His hands were warm as they moved over my hips and my sides, slipping up over my ribs before sliding around to take my breasts against his palms. The couch cushions sank slightly as he positioned himself behind me, teasing my cunt with the head of his thick cock. I wiggled my hips, teasing him right back. He grunted, nudging my knees further apart with his own before grasping his cock and pressing it roughly against me. It was almost painful when he thrust inside of me, the sort of painful that was delicious enough to make me bite my lip and remind myself not to tense up.
He wrapped his body around me as he knelt there, his cock deep inside of me, his arms wrapped around my ribs, his face pressed to my shoulder. His breath was hot as it came in puffs against my cooled skin. And then he bit me, a bite that was not meant to injure, but to muffle the sounds his throat desperately wanted to release against my skin.
It was a long moment before he began to move, his hand sliding down to my hips to hold me steady against him as he thrust. Slowly, at first, then a little faster. He touched me in all the right places, his body fitting against mine like we were made for one another. I leaned back, twisting my head so that I could find his lips. He kissed me for a moment then pulled away, the need in his eyes more intense than I’d ever seen it.
He lost control a second later, his movements growing erratic. Forceful. And then he cried out, pressing me hard against the back of the couch as he filled me. My own body shuddered, an orgasm shivering from my lower belly out like an earthquake shaking a major city.
We lay there in the aftermath for a while and Hayden actually held me, which he rarely ever did. I relished his body wrapped so protectively and even affectionately against mine and was loath to ruin the moment. But I eventually had to ask.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
He dragged his fingers through his hair, hesitating before he got up and began to dress. My body immediately cooled, missing his solid heat.
“I just didn’t want to go home.”
“You don’t have to go now.”
“I’m not. I need to go see Megan. I was just waiting till it was closer to dawn.”
I inclined my head slightly. Nice to know I was a convenient stop before Megan Bradford-Murphy.
“Is it about Dragon?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked about our investigation into the murders and that reminded me of my lie, bringing a blush to my cheeks.
“I haven’t got anything new.”
“Are you sure?”
He studied my face and then moved around the couch, going over to the computer I’d stupidly forgotten to shut down when he arrived. He frowned as he looked over the article I’d been reading when my mother called, the article that described the murder of Jack Wallace.
“Why are you reading this? What does it have to do with anything?”
“He’s your parents’ killer. It has everything to do with it.”
“Not his death. I told you, he’s dead and the other guy is still in prison. They have nothing to do with what’s happening.”
“But their families—”
“They have no families.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve spent most of my adulthood researching these assholes, trying to figure out why they did what they did. Willard was an only child and his parents died a few years ago. And this guy … he had a wife and a child, but they disappeared during the trial, probably trying to avoid the publicity. I doubt they could have something to do with this.”
Wouldn’t you be surprised.
“Hayden—”
“I have to go.”
“Hayden!”
He turned to glare at me halfway to the door. “What?”
“There’s something you should know. I didn’t even realize it until tonight.”
“What’s that?” he asked, his patience clearly wearing thin.
I didn’t want to say it. I’d never really said it out loud, not even to Wanda. But he needed to know.
“Jack Wallace … he’s my biological father.”
Chapter 5
Hayden
I never said that name out loud. It felt wrong to say it, like speaking it gave him life and respect. My father had said it over and again the night he was murdered, trying to remind this monster that his victims were human. He stopped saying it after that man raped my mother the first time.
And then when he killed Sam …
I clutched my fists at my sides. “You said your father was in jail, but you didn’t know why.”
“I lied.”
I inclined my head slightly, trying to keep my breathing level. My vision was literally tinted red. I was angrier than I’d ever been, except maybe for the day I came face to face with that monster in the prison where he was being held after Sam’s murder.
“I didn’t know it was your parents, I swear to you. I didn’t realize it until tonight when I began doing research on it. I never really knew more than that he killed some people in New York. That was all I really wanted to know.”
“You lied to me.”
“Hayden—”
I couldn’t hold the anger back any longer or the devastating need to hurt her. My hands shook and my chest burned.
“He didn’t just murder my parents,” I said, spittle flying from my lips despite the fact that tension in my jaw forced my teeth to clench. “He had his partner hold my father back while he raped my mother. And not just once. Three times he raped her, over and over again, while she begged him to stop, while she fought him with all the strength she had in her body. And then he spat on her as she lay bleeding and broken on the floor, her beautiful in dress tatters around her body. And then he turned to my father and he—”
“I know!” She turned her face from me, disgust and horror and a million other emotions speeding through her eyes. “I know what he did. I saw the police report!”
“Yes, but do you really understand what he did? Do you really appreciate how horrifying that night was? Do you know I still have fucking nightmares, reliving that night, watching this man I’d thought was so nice because he gave me a piece of candy when we checked into the hotel torture my parents, making them do and say things I’d never heard or seen in all my six years of life? Do you know that I will never forget the sounds of their screams? That I have to use the security bolt every time I stay in a hotel just in case someone should get the same idea while I’m there?”
Tears were streaming down her face, each one cutting like a shard of glass into me. And yet I couldn’t stop.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Sorry?” I snorted. “As if killing my parents wasn’t enough, he accused me of lying and pointing the finger at the wrong man. He so convinced himself that he came after me when he was released from prison. He came looking for me to get payback for what he saw as my willful choice to ruin his life.
“Did he hurt me? No … he didn’t hurt me. Not physically. He simply took away the only woman I’d ever loved, the only woman I ever trusted enough to bring into my life, to trust with my dark memories. The only woman I will ever love.”
I said that last thing next to her ear, making sure she heard every syllable. And then I pulled back to watch the pain skim over her face, to see the betrayal shine in her eyes. And the hurt. Raw, heartbroken, hurt.
I hesitated then, something changing inside of me. All I suddenly saw was delicate beauty—a small, slightly upturned nose, almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones—and grace that was evident even as tears streamed down her cheeks and her hazel eyes danced with pain.
There was nothing of my parents’ murderer here. She looked up at me. Again I expected to see betrayal in her eyes. Instead, there was resignation almost as though she felt like she deserved my cruelty. And that made me sick to my stomach.
Who was the monster here?
I had chosen to be with her. I had chosen to make her a part of my life, no matter how peripheral. Who was I to hurt her for telling me the
truth? Who was I to feel betrayed? I welcomed this mess and now I had to clean it up.
And I’d start by putting as much distance between us as possible. I had to do it to protect Waverly. But in truth it was more about protecting myself.
I walked out and the quiet sounds of Waverly crying rang in my ears for hours after.
***
I went to a bar though I rarely went to them anymore. There was a period after Sam’s death where I had spent far too much time in seedy establishments. I woke up one day and decided that Dragon was more important to me than destroying my health and my future. I hadn’t been in one since, but tonight seemed like a good exception to the rule.
I could still smell Waverly on my hands. I realized it as I lifted the second shot of tequila to my lips. I reached over the bar and grabbed a wet towel that was sitting on a low shelf, wiping my hands with it. The towel smelled like days of mildew growth, but it was better than smelling Waverly every time I brushed my fingers against my face.
My life was turning into a big, cosmic joke. First, this thing that happened to my parents. I had no responsibility in any of that—I knew that now—but the guilt that I had been unable to protect my mother had plagued me for years. And then testifying in court, questioning everything. By the time the trial took place, I was no longer sure what I’d seen that night. But as the years passed and the press lost interest, my doubts began to disappear. And then seeing him again—
I swallowed the contents of the fourth shot and poured myself another with the bottle the bartender had left behind after the third.
While the guilt I carried regarding my mother had been illogical, the guilt I bore for Sam’s death was painfully accurate. If I’d just answered my phone once when the New York parole board called to warn me that that man was free and possibly looking for me, maybe she wouldn’t have been shot. Maybe she would have lived at least a while longer.
Sam was sick when she was shot on the street that day. I didn’t know it—I learned the truth at the hospital when the emergency room doctor came out to tell me she was gone—but, Sam had been suffering heart failure as a result of a life-long struggle with lupus. Her heart was so fragile that she was only expected to live a few more months. If she hadn’t been shot, if the bullet hadn’t over-taxed her already-struggling heart, if I’d answered that damn phone and gotten the chance to propose that afternoon as I had planned …
But it was all futile, the what ifs and the would ofs, could ofs, should ofs.
And now this mess.
I had brought this down on Amelia. But I’d be damned if I let anyone else close to me get hurt.
I skipped the glass on the next shot, filling my mouth from the bottle itself until my throat burned and I couldn’t breathe.
“Hey, buddy, take it easy,” the bartender called out to me.
I just kept pouring until there was nothing left in the bottle.
I stumbled out of the bar and thought briefly about getting behind the wheel. Even drunk, I knew better than that. I ordered an Uber on my phone—a spare phone I carried when I didn’t want the phone someone had turned into a listening device around—and waited on the hood of my car for the fifteen minutes it took him to arrive.
I lay on my back and stared up at the stars, trying not to think. It wasn’t hard, with the way I’d just pickled my brain. The stars were more beautiful than I remembered them being.
“You ordered an Uber?”
I sat up, eyeing the rough-looking guy waiting for me. He was about five foot nothing and round, tattoos creeping up his throat and around his ears. He had a long, dark beard that was probably the only properly groomed thing on his entire body. And he had a smile that looked more like the grimace of a man whose balls were in a vise.
I jumped down and climbed into the back of his surprisingly clean Prius.
The hum of the car was a little lulling as we moved through the streets of Houston. I stared out the window, watching familiar landmarks pass, each shrouded in darkness that seemed fitting to this night.
“Can we make a quick stop?” I asked, leaning forward against the front passenger seat.
“Where?”
I gestured toward the windshield. “Take a left up there. It’s just a few blocks down.”
He pulled to a stop at the curb in front of Dragon’s offices. I used my key to let myself in the front door, nodding to the night security as I tried to concentrate on my steps so that I wouldn’t stumble and alert him to the fact that I was drunk off my ass.
“Just forgot some papers upstairs.”
The guard nodded.
The elevator made my head spin. I was almost relieved when it stopped, but the spinning didn’t stop. I stumbled against the wall as I walked too quickly for my screwed up equilibrium as I made my way to the records room.
Waverly Cooper.
I had to search three time before I finally found the thin file. We kept almost everything on the computers, but we had paper backups of the things that were considered of upmost importance. Personnel files fell under that purview.
Waverly Elizabeth Cooper. Born February 18, 1986. Educated at Harvard, graduated with a degree in computer science. Briefly held a series of five jobs, mostly computer-software oriented, before Dragon hired her. Her response to the question of why she left each job: I grew bored.
There was no doubt in my mind that Waverly was brilliant. I didn’t need to see this file to know that. What I was interested in was the background check that Megan always insisted on running for each and every candidate for every job at Dragon.
I’d always wondered where Waverly’s money came from. She made a cool seventy thousand a year—during her time at Dragon. That could explain the silk sheets on her bed. The down comforter and down pillows. But it didn’t explain how she’d managed to be out of work for months and not feel pressured to find new employment. No one had that many savings.
But then, not everyone had written not just one, but ten separate smart phone apps that had gone viral. And not everyone was a silent partner on one of the most successful dating apps ever invented.
Waverly was worth millions. She didn’t have to work, at least not a nine to five job like the one she’d had at Dragon.
When asked why she wanted the job, Megan noted in her own handwriting that Waverly had expressed a desire to be challenged and thought that working for Dragon would challenge her..
She’d never been married, never had any children. No major medical issues.
But what did that really mean?
Why Dragon? There were dozens of security firms like ours in Houston alone. And several in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio. She could have gone anywhere. Why this one?
Was she looking for me? Was she part of this string of murders? Was she trying to avenge her father by turning my life upside down?
I was suddenly unsure of what I knew to be true.
I was not a man who liked being unsure.
Chapter 6
Hayden
“It’s four o’clock in the morning, Hayden,” Luke, Megan’s husband, said as he stood bleary eyed in the doorway of his house, watching me walk up the path toward him. His eyes narrowed, a frown darkening his already somewhat dark features. “Are you drunk?”
“I need to talk to Megan.”
“We have children. Do you know the security guard calling up here woke our daughter?”
“I’m sorry. Tell Samantha I’m sorry.”
Luke’s eyes moved wearily over me. “This had better be good,” he grumbled before turning and gesturing for me to enter the house.
Megan and Luke had bought this house not long after Samantha was born. She was four now, a little copy of her mother. They had a son, too, a two year old Luke absolutely adored. The perfect little family, the perfect little life. Sometimes it made me want to throw up because of how perfect it was.
Why wasn’t Megan as miserable as I was? Why hadn’t losing Sam ruined her life the way it did mine? They were best friends from
the time they were in high school. Naming her daughter after my lost love wasn’t enough. She should have been hurting the same way I was.
And then I hated myself for that thought. Megan had been through enough this last decade to destroy anyone. But she was strong. Unfailing. She would never give up.
“Hayden,” Megan said, stepping into the room as she tugged her bathrobe tighter around her waist. “What’s wrong?”
As the owner and CEO of Dragon, I should have called Megan the moment I was alerted to the attack against Amelia and Rowan. Realizing that it was connected to the copycat murders based on my parents’ deaths had thrown me for a loop that wasn’t made any better by Waverly’s confession.
Luke touched his wife’s arm and whispered in her ear. There was affection in her eyes as she looked up at him. I could see the silent communication happening between them, the concern flowing from him and the reassurance coming from her. They had one of those relationships that made all single people sick and all people in committed relationships that weren’t quite as intimate as they should be jealous as all hell. It annoyed me because I knew what Luke had put Megan through when he got himself mixed up in the rogue CIA agent disaster that Dragon had unraveled years ago. I knew his intentions had not always been pure. But Megan had forgiven him his poor decisions and who was I to criticize her for that?
Luke glanced at me once more, then disappeared up the stairs.
Megan came toward me as soon as Luke was gone, touching my arm lightly with her cool hand.
“Tell me you didn’t drive here.”
“No, Mother, I didn’t. I took an Uber.”
She looked me over a long second, then nodded. “Good.” She stepped back and perched on the arm of her couch. “So tell me what prompted this middle of the night visit.”
I didn’t even know where to start. It was all so complicated and my brain was still pickled in tequila. But I was here. I had to start.
DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series Page 80
