Mystic Realms: A Limited Edition Collection

by Nicole Morgan

  He squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this mess.”

  She felt his touch in every part of her body. With a fire smoldering at her core. “No—no you didn’t. This is my job.”

  “Is that all this is to you? A job.” He hadn’t removed his hand, nor had she moved hers.

  How to answer that? The question held underlying meaning for them both. Initially, her answer would have been yes, should have been yes but after last night, she wasn’t so sure. After hearing his story and suspecting the type of blood running in his veins, her answer might fast become something else when it came to Ethan Graves. However, while they might both wish otherwise, for now only one way existed to answer that question. “What else could it be?” She sat back in the chair, at the same time the motion pulled her hand out from his.

  He glanced away from her briefly. “I don’t know, but thank you for your help and believing me.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. Talking to Harvey is just a first step and that journal at least, shows you’re not the only suspect.”

  “I know. Although, I think the only way to prove my innocence is to get a confession out of Richard.” He snorted. “Yeah, I can just see Richard standing up in open court and saying he was the one who killed Sharon. Not going to happen.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve seen stranger things, but I don’t think this will be one of them,” she agreed. “Although, Richard does strike me as the kind who likes to brag to an appreciative audience.”

  “My thoughts exactly. If he thought no one would ever know and if he confesses to anyone…it’s going to be me. He’d want me to know he’d gotten away with it and placed all the blame on me.”

  “Sick bastard.”

  “Yes.”

  They shared another grin. In that moment, she knew she had to be very, very careful or they could share a lot more. “If we could set some sort of trap,” she suggested.

  “Hmm, yes. That might work. I could wear a wire.”

  “My thoughts exactly, and we can have the cops listening in. After we set a few things up, I can turn the evidence over to a cop we work with sometimes. It should be enough to get them to agree to the set up and with his confession, it would be enough to clear you. Either way, they can get you or they get the real killer with a confession.”

  “Works for me.”

  They were silent for a moment each trying to read the other, but neither saying anything. Silence didn’t stop the tendrils of attraction weaving them together, drawing them toward each other. She moved away from him by pushing the chair back, just in case she decided to act on the tension building between them. “I’ve got a change of clothing here and you can check out the closet in the second bedroom on the left. There should be something in there you can change into.” She stood up. “As soon as I’m done, I’m going to go pay good, old Harvey a visit.”

  “Thanks, but I can go back to where I was staying and grab a few things.”

  “Oh, no. Stay put. I’m not taking any chances.”

  “Okay. Harvey should be at his office. I’ll write the address down for you. But without an appointment, you might not be able to get in to see him.”

  “Oh, I’ll get in.” Then she left the room. Either remove herself from temptation or stroke the side of his face to see if his late morning stubble felt soft or prickly. No. Not going there.

  Atrox or not, he remained out of her class, out of her league. For crying out loud the dude outright told you he only married his own kind. Well, she fell as far from that as he could get. Okay not exactly, if what she suspected about him proved true, but her family didn’t have deep pockets. Yeah, but…a small voice whispered…he knew he’d made a mistake. Well, she wasn’t about to make one—well another one. She would help him prove his innocence by getting Richard to confess. Although, she’d moved beyond just getting back at Richard for trying to kill them, it might be a part of it. She hated getting shot. More importantly, she wanted to help Ethan.

  Chapter Eight

  Well, the meeting with Harvey had been interesting. Originally, her plan was to talk to Harvey then head back to the safe house and Ethan, but instead she headed over to Ethan’s office to have another chat with Richard. Something Harvey said got her to thinking.

  “The strange thing is,” Harvey told her, “The morning Ethan claims he’d called me, I just happened to have been in a business meeting with his stepbrother Richard.”

  “Richard?” she asked.

  “Yes. Some coincidence.”

  She didn’t believe in coincidences. “Can you tell me what the meeting was about?”

  “He just wanted to retain my services on an unrelated matter.”

  “Hmm, pretty convenient for him to have been present when Ethan claimed he spoke to you. Does your secretary perhaps remember placing a call through to you from Ethan?”

  He shook his head. “That’s just it, she wouldn’t have spoken to him. Ethan would have called me on my direct line. Only family and a handful of clients have that number. They don’t have to go through my secretary unless it’s an emergency. I only use my cell phone for outgoing calls and you can’t leave me a message there. If I don’t answer my direct line, callers can just leave a message and I’d check that and return it, but there was none from Ethan. Trust me, I wanted nothing more than to be able to corroborate his story.”

  She sensed nothing but frustration and honesty in his answers, convincing her something else happened. “Is there caller ID on that line?”

  “Of course. On all our phones.”

  “During your meeting with Ingle did you have to leave your office, leave Ingle alone in your office at anytime?”

  “No.” He frowned. “Wait a sec. I’d forgotten I did leave, but only for a few minutes. Besides, if the line rang why would Richard pick it up? It would have gone directly into voice mail and I had no message. Ethan claimed he spoke directly to me.”

  She asked Harvey to call the phone company and see if there was any record of a phone call from Ethan’s home or cell phone to his private line around the time of his meeting with Richard. He promised he would and would call her with the information. Harvey seemed to be genuinely upset he couldn’t help Ethan, and while he didn’t think Ingle had taken the call, he was willing to consider it. He seemed pretty sure no one bothered to check the call records because he’d denied ever talking to Ethan the day before.

  This might just be the break they’d been looking for. If Ethan had made a call and they could prove he did call the office during Harvey’s meeting, along with the journal it might be enough to get her detective friend to consider that Ethan might not be the only suspect. There was another one.

  If the person he spoke to hadn’t been Harvey, it had to have been Ingle. When Harvey’s phone rang, she wouldn’t put it past Ingle to check the caller ID. He’d recognize Ethan’s phone number, and he could have answered the phone. Ingle struck her as the kind to play games. Knowing Ethan wasn’t going to be home and what he’d planned to see Harvey about, Ingle could have gone to see Sharon that night to tell her Ethan was filing for a divorce.

  Edge had planned on waiting to confront Ingle, but sometimes you couldn’t wait. She hoped to try to spook him, enough time had passed while he’d be wondering what she and Ethan were up to. She hadn’t sicced the cops on him—yet. Besides, she felt curious as to what he would have to say to her too. She’d stir the pot just enough to get Ingle to make a mistake. Let him think enough evidence existed in the journal to fry his ass. Force him to come after Ethan.

  First though, she needed to talk to Ethan. After she called him she explained what Harvey told her and she would head over to his office where Ingle made camp. His response to her destination had her moving the phone away from her ear.

  “What? Are you nuts?” he asked loudly, then only slightly calmer, he stated, “The man already killed once, tried to kill us both and now, you want to confront him by yourself to see how he will react!”

  �
�Basically. Look, I know what I’m doing. Besides, what can he do? I’m going to see him at his office—”

  “My office,” he interrupted.

  “Sorry, your office. There’s no way he could do anything. After I leave, I’ll go talk to my friend on the force. Pitch him a what if scenario. After I have confirmation from Harvey, then we’ll reel Ingle in.”

  “I don’t like this, Edge.”

  “This is what I do, babe.”

  “You really do like living on the edge, don’t you.”

  She grinned, even though he couldn’t see it. “I’ll call you after the meeting.”

  “Wait! Do you even have a plan?”

  “I’m working on that.” She disconnected the call to the sound of his cussing.

  When she got to Ingle’s stolen office she found him standing beside the secretary’s desk. He glanced up and saw her. She smiled and let him see the golden flash of the predator she kept leashed inside.

  The scent of his anger rolled off him like a windstorm. “Hold my calls,” he said to the woman behind the desk.

  “You have an appointment in fifteen minutes,” the woman reminded him.

  “We’ll be done by then. Let me know when she gets here.” Without a word, he turned toward his office.

  Edge grinned at the secretary behind the desk and followed Ingle.

  He walked over to his desk and sat down, placed his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands in front of him. Not so welcoming this time. Instead, he stared hard at her shoulder where he knew he’d shot her.

  Edge smiled even more while rolling her shoulders for added effect. Letting him know, he hadn’t hurt her.

  That motion got him frowning. “What do you want?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You…behind bars.”

  A muscle at the side of his head twitched. “Not going to happen.”

  “Don’t bet on it. All I have to do is call the police and tell them you tried to kill me last night and I have reason to believe you killed Sharon Graves.”

  He laughed but it was forced. “If you were going to go to the police you would have done so already. Besides, all I have to do is tell them you helped Ethan, a known fugitive escape while I was trying to apprehend him. My word against yours and my word is worth more. In any case, there’s no proof I had anything to do with Sharon’s murder and all the proof that Ethan killed her.”

  “Ahh, but we both know he didn’t, don’t we.”

  He didn’t say anything, just continued to stare at her and the muscle at his temple pulsed again.

  Edge poked at him some more. “And who said there was no proof.” Bingo, she got a more audible reaction from him. She heard his heart rate increase.

  “I want that journal,” he growled.

  “What journal?”

  The phone on the desk buzzed. He hit the talk button and yelled, “What?”

  “Ah, Mr. Ingle your mother is here to see you,” said the voice on the other end.

  “Send her in.” He rose from his chair. “This meeting is over. Ethan as you well know is wanted by the police. I suggest you tell Ethan to turn himself in or you turn him in and collect the bounty. I might even be willing to add a little something to that. I don’t really much care which.”

  It was her turn to rise from the chair. “I don’t think so.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” he called.

  A tall elegant woman with short cropped blonde hair and blue eyes a lot like Ingle’s, walked into the room. His mother, at first glance looked younger than Edge thought she had to be, but she’d had a lot of work done. Edge could smell the synthetics used on her body.

  “Am I interrupting?” the woman asked.

  “No, Mom,” Ingle said while sitting down again. “We’re done. Ms. Edgewater was just leaving.”

  The woman moved further into the room and Edge made brief eye contact with her as she headed for the door. She stopped at the open door and turned to glance at Ingle. “You’ll be hearing from me soon. Count on it.”

  “So, that’s the bounty hunter?” Beth Ingle Graves asked her son.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm, pretty. I thought you told me you shot her.”

  Richard knew his mother would have frowned except her skin had been pulled back so tightly, no chance in hell existed of it wrinkling, inadvertently or otherwise. However, his face had no such limitations and he did frown. “I thought I did. Maybe I just nicked her. I don’t know. Besides, I thought Ethan should have been dead or seriously disabled and he’s obviously not. But the point is the pretty bounty hunter is helping Ethan now and he’s got Sharon’s journal.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “It could be.”

  “Are you sure Ethan has it?”

  That’s just it, he couldn’t be sure. He’d searched the main house more than once, pretty thoroughly and he’d even checked Ethan’s home office safe. He couldn’t see it being kept elsewhere. Sharon liked to write in her journal constantly, so she always kept it close. The only place he hadn’t searched was the pool house. He’d planned to do it the night he’d seen Ethan sneaking across the grounds. Maybe that’s why he’d been there and hadn’t had a chance to search the pool house either. “I’m not sure that he does have it. There’s one more place I’d like to check, just to be sure.”

  “So, what will you do?”

  “Check the pool house obviously.”

  “Don’t be obtuse, boy.” Her tone came out cold and flat.

  It always put his nerve endings on edge, it was the kind of tone over the years he automatically obeyed. “The code for the pool house has been changed and the housekeeper did say that Sharon had some work done out there recently. I called the security company they use and they’ll come in a day or so and disarm the alarm for me.”

  “Why so long?”

  “I’m not the listed owner, so I had to get a judge friend to grant me power of attorney by showing I’m officer of the company and this involves a company matter. It helped, Ethan is a fugitive and there’s no next of kin. I’m supposed to get the papers by this evening or tomorrow.”

  “Good. But even if they have the journal, it still won’t tell them who killed Sharon.”

  “True, but I don’t know what she’s got in it—it could be enough to at least create doubt about Ethan being the only suspect.”

  “Then dear, we have to get it back.”

  “We?”

  “Yes. You didn’t think I wouldn’t help you? You are my son after all.”

  “Funny, you don’t always seem to remember that.”

  She got up and placed her hands on his desk. “Oh, I’ve always remembered. You need to remember if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t even be allowed through the front door of this company, much less be sitting behind this desk.”

  “Sorry, Mother.”

  She reached over the desk and patted his cheek. “You’ve always been such a dear boy. You’d have made a good father too. That woman would have robbed you of that.”

  “I know, but what are we going to do about finding Ethan and that bounty hunter?”

  “I suspect you’ll hear from them soon, and when you do, I’ll accompany you. I think I know how to make this all go away.”

  “Hopefully this time, Ethan will accommodate me and die.”

  “Damn it, Edge, I don’t like this,” Ethan said pacing back and forth in front of the couch where Edge sat. She’d just gotten back from her visit with Richard and told him what had happened. His anger wasn’t aimed at her, but he didn’t like the idea of her facing Richard by herself. Richard had proven how dangerous he could be.

  “I even met his mother,” Edge said. “She showed up as I left.”

  “I’m not surprised she’s come out of the woodworks to claim whatever she can get out of all of this. I have never trusted Beth. That woman is a real piece of work. She almost gutted the company when she divorced my father. She’s the reason I ended up having to marry Sharon in the fi
rst place.” He raked his hand through his hair. Along with the fact, Sharon had Atrox blood like him and he suspected that bitch of Richard’s mother, somehow found out something about his father. Something that could expose him, and blackmailed him into the hefty divorce settlement.

  His father never had a chance to explain, but it made sense. When Ethan had first found out about the terms of the divorce he and his father had a hell of a fight. He walked out of his father’s office and stopped taking his calls. Two weeks later, after he’d calmed down enough to talk to his dad, it was too late. His father’s plane had crashed. There were no survivors.

  Three years later and he still grieved his father’s death. During the ten years Beth had been married to his father, there was no love lost between him and Beth, just as no love lost between him and her son. Blackmail might also explain why his father took Richard into the company while he Ethan still worked on his masters in business. At least he didn’t turn the company over to the bastard, his father had always meant for Ethan to run it and even before his parent’s death, he’d made a lot of the decisions. But Richard held shares…more shares than he should have.

  “I think Beth knew something about my father.” He stopped pacing and sat down beside her. Leaning back on the couch, he threw his arms across the top. He feared he knew just what she held over his father’s head. He wondered why Beth never tried to use whatever threats she held against his father.

  “Like what?” Edge leaned back into the couch too.

  If he moved his hand a couple of inches, it would rest on her shoulder, near her wound. Ethan inhaled and got no sense she’d ever bled out of her shoulder the night before. In fact, healthy semi-aroused female dominated her scent. Semi, perfectly describing the way he’d been around her since last night. He hesitated, he couldn’t tell her the truth so he stalled. “How’s your shoulder? Let me take a look see if the bandages need changing.” He placed his hand on her arm.