by M. S. Parker
His Control
The Hunter Brothers Book 2
M. S. Parker
Belmonte Publishing, LLC
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Belmonte Publishing LLC
Published by Belmonte Publishing LLC
Contents
Reading Order
Prologue
1. Cai
2. Addison
3. Cai
4. Addison
5. Cai
6. Addison
7. Cai
8. Addison
9. Cai
10. Addison
11. Cai
12. Addison
13. Cai
14. Addison
15. Cai
16. Addison
17. Cai
18. Addison
19. Cai
20. Addison
21. Cai
22. Addison
23. Cai
24. Addison
25. Cai
26. Addison
27. Cai
28. Addison
29. Cai
30. Addison
31. Cai
32. Addison
33. Cai
34. Cai
35. Addison
Also by M. S. Parker
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Reading Order
Thank you so much for reading His Control, the second book in the Hunter Brothers series. All books in the series can be read stand-alone, but if you’d like to read the complete series, I recommend reading them in this order:
1. His Obsession
2. His Control
3. His Hunger (April 25)
4. His Secret (May 23)
Prologue
Manfred
I wasn’t sure which was worse, watching my beloved Olive standing by the portraits of our son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter while sobs shook her frail shoulders, or seeing my grandsons standing next to her, each face heart-breakingly stoic. All except for Blake. He’d been furious with the world from the moment he’d woken up in the hospital, and nothing Olive or I had been able to do had changed that.
A part of me still felt like this was all some horrible nightmare, that I’d wake up and find my wife sleeping peacefully next to me. She’d tell me that none of it was true, that Chester and Abigail were safe at home with Aimee and the boys. I’d go back to sleep, making plans to see them all soon so I could put this terrible dream to rest.
Except, only the real world could hurt this much.
And it couldn’t be a nightmare because that would’ve meant I’d been able to sleep. In the past few days, I’d barely managed twenty or thirty minutes a night. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the hospital, standing next to my son’s bed, listening to the doctor tell me that he’d never wake up, that I had to decide if I wanted to keep his body alive, or let him go. Or I was in the morgue, identifying Abigail and Aimee, both barely recognizable.
As awful as that had been, the worst moment was when I had to tell the boys. Blake was only four. He didn’t really understand what it meant that his parents and sister were gone. For him, I didn’t think it had sunk in that they would never return. Slade was only a year older, but he was starting to put things together. When I tried to leave the house yesterday to come here and deal with the paperwork that inevitably came with death, he wrapped his arms around my leg and begged me not to leave. When Jax had come over to get him, Slade had started screaming that if I left, I’d never come back.
I watched Jax now as he leaned over to Slade and fixed his brother’s tie. He’d been helping with his brothers, most of the time without even being asked. I hated seeing such a weight on his little shoulders, but I didn’t know how to tell him it was okay to just be a kid. I’d never been someone who’d expressed emotions easily. Olive had always been best at that, and Chester had been like her.
I was just grateful that I wasn’t doing this alone.
“Mr. Hunter.” Officer March drew my attention away from the boys. “If I could have a moment of your time.”
I shook his hand, then motioned for him to follow me away from the long line of people still waiting to offer their condolences. Chester and Abigail had been well-liked, and everyone had loved Aimee.
“I’m sorry to approach you like this,” he said, pitching his voice low enough that no one else could hear. “But I’ve been ordered to close the case and stay away from you.”
It took a moment for his words to process. “What, exactly, do you mean?”
Officer March scratched the back of his head, his eyes darting around as if he was still worried about someone overhearing us. “My partner wasn’t too keen on me telling you that I thought what happened was no accident.”
“I remember,” I said, “but I believed you would be investigating anyway.”
He nodded. “I was; and I did, actually. I visited the crash site again. Looked over the autopsy reports. Something was off, but I was still trying to figure it out when my captain called me into his office and told me that I needed to stop stepping on the detectives’ toes.” Another furtive look around. “The thing is, I spoke with the detectives yesterday, and they told me that they were getting ready to sign off on the accident report. My asking questions apparently made it look like they weren’t doing their jobs.” He looked away and then back again. “Or, at least that’s what my boss said.”
“You don’t think that’s the case?”
“I think someone doesn’t want anyone looking too closely at what happened.”
I shifted on my feet, my mind racing. I’d been going over this in my head every moment that hadn’t been consumed with planning and business. A true accident – black ice, an animal crossing the road – would be awful, but the idea that someone had done this on purpose…it was unimaginable. What sort of person could put a plan into motion that would not only leave a family without their father, but almost guaranteed collateral damage? I knew that Chester’s investigative journalism had created enemies, but I doubted any of them had the impudence to take a life.
Still, despite all those doubts, my gut said there was more to what happened than most people were seeing. I hadn’t managed a multi-billion-dollar business from the time I was twenty relying only on visible logic. I’d always had good intuition, and now it was telling me that something smelled fishy.
But I was still going to be smart about it.
“What makes you think that you can’t take the request from your captain at face value?” I knew Captain Hartman, and he was usually a straight-shooter.
“Because the order about staying out of the case wasn’t all he said.” Officer March leaned closer. “He told me to stay away from you specifically, that you didn’t want me poking around in things.”
My stomach sank. I hadn’t spoken to Hartman about Officer March. In fact, the only conversation we’d had since the crash had been when Hartman had said It’s a hell of a thing, losing members of your family like that.
Idiot.
“You’re right,” I said. “Something isn’t right about it.”
“If I keep looking into this, it could be my job,” he said. His eyes were wide. “What do you want me to do?”
I scrubbed a hand across my chin.
“Grandfather.” A tug on my sleeve made me look down as much as Cai’s quiet voice. His little face was solemn, bright blue eyes clear. “May I be excused?”
I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat and nodded. Cai didn’t ru
n off. He walked, calmly and like he knew exactly where he was going and why. It wasn’t a seven-year-olds way of doing things, but Cai had never been a normal child. Out of all my grandchildren, he was the one who reminded me the most of myself. Focused and serious, never showing how he felt about anything. Not even after losing three members of his family.
“How are they?” Officer March asked. “I mean, I know they aren’t fine, not after what happened, but…dammit. You know what I mean.”
I nodded. I did know. “They’re as good as can be expected.”
Cai disappeared around the corner, and I found myself wondering where he was going, and if I might join him. Cai had asked if he could go back to school this week, and I understood the sentiment. It had been difficult this week not to throw myself into work and escape that way.
“Mr. Hunter,” Officer March spoke again. “What would you like me to do?”
I didn’t look at him as I answered, “I don’t want you to lose your job.”
I heard his sigh of relief over the chatter around me.
“I’d hoped you’d understand.” His hand touched my arm, and I turned to see him holding out a piece of paper. “I took the liberty of writing down the name and contact information of a private investigator I know. He’s a good guy. Knows his shi-stuff, and he’s discreet.”
I glanced down at the paper before putting it in my pocket.
Bartholomew Constantine.
After all of this was done, I’d give him a call, see if he could find anything.
If there was anything worth finding.
One
Cai
Twenty-Four Years Later
I shoved my carry-on into the overhead bin and wondered if I’d made a mistake in not asking my brother if the company plane could fly me back to Atlanta. I wouldn’t have asked him to arrange a private plane again, not when it wasn’t an emergency, but the company plane belonged to Hunter Enterprises, and since part of my trip had been spent dealing with issues related to the business, I could’ve justified it to myself.
Who was I kidding?
No, I couldn’t have.
I felt guilty even thinking about the meeting with Germaine Klaveno, Grandfather’s attorney, as business. It had pertained to the company, but only because the inheritance of Grandfather’s shares – as well as the rest of the estate – were dependent on a few things.
Like my brothers and I reconciling our differences.
I folded myself into the window seat and mentally cursed myself for not being willing to wait one more day for an aisle seat. Coach seats weren’t made with a six-feet, five-inch frame in mind, but I couldn’t justify the expense of a first-class seat for a two-and-a-half-hour flight. Not when my money could be better spent elsewhere. The clinic where I volunteered was always short on funding. The cost differential between a coach ticket and a first-class ticket could mean the difference between the clinic getting an X-ray machine that worked and continuing to make do with one that gave fuzzy exposures half the time.
“That doesn’t look very comfortable.”
The woman looking down at me had tight gray curls, a blue cardigan, and those glasses with a chain that hung around her neck. Even though she looked nothing like my Grandma Olive, she had the same sort of caring, sweet air about her, and my throat closed up with the sudden memory.
She sat down in the aisle seat but stayed perched on the edge. “You know, whenever I fly out to see my son, I always buy an extra seat for my Sherlock.”
I gave her a tight smile. It didn’t matter if Sherlock was a dog or a cat, I’d be polite and not complain, even when I started sneezing.
“Except I had to put him down a few months back, and when I bought my tickets, I plum forgot that I only needed one.”
Where was she going with this? It took all my patience to bite my tongue and wait for her to get to the point. Usually, I had extraordinary patience, but after spending this past week with my brothers, it was wearing thin.
“You see, what I’m wondering is if you wouldn’t mind switching seats with me.” She gave me that grandmotherly smile again. “I think if I was by a window, I wouldn’t be thinking about my poor Sherlock. You’d be doing me a favor, sitting out here on the aisle, with an empty seat between us.”
I nodded, unable to speak just yet. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had done something kind for me without any thought of what they could receive in return. She might be saying that I was doing her a favor, but we both knew who was helping who.
When we were all settled in our new seats, I looked over at her. “Thank you.”
She reached over and patted my arm. “Don’t mention it, dearie. You looked like you’ve been having a rough time of it lately.”
She had no idea.
I knew Grandfather had done the best he could, raising us boys. Grandma Olive had made things easier, but she passed only four years after my parents and sister, another blow to our already fragile family. Instead of everything we’d been through bringing us together, it had pushed us apart, each for our own reasons. But it didn’t mean his death hurt any less.
“Pardon me.”
I looked up as a flight attendant leaned over me to put something in the overhead compartment. She was pretty, probably a few years younger than me, and smiling down at me in a way I easily recognized. I didn’t have the money that Jax and Blake possessed, or Slade’s charm, but I wasn’t hurting for it either, which usually made things worse when it came to women. Between my looks – a fluke of genetics – and my job – which I’d worked my ass off to get – I wasn’t hurting for female attention.
The flight attendant closed the compartment and shifted her position to allow a line of passengers to go by. The fact that it pressed her right up against my arm and shoulder wasn’t intentional at all, I was certain. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I appreciated confident people but brazen wasn’t an attractive quality, in my opinion.
“Is there anything I can get you?” she asked, her dark eyes making the invitation out to be more than the usual peanuts and sodas.
“No, thank you,” I said politely as I picked up my book.
“Whatcha reading?” The attendant rubbed against my arm with all the subtlety of a cat in heat.
“Infectious Disease Precautions and Protocols in Urban Environments,” I said lightly. “I’m on the chapter about quarantine in areas with rodent infestations.”
Horror and disgust were almost immediately covered by a plastic smile as she hurried along, but I knew I wouldn’t need to worry about her bothering me for anything other than her usual duties.
“Are you a doctor?”
I turned to my seatmate to find her watching me with an amused expression on her face.
“Yes,” I said. “My specialty is infectious diseases.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you work for the CDC.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of hard candy. “You could have just told her to leave you alone because you needed to concentrate on an important case.”
I shrugged. “The truth seemed like a simpler and more logical deterrent than coming up with a story that might only pique her interest.”
The older woman held out another piece of candy. I took it and popped the peppermint into my mouth.
“Were you in Boston for business or pleasure?” she asked.
“Neither,” I answered honestly. “My grandfather died.”
Her face softened, and she reached over to pat my hand. “I’m sorry to hear that, dearie.”
I gave her a tight smile. “Thank you.”
The voice of the head flight attendant came over the intercom just then, interrupting any further attempt at a conversation for the moment. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I’d flown enough to know the speech given at the beginning of every flight. If I could clear my mind for a few minutes, I could be asleep before take-off and wouldn’t wake up until we started our descent.
Except I
couldn’t clear my mind, and it wasn’t the fault of the flirting flight attendant, or the kind, older woman. For once, it wasn’t even my work that had my head buzzing.
No, it was those infernal requirements Grandfather had put on the distribution of his estate. My brothers and I had known that going our own ways was in everyone’s best interests, and Grandfather hadn’t said a word to the contrary. Why had he decided that, after his death, we should suddenly come together as a family?
We hadn’t been a true family for nearly twenty-five years.
Two
Addison
I’d been on the plane for two hours, and we were getting ready to start our descent into the Atlanta airport, but I still didn’t feel like any of this was real yet.
I applied for the CDC internship without any real hope of getting it. The University of Minnesota was good, but it didn’t have a prestigious, ivy league name that opened doors. I finished my classes at the end of the fall semester, but I was still working on my thesis. My advisor had spoken to someone at the CDC and gotten my application for the internship moved to the head of the pile. Apparently, they liked what they saw, because, after just a single phone interview, I was on my way. It was the perfect work to do while I completed my thesis.
