Seduced by a Dangerous Man (6 page)

“Ordered Chinese for dinner,” he said. “Might have been a little dodgy.” His voice was so loud in my ear that I winced. I stood, feeling like a movie with bad audio—I could hear the squeaking of the couch, the slippery slide of my socks on the carpet.
 

I eased up to the window and peered out. Henry was sitting across the street in the boxy sedan I had come to despise. “Can you call Henry?”

“Why?”

“Ask him if he has time to discuss the contract with you tomorrow or something. Just do it. And don’t mutter under your breath because I can hear everything.”

“Can you hear this?”

Frowning, I turned to see my brother’s middle finger extended. But he was reaching for his phone with the other hand.

I heard the ringing of the phone through Rob’s speaker. Henry answered with a grunt. “You gonna invite me up for a drink?” Henry asked.

I caught all of the conversation, but only through Rob’s phone. Not surprising given that Henry was across the street and in a car.

Motioning for Rob to keep him on the phone, I cut across the living room, ran downstairs and hurried to the front door.
 

The moment I opened the door, I remembered why I’d given up on the eavesdropper. Only the faintest breeze stirred the night air, but a hurricane raged in my right ear.

Henry hadn’t noticed I was outside. Bracing myself against the steady roar, I walked across the street to the passenger side of my car and opened the door.

I could hear Henry then. Not well, but I was able to make out some words. “… All… have to sacrifice… meeting with everyone.”

There was a crumpled bag from the diner on my floor—I often bought muffins at the end of my shift. Food was discounted for staff. I puffed out the bag to make it look full and closed my car door. The sound resonated in my skull for several long seconds, then the eavesdropper started making strange beeps.

I shot a look at Henry’s car. He had definitely spotted me and was watching distrustfully. Probably thought Rob had set him up so I could sneak away.

But I gave him the middle finger—pass it on, right?—and went back inside.

I peeled the bud out of my ear
before
I shut the door and went back upstairs. Rob was still on the phone. “She’s right here,” he said. He held the phone out. “Henry wants to talk to you.”

“Tell him I’m not in.” I sat back on the couch and returned the eavesdropper to its small pouch. I set it aside. Maybe it just needed to be calibrated.
 

Many of my other contraptions were more vanity than anything. Even though I had wasted far too much money on these things, I’d never been able to afford the really high-quality stuff. There was a ballpoint pen that recorded grainy video. It also took photos. It had only cost $99. The reviews for it in my amateur spy forums, which I hadn’t visited in an eternity, were solid, but everyone had recommended upgrading to the better version. Well, better than nothing. I set it aside.

There were zip tie handcuffs. Technically, they belonged to Stroop Finders, which I guess meant I had stolen them. It just made sense to have some at home, some in the car… I hadn’t always had time to stop by the office before going to pick someone up.

“Part of my severance package,” I said to Rob as I tossed the zip ties onto my small pile. He had gotten off the phone soon after my refusal to talk to Henry, and he was now watching with open fascination.

“They’re hardly expensive. What the hell are you doing?”

“Preparing for the end of the world,” I said.
 

He ran a hand through his straight red hair, pushing it out of his face. The moment he removed his hand, the hair fell back into his eyes. “Can you be more specific?”

I considered him. Rob was in this mess pretty deep. He had an interest in helping me with Henry. So I decided to tell him the plan that I hadn’t even fully admitted to myself until then. “I’m going after Henry.”

“Going after him where?” His confusion was so total, his expression so startled, that I laughed.

“Where he lives,” I said. “I’m not following him. I’m taking him down.”

Rob’s brown eyes narrowed into slits.
 

“Don’t look at me like that!”
 

“Look at you like what?”

“Like
that
,” I said, diving back into the box. I pulled out the pieces of my elementary and unreliable motion detector system. Oh, I’d had such high hopes for that one. I had chosen it for two reasons: price and environmental soundness. The second reason might have been influenced by budget, too, to be fair. Many of the systems ran on batteries, but this one had built-in rechargeables.
 

It had seemed the perfect way to simplify my life: find the house where the target was staying, set up the system, relax in the comfort of my car—as opposed to huddling in the shadows in what was
always
a record-setting high or low temperature—and get a little notification when the bounty showed up.
 

There was an unexpected hitch. The manufacturer had claimed two days per charge. It had gotten fourteen hours out of the box. Once it was set up, if I moved more than twenty feet away with the receiver, the batteries dwindled fast. Three hours, tops. And whenever the batteries drained completely, the capacity for a charge was severely affected.

Probably not very useful, but I found the charger and plugged them into an empty outlet on the other side of the room.

“Audrey!”

I twisted to look at my brother. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not ignoring you. I don’t know the details. But Henry has been doing illegal stuff all along. We know that. He’s probably gonna get Stroop Finders shut down.” I felt a twinge when I said it.

“I know. You told me what Corbin said.”

I squinted. “Technically, Corbin said Henry
might
get arrested and not to get my hopes up. But it’s been a long time, so I’m taking matters into my own hands.”

Rob leaned forward, his brows furrowed. “Corbin and his people couldn’t nail Henry. You do understand why I’m a little skeptical.”

“They were only concerned about the leaks. I doubt they even cared about the other crap he’s been up to. But I want dirt on him, and I’m going to break into his place,” I said. “Take a look around. See what I can find.” I smiled. “Want in?”

I had expected him to scoff, to dismiss my idea as silly—because on some level, I suspected it was, that Henry was too smart to keep anything incriminating in his house—and to tell me to drop it.

But instead he tilted his head and pushed out his lower lip. His frown deepened. “Yes,” he said.

“Yes?” I crossed the room and sat in front of the box again.

He shrugged. “Under one condition. If we find something, we blackmail Henry to take a hike. I don’t want any of the sheriff’s offices or the police departments involved. It can’t lead back to the company.” He cracked his knuckles and sighed.

“Of course,” I said, confused. It wasn’t a weird request, but he was acting strange. Edgy.
 

He picked up the zip ties. “I have a confession,” he said as he turned them over and over. “And you’re not going to like it.”

“Ok.” I shifted, bending one of my knees so that I could face him.

He tossed the zip ties to the table. “So… things have changed since you left,” he started. He blinked three times, his gaze focused intensely down as he searched for words.

“Lots of new people, new procedures,” I said.
 

“Procedures, yes. Exactly.” He cleared his throat. “Henry. He has a pretty good track record, right? It’s one of the reasons Dad was interested in partnering with him.”

“Yeah.”

Rob crossed his arms and stuck the side of his thumb between his teeth. I knew he was going to gnaw on his nail, a habit from when we were kids that drove me absolutely crazy. I swatted his arm away, and he tucked his thumb into his fist.

“Henry cheats,” he said.
 

“How is that news?”

“Big time. He’s running a scam. He gets his buddies on the force to draw up paperwork for people who are already in custody, then he picks them up,” Rob said, making air quotes. “He pays off the cops and keeps a nice chunk for himself.”
 

I stared at him, open-mouthed. “How long have you known?”

“That’s not all,” Rob said. “He’s also got a contact at one of the insurance agencies, and that guy kicks certain cases to Henry. To Stroop Finders, now. When Henry was alone, it was a harder sell, but since he joined us, it’s easy. We’re established and reputable. The perfect company for this kind of scheme.”

I found myself getting wildly excited. “Do you have proof?”

“No,” he said miserably. “It’s all stuff I overheard.”

“Start from the beginning and tell me everything.” With a little luck, I might be able to ferret out a hidden but important detail that Rob had overlooked.
 

Rob clearly didn’t want to, but he finally shrugged. “I was working late. I’d packed up for the day but decided to use the bathroom before leaving. I hear someone come in—Henry—and already he’s bitching about Kat leaving the lights on. So that gets my attention, and I figure I’ll just be a fly on the wall. I didn’t even know who he was talking to until Butch says Kat isn’t so bad. Then Henry starts in on Butch, saying these really nasty things, telling him that he’s worthless, that Henry should cut him loose.”

“Wow. Always thought those two were tight.”

“Henry has mood swings,” Rob said. “He’ll be charming one minute, then slamming doors the next. The man’s got issues.”

“In fairness,” I said, “we knew that.”

Rob looked like he wanted to press the point, but instead he continued his story. “Henry’s really pissed because he’s ramped up the stuff with law enforcement, but the guy at the insurance company is nervous about tripling the cases sent to Henry overnight. Butch starts apologizing, says he’ll talk to the wife of the guy at the insurance company, apply some pressure that way.”

I pulled my other leg onto the couch and wrapped my arms around my knees. “Rob, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this. Were you worried?”

“That they’d find out what I’d heard? Nah. Nosy. Henry’s got all these shady contacts, but I never knew for sure that he was guilty of anything more than poor taste in friends—”

“What about the stuff I told you!”

“Well, obviously that,” Rob said, uncomfortable. “I’m not doubting you. And anyway, I’ve only known for a couple of days.”
 

Henry had his fingers in every pot and on every level. Local law enforcement, the FBI, the insurance companies. He hung out with cops and criminals and managed to bend everyone to his will. Or maybe he was just really good at picking out the bad eggs. Frankly, I couldn’t help but be a little bit impressed.

I licked my lips. “When we were in Florida, Henry said he wanted to make a bounty hunter network that worked closely with law enforcement. But the funny thing is that he kept complaining about being subcontractors and doing the dirty work. Like he felt he’d been forced into bribery and stuff.”

Rob scoffed. “Playing dirty isn’t what upsets him. He’s still pissed about being kicked off the force.”

“Kicked off? He wasn’t… he resigned.”

“Who told you that?”

“Henry did,” I said. “He quit because he had something to do with a fatal car crash. He was chasing the kid…” I trailed off, realizing how stupid I sounded. “Was any of it true?”

That made Rob cough out a bitter laugh. “All that stuff is sealed, but Butch told me one night after work. Give that man a few drinks, and he talks. He’s former FBI, you know—”

“Yeah, I know. Told you what?”

“It was a routine traffic stop. Henry pulled the kid over for driving through a stop sign. The kid only had a learner’s permit. He was going ten blocks, he said, which was true. Dropping off a friend who had been drinking. He told Henry all of this, confessed it tearfully, hoping for leniency, I guess. So Henry said for the kid to get out, and the kid freaked out. Drove off. Henry got in his cruiser and followed even though he had the kid’s address, and it was clear the kid was just running home. But Henry, our hero, was furious about the lack of respect for his authority, and he rammed his car into the victim’s car. The kid wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and ended up on the pavement.”

My jaw dropped. “Damn.”
 

“Indeed,” Rob said with a sad smile. “Henry voluntarily completed an anger management course, but they canned him anyway. How could they not?”

I took a moment to process everything. “That is so not the story he gave me. Other than the victim being a kid, it’s not at all the same.” Despite everything, I was still shocked that Henry could have lied about
that
. And so convincingly. When he’d shared the story, it had humanized him, and I’d softened. He’d played me for a fool.
 

“I’ve found it’s best not to believe anything Henry says that might serve his purposes. He told me he’d take care of me. Gave me a raise. Then he took advantage of me.”

“This is Dad’s fault, you know,” I said. “If he had trusted us—”

“Have you been out to see him again?”

“Tomorrow,” I said.
 

“You’ve been saying that for the last few weeks.”

“He said he remembers when people talked to him during his coma. I can tell he wants to speak to me alone, but I’m dreading it.”

“So? Oh, you’re worried about Corbin?”

I shook my head. “I thought about it, and I’m certain that was probably more confusing than anything. I mean my heart-to-heart with Dad. It got… messy. I did it for me, you know? I never would have said those things if I’d known he could hear.”

“I doubt he remembers
everything
,” Rob said. “Probably just bits and pieces. I told him some things, too, but he hasn’t brought it up except to say he’s proud of me.”

A twinge of jealousy snapped through me. “You’re probably right.” I leaned forward and picked up the remote control.

“Not to pry, but—”

I blew out a long sigh, cutting him off. “You always pry.”

“Not always. But, come on. You’re my twin. We don’t keep secrets. What did you say to him?”