Holding on Tighter (Wicked Lovers 12)

that I hope his penis is blistered for life so he can’t screw some other unsuspecting businesswoman. The second phone call will be to my sperm donor to let him know that I don’t need him, I’ve never needed him, and—in case he forgot—he can go fuck himself.”

“Perfect.” Heath beamed proudly at her, and Jolie wasn’t just thrilled for Betti but for them.

Together they would have a bright future. And having such an understanding husband who was strong enough not to be threatened by her success, who didn’t need to meddle because he believed she could accomplish her goals all on her own . . . That meant everything to her.

“Isn’t it?” She couldn’t stop smiling. Success felt fabulous. It would also be the best revenge. Richard Gardner didn’t matter now. Carrington Quinn would never matter again.

Screw feeling vindicated. Jolie felt free.

Peeking around the office, Heath cupped her shoulders and turned her around. Everyone else was either away from their desks or had their heads buried in something. “Go.” He gave her ass a light swat. “You can tell me everything you’ve got planned tonight after a great dinner. Naked.”

With a laugh, Jolie left to find Karis and the rest of the staff and let them know they apparently had a savior.

***

EARLY the following morning, the buzzing of Heath’s phone woke him from a sound sleep. He groaned and rolled over, relaxing instantly when he found Jolie beside him, barely stirring with the intrusive vibration of his mobile.

He’d awakened her more than once last night to make love to her again. Not being able to get enough of her didn’t surprise him. He loved sex. They were newlyweds. She was fascinating. What prompted him to reach for her again and again was the closeness. It wasn’t merely growing but multiplying so quickly that every time he touched her, he found it harder to catch his breath. They were entangled on every level, entwined all the way down to their souls.

Bloody hell, he sounded ridiculous, bleating on about matters of the heart. But that didn’t change the fact that every moment with her only had him falling deeper in love.

The phone buzzed again, and he groped for it with a groan. He’d ten times rather be awakened by his passion for his wife than whoever wanted to disturb their peace.

“What?” he barked.

“It’s Sean. Sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner. This baby is exhausting. Why does he only sleep two hours at a time?”

Despite the dire reason for the voicemail he’d left Sean the other day, Heath grinned, rolling out of bed and tossing on his jeans. “You sound beyond weary.”

“Because I am. Callie is doing all she can but she needs rest. She’s got a fever we’re watching. Thorpe and I are trying to change diapers and understand swaddling. We’re walking Asher, talking and cooing to him, taking turns sleeping so we can care for him . . . Fuck, I should have paid more attention when the Santiago brothers told me how difficult parenting an infant was.”

Despite how doggedly tired the man sounded, Heath still envied him. “He’s a beautiful baby.”

“Amazing. Watching Callie give birth was something I’ll never forget and I wouldn’t trade it for all the sleep in the world.”

That’s what Heath suspected. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you. But I didn’t call to bitch about needing a nap. I finally got some info back on the street cam footage. Does the name Jim Dulin mean anything to you?”

“No.” He frowned as he headed for the coffeemaker. “Should it?”

“He’s your burglar. By the way, he’s not the guy who’s been hitting Betti’s neighborhood businesses, either. They caught that guy breaking into a Condom Sense store last night.”

“I’ll bet he wasn’t stealing computers from them.”

Sean laughed. “No. Anyway, Jim Dulin is a thug for hire with a rap sheet so long if he wound it around a cardboard husk of toilet paper, it would be an extra jumbo roll. Lots of burglary and trespassing, some B and E, and assault. Aggravated robbery, of course. Unlawful possession of a firearm.”

“Is there such a charge in Texas?”

“If you’re a convicted felon. He also had some army training as a sniper back in the day.”

Making it entirely possible he’d been the one who had tried to shoot Jolie. “Damn it.”

“I don’t think he’s had time to burrow too deep underground. The police are trying to track down his last known address but I worked an angle and came up with this.” He rattled off a street number and name. “Dulin was last seen there yesterday. It’s in a seedy part of town. Surprise, surprise. It’s a rent-by-the-week joint.”

“Thanks. I’ll start there. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. I once risked everything to keep Callie alive. I know how that worry feels. I hope you find this guy fast.”

They rang off, and Heath returned to the bedroom to find his wife rolling over and stretching. “Who was that?”

He explained. “I’m going to go over there and see what I can find. Stay with Cutter. He’ll take you and Karis to the office. Unless I could persuade you to stay here and work today?”

“Can’t do it. I’m the boss. I’ve got a staff to lead and a business to run.”

“I knew you would say that.” Heath sighed.

“Do you think there’s any chance Monday’s shooting was an accident or a fluke or—”

“Honestly, no. I wish it had been. I would sleep more and worry less. Remember what I said, stay with Cutter.” He bent to kiss her. “I won’t be gone long. Be a good girl today so I can treat you like a very bad girl tonight.”

When he winked, she laughed. He loved that sight. Jolie had had so little to laugh about in her life.

“You got it.” Jolie grabbed his arm, looking at him with troubled eyes. “Be safe.”

“Of course.” He kissed her forehead.

Heath didn’t spare the time for a shower. He just shoved on the rest of his clothes, had a quick exchange with Cutter about the situation, then hopped on his bike.

The morning air bit his skin as he traveled to the address Sean had given him. It was only a few miles away but it might as well have been a whole world. Prostitutes milled around, most leaving the motel after what was probably a debauched evening of johns and drugs. Junkies were passed out on the concrete stairs leading to the upper floors, seemingly oblivious to the morning chill and the noisy traffic on the nearby street. Management looked the other way, as evidenced by the big tattooed guy in a rumpled dress shirt wiping his bald head with a sweat towel as he ambled from the office to a beat-up truck at the edge of the lot, ignoring the carnage around him.

Heath shook his head. How did one wind up here, serving the dregs of society with no hope for the future?

That could have been him, he realized. If he hadn’t pulled himself out of his rage, hadn’t forced himself to pick up and move on. He would have stopped caring and merely kept subsisting day to day, hoping life took him someplace where he could disappear because nothing mattered anymore.

Thankfully, he’d persisted. Or he would never have met Jolie.

Heath headed up the littered staircase. An old man was drinking a bottle of cheap wine as he urinated off the side of the balcony, onto someone’s car below. A hooker who looked old beyond her youth buried her face in shadow as she passed, but that didn’t hide the bruising. Even if she needed his interference, she wouldn’t appreciate it.

He scowled and forged ahead, locating the room number Sean had given him. Drapes drawn. No signs of movement inside.

He found a tired woman in her forties shoving a housekeeping cart from door to door as if she were pushing a boulder uphill.

“A moment, please?” he asked.

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “What’chu want?”

“I’m looking for a missing person,” he improvised.

And it was true in a sense. According to Sean, no one had seen Jim Dulin for about twenty-four hours.

“I can’t he

lp you. You’ll have to talk to Eddie, the day manager.”

He would prefer to avoid management. Besides, this woman would benefit far more from his desperation. “Are you sure?” He pulled out a hundred dollars. “I simply need to peek into a room and see if I can find my missing someone.”

“You a cop?” She scowled.

“Private eye.” Of a sort. “I have a very concerned client.”

She spied the money, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You tryin’ to get me fired?”

“Not at all. If you help me, I help you.” He extended the money. “Your boss will never know and you will never hear from me again.”

She looked around, then snatched the money from his hand, tucking it in the kerchief she had wrapped around her head. “What room?”

He whispered the number. “I only need a few minutes.”

“I keep the master key on the chain hanging from my belt loop.” Without moving her head, she cast her gaze down clandestinely. “If you was to swipe it, I might not notice for a few minutes since I’ll be restocking my cart.”

“Excellent. And because my fingers are slippery, I’m sure I’ll drop it just outside that room where you’ll easily find it.”

She acknowledged him with a nod and walked away slowly. Heath thanked a bit of his misspent youth because he’d learned to pickpocket for fun. Relieving the maid of her room key and snagging a pair of latex gloves from the cart was a breeze.

Clinging to the shadows, he made his way to Dulin’s room and let himself in.

He knew something was wrong instantly. Despite the air conditioning being on full blast, the atmosphere was too still. No one rushed forward to ask why the hell he’d barged in. No one lay on the beds. The shower wasn’t running. Nothing stirred.

Heath knew what death felt like—and it had come to visit here recently.

He crept through the room, past the second of the queen beds. There, wedged between the mattress and the wall lay the body of a man in his thirties. His face was white, waxy. Blood, probably from a bullet wound in the back of his head, pooled into the dirty, patterned carpet.

Just looking at the state of the body, the guy had probably been dead somewhere between eight and twelve hours. The killer had turned the AC on high so the decomposing body wouldn’t smell right away but the stench was beginning to pervade the room now.

Grimacing, Heath thrust on the latex gloves and bent to the body. This was no theft gone wrong. The wallet in his back pocket still had a few hundred dollars tucked inside. And a driver’s license. He was, indeed, James Dulin. The picture and description matched.

Damn it, he could no longer ask the petty criminal questions about why he’d broken into Betti and whether he’d been the one to shoot at Jolie. The fact that Dulin had been murdered was unsettling enough. Maybe it was a coincidence that the man who had been paid to steal Jolie’s computer, then later her life, had been killed himself.

During his years in MI5, Heath had found that coincidences were never quite as random as they first appeared.

He searched the rest of the body. A .22 sat in a holster. He’d shoved a few bullets in his pocket. Anything else he might have had in there was conveniently missing.

In his shoe, Dulin had tucked a thin key. Heath studied it, holding it up to the weak sunlight leaking under the limp blackout drapes that had seen better days. It wasn’t to a safe deposit or a locker facility. It was smaller, maybe opening a suitcase.

Wedged under Dulin’s hip, he found the guy’s phone, as if it had been in his hand and fallen onto the floor just before he landed on top of it. He didn’t have the mobile password protected, which told Heath that he hadn’t used it much. Sure enough, he only had two people in his contacts, Barbara and Addison. The first was his sister, based on the information in the contact folder. Addison was his daughter, maybe seven or eight, living with her aunt Barbara. All the calls to and from the phone were to those two mobile numbers. The few pictures he had were of them both.

He sighed. The family left behind were often hit the hardest because they frequently knew their relative was a criminal but death finally dashed their hopes their loved one would turn his life around.

Heath tucked the phone under the body again, approximately where he’d found it. When investigators encountered Dulin’s body, they’d want to contact the next of kin. That would be the easiest means to find them. But this man couldn’t have operated without a connection to his shady underworld, and he wouldn’t want to be traced.

Dulin had a burner phone somewhere, likely in the room. Heath simply had to locate it.

Nothing under the beds, in the bathroom, beneath the adjacent sink. The closet proved empty of all but clothes and a discarded suitcase. The drawers contained a few pairs of boxers and a Bible.

Heath headed to the kitchenette area and pulled open drawers, prowled inside cabinets. After finding nothing, he peeked in the oven. Inside a baking pan rested a little metal lockbox.

Sliding the oven rack out, he fished in his pocket for the key he’d found on Dulin’s body. Sure enough, it fit into the small lock on the box. Heath frowned. It wasn’t high security. Why had the criminal imagined he could hide anything here? Then again, perhaps he hadn’t been terribly bright. Heath would never know now . . .

He pried the lid open and found about ten thousand in cash, three fake passports—all badly done because Dulin had actually looked far more like a redneck than a Russian diplomat—and a burner phone.

Plucking the disposable cell from the box, he scrolled through the calls. Most were to an overseas mobile, all reached with the dialing code 44. United Kingdom.

A flush of shock and anxiety hit his system. Cutter had been right. Everything happening to Jolie wasn’t about her past, but his. He’d put away so many dangerous criminals in his decade with MI5. Any of them could have done their time or escaped and decided payback was in order.

But only one case had haunted him relentlessly for years. Only one case had the power to unnerve him.

Somehow, some way, this had to do with Anna’s murder.

Swallowing, he looked at the call history. A slew of calls starting last Wednesday had culminated in one at ten a.m. on Monday morning. A silent period followed between that call and the final one Monday, at three in the afternoon—shortly after Jolie’s attempted murder. Everything had been silent since, and Heath suspected he knew why.

This burner was his only link between himself and whoever wanted to do his wife harm.

He didn’t hesitate.

Plucking through the buttons, he redialed the most frequently called number on the device and waited. On the third ring, a man answered with a guarded “What?”

The familiar voice chilled him. Heath didn’t say a word. His thoughts raced, his palms sweated, his head spun with disbelief.

The man on the other end sighed. “You couldn’t leave it alone, could you? I hope you have your funeral suit ready. You’ll need it.”

Fear detonated throughout Heath’s body, the impact like a nuclear explosion in his gut. He had to get to Jolie now.

Heath wasn’t sure what the man was up to or why he’d just threatened everything but no one would spill even a drop of Jolie’s blood.

Hanging up the phone, Heath shoved everything back into place, darted out the door, and dropped the key as he went. On the mad dash to his bike, he texted Cutter that danger was coming. Then he shoved the burner phone in his pocket and the latex gloves into a nearby Dumpster.

It would take him half an hour—maybe more—to reach his wife. He only hoped he got to Jolie before anyone else did.

Chapter Sixteen

Rule for success number sixteen:

Be flexible and adaptable.

AS the morning sun slanted through the front windows of Betti’s suite, Jolie scanned the investor agreement for the third time. She’d made notes last night and e-mailed Clarke Winston for answers. They had been waiting for her bright and early this morning. She’d called an attorney she occasionally consulted with and asked him to glance at the document. To her shock, he’d called back within the hour to say it was a golden handshake of a deal