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A gasp from Ryker.
“Isn’t her life more important than a competition?”
“That’s why I hired you. I don’t want Alina to lose her dream. She’s lost enough. We can keep her safe. You do your job. Stay close to her—”
“I’m freaking down the street in a dark car, spying while I talk to you right now. If a neighbor spots me, my ass will be hauled to jail because someone will think I’m a freaking Peeping Tom. Being outside doesn’t give me the access I need.”
Silence. Then, “I don’t expect you to stay there all night. That was never part of the deal.”
No, it hadn’t been. But it should be. All-night surveillance. But not outside. He wanted to be in that house making certain Alina was protected.
“You said she was home,” Ryker continued crisply. “I have personally overseen the installation of a top-of-the-line security system at her house. Alina is secure for the night. You can leave. But you have to be back first thing in the morning.”
Yeah, he could leave. The problem was that he didn’t want to leave her. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re holding back on me. You think I don’t realize it? If you’ve had a direct threat, if you’ve got material I need to see—show it to me. I can’t work blind.” He’d been told about threatening emails and letters, but he hadn’t seen them. So far, he’d seen jack.
He heard Ryker inhale and then Ryker said, “All you have to do is keep an eye on my daughter. Make sure she is safe at her practices and at any public events. The day is over for you. She’s home, secure. You’re done. Go get some rest so you’ll be fresh tomorrow.”
He didn’t feel done. “I need to be in that house with her.”
“As I’ve told you, the house is secure. Her security system is top-of-the-line. Her home would be harder to get in than Fort Knox.”
He doubted that. “What aren’t you telling me?” Midas went right back to his question.
“You were hired to protect my daughter. To remain undercover. If you can’t do these things, then maybe I need to find someone else, recommendation from the FBI be damned.”
Let someone else get close to Alina? “I took the case. She’s mine.” Hell. He needed to dial things back. “My charge.”
“Then get some rest. Alina’s day starts early. You have to be ready for it.” Ryker hung up.
“I know her day starts freaking early,” he rumbled. He didn’t drive away. Not yet. Eyes still on the house, Midas made a second phone call. Because something else kept knotting his stomach…
And he reached out to someone that he really, really did not expect to be contacting. But he needed fast intel and Oliver was still honeymooning so…
“Yo,” Memphis Camden answered. “Tell me that my caller ID isn’t deceiving me. Tell me that I am talking to the one and only—”
“Don’t be a dick,” Midas growled. “I need help.” Like that wasn’t hard to admit to the former bounty hunter turned cold case solver extraordinaire.
Memphis Camden. Trouble with a southern drawl. A damn good hunter. Probably the best. And now that he and the other Ice Breakers—a crazily efficient cold case crew—were being bankrolled by billionaire Archer Radcliffe, Memphis’s reach was pretty limitless. So, when you needed help, why not turn to the big guns?
“Tell me what you need.”
A fast response that Midas hadn’t quite anticipated. “You’re not gonna ask me to make some deal? Promise you my first-born child or something?”
“Who the hell am I? Rumpelstiltskin?”
Midas’s brow furrowed.
“Tell me,” Memphis ordered. “You’ve got about two minutes before my beautiful wife gets out of the shower, so you need to make it fast.”
He could do fast. “There was a missing socialite in Colorado Springs. I caught a news story tonight saying that an autopsy had been conducted on her recovered body.”
“Maureen O’Sullivan. I’m aware of her.” Tension tightened Memphis’s voice. “She’d been missing a few weeks. Her brother actually reached out to us, but the local cops and Feds were swarming so we couldn’t get close to investigate. I hate this is the ending she received.”
“Broken neck and a knife to the heart.” A brutal ending, indeed. Midas exhaled. “That’s a very specific way to murder someone.”
