Page 86 of Collide

Kai

Thingsmovedprettyquicklyafter I left Riley napping in my roomhaving fucked her twice in the shower.

I hadn’t realized how badly my hands had been shaking with the needto shed more blood until my girl was back in my arms and distracting me with her beautiful mouth around my dick.

All of that faded as I stepped out of my room, intending to get hersome lunch when Miles came hurrying down the corridor to tell me he thought he had had a breakthrough.

Abigfucking breakthrough.

As soon as I’d arrived back after my visit to Victor, I had given Milesthe USB stick and left him to do whatever it was he needed to do to get me a name. Less than two hours later, he had done exactly that.He had excitedly told me there were seven Detective Anderson’sacross the whole of the state, and after some quick background checks, he was confident he had found the one we were looking for.

Detective John Anderson was an officer of Huntsville City PoliceDepartment, stationed at their 6th Street Precinct. Huntsville was smaller than my city and on the other side of the state from Hollows Bay. I had some connections to the city, mainly through legitimate business means, and as a result, I had a little knowledge of the criminal world there.

As cities go, Huntsville was neither the best place to live nor theworst. Sure there’d been the odd murder but most were domestic related, or because some crazy bastard had gotten carried away during a road rage incident, but that kind of shit happened everywhere.

The main problem Huntsville had was from the gang, known as TheStags, who peddled drugs but had little control over the market because of their greed. The leader of The Stags was an arrogant prick named Carlos Rigbywho had made his way up the ranks from a young boy. Carlos had visions of grandeur, but instead of taking control and building his gang and criminal enterprise, he’d run it into the ground resulting in mutiny and subordination throughout the ranks, to the point where the gang nearly ceased to exist.

That had been a few years ago, rumors over the last year were thatthe gang had been taken over by a silent partner whose identity wasn’t even known by Carlos himself, but since then, The Stags functioned as a profitable gang and managed to keep under the radar of law enforcement.

Victor had been good enough to include photos of all the policeofficers in his list. Against my want to let her sleep, I reluctantly woke Riley up and asked her to come to my office to show her the photo of the man we believed to be Anderson. Sure enough, she confirmed he was the man who had turned up at Club Sin all those months ago and was indeed the fucker who had strangled her at the charity ball.

Once we had a full name and place of work, it didn’t take long forMiles to work his magic and find out what he could about Anderson. It transpired he’d been a cop for the past seventeen years, he had started as a patrol officer and worked his way to becoming a detective, now working on the drug squad.From his personnel file Miles found from hacking into the policedepartment’s records, he discovered Anderson lived alone in the suburbs of Huntsville. The other interesting thing Miles found out was Anderson’s medical records were chequered with concerns regarding his mental health, and when he was a young patrol officer, he’d taken three months off work due to a breakdown.

The intel was a start, but it didn’t even begin to explain why Andersonhad it in for me and Theo, or even a connection to Hollows Bay. It was going to take a lot more digging into his past and Miles didn’t have the time for that, so I’d passed the details to Isaac to start finding out what he could.

As soon as I had his home address in my hand, I formulated a planwith Hendrix, Danny, and Miles.

I’d been hesitant to bring them in on my plan, and I fucking hated thatthere was a little niggle of doubt one of them might have betrayed me. But if it was one of them who had turned tail, I needed to act as if I didn’t have a clue, and that meant carrying on as if nothing had changed.

I thought long and hard about it on the drive back from Victor’s. Someone had told Anderson about my deal with Riley, did that meanthey were working with him? No, not exactly.

Neither Hendrix, Miles, or Danny stood to gain from Theo’s death,and they had all been just as cut up as I was when Theo’s body had been found. No, it was more likely that someone who was aware of the deal had loose lips and had told someone they shouldn’t have, who had then told someone else, who had then probably told Anderson.If you wanted something to remain secret in Hollows Bay, you werebetter off keeping your mouth shut and taking the secret to the grave with you.

In my heart of hearts, I didn’t believe any of my three closestassociates would have betrayed me, but it didn’t hurt to keep a closer eye on them.

I did, however, accept there was something going on with Hendrix,why else would he tell Riley about my nights at Sapphire? But the more I thought about it, the more I came to see that Hendrix was jealous.

I’d seen the way he looked at Riley, it was with longing in his eyes,probably the same way I looked at her. I couldn’t blame him, but Riley was mine and while I was sure he wouldn’t make a move, once I had taken care of my brother’s murderer, I’d be having a little chat with Hendrix and reminding him where his place was and who Riley belonged to.

With a plan formulated, I called in two of my top surveillance teamswho worked as part of my personal protection company, and with the assistance of some trusted members of my enforcement team, we loaded up the vans with surveillance kits and weapons and headed off on the five hour drive to Huntsville City.

Before we left, I said my goodbyes to a sulking Riley who had wantedto come with us, but it was too dangerous, and I would never intentionally put her in harm’s way. She soon cheered up when I said she could spend as much time as she wanted with Angel while I was away.She even seemed happy when I told her Danny would be stayingbehind to make sure she was safe.

More suspiciously,Dannywas okay with staying behind, and thelingering question as to if he had been the one to betray me sprung to mind, but when Riley had teased him about getting to spend more time with Angel’s tutor, Jane, and Danny had walked off cursing under his breath, the answer became apparent.

I was still a little reluctant to leave Danny, if he was colluding with anenemy behind my back then I’d be leaving him behind with the one thing Anderson wanted, and the one thing that meant anything to me. But I only had to watch their interactions and the way he spoke so fondly of both Riley and Angel, I knew without a doubt he was not the one to betray me.

He doted on the two girls like they were his sisters and the fact thatDanny had no family when he was growing up, family meant something to him now.

I said goodbye to Riley in the foyer as Miles and Hendrix joined uswith their bags. To make itcrystal clearjust who Riley belonged to, I pulled her into my arms and gave her the deepest, heated kiss I’d ever experienced.When I let her pull away, her cheeks were flushed, and lustfilled her gorgeous eyes, and if I hadn’t been so focused on the job ahead of me, I would have taken her back to my room and spent the evening buried in her perfect cunt.

But that had to wait.

I’d given her another quick kiss on the lips for good measure and thenwalked into the waiting elevator, smirking at the flash of jealousy on Hendrix’s face as I strolled past him. It looked like I’d be having that conversation with him sooner rather than later.

When we reached the parking level, we bundled into the SUV withHendrix driving, and we headed off to Huntsville City, confident that in a few hour’s time, we’d be returning home with Anderson, who would find himself hanging from his thumbs in my basement, begging for mercy.

That had been a full fucking 48 hours earlier and we were no closerto tracking him down.

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