DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  “Amelia?”

  “Hayden.”

  I sighed his name, the image of his face bringing a new warmth to my erratic emotions.

  When did I start wishing I was an aimless professional with nothing to call my own except a thankless career?

  “Where are you? Are you safe?”

  “For the moment. We’re in Louisiana.”

  “Good. We’ve come across some new information, but we’re not entirely sure how important it really is. We’re going to need another couple of hours to put it all together.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “It’s conflicting. Vincent came across some evidence that suggests Mr. McGregor lied when he said he didn’t know the victim. For that reason, I’m asking you to proceed with caution, all right? Call again in the morning and we should have more to give you.”

  “I’m hoping I will too.”

  “Great. Take care, Amelia.”

  I disconnected the call, my eyes moving back down to the group on the patio. Was Jayne still down there, dancing in her husband’s arms? What would she think if she knew we’d spent the entire day lying to her? Would she be surprised? But, again, it seemed to me, that group down there, everything about them was a lie of some sort.

  Were they all really that happy, or were they hiding their failures in their ability to use credit cards to pay for an unfortunate alcohol problem?

  When I was a kid I was convinced that my family was the only family that hid its dark secrets behind smiles whenever we were out in public. The pastor at our church was convinced my father was a saint. All those other families looked up to us and it was a burden that pushed me away from my beliefs once I left home. But now I understood that most families hid secrets like ours. And that understanding made me wonder if true happiness really existed anywhere.

  I sighed as I turned and went back to the room I was sharing with Rowan. He was hunched over the computer as I stepped inside, tossing the phone on the low dresser.

  “I have to call back tomorrow,” I told his hunched over shoulders.

  “Hmmm,” was his only response.

  He reminded me of Waverly a little. There was no getting her attention when she was on a mission either.

  I took a quick shower and curled up on the bed, flipping through the many channels on the television as he worked. He sat so still for so long that I was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong, but I could hear his fingers moving over the keyboard, punching letters and numbers at a rate that I could never imagine making my fingers do. I failed typing, but I could text on my phone quicker than anyone else I knew. Go figure.

  He suddenly came to life halfway through an episode of Star Trek Generations.

  He slapped his hands together and cried out, “Fuck me!”

  “What?”

  He shook his head, staring at the computer a while longer. Then he stood and came to the bed, throwing himself across the mattress like a child too excited to remember beds are not a plaything.

  “I figured it out! I know what was missing!”

  “Missing where?”

  “In my code!” He took my hands and pulled them together in front of my body. “You see, I had the code almost completed, but it felt like something was missing, so I waited to turn it in to my bosses. I wanted it to be perfect. And now I know how to do it.”

  “You were working on your code all this time?” I straightened up a little, confused by his statement. “You said you were checking to see if anyone had tried to get into the system.”

  “I did. No one had.” He shook my hands. “But I figured it out. And it’s fucking genius!”

  Rowan laughed as he pulled me closer to him, his breath, sour now, washing over my face.

  “I’ve never done such a brilliant job! No wonder someone’s after me.”

  “Who’s after you?”

  He sobered a little then. “I don’t know. I thought if it was a rival coder he would have tried to get into my system at the office, but he didn’t. So it has to be someone else.”

  “Or your security measures were too good.”

  “He wouldn’t have gotten in, but I would have seen his attempts. I didn’t see any.”

  “Good, I suppose.”

  “My work is done. I can send it to …” He stopped, clearly unsure what his next step should be. “I need to send it somewhere safe. To someone I can trust.”

  “Why not your bosses?”

  “Because they might not be trustworthy.”

  He pulled back, his excitement dampened. I watched him climb off the bed and begin to pace the length of the room. I got up to … I don’t know what I intended to do. But it felt like I should do something.

  “Rowan, I don’t understand why you can’t trust your bosses. Why anyone would want to hurt you in order to get to this code—”

  “And now it’s done. Whoever’s behind this, they’ll want it even more. They’ll want to stop me even more.”

  “Why? What does this code do?”

  “Everything.” He turned to look at me. “Everything, Amelia. The code is revolutionary. It will change the way people interact with robots and the way robots interact with people.” He took my hands again, pulling me into his space. “This is what I’ve been working toward from the beginning of my career.”

  “I’m happy for you, I really am. But I need to know what this has to do with—”

  He didn’t let me finish. He jerked me toward him and kissed me, twisting my arms behind my back and holding me against him with my captured wrists. His other hand moved up to the back of my head, guiding me against him as he invaded.

  And I … damn, I couldn’t help myself. His enthusiasm was intoxicating, his touch breathtaking. Despite the promises I’d made to myself in the wake of his first touch, I moved into him, the passion he’d ignited downstairs flaring up again.

  He pushed me back against the low dresser, his hand sliding under the billowy T-shirt I’d donned after my shower. I was grateful I’d had that shower, grateful that my skin still smelled fresh and was still clean. I wanted him to enjoy the feel of me. I wanted him to breathe me in and love the scent of me.

  I tugged as his shirt with my newly freed hands, pulling it free of his borrowed pants. His muscles jumped and popped as I slipped my palms over his back. And then down over his ass, that tight ass that was so tight, so hard except for this deep dimple along the side. I wanted to feel that ass under my hands. I wanted to touch every inch of his incredible body.

  He was one step ahead of me. He was tugging at my shorts, sliding them down over my thighs as his mouth slipped down over the tip of my chin, pressed itself to my throat and slid down along my chest. He caught me by surprise when he fell to his knees, his mouth creating a path along the inside of my thighs. I ran my fingers through his hair as he touched me, as he kissed my knees, as he slowly slid down toward my ankles.

  “Rowan,” I whispered as he made my head spin.

  He ignored me, taking his time running his tongue over my ankle bone before slowly making his way back up the length of my body. He nibbled at the soft flesh on my inner thighs, the heat of his breath just as exciting as the sharp pain of his teeth. And then … oh, my heart threatened to jump out of my chest as he played with the thick, swollen lips of my cunt. I ran my fingers through his hair, leaning back as I shamelessly exposed myself to his ministrations.

  I could only take it for a moment. The feel of him, the way he touched me … it was intense. I wanted him inside of me, wanted to touch him, wanted to give him as much pleasure as he was giving me.

  “Please, Rowan,” I moaned. “I can’t!”

  He slowly regained his feet, lifting my shirt off of me as he did.

  “Can’t what?” he whispered against my ear. “I thought you were capable of anything.”

  “I need you.”

  “Yeah? Me?”

  “I need you inside me.”

  He groaned, no quick comeback coming to his lips at tha
t. He pulled my hips forward with one hand while the other hand worked at his pants, trying to free himself. I would have helped, wanted to help, but I was holding myself up as he balanced me on the edge of the low dresser.

  And then … every muscle in my body tightened, every nerve came alive as he touched me with the tip of his cock. The promise of what was coming made my heart skip a beat. I slid my legs around him as he pulled me into him, impaling me as gently as both our overwhelming needs allowed.

  He closed his eyes as he filled me, tension bursting through his body. I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist, holding him still as my body adjusted to his invasion. When his eyes opened he focused on me, seeming surprised to find me watching him.

  I reached up and touched the side of his face, urging him to me. I wanted to feel his lips. He sighed heavily as he indulged me, pressing his lips almost roughly against mine. And then he slid his hands under my ass and encouraged me to move as he slowly slipped into a rhythm that threatened to blow my mind.

  Gentleness went out the window fairly quickly. He leaned into me and thrust roughly, moving almost painfully against me. But it wasn’t painful. It was perfect. It felt like sex was supposed to feel, like pleasure taken to an all-new level. I moved my hips against him, breathing heavily against his mouth as noises I don’t think I’d ever made before slipped from between my lips. I was losing it after too short a time, losing control when I desperately wanted to hold on, when I desperately wanted it to last so much longer.

  I cried out, tightening my hold on him, forcing him to still his movements for a long moment as the crest of the wave quickly washed over me. The room went dark and I felt him swell and heard his cries. We fell back, the bed catching us as he collapsed. We lay there tangled in one another, our breathing crazy, our bodies overwhelmed with sensation.

  I curled up against him and tried not to let reality dawn too quickly because I knew when it did, I would be overwhelmed with regret I didn’t want to feel.

  What the hell had I done?

  Chapter 8

  Hayden

  I stared at the computer screen, pretending I wasn’t distracted from the case at hand. I knew I should be down in Vincent’s office, pushing him to figure out what the hell mess this McGregor fellow had pulled Amelia and the rest of the firm into, but I couldn’t stop working the puzzle created by Rosalie Matthias’ murder.

  This killer went after couples in a hotel setting. Upscale hotels. Rosalie had been staying in a local hotel that wasn’t exactly three star, let alone four. And the killer—I assumed it was the killer—sent her brother-in-law to move her. Then the killer apparently spent a month tattooing Rosalie, covering her in the emblem that was on all the stationery, the carpets, and the towels in the hotel suite where I stayed with my parents that fateful night. It was a message meant just for me, but I couldn’t figure out why Rosalie. Why not, someone I knew? Why not one of my operatives or a friend? Why a complete stranger?

  I didn’t understand. The only reason I knew about Rosalie’s murder was because the killer had her sister ask my security firm to check into her disappearance. Otherwise … was that part of it? Was the killer telling me that he knew about my day job, that he knew how much control I had over the assigning of jobs? Was he saying that he could touch people close to me?

  That was what worried me the most.

  He was escalating. The first murder had happened over seven months ago. The second was four months ago. But now? There were two sets of murders in the stretch of a twenty-four hour period. That suggested there could be another anywhere between now and three months from now. And it would be here in Houston.

  As far as I could tell, the cops weren’t putting it together. The two in Louisiana had happened so far from one another that no one made the connection. Then the last two happened in California. I was the only one who saw the connection, the only one who saw how it all went back thirty years to a murder in a New York City hotel that no longer existed.

  Where was this leading? Was this coming to my front door?

  I stared at the crime scene photos stolen from a place I shouldn’t have had access to. I’d stared at them for hours these past weeks, but nothing screamed out at me. My memories of that night were a little fuzzy and those photographs no longer existed, at least as far as I could find. But these looked like an exact replica of what I did remember.

  Who could be doing this? The one killer was dead, the other still serving time in a New York prison. Neither had family—not that I was aware of, anyway. Neither had anyone who’d cared enough to stand by them through the trial, who visited them during their incarceration or who had reached out to me or my family during the extensive appeals process.

  Who else but family would be crazy enough to go about their revenge in this way?

  Was it some sort of copycat who just happened to lean about the murders? Someone who learned of my role in the murders and wanted to play with my head? Someone just playing games?

  I had nightmares every night now. Most of them centered around the night two men broke into our hotel room and murdered my parents, but some of them exchanged the faces of the victims with people I loved. Sometimes it was Sam, sometimes it was Megan. Sometimes it was Peter and his new love, Heather. Sometimes it was others in my life, Dominic, Vincent, Marcus … brothers I would lay my life down for. But a lot of the time it was Waverly.

  The truth was, I didn’t know that this wasn’t just my fear speaking. A part of me was afraid that my mind was warning me, that I knew something I didn’t realize I knew and this guy was really coming after my friends, my family.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Boss? You should see this.”

  I looked up as Vincent Caplin came into my office. He was a quiet guy we’d all mistaken for shy when he first came to work for Dragon. But now that we knew him and he was an important part of the organization, we knew he was just observant. And he was a brilliant investigator.

  “I’ve been looking into this party our client went to the night before he found that woman in bed with him. The dead woman?”

  “Yeah. You saw security footage outside the building of the two of them speaking.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s more to it than that.”

  He set his computer on the edge of my desk and pulled up security footage from multiple different angles, from different days, showing our client speaking with the dead woman. In one they were at an outdoor café sitting across from one another. In another they were outside a building, passing almost casually, their hands touching briefly. In yet another they were inside a restaurant, sharing a cup of coffee.

  “They didn’t just know each other. They knew each other well.”

  I frowned as I studied the evidence. “He lied to us.”

  “Over and again, apparently. Makes me wonder how long the cops will take to figure it out.”

  “But what about the drugs? We found drugs in his system.”

  “Maybe he accidentally drugged himself while drugging her. It’s been known to happen.”

  “Did they find the same thing in her tox screen?”

  “Don’t know yet. But I would guess they will.”

  “You think he murdered her and simply forgot because he accidentally drugged himself?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But why?”

  Vincent pulled up another screen that showed the woman’s face on a Texas driver’s license.

  “Her name was Reba Childs. She was thirty, a barista at a coffee shop down the street from our client’s office. Maybe they were dating. Or maybe their relationship was more nefarious than that.”

  “Was there security tape from his house?”

  “No. The cops took what little there was, but I get the impression he didn’t have a very efficient system. There probably wasn’t much for the cops to look at.”

  “What about his office? They ever meet there?”

  Vincent shook his head.

  “Then the
y weren’t dating. If there’s one thing I know about a woman in a new relationship, it’s that she wants to make sure the people closest to her man knows who he’s dating. That means she would have insisted on meeting him at the office at least once.”

  That made Vincent smile. He was married—had been for several years now—and had a couple of daughters. He knew what I was talking about.

  “Whatever their relationship, it’s clear he not only knew her, but he knew her for months before she died. And that makes me wonder what else he’s lied to us about.”

  That was my concern, too.

  “I think we should bring them in and turn him over to the cops.”

  “What if he spooks?”

  “Amelia can handle it. She knows what to do.”

  Vincent snapped the lid of his computer closed and picked it up, his eyes moving over the screen on my computer.

  “You working on something new?”

  I pushed a button on my keyboard that made the screen go dark. “No. Just reviewing an old case.”

  “You need some help, I’m around.”

  “Thanks, Vince. I appreciate it.”

  He slapped my shoulder. “Quinn would love to have you to dinner sometime. So would Olivia.”

  Olivia was a precocious child who’d had a crush on me since I helped Vincent figure out who was stalking her mother. I didn’t mind hanging out with her, but I had bigger things on my mind right now.

  “Tell Olivia I’ll be happy to spend some time with her. But now is a bad time.”

  “I can hold her off for a little while, but not forever. You can only be too busy for so long before it turns into a slight.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  I watched Vincent go, envying his family and the life he had outside of this office for a moment. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone cared when, or if, I left the office.

  I gathered my stuff, thinking about Amelia. I really hoped I hadn’t sent her across the country with a killer. But Amelia was a smart girl. I had faith that she, like all the operatives at Dragon, could improvise if necessary. She could protect herself. She’d sounded confident on the phone. Professional. She was keeping it together.