Passion's Fury (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 2) (21 page)

“For instance?” Caleb prompted when it appeared Dwyer wasn’t going to continue.

“For instance, we uncovered information that made us suspect that Detective John Bullard, the leader of the task force, is actually Lorenzo Righetti’s inside man in the Philly PD.  He and Lorenzo were best buds all through school, but we didn’t cotton onto that right away, because he had a different last name when he was in school.  He had his step-father’s name, Catalano.  We also learned that Bullard’s wife is Lorenzo’s fourth cousin on his mother’s side.  A check of Bullard’s financials revealed that he is living way beyond a detective’s pay grade and we think he’s up to his ears in the Righetti family business.”

“So what does all that have to do with the murder of my boss?” Kylie asked.

Dwyer sighed again.  “Moretti had been the Righetti’s accountant for years, laundering their money through their legitimate business fronts.  And for years, he had been recording all their illegal transactions in a secret set of books.  Names, dates, places, numbers, everything.  He had also been stealing from them, skimming off the top.  Not much.  A little at a time.  But enough over the years to make himself an extremely wealthy man.  When he found out that the Righettis had discovered his Cayman Island bank accounts and had put out a hit on him, he contacted the Director of the FBI and struck a deal.  His secret books in exchange for a new identity and safe passage out of the country.”

Dwyer heaved a weary sigh, took off his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.  “The Director called John Bullard.  Unfortunately, we hadn’t yet told him what we’d discovered about the detective’s background and possible mob ties.  So by the time Bullard sent Roscoe and me to pick up Moretti, along with his secret books, four hours had elapsed.  Plenty of time for Bullard to kill Moretti and steal the books.  Only we don’t think he found the secret books.  We think the only books he found were yours.  And we think
that
because when we decided to stop by and search Moretti’s house before returning to Philly PD headquarters, Bullard and his partner, Tony Angelino, were just coming out of Moretti’s house.  They said dispatch had gotten a call from a neighbor about suspicious activity and when they checked out the inside of the house, they had found it ransacked.  But Moretti’s house was in a neighborhood of estate homes, all set way back off the street, with wide expanses of land separating one house from the next, so their story immediately raised our suspicions.  And when we checked later, there had been no call about suspicious activity at the Moretti home.  We think that, not finding the books in Moretti’s office, they then went and ransacked his house looking for them.”

Thomas Dwyer tilted his head and looked Kylie square in the eye.  “So that leaves us with you, Ms. Ferrell.  We know he didn’t trust computers and insisted that you do all your bookkeeping the old fashioned way, in ledger books, all data entered by hand.  Did you ever see Moretti with a separate set of books from the ones you worked on?  Would you have any idea where he might have kept them?”

“Don’t answer that, Kylie,” Caleb said.  “We still can’t be sure these bozos are who they say they are.”

Kylie’s eyes widened, but otherwise she said nothing.  Just gnawed on her lower lip until Ash scooted back and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her snugly against his side.

“Bullard accused me of murdering him,” she said.

“Well, of course he did,” Roscoe Sweeney said with a wry twist of his mouth.  “If he could trump up a case against you, then that would shut down any further investigation into Moretti’s death.  He threatened you with that to get you to reveal the whereabouts of those books.  If you know, you’re a threat to him.”

“They kept hammering away at me, getting right in my face, asking about the books, what I was doing there at such a late hour, if I had seen anyone in the building.  I forgot all about seeing you in the parking garage until after they released me.  And by that time I wasn’t inclined to volunteer the information.”

“No need.  Bullard was already planning your murder.  Since the books were neither in the office nor Moretti’s house, he figured you had taken them.  Torching your house gave him a twofer.  Destroying the books and getting rid of you.  Except it didn’t work.”

“When did you tag her car?” Simon asked.

“When we saw her in the garage, we knew Moretti’s murder was about to become front page news.  And we knew that she was about to become embroiled in a shit storm of epic proportions.  And if she felt threatened, she might bolt, so we circled around the block and tagged her car.  Good thing we did, too.  When the Fire Marshall’s report indicated that there were no bodies present in the ruins, Bullard called for two of his investigators to search for you, ostensibly to bring you in for further questioning.  But we knew that once he got his hands on you, you were as good as dead.  So we volunteered.”  Thomas Dwyer leaned forward, spearing her with his gaze.  “Make no mistake, Ms. Ferrell.  These people are ruthless.  They will stop at nothing to find those books and keep their contents from going public.”

Kylie folded her arms across her chest in a last-ditch effort to maintain a distance from these two stony-faced men and the horror they were bringing into her life.  “Yeah, I sorta got that impression when my house blew up.”

At least Thomas Dwyer had the good manners to look sympathetic.  “We know.  We knew you were in danger, and were planning to come pick you up and take you to an FBI safe house on Sunday morning.  Possibly put you in Witness Protection.  The bombing took us by surprise, to say the least.  I mean how quickly it happened.”

“Me, too.  So, what’s being done to keep me safe?”

“We’d like the answer to that as well,” Ash said, a slight hint of menace in his voice.  “She’s safe as long as she’s with us, but she can’t live with this hangin’ over her head for the rest of her life.  What’s bein’ done to take these people down?”

“We almost have enough evidence for the U.S. Attorney General to prosecute under the RICO statute.  But there’s still some wiggle room and their lawyers are very, very good.  So, Ms. Ferrell.”  One eyebrow hiked and Dwyer leveled a stern glance at her.  “The ball is in your court.  Do you have those books or don’t you?”

“No.” she answered truthfully.  “I don’t.”

“Well.” Dwyer slapped his hands on top of his thighs and started to stand up.  The man sitting next to him followed suit.  “Then I guess we’ve come a long way for nothing.”

‘But I think I know where they are.”

Both men froze.  Caleb, Ash, and Simon turned their heads to look at Kylie in astonishment.  Then Simon’s phone lit up and he looked down to read the message that had just come in.

“Don’t tell them, Kylie,” Caleb warned.  “The minute you tell them, you’re dead.”

“She’s dead if she doesn’t tell us,” Dwyer snapped.  “They’ll kill her no matter what.  The only thing that’s going to keep her alive is if we get those books before they do and take them to the Attorney General.”

Caleb and Ash both took her hands into one of theirs.  “It’s up to you, baby,” Ash said, lifting her hand to his lips.  “You know you’ll be safe here.”

Kylie took a deep breath and blew it out noisily.  “One day I went into Mr. Moretti’s office without knocking.  He was on his hands and knees, backing out from under his desk.  As soon as he saw me standing there, he yelled at me to get the fuck out.  And if I ever entered his office again without knocking first, I’d be fired.  Needless to say, I skedaddled the hell out of there.”

Roscoe Sweeney looked skeptical.  “You think there’s a hidden compartment under the floor?”

“I don’t know.”  She bit her lip.  “Maybe there’s a hidden compartment at the back of the kneehole.  It’s a really big desk.  A space five or six inches deep wouldn’t be obvious.  The books could be standing on end instead of lying flat.  They’d take up a lot less room that way.”

Sweeney and Dwyer exchanged glances.  Then they both seemed to relax.

“Ms. Ferrell, I’d hug you, but I don’t think your men would allow it.”

“You got that right,” Ash said.

Simon raised his eyes from his phone and looked at the two agents.  “That was our buddy, Jason on the phone.  I had him check you out.  Looks like you guys are who you say you are.”

Dwyer’s expression didn’t change, but a definite “I told you so” was implied.

“Sorry,” Caleb muttered.  He stood up, along with his brothers, and extended his hand toward the two FBI agents.  “Sorry for the less than hospitable reception.  But, under the circumstances, I’m sure you understand our suspicions.”

“Of course.  If our positions were reversed, you would have gotten the same treatment.” 

There were handshakes all around.  Dwyer looked at Caleb.  “You got a safe phone number we can call when we find out if the books are there or not?”  Caleb gave the number to Roscoe Sweeney, who entered it into his phone.  Dwyer turned back to Kylie.  “Thank you, Ms. Ferrell.  We’re driving back to Philly tonight.  We need to get to Moretti’s office before the crime scene tape is taken down and everything’s moved out.  I’m afraid you won’t be completely safe until we turn those books over to the U.S. Attorney General and all the perps are rounded up.  That may be another two or three days.”

“She’ll be here with us,” Caleb assured him.  He put his arm around Kylie and squeezed her shoulder.  “We’ll keep her safe.”

Thomas Dwyer’s lips curled upward and Kylie couldn’t help herself.  “So you
do
know how to smile!”

Everybody laughed and the two agents turned to leave.  Kylie watched another round of handshakes and “Thank you’s” at the door.  The agents retrieved their weapons, shoved them into holsters, and said good-bye, promising to call

Caleb closed the door after them and set the alarm.  “I’ll arm the perimeter alarms as soon as they’ve cleared the premises.”

Perimeter alarms?  Holy shit!

They returned to the living room.  Ash and Simon sat on the sofa on either side of Kylie while Caleb took the chair just vacated by Roscoe Sweeney.  Simon took her hand between both of his.  “You doin’ okay, darlin’?”

“Yeah.  I am.  I’m actually relieved.  After the arrests are made, I’ll be free.”

Ash took her other hand.  “Free to do what, baby?”

Uh-oh.  How do they expect me to answer that? 
“Umm.”  Three pairs of eyes were focused on her as if she were the only thing in an otherwise barren world.  What could she possibly say?  She knew what she
wanted
to do, of course.  Stay in this place and let herself be loved by these three stalwart men.  They would protect her.  Cherish her.  Perhaps even come to love her.  But what if they didn’t actually love her.  Could she live without it?  Would fantastic sex be an acceptable trade-off?  And for how long?

And what about her?  Did she love them?  If her racing heartbeat or the arousal flooding her pussy or the soul-deep connection she felt to all three of them were any indication, she did.  Whenever they touched her.  Whenever they kissed her.  Whenever they spoke to her in those deep baritone voices.  Whether they were as smooth as velvet or as rough as a lion’s purr, it didn’t matter.  They called to her parched soul on a visceral level, filling her up with a peace unlike anything she had ever known.  She recognized that even though she supposedly had all the power, the power they had over her, body, mind, and spirit, was absolute.  She needed what they gave her with a need so fierce that if they ever withdrew that from her, she feared it would leave her hollowed out and empty.  It was a scary thought.

But going back to Philly was equally scary.  Her job was gone.  Her boss was dead and she was still in danger of meeting a similar fate.  Her home was gone, incinerated by a bomb blast meant to take her life.  She had no friends to speak of.  She was already better friends with Leah and Sarah than she was with anyone back in Philly.  All she had, really, was the Goodmans.  And between Skype, emails, texts, phone calls and visits back and forth, she’d probably see them more often living here than she had over the last four years living there.

“Umm is not an answer,” Caleb said.  “What would you
like
to do?

A blush spread across her chest and up her neck, heating her cheeks.  “I would like to stay here.  If you’ll have me.”

Ash’s grin was wicked.  “Oh, baby, we’ll have you, all right.  Over and over, in every way humanly possible.”

Her blush deepened.  Her shoulders hunched.  She pulled her hands out of theirs and thrust them between her legs, sandwiching them between her thighs.  She was so aroused she knew when she stood up she’d leave a wet spot on the leather seat.  “It’s just…I don’t know, I’m just…scared, I guess.”

“Of us?” Caleb asked, shocked.  “Do you think we would harm you?”

“No, no, of course not.  I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you would never harm me.”  She gnawed on her lower lip as she assembled her thoughts.  “But what if I can’t give you what you want?  I guess I’m just scared that you’ll just take me over and control every aspect of my existence.  My father did that for sixteen years, and I don’t ever want to be in that position again.”

Caleb rose from the chair and moved to the big leather ottoman, so close his knees touched hers.  “Did you give him your permission to control you?” he asked.

“Of course not.  He was my father.  His word was law, which the daily beatings simply reinforced.”