Page 38 of A Daddy for Christmas 2: Kitt

The explosion on the other end of the phone came pretty quickly. “Are you saying…? You seriously think I set you up?”

“What would you have thought? I couldn’t take the chance.”

“Why the fuck would I want to do that, Rio?”

“I don’t know. But I did find out some interesting information about Jazz Devlin.”

“Like what?”

I filled him in on Jazz’s financial problems and there was a silence on the other end. “Shit. So he lied to us? But what would be his motive to get us involved?”

“He needed to find Kitt and get him back here. He lied to us about the inheritance, and he’s probably been lying the whole time. Kitt was never cut out of any will and he comes into his inheritance on his twenty-first birthday, in another month or so. The motive is money of course. If Kitt was out of the way, Jazz Devlin will inherit Kitt’s part of the money from his mother’s will.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes. How come the firm didn’t know about all this anyway?”

“We don’t run a credit check on our clients, Rio. And we don’t question what they tell us without cause. We had no reason to doubt his word. He told us about his father’s will, and he told us that Kitt had been cut off by their father. We had no reasonto suspect another will. Jazz is a successful businessman as far as we knew. He said he was Kitt’s only source of support, and we had no reason to doubt his word. He paid for our services up front, and his only concern seemed to be to find his kid brother. There was no reason to think otherwise.”

“Okay. Well, just so you know, I’m finding him a good doctor and a lawyer, so he can get this ridiculous guardianship dismissed. After that, we’re going to go to the police over the attempted murder in Arkansas, and they can sort all this out.”

“Wait a minute—you’re finding him a lawyer? Why you? What’s your interest in all this?”

I hesitated. Then took a deep breath and just said it. “Kitt is my interest.”

There was a short silence and then Lucas sighed. “Rio, I hope you know what you’re doing there. Kitt Devlin is young, and he has a lot of problems.”

“You don’t know him. Don’t assume you do.”

“Do you have any proof that his brother doesn’t have his best interests at heart?”

“Other than the fact I believe he sent killers after both of us? No, that’s about it. Do you have any proof that he does?”

“But are you sure? You can’t just go around accusing people unless you have proof. Don’t you think you might be jumping to conclusions?”

“Anything’s possible. But I’m not accusing anyone of anything. Yet. We’re getting a lawyer to work on the guardianship, and then we’ll take his advice about going to the police. They can be the ones to investigate this thing.”

“Wait. Let’s talk about this.”

“I think we’ve talked enough, Lucas. I’ll be in touch.”

I ended the call and turned to see Kitt looking at me with wide eyes. “Did you just quit your job?”

“I’m not really sure.” I shrugged. “Maybe. Looks like we might be staying in a hotel tonight. I don’t think the apartment is safe right now. It’s just a hunch, but they’ve been right so far. We’ll go by and get a change of clothes. Tomorrow we’ll find that lawyer.”

I packed a few things in a hurry—I was getting pretty good at that now. I heard Kitt moving around in the living room. I checked the thermostat on the way out, turning down the heat a little while I’d be gone. It was then that I heard the front door suddenly open, as Kitt gave out a scared, startled shout of alarm.

“W-who are you?” I heard him say. “What are you doing here?”

It was then that I got the biggest scare of my life as I heard a familiar, raspy voice say, “Hello. You must be Kitt. Just be quiet and answer my questions. Where’s Rio? Tell me now.”

I recognized the voice, of course. It belonged to my boss all right, but not Lucas. This was Ed Colton, the owner of the firm, and Lucas’s father-in-law.

Maybe Ed had some perfectly good reason to be here—maybe he had come with some kind of message for me—but then why hadn’t he knocked? Why had he just barged in? There had been no call ahead to let me know he was coming either, so I could only assume the worst. And the worst was knowing that my Kitt was out there alone with Colton—and Colton was holding a gun on him.

I immediately got that sick feeling—the crazy one I got sometimes when I was on patrol back in Afghanistan and still got when shit was about to go down. Those old instincts kicked in and I instinctively crouched down, easing out of the bathroom and slipping next door to the bedroom, looking for my Glock. I knew exactly where it was in my bag which was on the floor just inside the door.

I heard Kitt talking, saying I had gone out. I knew Ed wouldn’t believe him. I sent up a few fervent prayers for his safety and somehow kept going.

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