The captain paused a moment, turning back to his filing cabinet and returning with a single sheet of paper. It was a shipping manifest. Manila to San Francisco.
“Nathaniel Hale prefers to do his business in person, Sandra. That’s the manifest, and that,” he said, pointing to a dark smudge on the bottom right of the photocopied sheet, “that is Mr. Hale’s thumbprint, according to forensics.”
My whole body felt numb. “When did this happen?” I asked, my hands shaking as I stared at the document. The captain didn’t have to answer, because my eyes swept immediately to the date at the bottom of the page.
Yesterday… It fucking happened yesterday!
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear this piece of paper to shreds and pretend it never happened. Instead, I let my mind wander back to the last 24 hours.
“Come back to bed…” I’d whispered, my body still shaking from the Earth-shattering orgasm he’d given me. I was positively giddy, grinning like a fool as I watched Nathan’s half-naked body move through the bedroom, his muscles bunching and coiling like a mass of serpents writhing just beneath his skin. I wanted to watch him crawl toward me on the bed, wanted to see his hard body ripple as he pinned me down again. I wanted to return to the nirvana he sent me to every time he touched me.
“I’d love to, but I have a bit of work to do. Money doesn’t make itself, you know,” he had replied, smiling ever so smugly before walking to huge and insanely opulent bathroom and starting the shower.
I had pouted then, and briefly even considered joining him whether he wanted me to or not. But in the end, I had settled back against the pillows and sighed, stretching my arms above my head as I basked in the afterglow of our union and drifted to sleep. When I awoke, Nathan was gone…
I blinked away the memories, as well as a few tears threatening to overflow past my lashes. The asshole had done it right under my nose.
I took slow, deep breaths, willing myself not to vomit all over the manifest and the Captain’s shoes. I sat back, hand over my mouth as the paper dangled limply from my fingers. I felt hollow inside and out. When I lifted my head to look at the Captain again, I barely even felt the motion.
“Unfortunately, there’s more,” he continued. “We don’t think Mr. Hale and Mr. Wallace were business partners on this.” He paused. Maybe it was for dramatic effect, but I wanted to think better of him. I chose to believe he hesitated because it was difficult to break the news. “We have reason to believe they were competitors.”
For a long moment, I just sat there, letting those words echo in my head. Competitors. So, Nathan wasn’t just complicit out of willful ignorance—he was actively trying to oust Wallace as the most prolific trafficker in the western hemisphere?
Finally, feeling returned to my body, but it wasn’t a good one. Boiling heat prickled my skin from the inside out as I looked up at the captain and said:
“What can I do?”
I’d been betrayed. I’d been used and lied to by the one man I thought I could trust. I’d helped him secure his spot at the top of a criminal enterprise. All the little puzzle pieces had fallen into place, thanks to me.
And the picture they formed was about as damning as it got.
“You’re already done the dirty work. Now, you’re going to stay close to him, Detective. You’re going to do whatever it takes to hide your true intentions, and you’re going to get me access to his computer.”
“You, as in you personally, Captain?” I asked, staring at the bear of a man. There were a lot of words and phrases that came to mind when I looked at Captain Pierce, but “technologically-savvy” wasn’t one of them.
“We still have a rat, Sandra. Officer Kimball was compromised, and now he’s dead. We have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes. The entire operation needs to stay quiet until we have the dirt we need on this asshole. Don’t let his boyish charm fool you, though. Nathaniel Hale is smart, and he may be dangerous. Letting you go back there is a risk, but if you don’t, there might be thirty-six more women at the bottom of the ocean, and that’s going to be on you.”
None of this made sense. How could I have been so wrong? How could I have let the needs of my body get in the way of my morality? I became a cop to serve and protect, not to let myself fall for the sweet-talking billionaire with a dubious history.
“What if he’s innocent, Captain?”
I was grasping at straws and I knew it. This was the “denial” phase of grieving, it seemed. I’d seen suspects’ families do it all the time. Nobody wanted to believe that their wife, their brother, or their child could be a killer. But if there was even a chance that this might not be what it seemed, then I had to look for that angle.
Nathaniel Hale represented everything I’d always hoped for. It wasn’t the money I was after, or the lifestyle he could afford. It was the feelings I had when I was with him. He made me feel… whole. Was that just another lie?
“If he’s innocent, I want to know who’s pulling the strings. Wallace is in jail and O’Rourke is dead, but the wheels are still in motion. Somebody is bringing those women over, and you know damn well what will happen to them when they get here.”
“What do I tell him?”
“You tell him you quit.”
I nodded. It was a sound plan. That was what I’d originally come here to do, after all. “When do we get started?” I asked, steeling myself against the tide of my emotions.
“Pick up your badge. Take your gun. We get started right now, Detective,” Captain Pierce replied.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I stood quietly in front of the huge oaken doors at the front of Nathan’s mansion, but I knew something was wrong even before he opened them. His private security team, usually quiet and more or less invisible, was out in force. They seemed to be scouring the exterior of the building, although after a quick glance in my direction, they completely ignored my presence.
Relax. Innocent before proven guilty. Don’t just let yourself fly off the handle, I told myself, trying to calm my nerves.
It didn’t make sense. Wallace was in jail. O’Rourke was dead. Any Paddie left would be too busy stuffing their pockets with the leftovers to bother with retaliation. Nathan didn’t need this kind of security presence, unless there was another, more sinister reason they were here.
One of the men walked past, sweeping a long antenna through the air, the business-end attached to a strange little electronic box. He barely even acknowledged my presence.
When Nathan finally opened the door, he looked different. On the courthouse steps he had seemed a happy man, a braggart and a lover. Now, he carried a look that was anything but calm. I’d watched him stand up and allow himself to be shot. The last thing I’d expected to ever see on his face was fear.
Was it possible to be sexy and scared? Nathan pulled it off. Sort of.
“Get inside,” he whispered, pulling me through the door and shutting it behind us. I could hear a mechanical whirring and a high-pitched electronic whine, and I glanced back to see expensive looking locks sliding into place behind me. They looked better suited for a bank vault than a front door.
“What’s going on, Nathan? You’re scaring me,” I said, my hand instinctively moving toward my purse and the piece of death-dealing metal within. Before I could go any further, Nathan had grabbed my arm and dragged me through the living room, past the kitchen, and around near a staircase. Hitting a piece of the wall paneling, I watched in silence as it slid away, revealing a heavy metal door. It swung open, and I could see the three enormous metal bolts that had retracted from the wall.
“Get inside,” Nathan said fiercely. I complied, despite every instinct in my body telling
me to get the hell out of here. A moment later, the man I had come to both love and fear in such a short amount of time was standing before me, the huge metal bolts closing off any hope of escape.
“What are you doing, Sandra?” Nathan asked, staring down at the gun I’d pulled out into the open. “Put that thing away.”
“You just locked me in a dark room and you look like something has you scared to death, Nathan. You tell me what the hell is going on right now and I’ll think about putting this away,” I replied, my hand shaking ever so slightly.
What the hell was he doing? I stepped backward as he moved toward me, one step, then another, until I was flush against the cold metal wall of our makeshift prison.
“Stop. I’m warning you, Nathan!” I shouted, holding the gun up. He stepped closer, reaching out. Every part of me wanted to pull the trigger. Here he was, the man I thought I could trust, ready to show me how foolish I’d been… But I couldn’t do it. His hand wrapped the barrel of the gun and pushed it aside as he swept me up into his arms.