“Only the one. He talked about how Amelia looked. He commented that she was youthful and more beautiful than the others.”
“What others?”
Rowan looked up at me. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“You don’t know these people? They didn’t mention Johnson or anything?”
“I don’t think they were related.” Rowan ran his fingers through his hair again. “They didn’t say anything about the CEO or what went down earlier tonight. And they didn’t ask me any questions. They went straight for Amelia.”
I nodded, trying not to let my mind go where it was going. But the problem was, this attack didn’t make sense unless …
“I’m taking her to Ireland,” Rowan suddenly said. “I think we both need some time. A few weeks, maybe.”
I touched his arm. “Of course. I understand.”
Rowan pulled himself up to his full height. “As soon as they release us.”
“You do what you need to do.”
He went back into the room where Amelia slept. I watched, my thoughts filled with darkness. I might not have reciprocated in Amelia’s crush, but she was still my employee and my friend. The idea of what had happened to her tonight made me want to combust. I would make damn sure whoever did this paid for their crime.
I was headed toward the nurse’s station when I heard Vincent’s voice. I turned a corner and there was the head of investigations at Dragon, speaking in a low tone with a couple of beat cops. When he saw me, he gestured for me to come over.
“This is our head of operations,” Vincent said as he introduced me to the cops. “Could you go over what you told me with him?”
One of the cops looked me over wearily while the other checked his notes.
“We got a call of shots fired,” the cop with the notes said. “When we arrived at the hotel and identified the room, we were admitted by a man with a gunshot wound in his shoulder as he attempted to leave the room. We subdued him, pushing him back into the room where we found another suspect unconscious on the floor and two people on the bed. The woman had clearly been sexually assaulted. Her clothes were torn and there were wounds on her breasts.”
I flinched when he said that last.
“We were able to ascertain that the two men had forced their way into the room with another suspect. One of the men held back the male guest of the hotel while the other attacked the female. However, the female managed to pull a gun on the men, resulting in the first male’s gunshot wound.”
“Have you spoken to the suspects? Have you been able to identify them?”
“We have. They are local men who have worked together, off and on, in the oil fields. They’re the type who work when they need money and stop when they don’t. They’ve both got records, mostly petty crimes and a few assaults. Nothing that resulted in any real time. Just guys who have always lived just below the radar.”
I glanced toward the doors behind the cops.
“They’re here? Can I talk to them?”
“They’re here,” the cop who’d been silent until now said.
“They attacked one of my operatives, sir,” I said as politely as I could. “I need to know why.”
The two cops exchanged a look. I was convinced they were going to deny my request, but then they stepped aside, the silent one simply gesturing to a door.
I stepped into the exam room and found myself face to face with a man who had clearly suffered a severe beating. He was reclining on the table, an ice pack pressed to his face where new stitches were holding together skin that had yet to swell.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“That’s what I was about to ask you. Why did you chose that hotel room tonight? Why those people?”
The man’s eyes narrowed as he took a second look at me. His jaw clenched and he seemed to turn into a tight ball as he lay there on that bed.
“You’re Hayden Dubois.”
“Who are you?”
He shook his head, turning his face from me.
“Why did you chose that hotel room?”
The man continued to refuse to answer me. That wasn’t going to work.
I marched up to the bed and grabbed his wrist. It was wrapped in an ACE bandage, so I assumed touching it would cause a little pain. But I didn’t just touch it. I twisted it down over the edge of the bed.
The man screamed.
I leaned down close and whispered right next to his ear so that he couldn’t miss hearing me. “Why that room? Why those people?”
When he refused to answer again, I twisted his wrist again. He cried out, glaring at me with more hatred than I think anyone had ever thrown in my direction.
“Because of their connection to you.”
Fear shot through me and that ratcheted up the anger that was barely controlled just below the surface. I squeezed his wrist just enough to remind him I still had it in a vise. He glared at me again.
“Who’s behind this? Who told you to go there?”
The man looked away and began to laugh despite the pain that must have been shooting through his wrist.
“You’d never believe it, even if I told you.”
I jerked his arm again and saw the pain flash over his face, but he didn’t respond to it as he’d done before.
“You can break my fucking wrist. I don’t care. I won’t ever tell you.” Then he laughed again. “Boy, are you in for a surprise!”
I came close to breaking his wrist then. But Vincent came into the room, perhaps drawn by the man’s screams, and he carefully removed my grip from the would-be rapist’s arm. The moment he did, I came back to myself from the edge of rage that had been driving me. I turned and stormed out of the room.
“Hayden!”
Vincent followed, but I was in my car and gone before he could say anything else.
Whoever this person was—this murderer—I had to get a step ahead of him. I had to protect those closest to me.
But how did I do that without putting them all at increased risk?
Chapter 4
Waverly
My mother always knew the worst moments to call. And it was usually for some stupid reason, like my sister’s baby shower a couple of months ago. She wanted me to show up so I could bring the wine she knew my sister wouldn’t want there, but that she couldn’t go an hour without. I didn’t go, and I never heard the end of it. She was probably calling now to yell at me about it again.
I thought about ignoring her call, but it turned out that her timing was actually pretty good this time. I needed a few answers and she might be the only person who could give them to me.
The thing was, I had lied to Hayden.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Darlin’, your sister has been out of town all week and I feel like I have no one to talk to.”
“What about your husband?”
She groaned. “He’s at the office. He’s always at the office.”
My mother had remarried just five years ago. It was her fourth marriage. The first was to my father, a man I never knew. The second was when I was still a toddler, so I didn’t really remember that one very well. It only lasted a few years, long enough to get my mother a nice alimony check. Then there was Paul. He was an insurance salesman, a quiet guy who wanted the simple life. But that was asking a little too much of my mother. She was more the go-out-every-weekend-and-party type.
This latest husband was a lawyer. Mom had met him during her divorce from Paul and they had a heated affair for several years before she finally consented to marrying him. But the passion quickly cooled after the I do’s. I think Mom would have left him long ago, but she liked spending his money too much.
“I’m actually glad you called.”
“That’s a new one. Are you dying?”
I bit back a groan. “I wanted to ask you about Jack Wallace.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. I could picture my mother, her almond- shaped eyes narrowed, her thin fingers raking through her sl
owly graying hair. She was beautiful even when she was agitated. She had her Japanese father’s delicate features and her Irish mother’s pale skin, making her delicate and porcelain-like, but she had a temper that could melt paint off the wall.
“Why are you asking about him?”
“I’m doing research on a series of murders for a client.” She didn’t need to know who it was really for. “And his name came up.”
“Why are you dragging this stuff up now, Waverly? We put all that behind us nearly thirty years ago.”
“We ran.”
“I ran. And be glad that I did. If I’d left you in New York with his crazy sister, there’s no telling where you’d be now. Definitely not working for some exclusive security firm in Houston, Texas.”
I hadn’t told my mother that I was fired from Dragon some weeks ago after an information leak that Hayden had traced back to our computer system. My computer system that I designed and implemented for the firm when I first arrived there. It seemed kind of obvious now that the breach had been caused by some sort of virus, the same sort of virus that I’d found on Hayden’s phone—a virus that allowed whoever had put it there to use the phone like a listening device. But Hayden hadn’t even broached the subject.
Stubborn man.
My mother left New York when my father was arrested for murder. I was only an infant, but my sister was seven, so she, remembered our family before the arrest. She talked about it sometimes when I was little, like my father was some sort of misunderstood prince of a man. For a long time, I believed her stories. I was beginning to see the other side of the issue now.
According to the news reports I was able to unearth over the internet, the murders of Robert and Jessica Dubois had been horrifying. The story took on a life of its own in the aftermath, not only because the couple was wealthy and the man was part of a well-known, well- respected southern family, but because of the heinousness of the crime itself. A hotel employee in a position of trust taking advantage of his position to torture and murder a couple in his own hotel? It was unheard of at the time of the crime.
I could see what had drawn Hayden to these new murders. He was right when he said they were identical to the murders of his parents. With one exception: he was the only witness to any of the murders.
Six years old. I couldn’t even imagine. It made my heart break for the child he once was, and my heart swell for the man he was now.
How many people could survive what he’d been through?
“I want to know about Jack. I want to know why he did it.”
“Waverly—”
“He was my father. Don’t you think I have a right to know?”
My mom was quiet for a long moment. Then she sighed, her tone taking on a serious note as she began to talk again.
“It was a long time ago. We were young and stupid, struggling just to get by. You were six months old, getting one ear infection after another. We were barely getting food on the table. And Jack … he was working at that hotel, watching all these rich people coming and going without a care in the world. It pissed him off. He’d come home and complain about it, telling me that just one dinner tab those people spent would put food on our table for a week. The longer he worked there, the sicker you got, the angrier he got.”
I’d never heard this before. I curled up in my office chair, the phone pressed to my ear, fascinated by this new information about my own life.
“Did you love him?” I asked.
“Oh, Waverly, you have no idea how I loved your father. He was everything I’d always imagined I wanted in a man. He was strong and bold, adventurous, loyal. I’ve never met anyone else quite like him.”
“Did you know what he was going to do?”
“Of course not!” There was indignation in her voice. “If I had, I would have talked him out of it. He ruined our lives that night.”
“When did you find out?”
“When the police came to our apartment.” She was quiet for a moment. “I knew something had happened when he came home from work that night. He was agitated. Nervous. He kept pacing the living room. And when the cops came, he kissed me, whispered an apology, and ran out the back. That was the last time I ever saw him out of handcuffs.”
I tried to imagine what it would be like to see the man you loved go to jail for such a heinous crime. But I couldn’t.
Hayden would never do something like that.
“Reporters surrounded our apartment. We couldn’t leave, couldn’t go to the store or the doctor. I couldn’t go to work. We had to move in with Jack’s sister, but they found us there, too. And when the trial started …it was a nightmare!”
“When did you decide to leave?”
“When it became clear that he’d be convicted. When I realized we’d never be free of the press. When they put that little boy on the stand.”
Hayden. I’d seen a picture of him being walked into the courthouse by his grandparents. He looked so small and vulnerable.
“I packed you girls up in the middle of the night and boarded the first bus leaving the station. It took us to Chicago. We settled there for a little while, but the press found us again. So we fled again, ending up in Ohio, then Iowa, and then Wyoming. That’s when I changed our names. And then I met Tom. He took us in and gave us a good life for a while.”
Till you got bored with him.
I dragged my fingers through my hair, still thinking about the romantic stories my sister Wanda had told me when we were small. She saw our father as a hero who’d been convicted of something he hadn’t done. When he died five years ago—mind you, I was not told until weeks later—you’d have thought he’d always been a part of our lives and always loved and supported us, the way Wanda responded. She was a new mother at the time and spent weeks in bed after giving him a funeral fit for a king right here in Houston.
I knew he’d been stabbed in prison by another inmate. I didn’t know that he’d been out very briefly and that he’d come to Houston to look for the child whose testimony had put him in prison. And I didn’t know that he’d stayed with my sister while he looked for him.
There were a lot of things I hadn’t known until tonight.
“Did he do it?”
Once again my mother fell silent.
“He always swore he didn’t,” she said softly. “He wrote me letters after he was first arrested and called me multiple times. Always swore that it was a case of mistaken identity. He begged me not to leave with you girls. Said he’d make it right. But then the trial started and …”
“You think he did it?”
“That little boy was pretty convincing.”
“Was Jack the kind of guy who could be capable of this sort of thing?”
A slight hesitation. Then a sigh.
“I never wanted to talk to you girls about this stuff. Wanda idolizes your father and I didn’t want to destroy that for her. But, you know, he had a temper. And he was so tainted in his view of the wealthy.”
That sounded familiar. She was often the same despite her comfortable husbands.
“Did he have any family, besides us and his sister in New York?”
“No. His parents died before I met him and he had no other siblings, cousins, nothing like that. And his sister passed away a few years after he went to prison. I always kind of assumed it was the stress of the trial.”
“And he died in prison.”
“He did. Five years ago, after he killed that woman.”
I nodded, thinking about Hayden, imagining the scene I’d just read about in local newspaper archives. Almost as if my thoughts caused him to materialize, his familiar knock on my front door drew my attention from the phone.
“I need to go, Mom.”
“Yes, it’s pretty late,” she admitted.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
The second I opened the door, I knew something was wrong. Hayden didn’t show emotion on the best of days. He was stoic, like he thought a man had to be made of stone in order t
o be a true man. But there were small, telltale signs, like the slight slope of his shoulders and the tension expressed by the minute lines on his face.
And the fact that he was here after he’d already visited once this night told an important story.
“What happened?”
He shook his head, but his eyes never left me. He was studying me, his eyes moving quickly over me, viewing every inch, as though he was looking for some sort of injury. It made my heart swell a little, the idea that he cared whether or not I’d been hurt.
This man was a ball of contradictions, practically telling me all the time that he only used me for sex, but then looking at me that way. I knew that somewhere within that stone exterior he cared about me at least a little. And I was patient. I was willing to wait until he realized it.
I moved into his arms, sliding my hands slowly over his muscular chest. I loved the feel and closeness of him. He smelled like cedar and tasted like nirvana—whatever that might taste like. When I moved to nibble at his throat, he picked me up, tugging my thighs up over his hips, slamming the door with a kick of his foot as he carried me across the room. His mouth found mine and I was immediately lost in the feel of him.
He didn’t bother with the bedroom. He set me on the edge of the couch and began to disrobe, his eyes on me again, but this time there was another intent in his eyes. Those gorgeous, blue eyes were burning with a need that went beyond the physical. Whatever had happened, he needed a release to rid himself of nervous energy so that he could focus on the problem at hand. I’d seen him like this before and I understood. I’d used him for the same thing a time or two.
As much as I wanted to just sit there and watch him get naked, I was just as anxious to feel his hands on my naked skin. I tugged off the T-shirt I was wearing—one of his, actually, that’d gotten left behind some weeks ago—biting back a pleased smile when the sight of my bare breasts made the heat in his eyes increase twofold. I stood and shimmied out of my panties, making a show of it that made him groan.
“You’re too fucking beautiful,” he grumbled as he grabbed my hips and tossed me back onto the couch, positioning me against the back of the couch with my hips pulled back and up, exposing my bottom to anything he had in mind.
DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series Page 79
