaze shrugged. “I’d say that’s the most likely answer. But there are other players in the game, and we have to check every one of them.”
“I can hardly take it all in. It just seems so far out of anything my sister and brother-in-law would be involved in.”
“And they were probably innocent bystanders.” Blaze rubbed her neck. “Tomorrow we’ll go through everything we found about the law firm as well as some of Peter Kendrick’s connections. I think you’ve had enough for tonight.”
“I agree.”
She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair, soothed by the touch of his hands.
“And I think that’s my cue to leave.” Viper shut down his laptop, unplugged the cord and shoved everything into a messenger bag. “Blaze, we all going to meet in the morning?”
‘Yeah. We’ll pool all the
info and go from there. Hopefully Eagle will have been able to pull an image off the CCTV cameras. I also want to see if you can get a line on what happened to Dane Hollister’s car. And high on the list is digging out the connection between Peter Kendrick and the so-called Tampa Mafia.”
“I think we need to go for a little flight to nowhere,” Viper suggested.
Blaze nodded. “I agree. You’ll make the arrangements?”
“Consider it done.”
“What does that mean?” Peyton wanted to know.
“It means,” Blaze explained, “that we’re going to load ourselves and all the computers onto the plane and have a meeting where no one can see us or overhear us. And plan our next steps.”
Peyton leaned back and looked up at Blaze. “You think even meeting here isn’t safe?”
“I’m not taking any chances. With the kind of stuff we’re just beginning to dig up, I don’t want to take risks of any kind.”
“Remember,” Viper said, “Saint took off for a couple of days.”
Blaze gave another nod. “But he also knows that when we have a client, he can be called back at any time. That’s what he gets the big bucks for.”
“Then I’ll let him know.”
“Okay. Then yes, we need to wrap it up for the day.”
Viper hiked the bag’s strap over his head. He looked from Blaze to Peyton and back again, as if he had a question he wanted to ask but thought he should keep his mouth shut. Blaze didn’t say a word, either. Finally, Viper headed toward the door, but stopped before opening it and looked at Blaze again. Peyton sensed some sort of secret message passing between them. When Viper spoke, she knew she was right.
“Hope you know what you’re doing, buddy boy. Remember the rules.”
“I’m fine. Everything’s under control. My brain hasn’t stopped working.”
“Just make sure,” he said in a voice so soft Peyton had to strain to hear it, “it’s your big brain and not your little one.”
“Nothing’s going to be a problem. Take my word for it.”
Viper studied him in silence for a moment. “Okay. I trust your judgment. Don’t screw that up.” He raised his voice. “Goodnight, Peyton.”