Page 11 of Lone Star Hostage

She couldn’t agree fast enough, and she touched her fingers to the still sore area around her eye. “And give me a sonofabitch with a slower right hook.”

He glanced at her, and his face—that incredible face—wasn’t sporting nearly as much tension as it had seconds earlier. Or rather, he was sporting a different kind of tension. It seemed to disgust him to see that bruise.

“I hope you kicked his balls into his throat for doing that to you,” Presley said.

“That’s pretty much what happened. The steel toe of my boot in his family jewels, and he deflated like a balloon.”

He stayed quiet a moment. “You mentioned it was a noncustodial abduction. Is the kid all right?”

“Kids. A girl, five, and a boy, seven. Thankfully, they didn’t witness the ball-busting. He’d stashed them in a motel room. I took him down when he came out to his car to get some things.”

“Good. It’s bad when the kids see too much.”

The voice of experience. Presley had indeed seen way too much when he’d found his dead parents. She suspected that hadn’t been his one and only time either. Not with his stints as a cop and military special forces. Maybe fate would give him a break. A break, too, for Victoria, and they wouldn’t end up finding her dead.

“Since you’re a stickler for rules, how the hell did you end up working for Strike Force?” Presley asked as he took the final turn toward Jesep’s office.

Ah, she’d been expecting something along those lines. Her boss, Owen Striker, had a reputation for toeing the line whenit came to the law. Actually, a reputation for occasionally going over the line in some hard situations.

“When I interviewed for the job, I told Owen upfront that I wouldn’t break the law,” she said. “And I haven’t.”

She might have added more, but he pulled to a stop in front of the Wessington building. No mistaking it for something else since the name was right there, emblazoned in shiny silver across the front of the limestone building. It looked expensive and lavish, exactly as she’d expected.

Presley parked, and while keeping watch around them, they went inside to an equally impressive lobby. The receptionist, a twenty-something-year-old curvy blonde, gave them a look as if they’d tracked in something smelly and disgusting on their shoes.

“Presley Nolan and Billie Cooper to see Mr. Wessington,” Presley said, and they both produced their IDs.

The receptionist took the IDs, studied them, and gave them that look again. “Mr. Wessington is expecting you?”

The question riled Billie because, yeah, he was expecting them, and he should have let his employee know so this part of the visit could be streamlined. Instead, they had to wait for the receptionist to call “up to the top floor.” Then, they had to wait—Billie kept watch of the time—for over two minutes before they were allowed into the elevator.

“Either Wessington has bad attention to detail, or he’s fallen apart,” Billie guessed.

“Yep, it’ll be interesting to see which,” Presley agreed.

They rode the elevator to the top floor, and when they stepped off, there was another receptionist, a middle-aged brunette this time. Unlike her downstairs counterpart, this one didn’t give them any nasty looks. She ushered them straight into Jesep’s office.

Billie glanced around the massive space. Floor to ceiling windows with a view of the San Antonio Riverwalk. Prime real estate. Everything was gleaming and polished, from the marble floors to the wood on the large desk where Jesep was seated.

Jesep was polished, too, with every strand of his silver-white hair in place. Ditto for his dark gray suit. Billie’s first impression of him was that he looked like an arrogant jerk. She hoped she was wrong because that kind of personality wouldn’t make it easy for them to rescue his wife.

He wasn’t alone in the room. There was a woman on the white leather sofa in the seating area that Billie recognized from her photo as Jesep’s daughter, Olivia. The man across from her was Ari.

So, the family was all here.

Well, with the exception of Victoria, and even her picture wasn’t present in the shiny framed photos on one of the end tables. In that trio of photos was another woman, a much younger Jesep, and Ari and Olivia as children. Billie was guessing this was Jesep’s first wife and Ari and Olivia’s mother.

“Presley Nolan,” he said, and he hiked his thumb to her. “This is Billie Cooper.”

“We’ve met,” Ari all but snarled. “You refused the last time I needed help.” So, he obviously remembered.

Billie didn’t remind him that he was the one who’d done the refusing by not wanting a woman on the case. At least she didn’t remind him verbally, but she shot him a cool glance that probably had a tinge of a smirk to it.

“Where’s Victoria?” Jesep demanded without introducing himself.

“We don’t know,” Billie admitted. “Presley and I went to the drop location—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “The police told me there was a note on the wall and a finger in a jar.”

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