Page 86 of Winning Bid

“I'm serious, Moss. Don't lay a hand on their heads.” That might not be specific enough. “No harm is to come to them. Not from you, not from anyone you know. No one connected to us will harm them. I want them protected.”

He sighs, defeated. “Very well.”

“If we're going to do things better than my father, then we need to start now. I won't keep doing things the way that he would do them.”

“Your father, he makes a lot of money. Not all his schemes are bad ones.”

“I don't care. I'm not him. Things will be different when I am in control.”

“Yes, boss.”

I am mostly certain that Moss will not hurt those people when I leave. But dealing with him is sort of like dealing with a tiger on a leash. One wrong move and things could become very bad, very fast.

But I can't focus on that now. For now, I get to tell June the good news. I didn't want to tell her when Dana told me. If this shit went sideways, I didn't want her to be disappointed. But when I come home and find her there with expectation on her pretty face. I tell her, “There's no video.”

“What?”

“There's no video. I found out from Dana, and I confronted the detectives. They don't have anything. All that they have is Neil's corpse. No video of the attack. No physical evidence of us being there. Otherwise, I'd be in jail right now.”

“Oh my God.” Her knees go loose, and I catch her before she falls.

“Are you okay?”

She laughs at herself. “I think I almost fainted. Like some weak Southern Belle or something. That's embarrassing.”

I smile and kiss her. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. Not ever. Not with me.”

She stands on her own two feet and hugs me. “So, does this mean we're out of the woods?”

“Not yet. There's still the matter of a dead body to be dealt with. But for now, the focus is less on us. I threatened to sue them for harassment for both of us, and they didn't like that much.”

She laughs. “Of course, they didn't. The last lawyer you walked in there with was Otto Pym.”

“He does tend to scare the panties off of cops.”

“We should celebrate.”

“I have been working on some ideas to incorporate those fuzzy cuffs again.”

She grins. “Oh?”

“Race you to the bedroom.”

43

JUNE

Now that the cops are no longer breathing down our necks, things settle down a little bit. It's nice to not constantly look over my shoulder. Part of me kept thinking one of the detectives would just show up someplace I was. But with no video, no harassment.

Now is the time to focus on me. And in the realm of me, things are a little sideways. I have no job. I haven't seen my friends in a long while. And my father has struck a friendship with the man who kidnapped me.

Not that he knew that last part before they became friends. But still.

I've always known my father was opportunist. He's a con artist. It's in their blood. But using me to make contact with somebody that he can use was a little bit beyond my scope. It's awkward to admit I didn't see it coming. That trick with having one of his work buddies fake my e-mail? That was genius.

And now I have to yell at him for being a genius.

I arrange to meet him at my old apartment. It was his mother-in-law's place, so he knows the address. There's no way I'm meeting him at our place. I don't want him to be familiar with where I live. A shameful state of affairs for a father and daughter, but it's true. I have no doubt that if he thought he could get money from Anderson, he'd figure away. He used me for contact with Andre. Why wouldn't he do the same with my fiancé?

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