Cuffed by His Charm (Dirty Little Secrets 4)

McKenna

My world is slowly breaking apart, piece by piece. I want to know where Gabe’s gone to, what he’s talking about, asking him to answer all the things that I don’t know. But I know that if it’s about me, Gabe will tell me. My mind wants to circle back to our time in the club, remembering just how he touched me, how he made me feel. But Evan’s there, the cold bucket of water, keeping my thoughts frozen in fear.

Besides, I have other things to think about. Here, I’m surrounded by people that shouldn’t help me, yet are, and the emotions that are running through me are breaking me down. I feel like I’m being loyal to the wrong people, and the confusion of that is sinking in. On top of that, it’d be so easy to get lost in the icy fear of what those men are doing to Evan. But he brought this on himself, and right now, I’m as scared for him as I am angry.

“They want something.”

I blink into the present, find Alex staring at her computer screen. “Pardon?” I ask.

“These people that took your brother . . .” She turns to me, dressed in a black T-shirt with blackwood security across her chest and tight dark-blue skinny jeans and black flats. “They want something from him.”

I scoot my chair closer toward her. “What makes you say that?”

“Because why else would they take him?” She pauses, eyes searching mine, then she rises and moves to a whiteboard that’s hanging on the wall next to her workstation. “Okay, let’s talk this out so we can make sense of it.” She takes a black dry-erase marker off the table. “Let’s go with the theory that he owes money since that’s what makes sense.”

“Do you usually go with what makes sense?” I ask.

She glances over her shoulder at me and nods. “It’s rare that something comes out of left field.” She uncaps the marker then writes “money” and draws a circle around it. “If someone owed you money and you wanted that money, and you were a thug, what would you do?”

“Beat them until they paid up.” I offer the logical assumption.

She nods and writes “beat up” then draws an arrow to the circle. “My thoughts exactly. They would beat the living snot out of him so that he paid.” She circles “money” again. “But they took him, instead of just leaving him there. Sure, they roughed him up a little bit, but they didn’t beat him to a point where they were saying, ‘pay us or you’re dead.’ ”

She pauses, draws in a deep breath, then from “money” she draws another arrow and a question mark. “Their motive here wasn’t about making him pay them.” She taps the tip of the marker onto the question mark. “Which makes me believe that there has to be more going on.”

Hand on her hip, she circled the question mark repeatedly. “This right here, this is their motive behind taking your brother. Everything else makes sense, but”—she points back to the monitor showing one of the guy’s faces—“them taking him like this doesn’t add up.”

I stare at the words on the board and shake my head. “But what could it be?”

She shrugs, eyebrows drawn over her intense eyes. “That’s the very question we need to answer. I mean, the bottom line is they didn’t kill him.” She adds another arrow and then writes “has money.” “The logical reason for not killing him is that your brother has money somewhere that they were going to get.”

I’m reeling at how easily she talks about my brother’s death, but I realize she’s right. Something’s missing in all this. It’s like there’s this big hole we’re not seeing. Which of course could be because this isn’t about money at all, but knowing my brother I’d say that’s unlikely.

“But,” Alex adds before I can voice that thought, “if he had money somewhere, then why isn’t he back home?” She puts an “X” through “has money.” “It can’t be that, so again we’re back to the question of wondering why they took him.” She circles the question mark again.

“I take it that’s the frustrating part?”

She agrees with a nod, tapping the bottom of the marker against her lip. “It is.” With a huff, she replaces the cap on the marker. “But hopefully soon, we’ll at least know who we are dealing with, then we can go from there.”

“You sound pretty sure you’ll find out who they are,” I say.

“That’s because I am sure.” She points to the monitor where the face of the guy on the left of Evan is shown. “Right now, I’m running face recognition software against . . . err . . .” She pauses and grins. “Well, against some databases that I have gained access to.”

I note the sparkle in her eye. “Is this legal?”

“Do you want to find your brother?” she asks plainly.

“Yes.”

“Then don’t ask that question. We have the means to find Evan, some legal, some not, but in the end, we’re not hurting anyone with the information we’re using. So, really does it matter?”

I stare at her, realizing for the first time ever in my life there is a gray area when it comes to the law. She’s right—even if she is breaking the law, which I guess she is by likely hacking into local law enforcement systems, or worse, CIA and FBI databases, she’s doing so to find a guy who doesn’t deserve to die just because he has a gambling addiction. In the end, she’s working to take out the bad guys. At the same time, I realize that Ryder’s right, too—I don’t want to involve the police because I don’t want to be shut out of this investigation. Being a part of it makes me at least feel like I’m doing something to help find Evan. “No, you’re right,” I agree. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Excellent.” She smiles, focusing back on her computer monitor.

I inhale deeply, glancing at the screen; now that I know what she’s doing, it brings a little hope. “I really can’t thank you all enough,” I tell her, straight from the heart. “Honestly, what you’re doing for me . . . I’m so grateful.”

“You don’t need to thank me,” she says softly, giving me a sheepish look. “It’s my job.”