Page 54 of Bitter Desire
“Pretty stuff, why? I sent two of them, and-”
“Did you send a red dress?” I asked, the image of Honey in the red ball gown in my memory. She’d been beautiful that night. Ethereal and alluring, but the idiot that had grabbed her had known exactly who she was. The dress she was wearing had to have been a signal. Honey had stood out from the crowd not just because she was beautiful, but the color of the dress had been a stark splash of color against the sea of party goers.
Her face scrunched up at my question. “Red? No, I didn’t. I sent a black and a green one.”
“Those weren’t in the dresses.” Every color in the closet of dresses made available to Honey had been jewel toned, saturated and deep in their colors. Gold, Plum, Red, all of them had been signals to the kidnapper.
Addie’s eyes closed. “My computer’s compromised,” she said, voice quiet. She opened her eyes and gave me a pained look. “I didn’t know, I’m sorry, Law. I’m so sorry.”
I held up a hand. “It’s not your fault,” I said, but my voice was rough. My brain was skipping ahead to when I’d find the fucker who thought they could mess with my world. That they could reach out and touch Honey, down to the fucking clothes she was wearing, that shit had me seeing red and I sucked in a deep breath. “It’s not on you, Addie. This is bigger than that.”
“I should have noticed.”
I looked at her. “What? That some psycho broke into your computer? This shit is on our security, not you.” The words were true but even as I said them, my mind was racing. Someone had broken into Addie’s computer. Someone that had changed where I was going, what my girl was wearing, someone that had paid for her to be taken.
This shit was serious.
“Take the rest of the day,” I told Addie. “See to your brother. I’m going to have someone to help you soon.”
She frowned. “But Law-”
“I mean it, Addie. Get some rest. We both need it.”
She’d agreed, but she hadn’t liked it. I knew it. Didn’t matter. I was going to make sure this shit was handled, both Addie’s and mine. I’d left the office after arranging for Taylor to pick Honey and I up from my apartment. He was under strict orders to see that Addie made it home, and that she was comfortable before doubling back to the club on an on-call basis. I was going to have him checked in.
Just in case.
I was bent on taking Honey to the club, but that didn’t mean I was stupid. I wanted to have backup within reach if the need arose. I fucking hoped I wasn’t going to need Taylor but having a man that I could trust would be worth its weight in gold if shit went sideways.
Because of all the things that I had expected in life, the fact that Christian O’Hanon hadn’t given me the information I’d wanted was one of them. The fucker was a lot of things, a man with a backbone was not one of them. But somehow he’d kept his fucking cool when I’d paid him a visit.
I hadn’t expected that.
Men with a lot more to them hadn’t been able to stop me when I wanted to know something, but Christian had managed it.
“I’d tell you, but I’m more scared of him than you.”
Add that to the growing list of unexpected bullshit I was encountering lately. Christian scared all right and not even me putting him through his desk had done shit to shift that feeling my way. I didn’t think that meant a particularly great or fruitful future when it came to gathering information.
And with Charlaine coming up against a dead end. That meant I was going to have to go right to the last known source of information. The common denominator.
The Cairn.
That brought me to now. And that was Honey and I on our way to the club. It was the one place all three of us were connected. Honey, Christian and me. That couldn’t be an accident. The answers had to be there. My gut was telling me it was true, even if the connection was thin. I glanced at my phone and frowned when I saw no new messages from Charlaine.
In any case, with Christian keeping quiet it was as good as I had to go on until Charlaine came up with something more substantial than what I’d managed to pull out of a bleeding and scared Christian O’Hanon.
“I don’t know what that Texas number is about, but that’s not me.”He’d been insistent on that one. Even when I’d shown him the messages, the fucker hadn’t broken from his story once. The Texas number and the texts from that number were not from him. I’d texted the new bit of information to Charlaine the second I’d left his apartment. She’d responded with a thumbs up emoji and that had been that. I’d been keeping a close eye on my phone ever since, but it had remained silent all afternoon.
I looked over at Honey. She was staring down at her hands, fingers twisting and pulling nervously at the dress she wore. It was a pretty dress. A pale blush pink, satin and flowing. I’d bought it earlier that month but had been saving it for a special occasion. I liked surprising Honey with presents here and there when she wasn’t feeling her best. The dress had been just the thing to bring a smile to her face, even with the shitstorm going on around us. She’d lit up like the Fourth of July the second she opened the box it had been in.
“I love it!” she’d exclaimed, pulling the dress from the box and doing a little twirl with the dress pressed close to her. “It’s so perfect! Thank you, thank you.” She’d rushed me then and kissed me, her lips peppering my skin before she’d rushed off skipping to the bedroom to change into it.
It was the kind of color and dress I liked on Honey. She liked it too. She wouldn’t have put it on if she hadn’t. We were in the back of the car, Taylor driving us towards the Cairn and the mood was somber. It felt like we were walking into a trap, which I guessed given the past 48 hours we’d gone through, the mood made perfect sense.
I was still processing the information from earlier. Someone had gotten into Addie’s computer. Someone smart enough to get past all the security stops on our intranet, someone with enough fucking malice and intent against my girl to make their plan happen—and all while even controlling the clothing she’d worn. My hands curled into fists. I think I liked that last bit the least, almost as much as I disliked the fact that Honey had seen a part of me that I had wanted to keep hidden.
She’d seen my violent and dark side. Known that I’d done some serious shit to the fucker that had grabbed her, and she was still with me. I looked to the side at Honey to see that she had her hands tucked under her thighs, head turned, eyes still on the passing city outside the window. I reached out and touched her cheek.
