Page 39 of Bitter Desire
I was going to protect her until my last breath. For as long as I lived, she would be safe.
All of this was on my mind, turning over with the possibilities of who had been the one to hire Patrick Nowak, of the woman that had ordered him to leave Honey for a duffle full of cash, of the MC and why she had helped in the plan, and of course, what I was going to do when I got my hands on the person behind all of this. I’d been set on making coffee, if the sun was up Honey wouldn’t be far behind not even with me trying not to wake her, but now my buzzing cell had my attention.
Who would be calling me at this hour?
I approached the counter I’d left my phone on when Honey and I had come home last night. We’d been too wrapped up in the other, too keyed up to think of anything else but sex and I’d tossed my phone to the side blindly before picking her up and carrying her into the bedroom. I reached for my phone and hit the answer button the second I saw the familiar name on the screen.
“Charlaine. Talk to me.”
She sighed. “Good morning to you too, big guy.” I was silent, waiting for her to continue when she took a loud sip of what I assumed was her morning coffee. “Oh, the silent treatment today, what’s up with that?”
“Honey got attacked last night,” I said, and I heard her suck in a breath.
“Where?”
“Catskills. Took her on a whim. No one knew we were there, but someone had put out a call on her head. Some fucker grabbed her right out from under me.”
“Who?”
“A nobody. Definitely small time. Patrick Nowak. Said a guy named Jose gave him the job.”
“Right,” Charlaine said, I could hear her shift the phone and she went on, “I’m running that name. I’ll send you some photos to get an ID. We can work from there to find out who Jose is. And you can pay me cash for this one, half the price as I normally go for because honestly, Jersey is still too big a favor for the work I did while you were gone.”
“Thanks, Charlaine. Appreciate it.” I smiled, looking out the window at the lightening sky. It was gray now, not black. “I know a woman gave the job. Nowak said he talked to a woman on the phone about where to drop Honey for cash.”
“What was the payday?”
“Twenty grand.”
“Fucking shit. That’s some cash for one girl.”
I gritted my teeth, not liking that Charlaine was right. Twenty grand to grab a girl and leave her in the middle of nowhere? That was easy cash. “I know.”
“What’d you do to him?”
“Took a finger. Cut him up decent. Sent him back to spread the message Honey is mine.”
She snorted. “That woman is making you soft. You would have cut his nose off before,” Charlaine said.
I rolled my eyes and leaned back against the counter. “I thought about it, but I had to get Honey back to the city. Shit was too hot out there. Needed to get back here.”
“Right, right,” Charlaine said. I heard her clicking and typing on her end, telling me she’d put me on speaker phone. “Look, I’ve got a database up now and I’m looking for this fuckwad Nowak. I did call to give you some good news though.”
“What is it?”
“I figured out who was texting Honey. It’s a local number and when I looked into them it looked like Honey was connected to them.”
“It’s her ex-boyfriend, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
I sighed, pressing my fingers to my temple. “I was afraid of that.”
“Why? He’s just some rich kid that thinks he’s so smart because he has a firewall and is sending those texts from an encrypted phone–which I gotta say is a low bar since just about all phones now have a basic encryption key you can activate. You can handle this little shit.”
Outside the sun was rising, filling the city sky with lights that were a mix of pink and orange. It wouldn’t be long now before the sun was high, cresting above the skyscrapers shining gold and bright. I glared at the morning sky and walked away from the counter, pacing the kitchen.
“Exactly. I can handle him. He’s a nobody, but if he’s the one that’s been texting Honey then who the fuck put out the job on her head?”
