Seduced by a Dangerous Man Read online

  It had seemed the perfect way to simplify my life: find the house where the target was staying, set up the system, relax in the comfort of my car—as opposed to huddling in the shadows in what was always a record-setting high or low temperature—and get a little notification when the bounty showed up.

  There was an unexpected hitch. The manufacturer had claimed two days per charge. It had gotten fourteen hours out of the box. Once it was set up, if I moved more than twenty feet away with the receiver, the batteries dwindled fast. Three hours, tops. And whenever the batteries drained completely, the capacity for a charge was severely affected.

  Probably not very useful, but I found the charger and plugged them into an empty outlet on the other side of the room.

  “Audrey!”

  I twisted to look at my brother. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not ignoring you. I don’t know the details. But Henry has been doing illegal stuff all along. We know that. He’s probably gonna get Stroop Finders shut down.” I felt a twinge when I said it.

  “I know. You told me what Corbin said.”

  I squinted. “Technically, Corbin said Henry might get arrested and not to get my hopes up. But it’s been a long time, so I’m taking matters into my own hands.”

  Rob leaned forward, his brows furrowed. “Corbin and his people couldn’t nail Henry. You do understand why I’m a little skeptical.”

  “They were only concerned about the leaks. I doubt they even cared about the other crap he’s been up to. But I want dirt on him, and I’m going to break into his place,” I said. “Take a look around. See what I can find.” I smiled. “Want in?”

  I had expected him to scoff, to dismiss my idea as silly—because on some level, I suspected it was, that Henry was too smart to keep anything incriminating in his house—and to tell me to drop it.

  But instead he tilted his head and pushed out his lower lip. His frown deepened. “Yes,” he said.

  “Yes?” I crossed the room and sat in front of the box again.

  He shrugged. “Under one condition. If we find something, we blackmail Henry to take a hike. I don’t want any of the sheriff’s offices or the police departments involved. It can’t lead back to the company.” He cracked his knuckles and sighed.

  “Of course,” I said, confused. It wasn’t a weird request, but he was acting strange. Edgy.

  He picked up the zip ties. “I have a confession,” he said as he turned them over and over. “And you’re not going to like it.”

  “Ok.” I shifted, bending one of my knees so that I could face him.

  He tossed the zip ties to the table. “So… things have changed since you left,” he started. He blinked three times, his gaze focused intensely down as he searched for words.

  “Lots of new people, new procedures,” I said.

  “Procedures, yes. Exactly.” He cleared his throat. “Henry. He has a pretty good track record, right? It’s one of the reasons Dad was interested in partnering with him.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rob crossed his arms and stuck the side of his thumb between his teeth. I knew he was going to gnaw on his nail, a habit from when we were kids that drove me absolutely crazy. I swatted his arm away, and he tucked his thumb into his fist.

  “Henry cheats,” he said.

  “How is that news?”

  “Big time. He’s running a scam. He gets his buddies on the force to draw up paperwork for people who are already in custody, then he picks them up,” Rob said, making air quotes. “He pays off the cops and keeps a nice chunk for himself.”

  I stared at him, open-mouthed. “How long have you known?”

  “That’s not all,” Rob said. “He’s also got a contact at one of the insurance agencies, and that guy kicks certain cases to Henry. To Stroop Finders, now. When Henry was alone, it was a harder sell, but since he joined us, it’s easy. We’re established and reputable. The perfect company for this kind of scheme.”

  I found myself getting wildly excited. “Do you have proof?”

  “No,” he said miserably. “It’s all stuff I overheard.”

  “Start from the beginning and tell me everything.” With a little luck, I might be able to ferret out a hidden but important detail that Rob had overlooked.

  Rob clearly didn’t want to, but he finally shrugged. “I was working late. I’d packed up for the day but decided to use the bathroom before leaving. I hear someone come in—Henry—and already he’s bitching about Kat leaving the lights on. So that gets my attention, and I figure I’ll just be a fly on the wall. I didn’t even know who he was talking to until Butch says Kat isn’t so bad. Then Henry starts in on Butch, saying these really nasty things, telling him that he’s worthless, that Henry should cut him loose.”

  “Wow. Always thought those two were tight.”

  “Henry has mood swings,” Rob said. “He’ll be charming one minute, then slamming doors the next. The man’s got issues.”

  “In fairness,” I said, “we knew that.”

  Rob looked like he wanted to press the point, but instead he continued his story. “Henry’s really pissed because he’s ramped up the stuff with law enforcement, but the guy at the insurance company is nervous about tripling the cases sent to Henry overnight. Butch starts apologizing, says he’ll talk to the wife of the guy at the insurance company, apply some pressure that way.”

  I pulled my other leg onto the couch and wrapped my arms around my knees. “Rob, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this. Were you worried?”

  “That they’d find out what I’d heard? Nah. Nosy. Henry’s got all these shady contacts, but I never knew for sure that he was guilty of anything more than poor taste in friends—”

  “What about the stuff I told you!”

  “Well, obviously that,” Rob said, uncomfortable. “I’m not doubting you. And anyway, I’ve only known for a couple of days.”

  Henry had his fingers in every pot and on every level. Local law enforcement, the FBI, the insurance companies. He hung out with cops and criminals and managed to bend everyone to his will. Or maybe he was just really good at picking out the bad eggs. Frankly, I couldn’t help but be a little bit impressed.

  I licked my lips. “When we were in Florida, Henry said he wanted to make a bounty hunter network that worked closely with law enforcement. But the funny thing is that he kept complaining about being subcontractors and doing the dirty work. Like he felt he’d been forced into bribery and stuff.”

  Rob scoffed. “Playing dirty isn’t what upsets him. He’s still pissed about being kicked off the force.”

  “Kicked off? He wasn’t… he resigned.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Henry did,” I said. “He quit because he had something to do with a fatal car crash. He was chasing the kid…” I trailed off, realizing how stupid I sounded. “Was any of it true?”

  That made Rob cough out a bitter laugh. “All that stuff is sealed, but Butch told me one night after work. Give that man a few drinks, and he talks. He’s former FBI, you know—”

  “Yeah, I know. Told you what?”

  “It was a routine traffic stop. Henry pulled the kid over for driving through a stop sign. The kid only had a learner’s permit. He was going ten blocks, he said, which was true. Dropping off a friend who had been drinking. He told Henry all of this, confessed it tearfully, hoping for leniency, I guess. So Henry said for the kid to get out, and the kid freaked out. Drove off. Henry got in his cruiser and followed even though he had the kid’s address, and it was clear the kid was just running home. But Henry, our hero, was furious about the lack of respect for his authority, and he rammed his car into the victim’s car. The kid wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and ended up on the pavement.”

  My jaw dropped. “Damn.”

  “Indeed,” Rob said with a sad smile. “Henry voluntarily completed an anger management course, but they canned him anyway. How could they not?”

  I took a moment to process everything. “That is so not the story he gav
e me. Other than the victim being a kid, it’s not at all the same.” Despite everything, I was still shocked that Henry could have lied about that. And so convincingly. When he’d shared the story, it had humanized him, and I’d softened. He’d played me for a fool.

  “I’ve found it’s best not to believe anything Henry says that might serve his purposes. He told me he’d take care of me. Gave me a raise. Then he took advantage of me.”

  “This is Dad’s fault, you know,” I said. “If he had trusted us—”

  “Have you been out to see him again?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  “You’ve been saying that for the last few weeks.”

  “He said he remembers when people talked to him during his coma. I can tell he wants to speak to me alone, but I’m dreading it.”

  “So? Oh, you’re worried about Corbin?”

  I shook my head. “I thought about it, and I’m certain that was probably more confusing than anything. I mean my heart-to-heart with Dad. It got… messy. I did it for me, you know? I never would have said those things if I’d known he could hear.”

  “I doubt he remembers everything,” Rob said. “Probably just bits and pieces. I told him some things, too, but he hasn’t brought it up except to say he’s proud of me.”

  A twinge of jealousy snapped through me. “You’re probably right.” I leaned forward and picked up the remote control.

  “Not to pry, but—”

  I blew out a long sigh, cutting him off. “You always pry.”

  “Not always. But, come on. You’re my twin. We don’t keep secrets. What did you say to him?”

  Rob’s obvious ploy worked, but only because I was already feeling so guilty about keeping the Zachary fiasco from him. “You know… the stuff that frustrates me about him. How hard I tried to live up to his expectations. He wants to talk about it, but I’m not ready.”

  Rob nodded. “So let him make amends.”

  “You assume that’s what he wants.” I threw my brother a desperate look. “Suppose he plans to defend himself? Tell me that my feelings, my experiences, are invalid? It wouldn’t be unlike him.”

  “Almost dying has changed him, you know.”

  “I said I would go tomorrow,” I grunted.

  “Hope you do.” Rob punctuated this with a sage nod and heaved himself to his feet. “Picked up some strawberry shortcake at the store,” he said. “Interested?”

  I smiled. “That depends. Is it a euphemism for a hot girl or the actual dessert?”

  “I’m not nearly as bad as you think I am,” he said as he walked away.

  I followed him into the kitchen. “So when is good? To see what we can dig up?”

  Rob forced a scoop into the half-gallon of vanilla ice cream that he had pulled out of the freezer. He nodded at the package of shortcake. I opened it and cut the pieces in half and arranged them in bowls.

  “This weekend should be perfect,” Rob said. “There’s a six-figure bounty to pick up Saturday. Henry’s too much of a control freak to let anyone else head it up.”

  He twisted the scoop and black-speckled white ice cream curled smoothly into the air. “Not that I would be on that job regardless. Not unless the guy also has some overdue library fines or something.”

  He thwacked the edge of the scoop into a bowl.

  “Wow,” I said. “Never would have imagined you’d take the job so seriously.”

  He shrugged one shoulder as he teased another ball of ice cream from the container.

  ~~~

  I really had intended to see my father the next day, but by the time I finished work, I was completely exhausted and in no mood to deal with anything that required subtlety or finesse.

  The next day wasn’t any better. Or the next…

  It didn’t help that most nights, uneasy dreams about Corbin had woken me several times. Corbin, and sometimes Zachary. Dreams where Zachary slowly choked the life out of me while Corbin watched impassively.

  Not fun.

  Butch was waiting outside the diner when I got off. That made me feel better; I couldn’t take much more of Henry. Remembering what Rob had said about how Henry had treated Butch, I didn’t give him a dirty look.

  I went to the gym—one expense I hadn’t cut—then went home, showered, and took a power nap. Afterward, I started a load of laundry. So this was what my life had become. Boring. And I had to face it… I was lonely. I needed to spend time with people other than Rob and demanding customers. But it wasn’t going to be easy to make friends with creepy guys shadowing me everywhere.

  I poured myself a bowl of corn flakes and settled onto the couch to watch some sitcom reruns that were even less filling than the cereal had been.

  Maybe I needed a hobby. I couldn’t open my own bounty hunting operation until the fall, when the non-compete expired, and while I could get some things set up for that, it was a little premature. Though it wouldn’t hurt to look at a few offices. Get an idea of what it would cost to launch.

  Wow, I thought. Look at me, thinking about the future. Imagining I had one. Must have been due to seeing the tools of the trade the night before. I missed working as a bounty hunter. It was what I’d wanted to be since I was a little girl. It wasn’t a noble calling, and it certainly lacked glamour (especially when someone spit in my face or tried to attack me with a used syringe), but I was good at it, and I liked it. I missed the chase.

  When I had my own business, we would go after the big bounties. We would save every penny those first few months so that we could hire Katrina, get her out of Henry’s clutches, save her reputation. Though maybe she didn’t deserve it. Well, I had plenty of time to decide.

  I also planned to dedicate a part of the business to private investigation. To me, that would be a much more interesting challenge. Finding patterns. Locating trails.

  Too bad I couldn’t use those skills to find Corbin, but then, he had a lot of infrastructure, money and power on his side. Not to mention experience.

  It had just gotten dark when Rob arrived home. I muted the television when I heard the door open.

  He came up the steps and went straight into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door open and close. A drawer full of utensils slid out noisily. There was a moment of quiet, then a soft clatter. A beer bottle top hitting the counter, I guessed.

  “Bad day?” I called out.

  The drawer closed and Rob returned. He sank into his recliner and pushed back. I noticed his socks didn’t match.

  “It was a day,” he said, washing away his words with a few noisy chugs of beer.

  I clicked off the television. “What did he do?”

  Resignation slumped Rob’s shoulders. “Guess whose name went up on the whiteboard a few hours ago? No, don’t guess. One C. Lagos, worth two million buckaroos.”

  My spine wrenched as my body shot straight up. “It’s a joke, right? He’s fucking with you.”

  “I really don’t think so.” He shook his head and took another long, noisy draught. “He’s got a lead. Sorry.”

  A shuddering chill ran down my back. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing yet. I only saw the name up when I got back from my daily busywork. Of course I went to ask. Henry installed himself in Dad’s office while I was out. So I might have had some sharp words about that. Henry said it was temporary, but he’s getting anxious. I think Dad’s having second thoughts. If you talk to him, maybe you can nudge him a bit.”

  Normally I would have been all over that news, but there were bigger things on my mind. “Tell me about Corbin,” I pleaded.

  “Sorry. Before I could dig for info on Corbin, Henry said he had to go home to get ready for a date. Guess I’ll find out more at the meeting tomorrow morning.”

  Blinking as I tried to collect my thoughts, I put down the empty cereal bowl that I’d been holding for over an hour. I could see a vein in my wrist pulsing furiously.

  “We have to do it tonight,” I said. “We have to stop him.”

  “No w
ay. We need the extra time to get ready.”

  I shook my head. “I think we’re prepared. You could—”

  “I’m not in the right headspace to do anything but drink,” Rob said. “I spent six hours sitting across from an elementary school, waiting for someone to come by to see her daughter. You have any idea how much that sucked?”

  “A lot,” I said. “What had she done?”

  “Shoplifting. The woman is no angel, but grabbing her when she was trying to see her kid? I have never felt so low in my life. And the kid. It was like a waterfall. Like in cartoons, when the tears come out at a sixty-degree angle. That girl will grow up terrified of redheads. Christ.” He took a long, hard swallow.

  “The mother will probably be out before we get back from Henry’s place.”

  “I said no.” He emptied the beer, rocked forward on the chair and set the bottle on the coffee table, using a piece of junk mail as a coaster. “Maybe it’s time for me to quit.”

  I didn’t know what to say as Rob walked past me and up the stairs. He wasn’t given to periods of dejection. Adversity made him crack jokes, not drain beers.

  The chime of his game system starting up told me he was going to take his frustration out on some enemy snipers. He could have played downstairs, with me, but apparently he wanted to be alone.

  It was official. I had worn out my welcome.

  Above me, Rob’s footsteps came down the hallway, and he thumped down the stairs. He stopped halfway and leaned forward so he could see me. “You’re going to go, aren’t you?”

  “Go?” I asked around the lump in my throat. It would take me at least a few days to find a new apartment—

  “To Henry’s. You would go without me tonight.”

  I expelled a sigh of relief. “I…” I actually hadn’t gotten around to thinking about it. Though, yeah, that would have been next on my list of problems to worry about. And unlike fixing things at work for Rob, I could do something about moving ahead the date to break into Henry’s place.