I meant for him to say ‘sir,’ so the Daddy surprised the hell out of me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, and I didn’t want to lead him on. I put it off to think about later.
“I’m not your Daddy, Kitt,” I said as gently as I could. “But don’t look like that. It’s just too soon for that, okay? And stop acting so scared. I’m handling things, so you don’t have to worry. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Da... uh, sorry. Sir.”
“Good.”
He held up his lips to me sweetly to give me a kiss, with his eyes tightly closed, and what could I do but brush my lips across his. It was all I could trust myself to do, because if I kissed him like I wanted to, then I was taking him to bed for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, that was just going to have to wait. Like a lot of things.
I put him firmly back on his feet and told him to turn on the television and find something to watch while I waited for the car and the cash Lucas sent to be delivered. It didn’t take too long before the clerk at the front desk called up to say I had a visitor downstairs.
“Grab your bag, Kitt. We’re leaving.”
We went down to the lobby, because I wasn’t leaving him alone anymore, even for a few minutes, and a messenger was there with a key to the car he’d parked outside and a large envelope. I tipped him, and we checked out and went outside to find the vehicle. I used the key fob to find it, this one was a big, dark gray Infinity SUV.
The most direct route from where we were was to head over toward Memphis on I-40 and keep on till we got to Birmingham, Alabama and then on back home to Atlanta. I could take a more circuitous route, but what would be the point? Now that I had a secure vehicle, we should be able to travel with no difficulty. It was after we got there that I was worried about.
I was taking Kitt somewhere safe that no one outside of my agency would know about—my own home. I wasn’t going to take Kitt back to his brother’s house. Something wasn’t right there, including why Jazz had lied to me about Kitt’s inheritance. Did this somehow have to do with his new marriage? I needed a little time to figure it all out and do a little research. In the meantime, I needed to avoid his brother Jazz, who was still his legal guardian in the eyes of the law. That meant keeping my agency out of this mess too, to limit their involvement. As far as Jazz would know, I’d simply dropped out of sight, and even the agency was looking for us too.
“With so much happening the last few days, I lost track of Christmas. Jazz will be mad that you didn’t bring me home, I guess.”
“He’ll get over it. Besides, he’s busy with his wedding, right? I’m not worried about him. Are you?”
“No,” he said, grinning at me as I slid in beside him.
“Are you sad that you weren’t at the wedding?”
“No. If he doesn’t want me there, then I don’t want to be there. He doesn’t really want me in his house, and that’s good, because I don’t want to live with him anymore. Especially with that Miranda.” He peered over at me as I pulled out of the parking lot. “Aren’t you going to argue with me, like you did the last time I told you that?”
“No, not this time. I believe I need to do some research on your brother and his situation,” I told Kitt. “Something doesn’t feel right about this. Or I need someone who has access tocomputers and who knows how to find out some things for me. I think I know a guy—I did some work for him about three or four months ago, and he was something of a computer whiz. A hacker, actually, named Walter Reilly, whose girlfriend had left him, stealing quite a bit of money from him. He was even willing to let that go, but she also took his grandfather’s gold watch and tried to say he had given it to her. Threats about lawyers and lawsuits flew back and forth between them for a while until he hired us to see about it for him. I went to visit her and convinced her to do the right thing and give the watch back.”
Kitt laughed. “I can only imagine. Okay, sounds good. Will this guy help us?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I think he will. He owes me a favor.”
I called and spoke to my friend Walter, the computer guy, around the time we hit Birmingham. By the time we were coming into Atlanta, he’d called back to say he had the information for me on Jazz Devlin. Like I said, he was good at what he did.
“The guy is seriously in debt,” he told me. “Devlin has been trying for loans, but the traditional banks are turning him down. He justrefinanced a mortgage on his home and a building he owns downtown, and those are going to be due in a couple of months. An auditor in his firm recently resigned, saying that the company’s financial statements couldn’t be relied on. In other words, someone has been cooking the books.
“Devlin is dealing now with a nontraditional lender, an on-line bank with a history of handling atypical loans. They use cripplingly high double digit annual interest rates, so most people use them as short-term solutions. They also specialize in loans to foreign nationals and have offered Devlin a type of loan that will allow him to turn around and instantly take money back out of it. A loan like that can involve money laundering.”
“Okay. Can you send me the files in case I need them?”
“I’m sending them now. Your email the same?”
“Yes. Thanks, Walt. I owe you one.”
“Nah, no problem. Let me know if you need anything else.”
I turned to Kitt, who looked stunned. “Did you know anything about your brother having money problems?”
He shook his head. “No. He never talked about anything like that with me. If he’s so hard up for money, do you think he’s going to take my inheritance?”
“No, he wouldn’t be able to touch that. Unless…”
I glanced over at him, and the blood had already drained from his face. “Unless I was no longer alive. Then all of it would go to him.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions, baby. We don’t know anything for sure.”