eyond Desire Collection

by JS Scott, M Malone, Marie Hall, et al

  “Why are you still looking at that? We already know he and Ridley were scamming people. It’s over, Eli. Let it go.”

  His brother made a frustrated sound and dropped the papers on the coffee table.

  “What?” Jackson asked. It was hard to believe but his brother seemed almost more pissed off by the turn of events than he did.

  “I feel like I’m missing something. Or maybe I just don’t want to admit that I didn’t see this coming.”

  Suddenly Jackson understood. All his older brothers looked out for him, but security was Elliott’s specialty. Of course he felt guilty for not protecting him.

  “None of us saw this coming. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  “I agree.”

  They both turned to see Nick standing in the doorway. His brother had removed his dress shirt and tie and wore just a white tee shirt and slacks.

  “You can’t sleep either, huh?”

  Nick shook his head. He crossed the room and sat on the couch next to Eli, propping his feet on the coffee table in front of him.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t said I told you so. It’d actually be justified for once.”

  Nick leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head. “Somehow, I’m not enjoying this as much as I thought I would.”

  Jackson observed his brother from across the room. They all had stubble and looked tired but Nick looked the worst of them, easily. It made him feel marginally better that his brother wasn’t gloating. Especially since he’d tried to warn him about Ridley from the beginning.

  “I just can’t believe she would do this. I would have just given her the money if she’d asked.”

  Jackson gritted his teeth. He’d told himself that he wasn’t going to think about it but he’d been doing nothing but all night. Turning it over and over in his mind. He still had no explanations for why Ridley would steal from him. She had to have known that he was gone over her. So infatuated that it was embarrassing.

  And why steal the money when she’d refused everything else he tried to give her? He’d offered to be a landscaping client and she could have easily billed him an outrageous amount for that. Instead she’d pulled weeds in his backyard and dug a spot for a garden for free. The day she’d gone to the mall he’d practically had to beg her to take the Audi. She could have just driven off with it and not come back. She’d even refused the money he’d offered her the previous day when he told her to leave.

  It just didn’t make sense. He needed it to make sense. Maybe if he could understand it he could stop seeing her face when he’d told her to leave.

  “Wait a minute,” Nick interrupted. “What do you mean ‘if she’d asked?’ You’re saying she never asked you for money?”

  Eli narrowed his eyes.

  “No. I already told you guys. She hated the idea of charity. She didn’t even want to have her sister as a landscaping client because she wanted to do it on her own. She didn’t want people thinking her success was due to her sister’s fame.”

  Nick steepled his fingers. “What kind of scam artist doesn’t even try to scam you out of the money first? Why come here and get all cozy with you if she wasn’t buttering you up?”

  “She wasn’t buttering me up for anything.” Jackson glared at them both. She was just burying herself so deeply in my life that I can’t function without her.

  “Well, if she wasn’t trying to scam you, then what the hell was she doing? If all she wanted was your banking information, she didn’t need to stay this long to get it.” Nick spoke so softly that Jackson wondered if he knew he’d said the words aloud.

  Elliott sat up, a grim look of determination on his face. “Something about this doesn’t add up for me. We need to figure this out. Fast.”

  “How?” Jackson ran his hands over his hair and blew out a breath.

  “By going back to the beginning. Everything started with the car accident, right? The authorities indicated that it wasn’t an accident.”

  “If you say she’s a murderer, then I’m going to hurt you. I don’t believe Ridley killed David.”

  “I don’t believe she killed him either, but someone did. Which leads me to wonder what they hoped to accomplish? Were they actually trying to kill the guy or just scare him? And how does Ridley fit into the picture? If she’s not involved, then why are they coming after her?”

  Jackson sat up straight. “The necklace!”

  “The what?” Nick and Eli spoke in unison.

  Ignoring their puzzled looks, Jackson ran upstairs to his room. He opened the door to his closet and pushed aside the row of black suits in front of his wall safe.

  “Jackson, what the hell is going on?” Eli’s voice floated from behind him.

  Jackson ignored him and punched in the electronic code. The numbers flashed and then a soft click indicated the unit was open. He pulled the door open and reached behind the pile of documents he kept on the bottom row. When he turned around, he held the necklace up to the light.

  “I think I know what they’re after.”

  Eli took it and ran his hands over the front. “What is this?”

  “Ridley said David gave her this for safekeeping the day he died. That he was chasing down a lead and didn’t want it to get stolen. Do you think the jewels are what they’re after?”

  Eli flipped it over and then grinned. “That’s not a necklace.” He yanked on the ends. It snapped in two.

  “Wait… Did you just break it?”

  His brother held up the two ends triumphantly. Jackson stopped in his tracks. One end looked like a jeweled pendant. The other end looked like a computer port.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “This, little brother, is a flash drive. Now let’s go see what the hell was worth killing for.”

  ***

  “I don’t want you to worry. I’ve got Sam working on it and we are going to figure out who’s behind all this. I still think I should have changed my flight.”

  Ridley sat on the edge of her sister’s bed and smoothed a hand over the luxurious counterpane.

  “I still can’t believe this is happening.”

  Ridley knew she needed to just go to bed. There wasn’t anything else she could do tonight and Raina was furious enough for the both of them. She was already scheduled to come back late the following day, but it had been a fight to convince her not to change her flight to that very night. It seemed ridiculous to go to all that trouble and expense when she would be here within a day anyway.

  “It’s fine. I’m not going to let them intimidate me. I know my rights and since I haven’t done anything wrong, whatever evidence they claim to have must be bogus.”

  “You bet your ass it is. I already have my suspicions about who’s behind this nonsense,” Raina snarled. “Nick hates me enough to do just about anything.”

  “You think Nick did this?”

  “Sam is going to prove it. He’s already working on tracing the IP address used to make the transactions. Nick is smart, so I’m sure he didn’t do it from his own computer.”

  It was horrifying to imagine someone hating her so much that he’d be willing to frame her for something she didn’t do.

  “I don’t understand any of this. What happened between you two that was so bad?”

  Raina was quiet for so long that Ridley figured she wasn’t going to answer her.

  “As a favor to Jackson, I went to a charity dinner with Nick a few months ago. It was a high-profile event. The publicity was good for both our careers.”

  Raina had dated so many men over the years that Ridley had stopped trying to keep track. She knew some of the guys weren’t real boyfriends but just people her sister spent time with to bolster her public profile. The more she was photographed, the more famous she became and the more money she could command when companies wanted to book her.

  Ridley couldn’t imagine dating someone just to get photographed for the tabloids, but Raina had explained the tabloids were a necessary evil and having a strate
gy to deal with them was just smart PR.

  “So, you dated him for a while then?”

  “No, it was just one night. We only spent one night together but that was all it took. I fell for him, Ri. I think I fell in love with him the moment we met.”

  Ridley stood, a million questions swirling through her brain. Nick’s fevered kiss had told her that his relationship with Raina was more than just casual, but this? She hadn’t expected this.

  “If you love him, then why aren’t you with him? I know he feels something for you, too. He may not want to admit it, but he does. I can tell.”

  “I can’t be with him.” Raina let out a soft sound. A moment later she cleared her throat and when she spoke again, her voice was stronger. “Nick is not the kind of man you settle down with.”

  Neither of them spoke for a minute and Ridley was suddenly incredibly depressed. They were both in love and they were both sitting by themselves, lonely.

  “I’m sorry, Ray.”

  “It’s fine. I was just being melodramatic. Plenty of women have fancied themselves in love with Nicholas Alexander. I’m not the first and I doubt I’ll be the last. But I’m the smartest because I’m not wasting my time.”

  “Ray—”

  “I’m going to check with Sam to see where he is on this. But I’m sure he’ll have it figured out by tomorrow. You need to get some sleep, baby sis.”

  Raina’s voice was firm and Ridley knew she’d gotten all she was going to get out of her. Raina was hardly the sharing type so it was a minor miracle she’d opened up at all. Plus, she didn’t really want to dissect her own feelings either. What she really wanted was to fall asleep and dream of a simpler time.

  A time when she’d never even heard the name Jackson Alexander.

  “Okay, I’m going to go to bed. Just call me if you find out anything. Night.”

  After they hung up, she moved around the room in a fog. Her brain sent directions that her body followed blindly.

  Open drawers.

  Find nightgown.

  Get undressed.

  She could have been a robot for all the emotion she invested in what she was doing.

  She moved into the bathroom and turned the light on. Her reflection in the mirror was even grimmer than she felt. Her hair was sticking out of her ponytail in various directions, so she just pulled the band from her hair and let it go wild. There was no one here she needed to look cute for.

  Her toiletry bag was still on the counter where she’d put it earlier. She dug around in the bag until she found her toothbrush. Her toothpaste should have been there, too but the bag was filled with all the other things she’d left on the counter earlier. Ponytail holders, her hairbrush, and some of Raina’s makeup that had been sitting out on the counter.

  “I’m not this much of a slob.”

  She shoved the bag aside wearily. It was a waste of time trying to remember why she’d shoved all that stuff in there. Considering how emotional she’d been after leaving Jackson’s house, she was lucky she hadn’t thrown the thing in the trash without realizing it. Growing up, they’d always kept extra toothpaste and mouthwash below the counter. She bent to look under the cabinet. Nothing.

  “Damn.”

  When she stood up, she saw a dark shape moving from the corner of her eye. She spun around, her heart beating wildly.

  “Hello, Ridley.”

  A man stood in the doorway. He held up her toothpaste and waved it back and forth. As she stared at him, all the pieces fell into place. Humiliation, anger and finally fear swirled around before settling in her stomach with the force of a blow to the gut.

  “Oh my god, it’s you.”

  ***

  “This is a lot of money.”

  Nick held up the pages in his hand. “Over a million dollars moved through this one account in just a month.”

  They’d been up for hours sorting through all the information on the flash drive. It had taken three of Elliott’s best guys an hour to crack the encryption on the files saved on the drive. Now that they were in, Elliott had printed some of it so they could help him sort through it all.

  Jackson had gotten up a few times to bring drinks and nuke some food. He wanted them fueled so they could keep working. It was almost three in the morning, but he didn’t want to go to bed. Going to bed felt like admitting defeat.

  It was ridiculous, but he was strangely hopeful. He tried to squelch the feeling before it could take hold. What they found likely wouldn’t change anything, but he couldn’t help hoping there was an explanation.

  Maybe Ridley had taken the money because she was being blackmailed? Maybe David had gotten her into something that she couldn’t get out of and she’d panicked.

  He knew it probably made him a stupid sap, but if she’d just needed money to get away from whoever was chasing her, he could forgive that. What he really wanted was just to know that she was okay.

  Elliott handed him another stack of paper. Most of it appeared to be bank transactions, so Jackson gave it to Nick. “You’ll be able to decipher this before I will.”

  Nick looked through the top few sheets and frowned.

  “Most of this stuff seems to be confirmations of wire transfers. But it’s to a lot of different accounts. It would help if we could figure out who the accounts belong to, but I can tell you one thing—all the transactions appear to have started roughly three years ago.”

  Elliott grunted. “Has anyone else noticed that three years seems to be a recurring theme here?”

  “You think it’s important?” Jackson asked. “Or just a coincidence?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence.” Elliott stood and paced a bit before cracking his knuckles. “Let’s look at everything we know. This guy was into something shady, he had dealings with the Morenos, and it all started three years ago.”

  “What the hell happened three years ago?” Nick threw his pile of paper on the floor.

  Elliott sat back down behind his laptop and tapped the mouse to wake it up. “Let’s find out.”

  Nick and Jackson exchanged looks before moving closer. When Elliott had a hunch about something, he was rarely wrong. He could take bits and pieces of random information and use them to chase almost any lead down. It was what made him so good at what he did.

  “What are you going to do? E-mail one of your military buddies?” Jackson asked eagerly.

  “No.”

  Nick snapped his fingers. “Hack into the FBI database?”

  Elliott gave him a quelling look. “Hell, no.”

  Jackson leaned forward. “So, what’s your brilliant plan?”

  “Google it.”

  “What? Eli, this is serious.”

  “I’m serious, too. I would have done it earlier if I’d made the connection. I just have a feeling that if we do a search on the Morenos and filter the results by year, we’ll get an idea of what’s going on.”

  His fingers flew over the keys. Finally, he hit “Enter” and sat back.

  Nick had moved next to him so all he had to do was lean over to see the screen. His eyes widened before he glanced at Eli. “Does that mean what I think it means? Jesus. ”

  Eli stood and pulled his cell phone out. “Danner? I need an eye on Ridley Wells.”

  Jackson jumped up and crossed to the computer. He peered at the articles on the screen. There were tons of listings about the Morenos.

  “She’s in the house. Was anyone monitoring the property before she went in? Christ. Tell Rothwell, Holmes, and Maddox to meet me out front.” Elliott hung up and strode to the door.

  “What’s going on? Nick?”

  His brother wouldn’t look at him and just clicked on one of the articles. It loaded and the headline screamed out at them in big bold letters.

  - - HEIR TO THE - -

  - - MORENO CRIME SYNDICATE - -

  - - DEAD AT 33 - -

  “What the hell is this?” He stood as Elliott withdrew his Glock from its holster and did a quick check of his ammunition.<
br />
  “Alberto Moreno only had one child. I should have remembered this case. It was huge news at the time. It was rumored that the FBI was closing in, getting ready to take them down. Most of their evidence was against the son. Then he suddenly died. Three years ago .”

  Jackson’s heart dropped. “Three years?”

  “You want to guess how he died?”

  “Don’t say a car crash. Please don’t say it.”

  Elliott put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Not a car crash, but it was a fire. The body was too burned to identify using the usual methods. Now we know why.”

  Jackson shook his head, fear gripping him so hard he could barely get the words out. He’d sent her out there alone with nothing more than a weak apology and an offer of cash. He couldn’t have failed another woman he loved.

  Jackson raced for the door. “Oh God. Ridley .”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for.”

  Ridley watched as David poked through the contents of Raina’s dresser. He had forced her to walk from the bathroom back to the bedroom. He hadn’t raised his voice or said anything threatening. Then again, he hadn’t needed to.

  The gun in his hand was more than motivation enough for her.

  “Apparently I’m not smart enough. I actually thought you were helping me.” She backed up a few steps and leaned against the wall. “How did you get here?”

  He glanced back at her, seemingly amused by her attempt at polite conversation.

  “I got a sweet deal on a bus pass. You know you should really sign up for that CoupOn site. I’ve saved so much money.” Finished with the bottom drawer of the dresser, he shoved it closed before moving to the nightstand and picking up one of the books stacked on top. He flipped through its pages carefully before moving to the next.

  “I’ll pass. I doubt I’ll be traveling much anymore. So, you’re alive.”

  Ridley clenched her fists. He was looking at the books so leisurely, as if trying to decide which one he wanted to read. Arrogant bastard . She’d spent the past week agonizing over his death and he was acting like he didn’t have a care in the world.