AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Heath?” Tate asked as he sat across from us.
Samantha nodded. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that he’d never met Landon’s family. It wasn’t like Samantha had come to poker night or any other times the guys had all gotten together.
“As in Landon Heath’s little sister?”
“Drop it,” I warned when I saw Tate’s expression of incredulity.
But he either didn’t hear it or didn’t care because his gaze landed on me, and he grinned. “You’re dating your friend’s sister? Bro…he’s going to kick your ass from Milwaukee to Chicago and back again.”
I sighed. “He already knows.”
“And he’s fine with it?”
“More or less,” I muttered.
Tate laughed as he got comfy in his seat. “I’m glad I came to poker night this month. Wouldn’t have wanted to miss this drama.”
“When did you become a teenage girl?” I drawled as the plane took off.
“Landon doesn’t have a say in who I date, anyway,” Samantha chimed in. Then she smiled at Tate, and I tamped down the urge to rearrange his pretty face. “Nice job breaking the record for most hat tricks last season.”
His eyebrows shot up again, and he cocked his head to the side. “You know hockey?”
Samantha scoffed. “I’m from Wisconsin. And my sister-in-law is from Canada.”
“Damn, if only I’d met you first.”
I scowled and unbuckled Samantha’s seat belt to pull her onto my lap. “You’re booking yourself a thirty-five-thousand-foot jump without a parachute, Finch.”
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket while he laughed, and I dug it out to glance at the screen. The device was connected to the plane's Wi-Fi, so I could still receive texts and make calls.
I’d been sent a message from another unknown number.Shit.
“Hey. What’s wrong?” Samantha asked softly as she smoothed the worry lines on my forehead.
I forced an easygoing expression and kissed her nose. “Nothing, baby. But I need to check on a project, so I’m going to make a quick call.”
She didn’t look as though she truly believed me, but she didn’t say anything else when I gently moved her back to her seat and stood. I pointed at Tate and snarled, “If you ever want to play hockey again, you’ll stay over there and keep your hands to yourself.”
He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, and after one more hard look, I stalked into the bedroom at the back of the plane.
Opening my phone, I furrowed my brow as I tapped on the message icon.
Unknown: Break up with the bitch.
My hand clenched as fury shipped through me, but I forced myself to relax my hold so I wouldn’t break the device.
I scrolled through my contacts and tapped the number for Jonah Carrington. He was the owner of one of the largest tech companies in the world and had the best cybersecurity division in existence. One of his subsidiaries, Essex Security, handled all of JB Capital’s holdings.
He ran the company with his eldest son, Tucker, though Jonah was partially retired. But I’d been friends with Tucker since we met in England years ago while he was setting up their European division and I was running our first investment property in another country. So he and Tucker always handled my shit personally.
“James Bardot. What can I do for you?” Jonah asked when he picked up.
“Another one,” I growled as I forwarded him the message.
I’d been receiving random texts like this for the past two weeks. They’d started out as messages of admiration, and since I didn’t want to keep secrets from Samantha, I’d told her about them. She was a little worried, but since I was simply annoyed, she didn’t push me to do anything except ignore them. Then they moved into stalker territory by mentioning my clothes and places I’d been. Samantha started pushing me to tell the police or hire a PI, but it wasn’t until they started pleading with me to break up with Samantha that I finally got Jonah involved. And stopped keeping her in the loop.
The wording of the past two texts indicated that the person was escalating, and I worried they might get dangerous.
