Beautiful Prey: The Storm Series (11 page)

Jack looked down at the note then back to Victoria. He was
waiting for an explanation.

“Victoria, is someone stalking you?”

When she didn’t answer, Jack grabbed her shoulders and
forced her to face him. “Has someone been stalking you?”

“Someone wrote the word ‘mine’ on my windshield yesterday
and my ex has been leaving notes under my door and on my windshield, but I
don’t understand this note.”

Jack was furious. Someone was stalking his Victoria. “Go
pack a bag. You’ll be staying at the penthouse for a while.”

He grabbed her arm and practically dragged her towards her
apartment building.

Victoria yanked her arm away. “What? No! I can’t move in
with you. Jack, I can take care of myself!”

“I’m sure you can take care of yourself, Victoria, but the
penthouse has twenty-four hour security and it would make me feel better knowing
that you’re safe,” Jack said in a calm voice. He was trying to neutralize her
attitude. Victoria seemed to relax her stance so Jack went in for the kill. He
pulled her into his body and when she looked up at him, he planted his
trademark smile on his face. Jack knew that some women couldn’t resist his
smile, and he was hoping Victoria was one of them.

“There’s one more thing that makes staying at the penthouse
a good idea,” he said seductively.

Victoria narrowed her eyes at him. “And what’s that, Jack?”

“Me,” he moaned sexually. “Me and mornings like this, nights
like Saturday, and me owing you one.”

Victoria was stubborn, but Jack had no intention on losing
this battle. Victoria nodded her head in agreement, and Jack was instantly
relieved. She was truly his now, and he wasn’t going to let anything happen to
her.

Victoria stood on her toes and gave him a quick peck on the
lips. Then she pulled away and headed towards her car.

“Whoa! What are you doing?”

She turned to face him. “I’m going to work. I’ll pack a bag
when I get off.”

Jack caught up to her. “Let me drive you.”

Victoria shook her head. “No, I’ll be fine. I can handle my
ex.”

Jack didn’t want to take his eyes off Victoria for a second,
but if he pushed too hard she might change her mind about staying with him. He
nodded, figuring that he would let it go
for
now
.

Victoria walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his
neck. She kissed his chin and smiled up at him. “I
gotta
go. I’m
gonna
be late. I’ll text you when I get
there. I promise.”

Jack agreed and walked her to her car. When Victoria got in,
Jack kneeled to kiss her.

“Oh and Victoria, you won’t be dealing with your ex. I want
you to stay away from him.”

Victoria nodded. Jack rose and closed her door. He backed
away from her car and watched as she drove away. Jack turned and walked towards
his car, while dialing John’s number.

Chapter 16

 
Victoria

Victoria
was aware of the attention that she was getting as she strutted through the
luxurious lobby of Chicago’s famous Drake Hotel. She was wearing a fitted
knee-length white Versace bandeau dress and five-inch royal blue Christian
Louboutin
pumps. She’d applied a moderate amount of makeup
and added a clear gloss to her lips. Victoria glanced at herself in a mirror as
she walked by. She had achieved her desired look: elegant but sexy.

Victoria had received countless responses since creating her
internet profile two months ago. She was spending a lot of time in Chicago’s
most expensive hotels. Since being with Jack, Victoria found that she was
getting very comfortable among the rich. Since her ex had gotten a little too
stalkerish
, Jack had insisted that she stay with him for a
while. It turned out that Jack’s “while” meant indefinitely. She’d been there
two months. Every time she mentioned returning to her apartment, Jack convinced
her that she should stay. Victoria had even started bringing up the subject of
leaving just so that Jack could convince her to stay in his special way. The truth
was that she couldn’t imagine not going to sleep with him every night and
waking up next to him every morning. Jack made sweet love to her almost every
night and again in the morning. She thought of him every minute of every day.

Victoria changed her cellular number, so she hadn’t heard
from Dante since she started staying at Jack’s penthouse. There were no more
notes or flowers left on her car. Life was good and she enjoyed being
surrounded by such luxury. But she knew that this wasn’t her life and she’d
eventually have to return to her tiny apartment. She’d finally shared what she
did for a living with Jack, and he thought it was admirable. But that didn’t
stop him from constantly trying to convince her to take a desk job. Victoria
just wasn’t a desk officer. She loved being a street cop and was most happy
when she was doing active police work. She couldn’t catch a killer sitting
behind a desk. The killer that she was hunting had brutally murdered three
additional women last month, and each murder was more violent than the last. He
was killing more frequently and becoming more sadistic. It was as if he was
becoming angry, but his anger was a good thing because he was getting sloppy.

The killer left his DNA on his last victim. All they needed
was to find a match, so Victoria had been doing decoy prostitution missions
nonstop for the past month. Evidence technicians were present at every mission
to swab the arrestees for DNA. The hotel security staff had provided processing
rooms for the evidence techs, and everyone was in place and ready.

The old-world charm of the Drake Hotel made Victoria feel
like the heroine in a 1920’s movie as she walked over to the bar and took a
seat. She was meeting a John who had secured a room in the hotel. She crossed
one leg over the other, showing a little thigh, and looked around the room.
Undercover officers were posted around the lobby and in the bar. Deon would be
tailing Victoria that night instead of Steve. Victoria decided that Deon would
be less conspicuous in the elegant hotel than her muscle bound tattooed
partner.

Victoria looked up and found a smiling bartender standing in
front of her. “What can I get you, lovely?”

“Jack straight,” she responded returning his smile.

She looked over at Deon, and he narrowed his eyes.

“Shut up, Deon,” she mumbled, well aware that she could be
heard through the microphone in her earring. Undercover officers were allowed
to drink on the job. Sometimes it was necessary in order to fit in, but
Victoria needed it to take the edge off. Even though she’d been doing
prostitution missions for years, Victoria was still aware of the potential
dangers of entering a hotel room with a strange man. Not to mention the fact
that one of them was torturing and killing women. When the bartender returned
with her drink, Victoria thanked him and took a small sip. She wanted to take
the edge off but remain alert. She turned from the bar and looked around the
room at all the well-dressed patrons. Hell, even the servers wore Chanel.

Victoria heard her phone ringing, so she reached into her
purse. It was her covert phone, so she knew it was the John.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Vanessa, you can come up to room 1507,” the voice
said before hanging up. Victoria placed the phone back in her purse and pulled
out a twenty. She placed the twenty on the bar and rose from the stool. She
straightened her dress and whispered, “Room 1507.”

Victoria headed towards the elevator, turning heads along
the way. She pushed the button and waited. When the elevator arrived, Victoria
stepped in, pushed 15, and turned to watch the doors close. She didn’t see
Deon, but she knew he was close by. When the elevator arrived at the 15th
floor, Victoria took a deep breath and stepped out of the elevator. She
followed the signs that led her to 1507. Victoria took another deep breath and
knocked. The door opened, and Victoria walked into the room. A man stepped from
behind the door and closed it. Victoria turned toward the man and froze. She
was shocked that Greg Donovan was standing before her.

“Hello, um, Vanessa, is it?”
 

Victoria feverishly wondered if it was a coincidence that
she happened to end up in the same room with the man who’d humiliated her at
the dinner party. He stalked over to Victoria and she didn’t know whether she
should continue to play her role or get the hell out of there. Her instincts
told her that his intentions weren’t good, so Victoria turned and walked toward
the door. Before she could reach the door, she felt an intense pain shooting
through her scalp. Greg had grabbed Victoria’s hair and yanked her against his
body.

“I knew you were a whore the first time I laid eyes on you.
But no, my money wasn’t good enough for you,” he whispered in her ear. His tone
was filled with hatred, and fear raced through Victoria. “I just didn’t know
how good of a whore you were. Apparently your blow-jobs are so good that you
can make a man that I’ve known for years attack me and ruin me financially.”

Victoria reached up and tried to peel his fingers from her
hair. She shouted for her partner, “D!”

Greg reached around her body, roughly grabbed her breast,
and continued his rant. “Jack Storm is
gonna
pay for
fucking me over, but first you’re
gonna
suck my cock
and show me why you’re worth a million dollars.”

Victoria slammed her head back and made contact with Greg’s
nose, causing him to release the hold that he had on her hair. She used the
opportunity to twist herself around and bring her knee up to his groin. Greg
doubled over and clutched his groin with one hand and held his nose, which was
now gushing blood, with the other.

“Ah! Fuck! I’m
gonna
kill you, you
fucking bitch!”

Victoria reached in her purse and pulled out her nine
millimeter. She slapped the side of his face with her weapon, causing him to
fall to the floor. Victoria climbed on top of him and struck him repeatedly
with the butt of her gun.

“You want me to suck your little dick, asshole?!” She swung
with every word. Victoria was seeing red. She was so focused on the ass
whipping that she was dishing out that she didn’t even feel Greg’s blood
spraying all over her. Nor did she hear her team bursting through the door.
Someone wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled a fighting Victoria off
Greg’s unconscious body.

“It’s ok, Vic. He’s out,” she heard Deon say in a voice meant
to calm her.

Victoria wiped the blood from her face and sat on the bed.
She needed to catch her breath. “Is he alive?”

“Shit, just barely,” Deon chuckled.

Victoria looked up at Deon and his face turned serious. She
could tell that her friend was afraid for her. “The fucking hotel key they gave
us didn’t work. I had to kick the goddamned door in! I’m sorry, Vic,” Deon said
clearly full of remorse.

Victoria felt bad for her friend, so she walked over to him
and asked, “Deon, who gave you the key?”

He
squinted
his eyes and looked
away as if he was trying to remember. Then he exhaled and looked back to
Victoria with an expression full of realization. “Sargent Banner.”

“Exactly.
That
drunk
bastard mixed up the keys. It’s not your fault, D.
He’s
gonna
get me killed,” she said loud enough for
the entire room, including Sargent Banner, to hear.

The paramedics entered the room and scraped Greg off the
floor and onto a stretcher. He was starting to come to, so Frankie cuffed him
to the rail of the stretcher. He and Miguel rode with the paramedics to the
hospital. They didn’t need to take Greg to the room with the evidence techs
because Victoria was wearing plenty of his DNA. She and Deon walked out of the
room and entered the elevator. When they reached the ground floor, Victoria
walked through the hotel lobby well aware of the fact that she looked like a
walking homicide. She was sure that she looked like the black version of
Carrie.

She heard someone gasp and say, “Oh my God!”

Victoria ignored the shocked faces and questioning glares
and exited the hotel. She wanted to get Greg and her dress processed as soon as
possible so that she could get home to Jack. After completing what seemed like
a mountain of paperwork and answering endless questions about Greg, Victoria
was finally in the elevator of Storm Enterprises. It was three in the morning
and Victoria was exhausted. She was still wearing the bloody dress minus the
swatch that the evidence techs cut out, which got her some strange looks when
she passed the security booth. She figured that Jack would be sleeping and
she’d wait until the morning to get answers. The elevator arrived at the
penthouse, and Victoria knew she had figured wrong. When the doors opened, Jack
was standing in front of her. He looked down at her bloody dress, and his eyes
widened with fear.

“What the fuck?!”
He ran
into the elevator and started searching Victoria’s body for wounds.

“Baby, I’m fine. It’s not my blood.”

Jack hurriedly pulled Victoria from the elevator and into the
penthouse. “What happened? Are you okay? Was there a shooting? Whose blood is
this, Victoria?”

Jack fired questions at Victoria but she had a few of her
own. “Whose blood is it?! It came from Greg Donovan,” she shouted and then
waited for a reaction.

She didn’t get one. Jack’s expression went from panicked to
business immediately. “How did you get Greg’s blood all over your dress?”

“Jack, he said that you attacked him and ruined him
financially. What was he talking about?”

Jack walked over to the bar and she followed. He fixed
Victoria a glass of Jack Daniels. She gulped down her entire drink and slammed
the glass down on the bar.

Jack poured her another and lowered his eyes. “I, well,
Emily and I, kicked his ass the night of my mother’s dinner party. Then I
blocked the funding for a company that he wanted to buy.”

“Emily?”

“Yeah, she kicked him in the balls while I was giving him a
pounding,” he chuckled.

Damn, his
balls have had a rough couple of months
, Victoria thought to herself.

He asked as if he was afraid of the answer, “Did he hurt
you?” He looked at Victoria with eyes filled with sadness.

Victoria wanted to ease his fears, so she gave him a full
account of her evening. By the time Victoria finished her story, Jack’s eyes
had turned from sadness to hatred. “Too bad he didn’t die.”

Victoria nodded, finished her drink, and walked away from
the bar. She decided that she’d worn Greg Donovan’s blood long enough, so she
headed up the stairs and into the master bath. Victoria peeled the dress from
her body and tossed it into the trash. She looked up at the mirror and saw Jack
standing behind her.

“I loved that dress,” she muttered.

“I’ll buy you a hundred dresses, baby. I’m so sorry about
this,” Jack said as he walked over and started the shower for her.

“It’s not your fault. Do you hear me, Jackson?”

He looked at her and smiled. Victoria knew that he liked
when she used his full name. She returned his smile, and he walked out of the
bathroom.

Victoria peeled off the rest of her clothes and yelled out
to Jack. “Hey! Wait a minute, baby.”

“Yes?”

“My shoes were ruined too!”

She heard his laughter from inside the bedroom.

Victoria hopped in the shower, grateful to be scrubbing the
blood and her shitty day from her body. It took forty minutes for her to decide
that she was as clean as she was going to get. She stepped out and grabbed the
fluffy towel that Jack left out for her. Victoria dried herself completely and
wrapped the towel around her body. She walked into the bedroom and over to her
side of Jack’s bed. After dropping the towel to the floor, she climbed in bed
with her man. She rested her head on his bare chest and, when he wrapped her in
his arms, Victoria was afraid for the second time tonight. She realized for the
first time that she had fallen in love with Jack.