Hot as Hell (16 page)

“Why Alexa Annabeth. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to control me in the bedroom.”

“Two hours from now, you can tell me if it worked.”

T
he small employee apartments sat on the far edge of the resort property and backed up against a red rock formation that scaled at least a hundred feet into the air. Like the guest quarters, the natural color of the buildings blended into the landscape. Eight domed structures positioned in a semicircle with two apartments per building. No landscaping, just a short walkway leading from a central parking lot to the double doors of each building.

On the late afternoon weekday during the span between lunch and dinner, no one was around. It appeared that everyone who should be at work was, and anyone who should be here wasn’t.

It was the perfect opportunity for two well-known businessmen with impeccable reputations to do something stupid. At least that’s how Gray chose to look at the situation.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this,” Gray said as he stepped onto the small concrete patio in front of Henderson’s apartment door.

“Hell if I know.”

“That’s comforting.”

Dex sized up the outside of the apartment with a frown. “I’m a computer guy.”

“You’re not making me feel better.”

“We need more information on this Henderson character.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Getting it this way seemed like a good idea an hour ago.” Dex peeked in the window to the shadowed room beyond the thin curtains.

“Not really.”

Dex flashed a smile. “You turning into a girl on me?”

“I’m thinking that I sit behind a desk all day. That I went my entire life without breaking and entering.” Gray scanned the other buildings, looking for any movement, animal or human. “Another streak broken.”

Dex reached for the doorknob then stopped. “We’re sure this is the right apartment?”

“Yeah, Mr. Computer Genius. There’s police tape on the door. I’m positive.”

“Just checking.

“Get on with it.”

“Sure thing. Make yourself useful and keep watch.”

Gray was not one to toy with the law. He grew up with parents who attracted attention. The upbringing made Gray very private. He took risks in business, but never with his reputation. “This isn’t exactly my regular day.”

“What, the one where you talk on the phone all day?”

“Someone has to run the office and keep an eye on the money.”

“And some of us do the fun part.”

Gray ran the place. He left the hands-on work to Dex and Noah. One man had a secretive past. The other spent hours lost in computer work. Gray thought of Noah and Dex as the same type of men—driven, smart, and focused. Then Noah hooked up with his sister and proved to be much deeper, much more solid and level-headed than Gray at first suspected. They had been best friends ever since.

Dex tested the knob. “It’s locked.”

“So?”

“So I’m assuming you don’t want me to kick the door in.”

“Not unless you’re intrigued by the idea of spending the night in jail. I’m not, in case you’re wondering.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Dex took out his wallet and a small tool with flip-out parts.

“Call it an attack of common sense.” Gray nodded in the direction of the small metal item in Dex’s hands. “What’s that?”

“I got Noah to teach me some of his tricks because sometimes security is about getting into things, not out.”

“We should make that our company motto.”

“I’ll leave that to you and the board of directors,” Dex said.

“That’s all me.”

“That’s my point.” Dex fiddled with the lock. After a few seconds of trying, it clicked open. “And if you’re so against this idea, why did you agree to tag along?”

“Boredom.”

Dex appeared to think about the answer for a second, then nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Let’s get inside before someone comes by.” Gray pushed against Dex’s shoulder and shoved him in the room.

Even with the bright sunshine outside, the room remained dark. They agreed not to use lights, but they did not need them.

“What the hell?” Dex beat Gray to the question by two seconds.

“It looks like a hotel room in here.” An empty hotel room. An empty hotel room that had never been used.

The bed had been made, but the place looked ready for a new occupant. Beige and boring, not a personal item anywhere. Gray opened the dresser drawers, and found them empty.

Dex stepped back out of the bathroom. “There’s nothing here. Not even towels or soap.”

Opening the cabinets, Gray searched the small kitchenette for any signs of life. Nothing in the fridge or anywhere else that would indicate anyone had been living there for months.

Dex stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. “The guy lived here?”

“That’s what I was told.”

“Someone cleaned the place out.”

“The police?”

“Not to this extent. They’d bag up whatever they needed for testing and leave the rest behind.” Dex shook his head. “No, this is about something else.”

“It’s only been two days.”

“Guess the man didn’t have much in the way of personal effects. Whatever he did have is gone.”

“But where?”

They heard the squeak at the same time. Dex turned to face the entrance to the room right as Gray checked around for a weapon. The door opened fast. Gray jumped back and out of the way to keep the thing from slamming into his gut.

The gun barrel poked around the door first. Next came the guy who got both men their rooms at the resort. Gray could not remember his name, but he did know this was not a guy who should be holding a gun.

“Stop!” The older man shouted his order.

“Calm down.” With his hands in the air, Gray tried to calm the other man down.

“What are you two doing in here?” The gun shook in the man’s hand.

“Don’t you own this place?” Dex asked. “Tate Carr, right?”

“Answer me.”

“Okay.” Gray continued to hold up his hands, but lowered them from chest-level to waist-level. “We can explain.”

“Do it now.”

Gray glanced at Dex. He thought about making up some story, but decided to go with the truth to be safe. “We’re just trying to find out a little bit about this Henderson guy.”

The gun stopped wavering back and forth. “Why?”

“Because he was in my sister’s room when he died. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on and if she’s safe.”

“All of the guests are safe. The resort is perfectly secure.”

“Of course.”

“You’re trespassing.”

Gray decided to appeal to the guy’s sense of decency. He just hoped he had one. “We’re sorry about that, but you know how it is. She’s my baby sister. I want to make sure she’s okay and see if I can find an answer to what happened, so she can stop worrying.”

Tate lowered the gun. “This is about Alexa?”

Relief swelled in Gray’s chest. “Exactly.”

The gun now pointed at the floor. “She’s been a very good guest.”

“She likes the resort.” Gray had no idea if that was true or not.

“We should contact her. See what she has to say about all of this.”

Dex groaned.

Gray understood why. Calling Alexa meant hearing her complain and lecture. Worse, it meant talking to Noah. They would both be furious. If the call interrupted anything interesting, Noah would beat the shit out of him.

Gray doubted either one of them would let him forget this scene. Of course, the chances of Gray forgetting one minute in this forsaken killing ground wasn’t likely, either.

“Why don’t we just forget this happened? We’re sorry about the inconvenience. It won’t happen again.” Gray tested Tate by putting his hands in his pockets. When Tate didn’t shoot anyone, Gray relaxed his shoulders. “We promise.”

Tate pointed the gun at the phone. “Call her.”

“Damn,” Dex mumbled.

And here Gray thought the visit to Utah could not get worse.

Wrong.

N
oah and Lexy showed up in Henderson’s doorway fifteen minutes later. Fresh from another bout of lovemaking and not at all happy about being disturbed, Noah walked in on the surreal scene with Lexy by his side.

Gray and Dex sat on the edge of the bed. Tate stood over them with a gun. There were so many things wrong with the picture. Noah did not know whether to beat the hell out of Dex and Gray for dragging him out of bed or laugh his ass off at the grim looks on his friends’ faces.

“What the hell is going on?” Lexy asked.

Yeah, what she said
.

“We have a problem.” Tate acted as if that fact was not obvious.

“Looks like a whole lot of stupid is happening in here.” Noah glanced over at Gray. “A huge amount.”

“I am well within my rights here,” Tate insisted.

By Noah’s thinking, there was nothing worse than a morally indignant man with a gun. “Why don’t you skip the legalese and tell me what you were doing?”

“I am merely defending my resort.” Tate lifted his nose in the air with a touch of superiority that highlighted his usual clueless manner.

At least he wasn’t wearing green. That saved Noah from having to shoot him just for that. “From what, the guests?”

“They should not be in here.” Tate used his gun to point at Dex and Gray.

And got a bit too close to Noah’s head. “Whoa. One of the ground rules to this discussion is that no one shoots me. Put that down.”

“Maybe we should let him shoot Gray and Dex instead,” Lexy suggested.

“I’m thinking about it.” Noah scowled at his friends. “Believe me.”

Noah saw Gray’s jaw clench. Dex’s face remained blank. Noah thought about knocking their heads together.

“That’s enough on that topic. We get it. You’re pissed.” Gray ground out between clenched teeth.

Lexy upped the outburst with one of her own. “Picking up on that?”

“Oh, we’ll get back to your genius in a second.” Instead of launching into a lecture, Noah turned to Tate and handled the scariest and most obvious problem. “Where did you get a gun?”

Tate glanced at the weapon in his hand as if it materialized out of thin air. “I bought it this morning.”

“Where?” Because Noah wanted to go to the place and warn the seller never to do something so reckless again.

“At a store.”

“Aren’t there any gun laws in this state?” Lexy asked.

Tate must have thought it was a serious question, because he answered. “Well, no, not really.”

Lexy rolled her eyes. “Just what a situation like this needs. Bullets.”

“I wish I had a gun right about now,” Gray mumbled.

Lexy aimed an angry finger in her brother’s direction. “You should know better.”

They all should. And the idea of the leaf-eating moron holding a weapon chilled the last of the sexual fantasies playing in Noah’s head. “I’m all for the right to bear arms, but there’s something wrong with a system that would allow you to walk out with a gun.”

“You go in and buy it.” Tate shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

“No background check or anything?” Lexy asked.

Tate stared at the gun and then back at Noah again. “Well, no, but I needed it following the incident.”

Lexy tried to step around Noah to get to Tate. Noah considered letting her. She would probably rip the weapon out of his hand and beat him over the head with it.

Lexy settled for yelling. The woman certainly could yell. “For the record, dropping a glass is an incident. What happened at
your
resort and on
your
watch was a murder.”

Tate’s casual manner lapsed into anger. “You can’t possibly hold me responsible for something like that. I’m a businessman, not a policeman.”

“Is he kidding?” Gray started to rise, but Lexy’s scowl had him sitting back down.

If he heard much more, Noah knew he would lose what was left of his mind. “Do you even know how to shoot that thing, Tate?”

“Not yet.”

“What?” Gray’s shock was obvious by his wide-open mouth and bug-eyed look of horror.

Tate ignored their collective groans and gasps. “I plan to take a class.”

“A class? Give me that before you shoot someone.” Noah grabbed the gun out of Tate’s hand. “Detective Sommerville would blame me if you took your foot off. The lady thinks everything around here is my fault.”

“I’ll hold it,” Lexy said.

“As if I’m going to give you a loaded weapon.” Noah snorted. “Right.”

“Can we go?” Dex asked.

“No, no, no.” Tate emphasized his denial with a head shake as if no one understood the word. “Not until I get an explanation.”

Gray stood up. “We gave you one.”

“Which was?” Lexy blocked the doorway. “And don’t even think about trying to go around me. You’re not moving.”

Tate reached out to grab Noah’s arm. Noah shrugged away. He was not in the mood to have any hands on him except Lexy’s.

The near miss did not stop Tate. He kept right on explaining. “They said they were in here because they were worried about Alexa.”

That made about as much sense as…well, nothing. “Okay.”

“We want to know more about the guy who died on her floor.” Now Dex rose to his feet.

The Stuart Enterprise crowd overwhelmed Tate in number and height, but he kept up his PR campaign. “It was an isolated event. This is not a reflection on the safety of the resort.”

“You sure have a problem using the word ‘murder,’” Noah said.

“The
incident
was not related to the resort, its employees, or the clientele.”

Noah had no idea how to respond to that bit of wisdom, considering one of the employees got murdered at the resort, so he pretended Tate never said anything. It was time to get some information from Gray, anyway. “Find anything?”

Tate made the arm-grab again. “That’s not the point.”

“It is to me.” Noah did not bother to look at Tate while he said it.

“We have a problem with trespassing. My inclination is to call the police.”

Lexy shot Noah a do-not-move look as she walked around him. In three steps she stood in front of Tate with a sweet smile on her face. “You don’t want to do that.”

“I don’t?”

“More police cars stacked up at the front gate? Imagine what the press will do with that. They still sit out there waiting for a photo of something juicy.” She placed her palm on Tate’s forearm. “We can work this out without involving reporters and causing more trouble for the resort.”

“That’s true.”

“If not, reservations will go down, and that’s not good for anyone.”

Noah admired the strategy.

Hated the touching that went along with it.

But Tate was buying into it. He covered her hand with his. “That’s a good point.”

“Clearly my brother is an idiot.” Lexy glanced over her shoulder and shot Gray a look that let him know she believed what she was saying.

When Gray looked as if he was about to jump in and call his sister a name or two, Noah spoke up. “She’s not wrong.”

“But he meant well.” Lexy’s tone was a combination of pleading and flirting.

Tate finally tried to speak up. “He shouldn’t have—”

“True. There was a better way for him to handle this. But he chose this route. We’ll talk to him. Right, Noah?”

“If you let me keep the gun, I’ll shoot him for you.”

Gray grumbled something unintelligible under his breath.

“I missed that. What did you say?” Noah asked.

“I wondered why I ever tried to help out with your messed-up relationship with Alexa.”

Lexy pulled Tate to a corner of the room. Away from the other men and their arguing. “I would consider this a personal favor, Tate. Since I’m thinking about using your resort for corporate retreats, I would hope you could overlook this show of brotherly affection and move on.”

“You are?” Gray sounded horrified by the idea.

Noah had to side with Gray in this fight. He did not plan to ever step foot on the resort grounds again. Once the murder was solved and he won back Lexy, they could all leave and never look back. Tasks he feared would take months instead of days.

Tate nodded in understanding. “I think I see what happened here. They were misguided.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it,” Noah said.

Both Tate and Lexy were smiling and nodding and otherwise chatting in their own world. One where any of this seemed rational, which was not this world.

“I think I could be convinced to overlook this incident and forget it ever happened,” Tate said.

Dex let out a loud exhale. “More incidents.”

“I appreciate your courtesy. Thank you.” Lexy looped her arm through Tate’s and brought him back to the group. The move was subtle and the steps small, but their conversation went from intimate to open to everyone in the room.

Which was the only reason Noah was not aiming the gun.

“Now are we done?” Dex asked.

“Of course.” Lexy patted Tate on the arm before letting go. “Tate needs to get back to work. And the rest of us need to talk.”

Dex, Gray, and Noah all crowded into the small room Lexy shared with Noah. She sat cross-legged on the desk and scanned their pathetic male faces. Gray by the window. Dex hanging in the doorway to the bathroom. Noah lounging on the bed as if nothing was out of the norm in his life.

Well, two pathetic faces. Noah was too busy being amused to wear the same dour frowns as his friends.

“A burglary, gentlemen?”

Gray rested his hand on the window ledge. “I’m getting tired of being lectured to.”

“You could try acting your age.” She still could not believe they took the risk and broke into Henderson’s room.

“Right now I’m thinking about catching the next plane back to San Diego,” Gray said.

“No one is going anywhere until this is straightened out.” Noah laid back against the stacked pillows with his arms folded behind his head.

From his smoky gaze Lexy knew Noah was thinking about their afternoon lovemaking session. His body language spoke of his relaxed state. The heat behind his eyes said something else. Something private that she was not prepared to deal with at that moment.

She had other issues to resolve first. “What were you two thinking? Are you trying to get Noah arrested?”

Gray’s head snapped back. “What are you talking about?”

“The detectives think he killed Henderson.”

“Technically, I think Sommerville believes you killed the man,” Noah said.

“The point is that bringing more attention to us and risking another call to the police was not smart.” She thought two college-educated and savvy men would know that on instinct.

“What were you looking for?” Noah asked.

“Anything that would give us some insight into Henderson.” When voices sounded outside the window, Gray stared out.

From the way he pulled back the curtain and concentrated, she knew the voices came from attractive women. Gray had a weakness for those.

“Any luck?” Noah asked.

Dex pushed away from the door frame and sat on the edge of the bed. “Did you see that room? Kind of tidy for someone’s home. Didn’t make any sense.”

And with that she lost all control over the conversation. Her stern lecture on common sense turned into a strategy session. She considered yelling until they paid attention to her. If she thought it would have worked, she may have tried it. As it was, they were determined to do the stubborn male thing and ignore ever reasonable thing she said.

And Noah was not helping.

Sure he started out angry. Getting that call from Gray right after he opened another condom wrapper caused more swearing than Lexy had heard from Noah in a year. Once he heard the reason for the call, the profanity just got worse. But now an air of calm hovered around him.

The heavy-lidded gaze gave him away. The rubbing of his hand over the comforter, back and forth, suggested he had some interesting things on his mind. None of them related to solving a murder. With the crisis behind them, his mind had moved on to another topic. Her.

“We know only what I found out before I came here. The guy was forty-something, single, no family except a grandmother with dementia who lives in an assisted-living facility in Arizona, and no debts to speak of.” Dex read off the list with all the enthusiasm of a man reciting a grocery list.

“How did he find us?” Noah asked.

Dex warmed to the subject, ticking off whatever he knew that might help. “He came to our company for some training and showed potential, so he stayed on for longer than originally intended.”

“Did Tate send him to us for training?” Noah asked.

“No. It looked like Henderson took this on himself. Probably trying to find a more lucrative position than security at this resort.”

“Can’t blame him for that,” she said.

“Probably wanted somewhere that served better food,” Noah pointed out for the hundredth time.

“Unless we intend to go around in circles, we need a new plan.” Dex threaded his fingers together and waited.

“Maybe he had a locker or a car we could check,” Gray said.

Lexy thought about calling the police and saving Tate the trouble. “I see you learned your lesson.”

Everyone started talking at once. Dex and Gray argued about other places to find Henderson’s belongings. Lexy tried to talk them out of the insanity.

“I, for one, am sick of all the secretive stuff. No more slinking around or breaking into rooms. If you have a theory or avenue you think we should try, just say it. Don’t go off on your lonesome and try to be a hero.”

“She’s talking to you,” Noah said to Gray in a voice with more than a little edge to it.

“Are you sure?” Gray fired back.

“Stop!” That time she did yell. It felt good to let some of the rage building inside her find a release. “Fighting annoys me as much as the sneaking around.”

“There might be an easier way to go about this.” Noah’s deep voice rose above the bickering and caught their attention. They went from thinking and scheming to listening.

Lexy envied the skill. “Care to clue us in?”

“My thought is that we try a plan that won’t result in us having to raise bail money. It’s not as sexy as breaking and entering, sure, but we need something more effective. Besides that, it’s so simple that we should have done it sooner.” Noah shifted and leaned up on his elbows.