Four to Go (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (11 page)

Tom and John were snorting with laughter at the stunned look on Mike’s face as she kept lifting his pant leg higher and higher.

“Mike, these boots have just created a full-blown fantasy in my mind. You, naked, except for these boots. Hot, hot, hot. One of these days, Mike, one of these days. Or nights.”

Mike grinned and reached down to help her to her feet. “Minx,” he said affectionately. “You’re deliberately trying to get us all hot and bothered. And you succeeded,” he said as he tried to adjust the growing erection in his tight jeans.

John was by the bed listening intently to what Tom was saying. He nodded and then grinned in surprise. John nodded again, then threw his head back and laughed in pure pleasure. Tom laughed with him, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Do you have any idea how much I love listening to them laugh, Katie? For a long time we had nothing to laugh about, but now, with you, everything has changed. You have lightened our load, and we love you very much. Now give me a kiss so I can meet the crew for a briefing before dinner.”

Kate slid her arms up around Mike’s neck and looked up into his warm, brown eyes. “Never forget that I love you, too, Mike.” She lifted herself on her tiptoes and captured his groan with her mouth.

Mike’s tongue licked into her mouth, tasting her, before he resolutely stepped back from her. “You’re dangerous, Katie, very dangerous and very sweet.”

John came up behind Mike and put his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Kate, stop fantasizing about Mike and his boots and giving him sexy kisses. It’s my turn for a sexy kiss.”

“The sexy kiss is right here, waiting for you, John. But I can’t fantasize about you naked, wearing only your penny loafers, it’s just not the same as naked with boots. But what does get me hot is the thought of you fully dressed with your penny loafers on but with one very important part of you exposed. Now
that’s
sexy with penny loafers.” Kate smiled at the stupefied expression on John’s face.

“You have three choices, Kate,” John said in a low rasp. “One, you can come over here and give me that kiss so that Mike and I can make the briefing. Two, I can nail you against that wall and fuck you until we’re both screaming in orgasm, or three, we can turn this into an all-out orgy right now and screw the briefing and dinner. Take your pick.”

“Well, since I’m starving, number three is out, and I don’t think I’m quite up to being nailed against the wall, so two is out. That leaves one sexy kiss coming up.”

Kate took one step forward, lifted her hand, and placed it against John’s cheek and looked into the incredible blue of his eyes. “I love you, too, John. Never doubt it.”

John slipped his hand behind her neck and gently drew her toward him. He lowered his forehead to hers and exhaled roughly. “You’re one hell of a lady, Kate. Are you sure we can’t order in?”

Kate laughed softly and lifted her lips to his, expecting a hard, wildly passionate kiss. Instead, he sipped gently at her lips and poured so much love and affection into his kiss that Kate was stunned.

“What about me? Don’t I get any kisses?” said Tom, grinning and leaning lightly on his cane.

“Absolutely, Tom,” said Mike as he carefully slid his arm under Tom’s, lending his unobtrusive support. “And I get to go first!” He angled his head and covered Tom’s mouth with his own in a steamy, ardent kiss.

“Damn, that looked hot,” said John as he moved to Tom’s other side and slid his arm around Tom’s waist. Tom’s cane clattered to the floor as John’s mouth took his demandingly. “Welcome back, Tom,” said John with a smile.

Kate looked at her three musketeers, standing with their arms around each other, through a film of tears. Their love for each other and for her was so overwhelmingly obvious that she could hardly speak. Finally, she managed one word.

“Slippers?”

That single word was met with an instant of stunned silence as they checked out Tom’s slippers, followed by a thunderous roar of laughter. They barely managed to stagger backward to the bed, gasping for air. Mike and John were shouting with laughter, while Tom was howling and doubled over, holding his sides. They would almost get themselves settled down when one of them would say, “Slippers?” And they’d start laughing all over again.

Mike staggered over to Kate and hugged her close.

“Katie, you have a wicked,
wicked
sense of humor. How did you keep it hidden from us for so long?”

Before Kate could answer, Mike’s cell phone started vibrating. He gave her a quick smile, stepped back, and answered his phone.

“This is Mike, go ahead.
What?
” His voice and face reflected his shock. “Where? Call the others. But don’t touch anything. We’re on our way.” All amusement wiped from his face, John was already on his feet heading for the door.

“Where, Mike?”

“The pool. Apparently a message was left there. We’ll let you know what’s going on when we know, Tom.” And they were gone.

“Damn it! I feel so useless, Kate.” Tom raked his fingers through his blond curls.

“Come on, Tom. Didn’t you once tell me that your success in the business world was based on hiring people who were experts in their field and letting them have the freedom to do their jobs without interference? Well, unless you’re a security expert, too, you have the best men for the job in Mike and John. Not only that, their employees are well-trained professionals.”

“You’re right. I’d only be in the way. But, damn it, it’s
my
problem. And I cannot figure out why I’ve been targeted. There has to be a reason! There has to be a reason that two years have gone by without any problems and suddenly it’s starting up again with a vengeance.”

“I’m sure we’ll find out eventually. Why don’t you come with me to see Mrs. Mallory?” We might be able to delay dinner for a while, or else take food down to the pool room for the teams. We might even want to order in pizzas and maybe buckets of chicken for later tonight for the M-G crew. What do you think?”

“I think I’m the luckiest man in the world to have you, Kate. I love you very much, and I’m so sorry today turned out to be such a disaster. I had everything planned out you know, right down to the tiniest detail,” Tom said wryly.

“It’s my firm belief that everything works out for the best, most of the time. Let’s go, Tom. I’m starving.”

“Tell us how you found this, Connor,” said Mike. “I’d like to get as much information as we can before Sheriff Whittaker arrives. He said he was only a few minutes away from here.” He looked at the thin, gangly twenty-five-year-old youth with his freckled face, intense concentration, and the stubborn cowlick standing straight up from his sandy hair, wondering if he’d ever been that young.

Connor gestured around him. “We had cleared this area just fifteen minutes previously. We wanted to get the peripheral area of the room checked out before we did the inside of the pool later tonight. I thought I’d take another quick look at the place. You know, the waterfall, the island, everything. It’s the most unique place I’ve ever seen, and frankly, I was anticipating checking it out later tonight. As my eyes swept the pool for the last time I noticed a trail of water leading from the side of the pool to the plants in back. It looked like someone tried to wipe the water up, but was interrupted before he finished. I didn’t recall seeing any water earlier, so I followed the tracks, and this is what I found.”

“Good work, Connor. John, can you turn the pool lights full on? We need to find out how this guy entered.” Mike squatted down next to the window where the inside and outside pools were kept separate by the sliding glass panel.

“It looks as if the glass goes all the way to the bottom, Mike, at least from this angle. We’ll have to go down,” said John, and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“I’ll go. I’ll go!” said Connor as he whipped off his shirt and kicked off his shoes. He suddenly stopped and looked around in consternation, his face flushed and red. “I mean, if you want me to, I’ll be happy to go down and check it out.”

“Go ahead, but be careful. If that glass has been cut, it will have sharp edges,” said John, trying to hide his amusement.

He’d hardly gotten the words out of his mouth when Connor dove into the water with barely a splash, his trousers tossed on top of his shoes and shirt. They watched as he swam to the bottom of the channel, looked around, and then swam under the partition to the outside pool and looked around the sides of the panel. He swam back under the panel and straight up to where Mike and John were waiting and started talking as soon as his head broke water.

“Don’t believe the panel is glass, but some type of polymer. The bottom of the panel was approximately a foot and a half above the concrete bottom of the pool. And since the edges of the panel were beveled, it wasn’t cut. There were some large, heavy scratches where the panel met the wall of the pool. It could indicate that someone had a problem installing it, since it would have to have been done underwater. I believe the plastic panel was switched with the original glass one not long ago because the scratches look relatively new.” Connor finally took a deep breath and continued. “I’ll be happy to check for anything else down there if you want me to.”

As Connor pulled himself from the water, John tossed him a towel. “Not right now, Connor. I think we’ll wait for the sheriff to arrive first.”

* * * *

Sheriff Ben Whittaker was not a happy man. He had missed lunch earlier today when he came out here, and it looked as if he was going to miss his dinner, too. He followed Tom and Kate down to the pool, marveling again at the incredible things that money could provide. Yet, he was here because there were problems, problems that had put Tom in a wheelchair and were continuing to threaten him.

As they entered the pool room Mike waved them over to the back wall of the pool area. There, amidst a lushly fragrant group of flowers, was a large envelope with Tom’s name printed in capital letters. Next to the envelope was a gun. The hand grip of the gun was wedged into the earth with the barrel pointed out at anyone approaching the envelope.

“No one has touched the envelope or the gun. We called you immediately. Our instruments have not detected any wiring anywhere in the area that could be attached to an explosive. The gun itself, while appearing threatening, is obviously missing a trigger. Apparently this guy entered from the outside pool. We did find that the glass panel that separated the pools was replaced with a shorter plastic panel that doesn’t go to the bottom of the pool. That’s all we can tell you at this point.”

After examining the scene, Sheriff Whittaker joined Tom and Kate. “Ma’am.” He nodded to Kate as he removed his hat and placed it on the table. “Tom, as soon as the area is photographed and the evidence bagged, we can slit the envelope and find out if there is a message inside and maybe learn what this is all about.”

“Ben, would you like to see the photos Connor took while waiting for Mike and me to get down here? We can make copies for you if that will save any time, or you’re welcome to use our digital camera and take your own photos.” John made a motion to Connor, imitating taking a picture. Connor picked up a folder and the camera and brought them to the Sheriff. Ben took the folder and opened it, scanning the photo on top.

“Carolanne just finished printing up the photographs I took. Before she left to take some sandwiches to Trey and Mark upstairs, she said a couple of the photos were very interesting and needed to be looked at more closely. She said she put them on top. I haven’t had a chance to go over them yet. There! That shadow. Look at that! He’s just going under the panel to the outside pool. Look! Look at that! This next picture just shows his feet. Oh, my God, thirty seconds earlier and I would have caught him. Just thirty lousy seconds. Oh, well, at least we know how he got in and out of here” he said dejectedly.

“One piece of advice,” Ben said as the photos were passed around. “Lose the coulda, shoulda, woulda crap, and all of the ‘if onlys.’ They keep your mind on what you did or didn’t do in the past, not what you need to do in the present and in the future. You did one hell of a job with these photos, Connor. And so did Carol—?”

“Carolanne,” said Connor.

“Right, Carolanne. The focal point of the photo was the watery track in the background, yet she was thorough enough that she examined the whole picture and was able to pick out a suspicious shadow in the water on the far edge of the picture. It could have been an easy miss for any of us. Okay, let’s get the evidence bagged and see if we can find out what’s going on.”

It was a work of just moments to get the gun lifted, bagged, and labeled. They picked the large envelope up using the tweezers and slipped it into a large plastic evidence bag. Connor held the envelope through the evidence bag while Ben used his knife to slit open the top and the tweezers to remove the two sheets of paper inside.

There were copies of two photographs on each page. The photographs were taken with the zoom lens of a camera which was jury-rigged to the barrel of a rifle. It appeared that a crude bulls-eye target had been hand painted on the lens of the camera, with the center circle an outline, showing the photographed face of the intended target perfectly lined up with the sight on the barrel of the rifle. Kate and Tom were on one sheet, and Mike and John on the other. The words hand printed on each sheet were,
You will never know when
.

“Motherfucking goddamned son of a bitch!” raged John as he reached for the photos, only to have his wrist clamped firmly by Ben.

“He’s playing you, John! Get control of yourself. Connor,” said Ben. “Do you have any clear plastic sheet protectors? If so, I need two, now! The rest of you can try to figure out where the photos were taken by what little background is showing. It looks as though all four head shots were taken at roughly the same time and place.”

“Here you go, Sheriff.” Connor handed the sheet protectors to Ben, and then turned to John and to Mike, who was trying to pull John away. “I need to talk to you both about personnel. I don’t think we have enough coverage in a place this big. I’ve already called Don Phelps and Ryan Underwood, and they’re available and on the way. If you don’t think we need them, let me know now so I can get back to them right away. I’d also like to call Sophie and Gina, if that’s okay.”