Page 87 of Collide

As soon as we arrived in the city, one surveillance team positionedthemselves near his home address, and the other team near the police station. They were to watch both locations until Anderson made an appearance.The plan was to make sure Anderson was at his home, tucked upsafe and sound in bed and then we’d attack. But Anderson hadn’t been near or by his fucking house, and on day two when I was starting to lose my patience, Miles managed to hack the restricted files of the police department to find out that Anderson had gone awol a week prior to the charity ball, and his senior officers were concerned about his mental stability, so much so they were treating him as a missing person.

But even with them doing their own investigation to find him, he hadmanaged to disappear off the face of the planet.

It was like we had taken one step forward and two huge fucking stepsback.

On the second night of being away from Riley, I found myself in myhotel room waiting to hear from Miles and Hendrix.Miles and two of my enforcers, Vince and Steve were going to breakinto Anderson’s house to see if he had left any clues as to where in the fucking world he might be. Huntsville PD had allegedly been in there once and searched it, but most cops were incompetent and I wanted to be satisfied that every corner of his house had been searched.

Hendrix was at the local nightclub following up on a lead. Isaac hadmanaged to track down Anderson’s ex-girlfriend who worked at the club and Hendrix was going to use his charm to see what intel he could get from her. I had no doubt that his charm would involve scaring the bitch into telling him what he wanted to know.

And so, I found myself alone and craving to see my Star. Two daysaway from her was two days too long, and I wondered if she was feeling the same way.

I’d checked in regularly with Danny to make sure everything wasrunning smoothly back in Hollows Bay and to make sure Riley was behaving herself, but I hadn’t spoken to her. I needed to remain focused, and as much as she would have been a welcomed distraction, I needed to keep my head in the game when we werethisclose to finding someone who would lead to the person who killed Theo.

The problem was, I was fucking addicted to that girl and withoutanything else to distract me, I couldn’t stop thinking about getting my next hit of Riley.

I loaded up my Ipad and used the virtual private network that Mileshad set up for me, it meant I could freely use the internet without anyone being able to track my location. Miles had once explained to me how VPNs work when he insisted weall used encrypted phones to ensure we couldn’t be hacked, it was something to do with all your data traffic being routed through an encrypted virtual tunnel that disguised your IP address and meant your location was invisible to anyone. Miles had been telling me about it like he was a little kid who had just received a gold star on a project he was working on. I, on the other hand, hadn’t given a shit about how it all worked, so long as it did what Miles was saying it did.

I fired a quick text to Danny, telling him to load the secure cameraapp on my office desktop back at the apartment. His reply was instant and within minutes, he answered my call.

“Bossman, you good?” he said as he answered. His scarred facefilled my screen and his tone filled with humor.

“What’s got you so fucking happy?” I grumbled, not used to seeingDanny with a smile on his face unless he was standing over a body with his knife in hand.

“Sorry, Boss, just that kid man, for someone who is deaf, she’s filledwith so much fucking sass. She’s given Riley some right shit the last two days,” he laughed and I couldn’t help but smile.

It seemed the Bennett sisters had managed to work their way into thehearts of the city’s scariest bastards. A little pang of worry flashed through me when it occurred to me that in just over five months, if Riley decided not to stay, both she and her sister would not be just out of my life, butallof our lives.

“She gets it from her sister,” I replied, dismissing the thought. It didn’tmatter if Riley wanted to leave after the agreed time was up, she wasn’t going anywhere. Which meant neither was Angel.

“You’re telling me. Riles has given me nothing but attitude these lasttwo days. I even told her if she carries on giving me shit, I’d tell you and you would put her across your knee, but that seemed to encourage her.” He smirked as I let out a laugh but then my thoughts turned fucking dark at the mental image of Riley across my knee, her perfectly round ass up in the air getting redder with every spank of my hand.

Fuck. Me.

There was a brief pause on the line as I tried to clear the image frommy head.

“Anyway, what’s happening, Boss? Any more intel as to whereDetective Dick might be?” Danny said, thankfully changing the subject and distracting me from my wicked thoughts of all the things I’d like to do to Riley and her ass.

I filled him in on what Miles had found about Anderson’s medicalrecords, he sighed when I told him we weren’t the only ones looking for him.

“Shit, where the fuck is he?”

“Fuck knows. He’ll pop up somewhere but who knows when. Justmake sure security is tighter than a nun’s cunt at the apartment, and Riley is not to leave until I’m back.”

I’d told him before we left that she wasn’t to go anywhere but a littlereminder couldn’t hurt. I also knew my apartment block was near impossible to breach if you weren’t welcome there, but with the knowledge that Anderson had managed to get to Victor with threats of violence against his family, there was no way of knowing if he’d managed to get to anyone else.

Call me paranoid, but I thought I had every right to be given what hadhappened. I hated knowing Riley was so far away, and if there were any trouble, I’d be too late to get to her.

“Course not. Although she is getting a little frustrated at beingstuck indoors, she understands the need.”

Danny alsounderstood it, he knew how fucking seriously I wastaking her safety and I knew that if it came to it, Danny would lay down his life to protect Riley.

“Good. Can you get her for me? I’d like to speak to her.”

“Sure thing. Keep me posted.” And with that, the big mandisappeared from my screen. I heard him leaving the office and faint voices in the distance as he went to get my girl. I took the opportunity to move from the table I’d been sitting at and made myself comfortable on the king-size bed that was in my room.As cheap hotels went, this wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t usually stay inanything less than four stars, but I didn’t want to draw attention to our presence in the city, and even though we were all using fake IDs, I wanted to lay as low as possible, so slumming it was the only way.

“Hey.”

Riley’s beautiful face appeared, and her tone was bright. She lookedfucking radiant and if I could have reached through the screen to touch her, I would have. For the first time in two days, my black heart beat wildly against my chest.

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