Forbidden Secrets Read online

  What he wanted was to take a taste of the woman beneath him. He craved her.

  When he broke the kiss, he was staring down into her bluish lavender eyes.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  Neither could he.

  “Everhart.”

  He was about to tell her that he wanted her when his phone rang.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Surely, the universe didn’t hate him this much. Hart was so damn close to getting the girl. He could almost taste it.

  He couldn’t believe he was going to do it.

  He answered it.

  “Hart.”

  “Hey! It’s Julian. We have to have a morning meeting. Meet us downstairs ASAP. We’re going out on interviews, and Tori and Nyx have a job for you.”

  Well, shit.

  This sucked. Hart had other ideas for the morning, and this wasn’t it.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  He hung up the phone. “I have to go down to a morning meeting. Will you be okay?” he asked. “If you’re afraid, I can stay.”

  She knew they were trying to stop this killer and keep her safe. Still, a part of her wanted him not to leave. They were in bed, alone, and that kiss…

  “I’ll go to my studio and work.”

  It sucked being an adult.

  Here was the proof. She’d just picked work over sex with an incredibly hot man.

  She was insane.

  “When I’m done, I’ll find you there.”

  Still, leaving her didn’t make him happy. He had a plan, and he knew the ghosts would help him.

  “Trey? Bethany?”

  Immediately, the curtains blew in the breeze and his phone came to life.

  “You. Rang?”

  “I need to leave Lennox. Can you watch her and let me know if something happens?”

  “Can. Do. Copper.”

  “Ex-Copper,” he corrected, “and I appreciate it.”

  Lennox watched as he pulled on his shirt. His back rippled with muscles, and she wanted to run her hands all over him. She’d been so close to what she wanted.

  So much for inspiration.

  “I’ll see you in a little while,” he said, leaning down to kiss her on the lips. “We’ll finish this later.”

  She didn’t know what to say.

  Her first thought was to do cartwheels around the room.

  “Promise?” she asked.

  Hart grinned. “I promise.”

  He knew he shouldn’t go there, but the one fact remained. He really wanted Lennox. While he knew nothing long term could come from it, he still had that craving.

  Call it lust.

  Call it need.

  It changed nothing.

  Lennox waited until he was gone. “Trey, are you still here?” she asked.

  The radio chirped to life as the curtains billowed. It reminded her of…

  Wait.

  It was just like last freaking night.

  What the hell?

  “Did you try and scare me last night?” she asked.

  There was silence.

  “Trey! I’m going to tell Tori.” She hoped that worked. How did you threaten a dead guy? She was new at this kind of thing.

  “Guilty. As. Charged.”

  “Why?”

  “For. Hart.”

  Her blood pressure shot up.

  He’d tricked her into his bed?

  Would he actually do something like that? It was wrong that she couldn’t even comprehend how to begin to understand what he was thinking.

  Jesus!

  That was low.

  He’d manipulated her into sleeping with him.

  Lennox felt her blood pressure spike. “So, he knew?” she asked.

  Again, there was a pause.

  She grabbed the bottle of holy water on his nightstand and flipped open the lid. “I swear to God, I’ll make you disappear.”

  “Yes.”

  Clearly, it was every dead man for himself.

  Well, that sucked.

  It looked like Everhart Rose had a lot to learn about women and how NOT to manipulate them.

  When she saw him, she was going to kick his ass.

  Now she wasn’t scared.

  She was pissed.

  And that made all the difference in the world.

  * * * L i t t l e m o o n * * *

  When he got downstairs, his bosses were already there, and they were having coffee.

  Beau and Nyx were, too, and she looked like hell.

  “Is she okay?” he asked.

  Nyx nodded. “I’m just tired still. I could use another nap. Channeling a ghost is hard.”

  “I imagine it is when you’re possessed,” Beau stated. The tone in his voice held no emotion.

  With Beau, that always told the tale. It was the control only found in a pissed off man or a soldier on the edge.

  Tori glanced over at her brother.

  He may look blank on the outside, but inside…he was stewing in his own juices. She could hear it in his voice. If there was one thing she knew well in life, it was the Christensen men.

  Trey often had the same look as the storm brewed.

  “I’ll be fine in a bit,” she reassured.

  Nyx tried to hold his hand, but he wouldn’t hold hers back. That worried her. She’d never seen Beau be this chilly to her. If anything, he was big into public displays of affection.

  She tried to stare into his blue-grey eyes, but he wouldn’t look at her.

  It was like she didn’t exist.

  Well, this sucked.

  “Did I miss anything?” Hart asked, taking a seat at the table. It looked like everyone was having coffee, and then hitting the road. He wished he was thinking about food. Instead, he was thinking about Lennox and what she did to his libido.

  “No, we waited for you,” Julian stated. He was much calmer now. Tori’s hand was on his thigh, and they’d worked out their issues.

  Well, talked it out.

  This was something they’d never fully agree on, and they both knew it. Now it was about meeting in the middle. Sometimes, in marriage, you had to both make some compromises to have it work.

  This was one of those times.

  “I want to go back over the victims, tell you what we found in the autopsies, discuss what the team found, and divide up for today. There’s no way Julian and I can investigate here and talk to people. We’re going to need all of your help to pull this off.”

  The team was good with that.

  “Ready?” she asked, pulling out the papers. She told them where they’d come from.

  Immediately, Hart lifted a brow. “That’s helpful.”

  Julian had thought the same thing when the man approached them.

  The question was—how ‘helpful’ was too helpful?

  At what point was it a suspect trying to point them away from himself with good behavior?

  They’d seen it before.

  Tori pushed on. “Our first victim, Lennox’s mother, Mariah Easton, died of blunt force trauma.”

  She passed the autopsy report around.

  “It was likely when she fell down the cliff,” offered Hart. He’d seen many reports like this. “Had it been a weapon, the original strike would have been deeper—more localized. The fall wouldn’t cover something like that.”

  She agreed.

  “Her blood-toxicology report showed no drugs, she hadn’t been drinking, and ultimately, no one saw a thing.”

  “So we have nothing.”

  “We have what Lennox stated from the start. No keys were found in her possession, and her car was located in the parking area of the state park locked up.”

  Julian was scribbling notes for his wife. He was the tracker, and she was all about figuring it out.

  “What did the team find out about her?” Tori asked.

  Beau flipped through the papers. “She was big into functions, charities, and parties. There were so many articles on her going back years. She’
d be at one event after another. How she raised her kids…”

  “They probably had staff do it,” Julian stated. “I can’t see someone living like this ever even noticing their kids.”

  Hart’s stomach flipped.

  He thought about Ivy.

  He thought about Lennox.

  Shit!

  What would she even be like around Ivy if they started something? Would Lennox build an attachment, or would she think of Ivy as competition?

  It freaked him out.

  All that lightness he was feeling a few minutes ago began ebbing away.

  This wasn’t about him anymore. It was about his daughter too. She mattered.

  “Do we have anyone who might have bothered her or seen her during her last moments there?” Julian asked.

  Tori flipped through the notes.

  “We have a man by the name of Gunner Grant. When we searched some articles, we found his name mentioned. We did a search on him, and we came up with his job,” Beau stated.

  “Which was?” Tori asked.

  “He’s the personal trainer to the wealthy. He was in a tabloid rag bitching about her. He said she fired him, she said he played grab ass, but no one knows the truth.”

  That worked for Tori.

  “We’ll put him on the list to interview if we can find him.”

  Beau flipped the paper over. “Oh, we found him. He’s still around. In fact, he takes clients on in his home.”

  He slid the man’s address toward his sister.

  “Good work. He’s now officially on the radar.”

  “What about her father?” Hart asked, sipping his coffee. He was using it to ease his nerves.

  “We did our research on him too. Orwell was shady.”

  Tori needed more than that.

  “What do you mean?”

  Beau slid those papers toward her too. “Well, if his shadiness in the business world wasn’t enough, he also was all about the women. We found multiple articles that stated he’d hit on anything with a vagina.”

  They already knew that.

  “I need more. I can’t interview ‘anything with a vagina’,” Tori stated, earning a look from her husband. “What? Think about it. I really can’t.”

  He shook his head.

  Beau continued, “You may want to start with Jessie Russo.”

  “Who’s that?” Tori asked.

  “Well, she’s the woman he was caught banging in the back of his Town Car. She was all tied up with no place to go.”

  He slid the article toward her so his sister could see for herself what he was talking about.

  While Tori didn’t take much stock in the rag tabloids, this one had pictures.

  Oh, it was the man alright, and the woman was bound beneath him.

  “Should we be creeped out that he liked to tie up his conquests?” Nyx asked. “That’s just wrong.”

  Tori could shock the woman with all the things they’d seen working for the police and FBI. “It’s pretty common.”

  “Not in my world.”

  Yeah, theirs either.

  While she and Julian played sexy little hotel games, they were discrete—and before she was pregnant.

  “Is his tied up sex bunny around?”

  Beau nodded. “Yes, yes, she is. Ask me how she connects to the man.”

  Tori would play along. “How?”

  “She was his driver. Only this time he was getting a ride from her.”

  No one laughed.

  “Come on! This is funny shit, people. How can you not find that amusing?”

  “Need I remind you of last night?” Tori asked.

  His eyes flickered toward Nyx. “No, that’s not necessary. I was there for it.”

  Tori heard the tone again, and so did Nyx.

  “Do we have her address?”

  He passed it over to her.

  “I have the autopsy report, and it shows that the man had one gunshot to the head, and he died instantly,” Tori stated. “The ME must not have been good, because Chris Leonard would have called this a homicide just from the location of the bullet. He was clearly on his knees.”

  That screamed killer, and was one of the things they’d use to get this to court after they found the maniac hunting Lennox.

  “At least we know we’re on the right track with there being a killer,” Tori admitted.

  “Who is next?” Nyx asked.

  “We have the uncle, Howell, next.”

  Beau pulled out the papers. “He was just like his brother. The two of them were running amuck in the town when it came to skirts.”

  Julian made notes. “He died swimming.”

  Tori sat back. “The lake is on this property, but the body was never found for six years. Does that sound off to anyone?” Tori asked.

  Julian raised his hand. “No body means he could still be out there. Who’s to say he didn’t fake his death and then kill off the rest of the family?”

  Nyx was appalled. “People do that?” she asked. “Really?”

  Tori laughed. “I’d like to say no, but it happens all the damn time.”

  They all thought about it.

  It made sense.

  Once the whole family was gone, he could reappear, claim amnesia, and go from there.

  “I’m going to assume that you ran him, right?”

  “We did, but nothing popped. If he’s out there, he’s not using his social security number. The man is a ghost. In this case, it could be quite literally.”

  He had a point.

  Anything was possible. Tori could see the spirits flickering around her. The place was busy with the dead, and most of them didn’t know how to communicate.

  “What do we know about him, since there was no autopsy report?”

  Beau continued, “He was involved in all of his brother’s dealings, and it looks like the third party was a man by the name of…”

  She cut him off. “Calvin Foster?”

  “Yeah, how the hell did you know?” he asked.

  “We heard about the business partner already. We interview him this morning. Since he knew the dead people, we’re going to be asking him one very important question,” Tori admitted.

  “What would that be?”

  “Who was Evangeline?”

  Nyx and Beau both tensed.

  Tori knew there was a storm brewing there. All she could hope was they worked it out. She loved her brother, and she’d grown to love Nyx too. She was part of the family.

  They had to find a middle ground like she and Julian had. It was the only way to make it work.

  They pushed on with work.

  Beau purposely didn’t leave any opening for conversation. He kept focused, trying to avoid the conversation that was destined to pop up.

  “I’ll keep searching for anything on the missing brother. You never know what might pop up,” he stated.

  “That’s probably a good idea. We should keep all of our bases covered,” offered Julian.

  “Next?” Hart stated.

  “Granny is up,” Tori offered. “She went out riding and never came back. By the time they found her, she was a snack. She died of a broken neck. The ME said there weren’t any major wounds other than her broken neck.”

  Julian pulled out the picture they’d gotten from Lennox. “Tori thinks this is suspicious.”

  He slid it to Beau.

  “What do you see?” This was like a test for him. The man had done really well on research, but he was still a newbie when it came to investigating.

  “The horse ran into a wire.”

  Tori was proud.

  “It looks like it was a trip wire. We used them in Afghanistan around the base. If a bomber came riding in with his chest full of explosives, he’d hit the wire first, and detonate. He’d be dead before he reached us. I’ve seen a few heads come off before an explosion finished the job.”

  Nyx placed her hand on his arm in reassurance. They all knew that Beau didn’t talk about the military and what had
gone on there.

  He just didn’t.

  That he was bringing that up was huge.

  “We had that happen too,” Tori offered. “The sandbox was one hell of a free for all.”

  Beau fist bumped his sister.

  She got it.

  They had served pretty close to each other, and he knew she’d seen the same shit he had.

  “So someone took granny down,” Hart stated. He’d been quiet until that moment. He was still thinking about Lennox, but he had to focus.

  “It looks like,” Tori offered.

  “Who had access to her or was bothering her?” Julian questioned.

  Beau continued to brief them. “We did our research. She spent most of her time cleaning up after her sons. She was forever buying people off, silencing people with money, or covering their asses. When they had a sexual indiscretion, which resulted in a pregnancy, she paid the ladies off.”

  Hart thought about that. “So there is an heir to the fortune out there somewhere. That’s interesting.”

  It was, but since the old lawyer was dead, and the new one said there wasn’t any paperwork, they were at a loss.

  Tori shrugged. “Unless Lennox can tell us who her daddy and uncle were diddling, we won’t know. I doubt Estella kept records.”

  Good point.

  “Is there anyone who spent time around her who is alive?” Tori asked.

  Beau had good news for his sister. “The same horse trainer that was on staff then is on staff now. He’s not in the limelight much but there are a few shots of Lennox riding with his name in the article.”

  “And it is?”

  He slid the cut out articles toward the team. “You’re looking at Anton Pierce.”

  Hart wasn’t shocked she could ride a horse. She was wealthy, and that’s what the rich did, right?

  Then again, Tori and Julian rode all the time, or so he heard. They’d come from pretty meager backgrounds. Maybe it was just fun.

  Hart refused to let his emotions take over. He wasn’t going back to judging her.

  He couldn’t.

  It was too late.

  “Last, but not least…” Tori set her husband up.

  “We have Cornell next. He was killed in a fiery wreck. We have the autopsy report.”

  Tori read the paper.

  “He was alive during the fire. There was smoke in his lungs. The ME is postulating he went off the road, struck the tree, knocked himself out, and then burned to death. He had trauma to his face, but that might just be from the steering wheel or airbag.”