B00MV3HMDW_EBOK (17 page)

Chapter Thirteen

“W
hat the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Jax asked, his anger evident even thousands of miles away.

Ethan rubbed his eyes, getting really sick and tired of his friends asking him that question. He’d returned to his room to grab a fresh set of clothes before room service arrived with their pizza and beer. Another ten minutes of conversation with Taryn had warranted setting additional boundaries, but he was no longer going to need his room. She hadn’t really replied to that, with the exception of placing a pencil in her mouth as she settled onto the bed with her notes. Jax’s call came in as Ethan had reached his floor.

“Well, I know it wasn’t Crest who spilled it,” Ethan exclaimed, using his cardkey to enter into his room. “I’ve got to say that I’m surprised Lach told you. I thought the man had my back.”

“Lach knew and didn’t say anything? Wait a fucking minute, are you telling me that Crest is aware of this and he hasn’t canned your ass? I’m going on record—you don’t get to borrow my Jeep again.”

Ethan groaned as he picked up his bag by the handles while assuring himself that nothing was out of place. Seeing that everything was as he left it, he walked into the bathroom and set his bag on the counter as he collected his shower gear. He shouldn’t have to defend his actions to his teammates and friends, but he understood where Jax was coming from. It didn’t really matter how he found out.

“This isn’t what it looks like, Jax, so cool your jets before you say something you’re going to regret.” Ethan looked around one more time to make sure that he wasn’t missing anything. When he entered back into the main room he sat on the edge of the bed, wanting to clear the air and needing to make Jax understand how important this was. “Taryn—”

“She’s like a sister, Ethan. You don’t mess with family.”

“She’s like a sister to
you
,” Ethan pointed out, grateful for the clarification. He would damn well use it toward his advantage. “Taryn and I have always been close and you know that. Feelings turned more personal when—”

“Shut the fuck up.” Jax must have been bouncing his stress ball, for every three seconds Ethan could hear a thud against a wall. “I don’t want to hear what made you pull this goat roping rodeo out of your ass, but fix it. She’s got enough on her plate without having to deal with your childish dumb ass.”

Ethan fisted his hand, and had Jax been in front of him there was no doubting what would have happened. It was a damn good thing they were in different states. Yes, Ethan was the youngest among the men. That didn’t give them the right to throw around opinions on his personal life, whether that included Taryn or not. As a matter of fact, he didn’t have to justify his choices to Jax or anyone else.

“I’ll tell you what, Christensen. This little call had better be about your frustration with your inability to locate Ryland instead of your contemptible personal opinions of my private life.” Ethan stood up and walked to the door, whipping it open and letting it slam behind him. “Had I wanted your advice I would have called you, asshole. If I’m not mistaken, it wasn’t even two years ago that the woman you loved got pregnant and it was your useless ass that was hiding in the office. Don’t be taking potshots at me while you sit there in your own glass fucking house.”

He pulled the phone away from his ear, not waiting for Jax to reply as he hung up. Ethan refused to feel guilty or defend his life, although he certainly didn’t like the idea of the dissention that would settle over the team. If Taryn discovered that this was causing rifts among them, her stress level would rise and that was exactly what he’d hoped to avoid.

Ethan took the stairs, not bothering with the elevator. In all honesty, he should be giving Taryn time to digest what had taken place this evening. Hell, he could probably use time away as well, if only to give himself time to cool down. Being able to stroke and caress her without taking it to another level took all his self-restraint. He wouldn’t change a thing about their first encounter either. He needed her to see that this alteration in their lives was personal growth for both of them and needed to be nurtured and cherished.

Using the keycard that he’d swiped from Taryn earlier, Ethan entered her room. She was sitting in the middle of the bed surrounded by papers, phone attached to one ear while a pencil lay behind the other, holding a beer in her hand. He smiled at the vision and all of Jax’s doubts faded into the background.

“I appreciate the information, Bill.” Taryn paused and while she waited for whomever this Bill was to speak, she motioned to the pizza lying on the desk as she scooted back against the pillows. Ethan dropped his bag, picked up the large box and shoved the papers toward the side with it before flipping open the lid. He stretched out across the bottom of the bed after he’d removed his boots, making himself at home. He picked up a slice to keep himself from reaching out to her. “Yes, you may use my CSA email address to send the list of names. Again, thank you so much for your help.”

“Who was that?” Ethan asked after he’d swallowed his first bite. He licked the side of his lips where some sauce remained and noticed that her eyes had followed his movements. If she kept that up, he wasn’t so sure his self-restraint would remain intact. “And what list is he emailing you?”

“Billy Emerson, Sabrina’s boyfriend from high school.” Taryn tossed her phone onto the bed and took a sip of her beer. Ethan looked away, the image creating visions in his mind that made this night even more difficult. “You know, you were right to begin with. If we just have sex now, this sexual tension wouldn’t get in the way of our doing our job.”

“We wait,” Ethan barked out, taking her beer and swigging it so that the piece in his throat would go down. She was going to be the death of him. “Back to the case. And before you continue on with Billy, what did you do to Detective Noel’s computer? That show you put on wasn’t for nothing.”

“I needed access to his hard drive.” Taryn leaned forward and swiped the bottle out of his hand. She had put on a pair of running shorts and an old worn Navy T-shirt and she looked just as beautiful now as she did when he’d had her bound naked. “And I didn’t
put
on a show. Look, I’m dealing with this
thing
between us as best as I can. It’s not easy to sit here talking about the case when you just had me…you know.”

“Aroused? Tied up? Begging for me to—”

Ethan laughed as he caught her foot before it landed in his stomach. They’d made it this far without the world imploding on them. He couldn’t have asked for more and he leaned forward, gathering her T-shirt up into his fist and pulling her toward him until their lips were inches apart. His breathing evened out and was now mingling with hers.

“See?” Ethan whispered, searching her eyes for agreement. “We’re still
us
. We’re just
better
.”

“I don’t know how to act,” Taryn sighed with a tiny shake of her head. When her hand touched Ethan’s shoulder, he couldn’t resist the urge to gently kiss her. Every time she reached out and voluntarily touched him intimately he felt like he’d won another battle. When he pulled back, he gently laid his forehead against hers and waited patiently for her to say what was still weighing on her mind. “Ethan, what if we really fucked up?”

“Can we agree to take this one day at a time?” Ethan asked, releasing her shirt and then caressing her face with his fingers. “Together, just like always.”

Taryn closed her eyes and then nodded. It wasn’t like they could take back what had happened this evening, and even if they could, Ethan wouldn’t. He was pleased that she hadn’t locked her emotions inside. She had a tendency to do that, although she’d always been relatively open with him. He was content in knowing that hadn’t changed.

“So,” Ethan said, pulling back and using his elbow for support, “what did Billy Emerson have to say?”

“Billy was a wealth of information,” Taryn replied, taking up his cue that they should carry on as usual. She picked up a slice of pizza and took a bite. “He said that although their breakup was decided by both of them, it was Sabrina who starting pulling back first. Bill said that she’d gotten distant and didn’t seem as happy as she had been in the beginning.”

“Isn’t that the way it is with most high school romances?”

Ethan started examining some of the papers that were scattered about. They needed Kevin’s whiteboard that he used when mapping out his investigations, but seeing as that wasn’t possible, Ethan looked around for something they could use. He picked up her notepad and pencil and then started to draft a quick timeline.

“The way Billy described Sabrina’s behavior back then, I would have almost said she was involved in drugs if it weren’t for him swearing she didn’t go near the stuff.”

“Did they remain friends?”

“That’s the thing,” Taryn said as she placed her half eaten slice back into the box. “They did. Billy said Sabrina would show up for her classes, but then would head to the library to do homework almost every afternoon. She’d mentioned having to keep her grade point average up and immersed herself in her studies.”

“Sounds like she didn’t want to go home.” Ethan stared at what he’d written down, but something wasn’t adding up. “Starting from the beginning, Sabrina’s brother was killed in action, her father was killed five years later, and her mother not long after that. In between that time, she goes missing. Basically the entire family is wiped out. Who benefits?”

“Arthur Bowers, but it wasn’t like he could control what happened to Travis,” Taryn pointed out, picking up a piece of paper. “The boy was on active duty, and from what’s in his file there was absolutely no way Art could have been involved.”

“Let’s face it. Arthur Bowers inherited the entire estate along with the business. What if Travis getting killed was a coincidence?” Ethan sat up, knowing they were on to something. “What if that actually spurred Art into thinking he had a shot at his brother’s legacy?”

“And picked them off one at a time?” Taryn asked skeptically, tilting her head to the side as she thought that through. “That doesn’t explain how Sabrina ended up as Yvette Capre. You can’t tell me that a woman who took contracts to kill for large sums of money wasn’t greedy enough to do it legally through her inheritance.”

“What if she couldn’t?” Ethan loved when all the pieces of a puzzle started to fit together. “We know that Yvette came through Houston at the time Charles Bowers was murdered. We assumed it was for his funeral, but what if she was the one who did the deed?”

“This is starting to sound like an eighties soap opera.” Taryn picked up one of the pencils on the bed and tapped her bottom lip. “So what you’re saying is that Arthur and Yvette were working together? Why would she have left to begin with? Someone invested five years in Sabrina—extensive training to be an assassin…and a good one at that. That kind of training is expensive and requires facilities. We’re still missing something, but if we go on the assumption that Arthur was greedy enough to kill off his family, he’s got to be nervous that we’re digging around Sabrina’s disappearance.”

“So we push a little harder.”

“We never did get around to visiting Alice.” Taryn pointed her pencil at him. “See? You distracted me and now—”

“Now we will finish our pizza and continue to pick at the threads of this case.” Ethan shoved himself off of the bed and grabbed a beer for himself. “Something’s got to give and I feel that we’re
this
close to finding out the missing evidence that will lead us to Ryland.”

*   *   *   *

“I might need your services.” Arthur Bowers looked out over the estate from the comfort of his Louis XIV chair strategically placed in his private alcove in front of the second floor observation window. It was almost a secret room with much larger multi-story bookshelves than the main library. The winding staircase that led to the arched entrance into this room wasn’t really hidden, it was just concealed from casual view. Another archway led out onto the second floor balcony that nearly encompassed the library, however, a sturdy oak secured that entrance. This small observation room was for Arthur’s personal use, a place where he could make a private call on a secure line. A place where he’d been trying to enjoy a Murano Venetian snifter of a fine 1796 Napoleon cognac. A suitable spirit should accompany these types of decisions, commiserating with the gravity of the moment. Unfortunately his mind was warring with itself, and unless he took provisions he wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else. He wasn’t a man who was prone to panic at the slightest hint of threats, but he was cautious enough to have a backup plan. “I’ll wire in half of your fee if you’ll arrive in Houston within twenty-four hours.”