Deadly act, p.3
Deadly Act, page 3
part #1 of Kylie Hatfield Series
Just like he was trying not to like her. Not to want her.
Then she’d gone and called him to help her find her dog after the gigantic canine had gone clambering into the woods. That was when Linc had learned that Kylie had aspirations of becoming a private investigator and had gone gallivanting out to try to find a cheating husband.
Well, they’d found the cheating husband all right, nearly dead from the snakebite. And the mistress…
Shit. They hadn’t been able to save the young woman. Yeah, cheaters sucked, but nobody deserved to die as painfully as that woman did.
It still haunted Linc.
He hadn’t been able to save the woman, who’d only been in her early twenties. Just like he hadn’t been able to save his team on that terrible day in Syria. Not been able to…
He shook his head, shaking the thoughts to the back of his mind where they would hide for a time, but never fade.
Maybe that was why he’d kissed Kylie, to release his frustrations. But, no. That wasn’t it. Not completely, at least. He’d kissed Kylie because he was freaking stupid. Stupid for letting his attraction to her get the better of him. It didn’t matter that they fought all the damn time.
Kylie’s eyes filled with relief as she spotted him. “Oh my gosh! Oh, my gosh! I am so glad to see you!” she shouted, clutching at her heart. “I was having lunch with a friend, and Vader just jumped up out of nowhere and took off like a bat out of hell. Almost got himself killed! I chased after him thinking I’d probably never see him again! But he must have scented you out, huh? From three blocks away…wow! Can you believe that? He’s got a nose, I’ll tell you!”
Annnnd there it was. The headache.
As bright as a firecracker and as loud as one too. He rubbed the back of his neck. “What—”
“I mean, that’s got to be some kind of record. That he could sniff you out from that far away? Does Storm even have that good a nose? What did I tell you? He’s made for search and rescue.” She touched his chest with her pointer finger to accentuate each word of, “Made. For. It.”
He took a step back.
She crossed her arms proudly as Vader suddenly saw a butterfly, and his tail started to beat against the pavement. She quickly grabbed his leash as he thrust his nose into the air, trying to catch it. He whirled in a circle, nearly dislocating her arm.
Made for SAR, my ass.
Before Linc could get Vader’s attention to calm him, the dog lunged forward, sending Kylie off-balance. She stumbled a few steps forward. Linc reached out and grabbed her before she could fall onto the pavement, lifting her into his arms.
His damn dick took notice. She smelled good. She looked good. Her breaths came short and fast, her chest heaving. Those emerald eyes stared up at him, heavy with anticipation. Those lips begged to be tasted.
Linc knew he couldn’t have her this close and not want to take advantage. For the first time, he was glad there were a lot of people around. If they’d been alone, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.
He quickly got her on solid footing and let go, raking his hands through his hair, averting his eyes. He leaned down and started to load the lumber into his truck. “See you around,” he muttered.
She didn’t take that as a cue to leave. The woman did not know how to take a hint.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Are you building something?”
He nodded. “New kennels. Where did you come from?”
She huffed and waved back in the direction she had come from. “Oh. I was out to lunch with a friend around the corner, and Vader got away from me.”
A friend. Part of him tried to think of a witty response, and the other part wondered if this friend was male or female. That part won out. He just nodded dumbly, cursing himself for caring. The girl was social, unlike him. She had loads of friends and probably a life rife with opportunities with the opposite sex, unlike him.
She grabbed ahold of the chair on the curb. The girl never sat still. “Which reminds me, I’ve got to return this. I’ll see you for the obedience lesson later?”
“Yeah.” Fuck. He’d forgotten. He had another obedience lesson with her later today, otherwise known as the Hour-Long Struggle to Keep His Cock Under Control. He leaned down and stroked Vader’s ears, and casually added, “See you later.”
He hopped into his truck and watched her walk away, dragging the plastic chair with Vader at her heels. The last thing he wanted in his life was a woman, but even if he had wanted one, she wasn’t it. She talked too much. She flitted about like a damn flea. She couldn’t just sit still and take a breath and calm herself.
No wonder she and Vader got along so well. Vader was Kylie, in canine form.
Linc snorted at the thought, then realized he was still staring after her, long after she’d disappeared around the corner. He turned to finish loading his supplies and caught Storm staring at him, looking as close to suspicious as he’d ever seen her.
“Hey,” he told her, pushing her muzzle out of his face and stroking it when she whimpered. “Don’t give me that. You know you’ll always be the only girl in my life.”
At least, she’d always be the only girl who made a lick of sense.
He went back home to his place up on the mountain, trying to go through the mental checklist of everything he needed to have ready for the online training session. He’d gone through dozens of them, so even though he wasn’t the most tech-savvy person on earth, it’d gotten easier. He needed to make sure his camera was ready, and…
And he couldn’t think past that.
Every time he tried, he thought of Kylie Hatfield when they’d been alone in the cabin after that snakebite case. Soft skin. Perfect tits. Pillowy pink lips. He’d wanted her. Wanted her with every pore in his body.
He couldn’t take her talking much, but he could listen to the little whimpers and moans she made when she kissed him all day long.
He turned on the country station and listened to some Kenny Chesney. But all that did was make him think of her. Aggravated, he turned it off.
He had to feed the animals before the hundred little details he needed to do to prepare for the online session. The other twelve dogs in the yard were barking up a storm as he neared them, wagging their tails excitedly. Usually, the sound of his dogs barking was a noise so loud he couldn’t think.
But he was still thinking all right.
Unfortunately.
Of the wrong thing. Her.
4
“That was unacceptable, Vader. Really. Un. Ac. Cept. A. Ble.”
Kylie wagged her finger at him sternly as she walked with him toward Starr Investigations, being the grown-up, just as Linc had shown her to do. He’d said it was important to be firm and express displeasure in a way that made a dog take notice.
And she was displeasured as hell. Not only had Bethany been gone when she’d gotten back to the restaurant, so she didn’t get a chance to ask her all the thousands of questions she’d been thinking, but when she delivered the chair back to the restaurant owners, they gave her death-glares and told her that she and her pet were not welcome in their establishment ever again. Vader’d pulled the chair out from under her with so much force that he’d cracked the seat in half.
Vader hung his head and gave her the closest thing to a pathetic little pout. It was so cute, her heart melted.
“Aw, it’s okay, boy,” she said, and he immediately perked up. She knelt down and hugged him. “The restaurant didn’t even charge me for the broken chair. And their food kind of sucks anyway. So, all’s well.”
Yeah, she wasn’t really good with firm.
Maybe Linc could be hard and serious and by-the-book because that’s all he was in life, a no-fun grump, but she happened to be glass-half-full and believe that people—and dogs—deserved second chances. Third chances. Hell, even more than that. Long live the imperfect.
It didn’t stop Kylie from thinking about how Linc had felt when she stumbled into his arms. Geez, Linc Coulter was hard in other ways too. He had some serious guns. She’d felt his chest, though briefly. She was sure, under his shirt, there were enough muscles to make her drool like Vader. Probably a sexy tattoo or two, mingling with some dog tags. He was former military, after all.
She wondered if that was how he did sex. Missionary all the way, hard and unforgiving. Maybe…
She groaned and shook the thought out of her head. Maybe nothing. That needed to stop. Seriously. He hated her. She hated him. They made awesome enemies. Attempting to change that would, she didn’t know, mess with the earth’s natural balance.
“Right, Vader? We don’t disturb the force,” she said to her dog as she reached the crumbling old storefront that housed Starr Investigations. “It can only bring despair. Also, I might lose an important body part in a battle with his, um, lightsaber.”
She dug in her purse for the keys to the office when she noticed her boss’s cranberry-colored Buick Skylark with the fuzzy dice on the rearview mirror parked across the street. Sure enough, the door was open. When she walked in, she didn’t see him at his desk, but that didn’t stop Vader. He raced up and tackled Greg Starr as he was coming out of the bathroom.
“Hey! Ho!” Starr said as Vader put his front paws all over his beach ball beer belly. The PI started out grouchy, but in two seconds, he was laughing. If only she had that kind of effect on the man.
“Hi!” Kylie said as Vader finally calmed down and went off to check out some of the flies buzzing, trapped, in the front window. “How was your case?”
He shrugged and tore off his too-small blazer, draping it over his metal office chair. “Fraud. Impact Insurance.”
Her eyes widened. From all of the invoices she’d filed and the budgets she’d worked on, she knew Impact Insurance was one of Starr Investigations’ biggest clients. They contracted out to him to perform surveillance on their workers’ compensation cases.
“Nasty business. This guy’s been milking the system for years. It’ll be my privilege to help Impact bring him down.”
Starr lifted a stack of photos from a beaten briefcase and spread them out on his table. It was an older guy, working in his backyard, chopping wood. The guy looked pretty healthy.
Kylie frowned, tapping the picture. “You mean he—”
“His heart defect is so bad he can’t work,” Starr said, sarcasm dripping from the words, “and yet he could lug a two-hundred-pound maple across the yard? I don’t think so.”
Why were people so stupid? Kylie wondered. “Dumb move,” she said.
Starr nodded. “So, how were things around here? Quiet as usual?”
He eyed her suspiciously. She’d only been working for him a month, but he knew she didn’t do quiet. She didn’t want to, but for some reason, she just couldn’t help making waves. She had a hard time reading him, though. She walked on eggshells these days, wondering if he liked her or was ruing the day he’d ever hired her loony ass.
“Oh, fine.”
His eyes scraped over the office. This place had a way of breeding paper in need of being filed, but since she’d started, Kylie had managed to get all of that under control. He’d moved her on to billing, budgets, typing up statements, calling customers to confirm appointments, but that was about it. He’d thought her success with the last case, finding that snakebite couple, had been a fluke, a stroke of luck. Even if the mistress hadn’t been so lucky…
Kylie still hated herself for that. If only she’d been faster or known more about the area. If only…
Stop it, she told herself. She was working on being faster and knowing the area better. She was working on learning more and trusting her spidey-senses better. Getting better at reading people…
“A good investigator would’ve noticed something was fishy with the woman who reported the crime the second she walked into this office, and called the police,” Starr had told her more than once since that day. It could’ve, as Starr lectured her, “Gone bad. Very bad for you, kid. You could’ve gotten your own self bitten by that snake or one of the other hundreds of snakes in this area. You’ve got to use your head and think.”
She guessed that was fatherly concern on Starr’s part, but she didn’t want that.
She wanted a real damn case. And she wanted to do a damn good job solving it.
“Oh,” Kylie said, giving her boss her most innocent eyes. “I did get one call.”
He stopped and stared at her. There must’ve been something written on her face because he groaned. “Uh-oh.”
“No uh-oh. It’s nothing. Really.” She grinned broadly.
“When Kylie Hatfield is tight-lipped about anything, it must be something.” He wheeled his chair in close to the desk and laced his fingers in front of him. “Okay. Spill it, short stuff.”
Kylie sighed and lifted the message out from a pile of paper on her desk. She pushed the paper with Miranda Hilyard’s Oregon phone number over to him. “This woman called. She’s very concerned about the whereabouts of her sister, Jessica, who disappeared a week ago. No one has heard from her.”
He stared at the number, stroking his chin. “They file an official missing person’s report with the police?”
Kylie opened her mouth to answer but realized that even though she’d learned a lot more about the case than that message would imply, she wasn’t sure how much she should share.
He let out a breath before she could think it all the way through. “You didn’t ask? I’m shocked. I thought you’d know her blood type, favorite show tunes, and you would have tracked her halfway across the state by now.”
He gave her a pointed look.
“No,” she said innocently, rolling her eyes like, Of course I wouldn’t do that, silly! “I did not, thank you very much. I know the police are investigating, but I don’t know what kind of report was filed. I mean, this isn’t even my case.”
Like that little detail would ever stop her.
“But you did do something.” It wasn’t a question. He already knew. She was beginning to learn why he was such a good investigator. He could read her more accurately than she liked.
“Well, what did you expect me to do?” she asked, indignant. She stood up and started to pace. Vader started to pace with her, so close she nearly tripped over his massive, hairy body. “After all, I’ve done everything to get this office in shape. And as Assistant PI, I should be able to—”
“Assistant to the PI,” he corrected.
She let out a huff of air. Those two damn words had a way of meaning just about everything.
“Okay. Whatever. As you know, I’m fully capable of helping you with your cases. I’m more than just a typist. In fact, I’m a crappy typist. I’m much better at other things. And yes, I’m sometimes rash and don’t use my head, but I promise, if you—”
“Kylie, Kylie, Kylie,” he singsonged, sighing in disappointment. “I know you are fully capable of doing many things. But you have to admit you don’t know a damned thing about investigations, and if you go off half-cocked, you’re going to get your foot caught in the door one of these days. And I’ll be the one paying for it.”
“Okay, then get me fully cocked!” she blurted, then blushed a hot red. That sounded so weirdly dirty that her mind briefly flashed to Linc again. She shook her head away from the other frustrating man in her life and focused on the one in front of her. “Teach me! I’m a sponge. And I want to learn. I want to know everything.”
“Kylie. I need someone to run my office. Not to play Hutch to my Starsky.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I have no idea what that is. But please…”
Starr’s face was flattened in a frown. That was a no. A big old door-in-her-face no. She just knew it.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Starr,” she said then shut her mouth tight. Her voice had come out in a high-pitched whine, to which he started to roll his eyes. She knew she had a tendency to go on too long when she should just put a sock in it, but she couldn’t. Not now. It meant too much. But she could do it with more dignity. “I’ve been in college for nearly six years, and I still don’t have a degree. Up until a month ago, I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do with my life. And then…when I came here and started working, it all just fell into place. I want this. So bad. This is what I want to do with my life. You don’t understand how much it’ll mean to me to be a part of this.”
Starr just stared at her as she gulped in the breath she desperately needed. “Are you done?”
Kylie nodded, a flame igniting inside her. This wasn’t done. She knew, come hell or high water, even if she had to track Jessica down on her own and carry her across the state on her back, she’d do it.
“Good. What I was going to say is that my schedule is fully booked with these medical fraud cases for Impact Insurance. So…” he picked up a notepad and pen and started to scribble a few things down, “if you’d like to get in touch with this woman, I’ll let you lay the groundwork. Find out which police department is investigating, call them, and see if a missing person’s report has gone into the national database yet.”
Kylie just stood there, her mouth opening wider and wider. She tapped on her ear. “I’m sorry, Mr. Starr. It sounded like you just told me to take the lead on this case.”
He barked out a laugh and wagged a finger at her. “Hell no. You’re still in training. But you can do a couple things for me to get the ball rolling.”
In a fit of happiness, Kylie jumped forward and gave her boss a quick hug before doing a happy dance that she thought was fairly contained.
Starr just stared at her. “Do you ever embarrass yourself?”
Smiling, she danced a little more. She’d never been much of a dancer, but she didn’t care. She felt too good to stay still. When Starr smiled too, just a little, she felt like she’d won some prize.
She shimmied over to him, grabbed the paper off his desk, and scanned it. “Yes. I will do these things. Actually, I already checked out the missing girl’s Facebook page and found we had a mutual friend. We went out to lunch today, and I learned that Jessica has never missed a day of work before, but she’s been out of the office for a week and no one has heard from her at all.”
