Page 102 of My Temptation

“Let’s go.” Jax faced us. “Meet you at the hotel.”

Nodding, Ethan and I crossed the parking lot and jumped into the car. We were heading to the hotel when I finally looked over at Ethan, who was driving. I immediately noticed his left eye was swollen and already starting to bruise, but as I scanned the rest of him, his hands caught my attention.

“Ouch.” His head jerked my way, and I pointed at his hands. “They look like they hurt.”

He glanced at his hands and chuckled. “They do.”

I laughed softly, appreciating his honesty. “We got him.”

He lifted one of his hands, slowly clenching and unclenching his fist. “It was worth it.”

“I can’t believe the guys were here,” I admitted. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

“All I know is that when I came back into the bar area, Nick was there. He told me to keep my cool and that you were safe. He sat down casually at one of the tables like we were going to watch the dancer, but it wasn’t long before I heard boots on the stairs, and the FBI entered the room. They’d already cleared the first floor. I’m anxious to hear the rest of the story. We didn’t have enough on Samson to bring in the FBI.”

“They must’ve found something else but didn’t tell us,” I muttered. We both grew silent and stayed that way until we pulled into the hotel parking lot.

We were parked and heading upstairs, the team right behind us and walking into our hotel room within a minute.

I shook my head when I saw Kyle on my bed, laptop open on his lap and his back against the headboard.

“Get off my bed.”

He laughed. “You don’t really want that.”

Smiling, I sat on the edge of Ethan’s bed and watched Jax, Brody, Nick, and Striker find spots to stand around the room. Ethan had gone into the bathroom but came out a minute later with a wet washcloth and began cleaning the blood from his hands.

Kyle gestured toward Ethan. “Doesn’t look like your hands got the worst of it.”

Ethan glanced down and saw what we all saw in the lights of the hotel room. He had bruises forming along his ribs, and his eye looked a hell of a lot worse now that we were in the light. “Better than it could’ve been.”

“Any broken ribs?” Brody asked.

“No.” Ethan shook his head. “Luckily, his size was his only advantage.”

“How the hell did this all happen?” I asked while Ethan crossed the room and grabbed a shirt from his bag.

“You’re starting to sound like Striker,” Nick teased, and my shoulders relaxed when he grinned.

Striker smirked and leaned against the wall, but he didn’t say anything. He looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen him, and that had everything to do with Samson being in federal custody, which meant Beth was finally safe.

Ethan sat beside me just as Jax crossed his arms over his chest and started talking. “After you found the picture proving Samson and Martin Sullivan knew each other, and Kyle found the house, we knew we had something to go on. Kyle did a lot of digging into birth and school records. He followed Samson’s trail through college, but it wasn’t until he was out of college that anything jumped out.”

“What happened after college?” Ethan asked.

“We’re not entirely sure,” Jax admitted. “He’s really good at covering his tracks, but it seemed he tracked down his half brother, Daniel Sullivan, got a taste of the money he was making, and decided he would follow in his footsteps.”

“What did you see that made you think that?” I asked.

“Money.” Kyle swung his legs over the side of the bed and put his feet on the floor. “And a whole lot of it. Because he majored in computer science in college, he knew his way around the systems and was able to hide a lot of it, but I eventually found it.”

“Once we learned a lot of his money was in banks outside of the US, the feds became very interested in Kevin Samson,” Jax added.

“You went to the FBI with this?” I asked.

“We did,” Jax confirmed. “After you gained access to the bar, we knew we had him. That was the only missing piece. We didn’t know where he did business. Turns out the bar he does business out of is owned by a local businessman, Walter Manning, and Manning funds the festival every year.”

“That’s how I recognized his name.” I snapped my head in Ethan’s direction. “Remember how I said it sounded familiar?” When he nodded, I continued. “His name was on some of the pamphlets and shit I picked up at the front desk.”

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