by Jen Talty
“Monty,” Cassandra whispered. She hovered over his body, cradling his cheek in her palm. “I’m so sorry to have put you in the middle of all this.”
“Call Dustin, now,” Kick said, swallowing the lump in his throat. She’d have time to deal with her emotions later. Right now, he needed her focused on something other than her friend, and he needed to make sure that some asshole wasn’t lingering around in the dark.
Cassandra set Kick’s phone on the back of the sofa. She leaned forward and gently closed Monty’s eyes. His body had turned cool. Bruises bubbled on the surface of his skin. Three relatively deep cuts lined his face and arms. “What did they do to you?”
“All clear,” Kick called.
The lights flickered in the family room. She blinked. The brightness blinded her for a couple of seconds. When her vision became clear, she swallowed a guttural sob. A couple of bags of rotten food were left on the floor near the rocking chair. Thick layers of dust lined every piece of furniture and with every breath, it coated her lungs like coal. “Your friend Dustin said Bear was on the way. Only ten minutes out and he called the locals.” Sadness filled her heart. Monty wasn’t doing fine. He’d allowed his hoarding and all his other issues to take control of his life.
“Bear won’t call your dad in the middle of the night. Not unless you were dead.”
“Maybe not. But the second the cops take my name, they will enjoy waking him up.” She had to face the music; she just hoped she was the one who got to tell her father before he found out another way.
Kick knelt by her side. “I’m really sorry about your friend.”
Tears stung the corners of her eyes. A gasp rumbled from deep in her gut. At one point in her life, she’d loved Monty with everything she was. If she was being honest, she still did. She’d wanted to get past his issues and always felt guilty that she couldn’t.
Glancing around at the family room with boxes of papers piled up against the walls, books and magazines cluttering all the furniture, and a pile of takeout containers littering the hallway, she wondered how he could have been happy at all.
“He’s dead because of me.” She jumped to her feet as she tucked Kick’s gun into her pants.
“That’s mine,” he said with an amused tone.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“No worries.” He holstered the weapon back on his ankle. “Why do you say his death is on you?”
She turned, facing the picture window. She knew she could trust anyone at the Brotherhood Protectors, but the more he knew, the more Bear and Swede would know, which meant her father and mother would also know, and she didn’t want to worry them. “It’s complicated.”
“Of course it is,” Kick said. “Who is he to you?”
“My ex-boyfriend,” she admitted. “I haven’t seen him since the end of college.”
“Why were you really coming here?” Kick rested his hand on the small of her back. “To see Monty?”
She jumped. “I told you.”
“You gave me the PG version. Besides, the cops are going to ask you all these questions, and they can be relentless, so I’m just trying to prepare you.” He gave her a little nudge. “Let’s step outside. This is a crime scene, and we don’t want to taint anything.”
“I know exactly how cops can be.” She turned, taking two paces toward the back of the house before Kick snagged her arm. She tried to yank it free, but he held it tighter. “I need to get Monty’s computers.”
“What computers? I’ve been through the entire house. There aren’t any electronics except for a television in the bedroom, which is worse than this room, by the way.”
She ignored the latter part of the statement, since it was obvious, but she saw no reason to dwell on the way Monty lived. “Monty is an ethical hacker. He’s got to have a few computers around this house. Knowing him, he’s built a hidden room somewhere. We need to check the closets.”
“The cops might be a little slow in getting here, but it won’t be long, and we can’t—”
“I don’t care what you do.” She jaunted her chin, catching his glare. His dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. “But I’m going to look for his computer. You can join me or go outside. The choice is yours.”
“Fine,” he ground out. “But if I’m going to put my career on the line looking for something here, then you have to give me something in return.”
“What do you want?” She stepped over a pile of old food, covering her mouth and nose. When she’d first met Monty, he had some issues. He struggled with making friends, but she always thought it was because he was so introverted. However, the more she got to know him, the more she realized his problems cut deep to his core.
“Tell me the truth.”
“Okay.” She pulled open the pantry door in the kitchen and started knocking on the back wall. “I hired him to hack into my brother’s and his wife’s email. The last couple of weeks before my brother’s death, he seemed off. Nervous. I was worried he was back on drugs from all the pressure of playoffs, but now I think it was something else.” She tapped a few more times, finding a hollow sound. “What’s behind the kitchen?”
“An office filled with more crap.” Kick stood in the middle of the kitchen with his hands on his hips and a scrunched up face. “You shouldn’t be touching anything. This place is a germ tank.”
“It’s just dirt,” she said, trying not to breathe. She raced around the corner, skidding to a stop at the doorway to the office. Her heart sank as she stared at stacks of papers, magazines, and books pushed up against the wall. Old Tupperware bowls lined the floor. It smelled like the inside of hockey gloves. The kind of smell you would never get out, no matter how hard you tried.
She studied the design of the kitchen and the office. “There is too much space between the two rooms. Do you see that?” She pointed.
“Yep. And there is a closet at the other end.” Kick carefully stepped over the garbage. He pulled open the door. “I need a pair of gloves.”
“Why?”
“I’m not touching this shit. It’s gross.”
“Oh, Christ. Grow a pair.” She shoved him aside and started tossing out a couple of coats. “Bingo,” she said. She busted forward, tripping over the shit on the closet floor. Her body lurched forward. She flung her warms wildly but couldn’t keep her balance.
“I’ve gotcha,” Kick said as he yanked her by the back of her shirt, slamming her back into his body before he lifted her feet off the ground.
“Put me down,” she said behind a clenched jaw.
He laughed. “Yes, ma’am.” Setting her feet on the ground, he twisted her body and stared at her with that damned smile again.
She had to press her hands against his chest to steady herself. She lifted her gaze and almost lost her balance again, no thanks to his sexy, come-hither, dark eyes. “All you had to do was catch me, not pick me up.”
“I’ll remember that for the next time.”
There wouldn’t be a second time, but for now, they needed to hurry. “We need to open the hidden door in this closet.”
“Stand back.” He took out his gun and pointed it at the door.
“I like the way you think.”
“It’s only because I don’t want to touch anything in this joint, and I’m in a hurry to get the hell out. I can feel the grime clinging to my pores.”
She couldn’t really blame the man for how he felt, but it still bothered her because for Monty’s entire life, he’d been judged. She took four steps back and winced, preparing for the lock to fly off the handle when he pulled the trigger.
Pop!
The door flung open, smashing against the wall with a bang.
She leaned into the closet. “Small room, but it does the trick.” She waved her hand across her face, hoping to keep the dust from settling in her nose. Five computer screens lined a wall under a desk that sported a closed laptop. She stepped over another pile of garbage. She’d seen shows on hoarding. She didn’t want to know what the bathroom
looked like.
Her heart ached. No way could Monty have been happy here. What the hell was he going to say to her when she arrived about the condition in which he chose to spend his days? What shocked her even more was that he was going to let her see it.
She unplugged the computer.
“What are you doing?”
“When I spoke to Monty before the damned SUV broke down, he said he’d been successful in cracking the passwords, but he wouldn’t discuss it over the phone. I need to know what was in those emails.”
“We’ll tell the cops what to look for.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, her heart thumping against her chest in an erratic beat. “And we don’t have time to argue about it. I’m taking it, and if you don’t want that, you’re going to have to stop me.”
He cocked his head and grinned. “I could easily do that, but you should be more concerned about the security cameras that are around this place. If he’s recording with them, then the cops will find out that you took it, and that wouldn’t be good for you.”
“Take out the camera. If Monty was taping versus watching live, then it would be on his computer. He was paranoid, so he wouldn’t let anyone else near a recording of his place.”
“Paranoid people generally have a backup of everything, and based on this equipment, I would bet there is hard drive or—”
She scanned the desk and opened up the drawers, gathering five thumb drives and two external drives. “I think that’s it.” She shoved past him. Not looking back, she rushed toward the pickup truck. Sirens blared in the distance, increasing in volume with every second.
“How are you going to explain a missing computer to the cops?” Kick asked as he reached inside his glove box, pulling out a bottle of sanitizer. He squeezed a big glob into his palms and rubbed vigorously, glaring at her with dark, evil eyes. He stood a good ten inches taller than her five-foot-five frame. With only scant inches between them, she had to crane her head to catch his menacing glare.
“Whoever killed him must have took it.” She smiled sweetly, batting her eyelashes. “I was just coming to visit an old boyfriend for comfort after my dear brother died.”
“No one is going to buy you were seeking comfort in the arms of a man who lived like that.”
“Don’t be so judgmental. You didn’t know him; I did. He was a passionate lover—”
“That, my dear, is too much information.” He arched a brow. “Taking the computer would be obstruction of justice and could hinder them in finding out who killed Monty.”
“It’s a risk I need to take. If I find something, I’ll share it with the police.” She stuffed the thin laptop and accessories into her bag, zipping it closed only seconds before red flashing lights filled the sky as a state trooper’s vehicle made the turn down the road. “I can’t stop you from ratting me out. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.” She leaned against the truck, folding her arms across her chest. In her years as a parole officer, she’d seen her fair share of criminals, all claiming they hadn’t done it. Or there were mitigating circumstances. But her all-time favorite was the one where her client told her they had no idea what they had been involved in.
They always knew. They either turned a blind eye, hoping being a bystander wouldn’t get them into trouble, or they were part of whatever crime from the get-go.
He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m going to go along with this as long as I have your word that we look at that thing together and you tell me what’s really going on. Otherwise, I let the cops cuff you where you can spend the night in jail.”
She jerked her head. “Fine,” she whispered. She hated making that deal, but she really wasn’t in the mood to lose her job and getting arrested would be an automatic termination the second she was fingerprinted.
Chapter 3
“The cops didn’t buy her story,” Kick said, sitting on the back of his truck bed. He held his cowboy hat, twisting the rim between his fingers. He didn’t care that she lied about why she was visiting Monty. But taking the computer, that went way beyond his willingness to bend the rules.
“At least they don’t think she killed him,” Bear said as he tossed his car keys in the air, catching them seconds later.
“That’s only because of us. Had she been here alone, they might be bringing her in for questioning.” Kick watched as Cassandra pushed from the tree she’d been leaning against. She made her way across the yard in his direction.
“We can look at that from a different angle since it was your gun that blew off that lock, which means we wouldn’t be harboring potential evidence from a murder investigation.” Bear missed his keys, and they hit the ground with a rattle and a thud. “Shit.”
“I picked up all the shells and whoever fired at us had the same gun.”
“Doesn’t make me feel any better.” Bear leaned against the side of the vehicle, facing the house. “That said, I’d rather our team check things out first. This family has been through a lot. Her parents are good people, and I’d like to keep Cassandra out of trouble.”
“My father has you brainwashed.” Cassandra jumped up on the tailgate. “I’m a big girl, and I know what I’m doing, so stop being a nervous Nellie. We both know you would have done the same thing if you were in my shoes,” she said.
“Just because you told them you’re a parole officer, doesn’t mean you get a pass on following the law, and those detectives don’t believe your story. That could be a problem,” Bear said.
“I’ve got a few ex-cops as clients. Trust me, I know. But I was pretty convincing. They have no reason to suspect tampering or taking anything, at least right now.”
“You’re a parole officer?” Kick asked, shaking his head. “I guess I’m not surprised. But you know you could lose your job for this, right?” He kept his voice low, even though the detectives and state trooper were in the house and not in earshot. But still, best to be safe.
“I’m not stupid,” she mumbled.
“Reckless. That’s what you are.” Kick rolled his neck. Never once in his career as a military man had he bent the rules. If he was given an order, he followed it. The only time he ever went out on a limb was when human life had been on the line, and that one time had nearly cost him his life.
It did cost him his career.
Coincidences weren’t the norm and even when they did happen, if someone dug deep enough, they’d find a connection. The fact that he and Cassandra showed up shortly after Monty had been murdered would be on the cops’ radar until the case was solved.
“When your apartment is ransacked days after your brother’s death and on the same day, you get some weird letter from your dead brother, followed by the death of your ex-boyfriend, whom you reached out to for help,” she poked Kick in the center of his chest, “you might do some things that go against whatever moral code you hold yourself up to.”
“Christ. You didn’t tell me half of this.” Kick rubbed the spot her finger had nicked. Hank had told him from the very second he’d been hired that each assignment created a new set of rules, and it would be up to Kick to define them in order to do his job. At first, Kick had fought that concept, always asking for an order and needing to follow in fear if he didn’t, it would cost someone their life.
A year later, it was still difficult for him make new rules, or bend the ones already in place, but he’d started to understand why it was necessary in the world of protecting people.
“Why would I?” She jerked her head back, staring at him with daggers shooting from her dark orbs.
“Because I’m helping you, that’s why. You should have told me the second things got out of hand.” He shot back. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman kept something important from him. While this wasn’t anything like what Eliza Jane had done, it still reminded him why other than a good time, a relationship with a woman was simply out of the question.
“Right. Because dumping all my shit while bullets are flying is the right time.�
� She had a point, but he could do without the sarcasm.
The night had been too long. In about three hours, the sun would be glowing over the mountaintops. God, he hoped he had an assignment. He needed to walk away from this situation. He didn’t regret giving the woman a hand, but he’d prefer not to let his thoughts linger with her any longer than necessary.
“Children, that’s enough bickering,” Bear said gruffly. He waved his cell over his shoulder. “I’ve got texts from Hank, Swede, and Arny.”
“Wonderful. Just what I need. Daddy to the rescue.” Cassandra rolled onto her back and clasped her hands behind her head. The moonlight caught the whites of her fiery eyes.
“He knows you can handle yourself.” Bear pushed himself from the truck and faced them. “He’s headed to Hank’s place. Swede and I will meet them there, where we will be doing some research of our own. You two,” Bear waggled his finger between them, “are going to a safe house Hank secured on Holter Lake.”
“Excuse me?” Kick’s voice screeched like a schoolboy who’d just been told he had to empty the garbage.
“Arny just hired us, and Hank assigned you to protect—”
“No fucking way.” Cassandra bolted upright, leaping from the back of the truck. “First, I’m not a child. Second, I don’t need a flipping bodyguard, thank you very much. And finally, I’m not staying in some random cabin, sitting around twiddling my thumbs, waiting for something bad to happen.”
“I’m just the messenger. You can take it up with your father tomorrow afternoon when he heads over to the cabin.” Bear reached into his pocket, pulling out a set of keys. “Here come the detectives. Once they say we can leave, I’m out of here, and I suggest the two of you do as you’re told.” He pointed at Kick. “This would be one of those times where following an order is a good thing.”
Kick opened his mouth to argue but snapped it shut when one of the detectives stepped behind his truck.
“I need to get all of your contact information. Is everyone staying local?” the detective asked.
