Possession (Steel Brothers Saga 3)

“Okay, good.”

“And what’s this about your boss missing?”

“Yeah. It’s the weirdest thing. He left a little bit early Friday, to take his grandkids somewhere. And then I was almost sure I saw him talking to Nico in the hallway at the hospital around midnight that night. But in a flash they were both gone, so I could have been mistaken. I haven’t seen either one of them since.”

I stiffened again. Larry Wade. I knew very little about him, other than he’d come to town and been appointed city attorney when the old one retired. But if he was hanging with Nico Kostas… My spine went cold.

Jade went on, “Anyway, the mayor is pissed that nobody can find him. In fact, he made me acting city attorney for the time being.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

She let out a laugh. “I’ll say. There will be no more bending of ethics with me in charge.”

“Well, it was his bending of ethics that got me off with Colin.”

“True enough. But Talon, he’s a sleaze—” She stopped abruptly, as if there was something else she wanted to say but thought better of it.

“And?” I pushed.

“And…what?”

“Never mind.”

As curious as I was, she hadn’t pushed me on things I wasn’t ready to talk about, so I would not push her.

Then she jerked upward into a sitting position. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“You don’t think Colin’s disappearance and Larry’s disappearance are related, do you?”

“I don’t see why they would be. Colin disappeared way before Larry.”

“It’s just that…something is so weird about all of this. Why would Larry just fall off the edge of the earth? He had a good thing going as city attorney. Yeah, he’s a sleaze ball, but as far as I could tell, he had a great relationship with his grandkids. Why would he leave all of that behind?”

“I don’t know, blue eyes. But I can give you the name of a few really good PIs if you want to investigate it.”

“I have everything at my disposal at the city attorney’s office. I can investigate it myself.” She lay back down, snuggling into my arms. “Talon, will you stay with me tonight?”

And I stiffened once more. She was asking me for the one thing I couldn’t give her. “Blue eyes, I can’t. And you know why.”

* * *

My guts were churning as I gripped the arms of the hunter-green chair. I couldn’t stop thinking about Jade’s mother’s boyfriend, the man named Nico Kostas. I had Googled him when I returned home.

The Internet held precious little about the man, considering he was supposedly a politician.

“You seem a little more agitated than usual today,” Dr. Carmichael remarked.

I didn’t know where to begin. “Remember the tattoo? The image of a phoenix that Jade wanted to get permanently inked on her body?”

She nodded.

“I found something out last night. She didn’t just find the image in a book. She saw it on a person. On a person’s forearm.”

Dr. Carmichael widened her green eyes. “Whose?”

“Her mother’s boyfriend. His name is Nico Kostas, and he’s supposedly a senator from Iowa, but he’s lying. There’s no record of him anywhere.” I trembled. “I met him. I shook his motherfucking hand.”