Bounty Hunters: 03 Stay Hungry (20 page)

"You have proof the abductees are there?" Huxtable sounded interested for the first time since they'd started talking.

Jake didn't let out the sigh of exasperation building inside him. Huxtable acted as if his life weren't in danger. Regardless of what the man thought, he wouldn't be able to hold off some hired thug if he came to Huxtable's house. Henchmen like that didn't knock on the front door and ask you to come with them.

"Maybe. I'll have physical proof by tomorrow," Jake offered, but continued before Huxtable tried swaying the conversation further off the issue at hand. "The two men were spending time with one lady they'd kidnapped and were talking about her, and their time with her, when they walked within range of the bug your daughter planted."

Huxtable swore under his breath. Jake dragged his hand through his tousled curls. His hair was tangled and he doubted he made it look any better. "We already knew they were despicable assholes," he grunted. "You need to leave your house. Give me your address."

"I'm a step ahead of you, boy," Huxtable said, his stern tone returning. "I've already left the house. They won't find me and in the meantime I want to know what picture they found on the Internet of Angela. To the best of my knowledge, there are no pictures of her anywhere on the Web. Nor have there ever been. Even her mother agreed to that."

"I don't know," Jake said. His gaze shot to the bathroom door when it opened.

Angela stepped out, a white towel wrapped around her body and another wrapped around her hair. She padded barefoot to her suitcase and squatted, pressing one hand to her chest to hold her towel in place while unlocking her luggage and rummaging through it.

"I'll do a search, but the picture has already been discovered. I need to make sure her cover hasn't been blown."

"What?" Angela gasped, managing to balance herself while keeping the towel in place. "Who are you talking to?" she whispered, searching Jake's face.

An overwhelming urge to touch her, to protect her and destroy anyone who even thought about causing her harm, forced his chest to tighten. He couldn't breathe. The sensation rushing through him had that much strength.

"You're damn right you do," Huxtable snapped. "Regardless of whether that picture is of her, or not, they now suspect Angela. You make sure you tell her this changes the entire picture."

"Is that Dad?" Angela asked, her eyes widening. "Why are you talking to him at this hour? What's wrong?"

"Is that Angela?" Huxtable asked at the same time Angela spoke. "Let me talk to her."

"Yes," Jake said to Angela. "It's your father." Jake turned his back on her when she stood, reaching for the phone. "Angela doesn't know about this yet. I'll explain and have her call you."

"I need to know my daughter is safe." Huxtable didn't yell this time, and the concern in his voice came through stronger than his stern tone.

Jake cut him off before the older man implied something he might regret. "Your daughter is safer than she would be anywhere else," Jake growled into the phone. "And I think you know that already, since I'm with her because you encouraged it. Actually, you demanded it. Where are you headed?"

"I'm getting a room tonight. It's too late to go anywhere else."

"Call me as soon as you've checked in." Jake didn't usually hang up on anyone without saying good-bye. In this case, he made an exception.

"What the hell is going on?" Angela demanded, throwing her arms out in frustration when Jake snapped his phone shut. She lowered her arms and grabbed her towel when it started to slide.

Another time Jake would have enjoyed the incredible display of her breasts and how the towel pressed them together. He might have even grabbed her towel, yanking it off her body, and endured her show of anger just to have her naked. His protector's instincts were at full mast, though. Her almost-nude body didn't just make his dick hard but also drew the powerful need inside him in, hardening every inch of him.

"Your surveillance equipment records, right?" He walked over to the table and began messing with the knobs on the small black box.

"Yeah. Why?"

"I want you to listen to a conversation that took place why you were in the bath."

Angela returned to her suitcase and the closet, dropping her towel with her back to him and sliding into a terry-cloth robe.

"Don't mess with it," she ordered, her calm tone all business as her shiny black, unbrushed hair tumbled down to her waist.

Angela reached around him, sliding the box in front of her, and sat in the chair where Jake had been while she bathed. "What did you hear? And why did you call my dad, or did he call you?" she asked, glancing up at him while the small box hummed in front of her.

"I called him." Her robe was tied at her waist but loose at the shoulder. From where he stood, he had one hell of a view. "You'll understand in a minute. I want you to listen, and while you do, I need a laptop."

"Go ahead." Already she focused on her box, frowning and chewing on her lower lip as she rewound, paused, and rewound again until she hit part of the conversation.

Jake sat in the chair opposite her, pulling up the Internet on her laptop. "Rewind a bit more. That's around the middle of the conversation."

"That's Mario. I don't know who he's talking to," she said, picking up the pen off the notepad and clicking it open and shut as she pressed the button on the box. "What are you doing on the computer?"

"Apparently there is a picture online," he began when Angela pushed Play on her box.

Static popped only for a moment before the man who'd been talking to Mandela, possibly the blond, began speaking: "You really are the best boss I've ever worked for."

Angela looked up at Jake, her milky green eyes wide as her moist lips parted. Jake loved how her face lit up; the thought of learning something new, picking up a solid lead they could play through, showed in her expression, and she glowed from the excitement of it.

Jake nodded at the box. "Listen," he instructed, and typed
Angela Torres,
the name she'd given Mandela, into the Internet search bar. Nothing came up. Jake tried spelling her name several different ways and still came up with nothing. Then he typed in
Angela Huxtable
, since the connection to the picture had been through Huxtable. Links filled the page. A quick scan didn't show any pictures.

Mario and Bobby started talking about the woman they'd just left. When they implied having just had sex with her, Angela gasped and shot an outraged look at Jake.

"Fucking pricks," she said under her breath, slapping her pen down on her notepad.

Mario and Bobby kept talking.

"What did you think of the picture on Uncle Petrie's computer?"

"The girl? Do you think she is your lady? There is a resemblance."

"His lady?" Angela whispered, and all color drained from her face. She stared wide-eyed at the black box as she gripped her bathrobe and tightened it around her as if suddenly she were freezing. Her lower lip started quivering as she listened to Bobby promise to take care of the detective that evening. There was the sound of a door opening and closing and silence followed.

Angela sprang out of the chair as if something had just bit her. "Crap. Oh my God! Crap!" There was a wild look on her face when she stared at Jake. "You heard this live and immediately called my father?"

Jake nodded, standing slowly. Angela looked pissed as hell. He started around the table, but she shook her head, long damp strands of hair clinging to her robe, looking tousled and adding a wild air to her already-outraged expression.

"He's okay, baby. I promise." That tightening in his gut returned when Jake brushed her hair over her shoulder. "I've taken care of him for now."

Angela spun on Jake, her fury finding a target as she stabbed him in the bare chest with her fingernail. "I am not now nor will I ever be your baby. Babies are unable to take care of themselves, require complete care and attention. If you ever suggest that is how you think of me again, no matter how big you think you are, I will kick your ass." She glared at him, her breathing coming hard as she squinted, narrowing her gaze on him. "Are we clear?" she whispered fiercely.

"
Sweetheart,
" he began, stressing the word as he took her pointed finger in his hand and wrapped his fingers around it, holding her hand when she tried pulling it free. "We're very clear and I apologize for allowing you to think I believed you were incapable of anything. You're quite easily the strongest, most capable woman I've ever met."

She stared at him, not saying a word. Her anger didn't sway, but she didn't lash out again. Jake wasn't sure if she knew how much he meant what he just said, but right now wasn't the time to dwell on it. Angela was pissed her father was in danger, an emotion Jake understood very well. Anytime family met the radar of a perp, fury could blindside rational thinking.

He treaded lightly, knowing he needed to keep her focused but aware if she thought he was coddling her she'd explode again. "How far does your father live from Mario?"

She blinked, frowning. "Probably twenty minutes or so. Why?"

"Within less than ten minutes of that conversation ending, your father was already gone from his house and heading to a hotel for the night."

"Which hotel?"

"He didn't say. Once he's checked in he's calling me back."

"Huh." Angela marched across the room and grabbed her phone. After punching in a number, she began combing her hair with her fingers as she stared at the floor. "He's not answering." Angela sucked in a breath and pulled the phone away from her ear to stare at the screen before listening again. "It went to voice mail."

"Don't leave a message."

"I wasn't going to. He'll see the missed call." She hung up and lifted her gaze to Jake's, searching his face for a moment. "Why did you say not to leave a message?"

Jake shook his head, unwilling to explain that his antenna was tuning in on something that wasn't ringing right to him. "Where did you leave the bugs at Mario's home?"

Angela dropped her phone on the table and walked to her suitcase. She dug through it and pulled out clothes, rolling them in her hands and hugging them against her chest when she straightened and faced Jake. Her expression was still tight and angry.

"There is a bug in Mario's bedroom, next to his computer. I left the other one on the table outside the sliding glass doors on his patio. That is where Mario and Bobby were talking. I don't know who this Bobby person is, though. Mario had several house servants. All of them were in suits and all looked like they were related to Mario or at least men he'd known from his home country."

"When I was scoping out his place I saw a tall blond, probably a few years older than me. He was in jeans and a T-shirt. I watched him enter the outbuilding where, I'm willing to bet good money, the people Mario's abducted for the game are being held."

"We heard Mario and Bobby talking as they came up onto the patio, probably after leaving that outbuilding. I never got a really good look at it. Mario has floodlights on either side of his house facing the yard, but the way the light streams, it doesn't quite reach the outbuilding."

"I noticed that, too. At first I thought it might be because Mario was renting and it was how the owners of the house had set it up. But now I'm thinking it might be intentional. It takes the attention away from that outbuilding by shrouding it in darkness."

"Which Mario would definitely want if he was harboring captives that he's drugged and plans on using for terroristic activity with the game." Angela headed into the bathroom and pushed the bathroom door closed.

It didn't click shut but remained ajar. Jake walked toward it, trying to figure out why it seemed like something wasn't right. "Try calling your father again," Jake suggested, standing outside the bathroom. His attention riveted to the floor when her bathrobe crumpled just inside the door. "He should have called us by now if he'd checked into a room."

Angela was combing her hair with her fingers when she pulled the door open. "What do you mean, if he checked into a room? That's what he said he was doing, isn't it?"

"Yes. And he was pissed when I called him, which at first I didn't question since it was almost one o'clock in the morning."

"What are you saying?" Her hair was still fairly wet and shone black as night as she worked her fingers through it. Apparently she didn't think she was going to bed anytime soon. The jeans she wore hugged her slender hips and clung to her legs like a second skin. They were faded and looked comfortable. She'd tugged a sleeveless pink blouse over her head, and some of her hair was still stuffed under the collar. "Dad doesn't usually wake up grouchy, but you probably shocked him when you called."

"I told him to wake up and he said he was awake," Jake said, replaying his conversation with Huxtable in his head.

"Of course he was awake. You'd just called him."

"Call your dad." Jake backed away from the door to let her out and gestured toward the table where she'd left her phone.

Angela grabbed a brush off the counter and headed out of the bathroom. "You don't think that Bobby guy got to Dad before he made it to a hotel, do you?" She was brushing her hair and looked over her shoulder, her mouth puckered into a circle as she searched Jake's face.

If any of Mario's men were after Huxtable, he was in serious danger, whether they'd caught him yet or not. "Your father told me he'd left the house before we finished our phone call with each other." Jake stared at his phone and Angela's on the table next to the surveillance equipment. "I listened to the conversation between Mario and Bobby as it took place. It wasn't even five minutes later when your dad was no longer at his home. And he didn't give any indication anyone was following him."

Angela picked up her phone, her damp hair shrouding her face as she pushed numbers.

"Wait a minute." Jake grabbed her phone out of her hand.

"What?" she gasped, more surprised than pissed as she looked at Jake, confused.

"Something isn't right here. Your dad hasn't called. He wouldn't tell me where he was going."