Текст книги "Wicked for You"

Автор книги: Shayla Black

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Chapter Fifteen

AXEL woke a few hours later to sun slanting through the windows, a chill in the air nipping at his nose, and Mystery curled around him trustingly in sleep.

He glanced around the bed and found all the scarves and belts he’d used to restrain her last night, and the pleasure had been beyond intense. Something more like cataclysmic. Moving. Life-altering.

Wouldn’t Thorpe be saying “I told you so” now? Yep, and Axel didn’t mind at all. He simply held Mystery close against him, reveling in the warmth of her sleep-soft body.

The buzzing of his phone on the nightstand startled him, and he frowned, wondering what the hell time it was. The sun looked high in the sky and he’d slept half the morning away. Shit.

He plucked the phone off the nightstand, extricating himself from Mystery, and sat up, staring at the device.

Seeing the name on the display, he pressed the button to accept the call instantly. “Stone. What do you have for me?”

“Oh, you finally answer the phone, Sleeping Beauty?”

Axel didn’t ask what Stone meant. He’d bet that if he looked through the record of his missed calls, he’d find more than a few. “It was a really late night getting here and making sure we were secure enough to turn in. Did you sort through the footage leading up to Mystery’s hotel room?”

“Yep. I got nothing usable for you. Whoever did it knew they were being filmed. They wore a hat with a wide brim and a trench coat, along with sunglasses, a wig . . . the works. The only thing I can tell you is that whoever left the picture is female. She entered through a service door at the back of the hotel and exited the same way, walking out of the courtyard, onto the street. No vehicle or license plate to trace. I can’t tell under the layers of shit how old the woman is or discern any of her facial features. She’s got her hands in her pockets, so I can’t see any identifying marks or jewelry. The camera angle hid her shoes. I’m guessing she’s a hotel employee or an actress looking for a few extra bucks, but no way of knowing for sure.”

“Sounds like a dead fucking end.”

“It’s looking that way, too. Since I had a little extra time this morning, I called the hotel manager. He’s spoken with the staff on duty then. No one remembers seeing her. So she either blended in or timed it well.”

“Fuck,” Axel muttered, not wanting to wake Mystery. “Any idea whose key card the woman used to access the hotel room?”

“The housekeeping manager—a man—reported his master card missing from his desk about two hours before anyone let themselves into Mystery’s room. He left about forty-five minutes before that photo appeared in her room. There’s footage of him driving out of the employee lot and everything.”

“So . . . nothing.”

“Nope. Sorry.”

“Thanks for trying, man.”

“No worries.” Stone hesitated, and Axel knew exactly where this conversation was headed. “I’d like to talk to you about Misty.”

“She told me last night that you wanted to talk. I’m not opposed, and technically she’s no longer my submissive, but if you’re serious, I’d really appreciate it if you’d have a chat with Thorpe about your intentions. I’ll be back in a few days, then we can sit down and work everything out.”

Stone heaved an impatient sigh. Obviously, he didn’t like it but he didn’t have much choice. “Sure.”

“It’s for her benefit. She’s skittish.”

“I know. It’s the only reason I didn’t tell you to blow it out your ass. Because if you wanted to stand between me and Misty, well . . . the twenty-two months I spent in prison for my fun white-collar crime taught me two things: That Uncle Sam has no sense of humor, and how to kill a man with my bare hands.”

Axel rolled his eyes. He did not have time for Stone’s posturing now. If the dude wanted to impress upon him how much he wanted Sweet Pea, message received.

“I’ll call you when I’m back at Dominion.” And before Stone could answer, Axel hung up.

Then he placed a call to Callie. The woman answered on the first ring. “Hey, Axel. All okay? How’s Mystery?”

“Sleeping,” he murmured. “Do you happen to know if she left her phone behind?”

“Actually, I found it on the floor of Thorpe’s old bedroom last night. I stashed it in his office. Do you want me to send it somewhere?”

Axel didn’t think they could afford to stay at this remote house for more than twenty-four hours before the bad guys—whoever they were—closed in. Even if Callie overnighted the device, he doubted they’d be spending that much time on this farm. “No. Just tuck it away. I’ll take care of everything else.”

“Will do.”

“You all right? You don’t sound like your usual chipper self this morning,” he asked with concern. “Morning sickness still bothering you?”

“More like morning, noon, and night sickness. Ugh. I’ll be so glad to get past my first trimester. I’m praying it gets better.”

“I hope so, but I’m sure Thorpe and Sean are spoiling you silly.”

“Completely.”

Axel heard the sigh in her voice and smiled. Callie deserved happiness. So did Thorpe, for that matter. And Sean seemed like a good guy, so if those two made her happy, then he was thrilled for them.

“Good deal. Talk to you later.”

“Bye!”

They rang off, and Axel eased from the bed and shoved on his jeans. He hit the head down the hall and brushed his teeth, then jogged down the stairs for some coffee.

In the kitchen, he spotted Heath sitting alone at the table with an iPad and a cup of brew he’d probably pushed aside some time ago.

“Morning,” he said, banging around the cabinets for a cup.

“Your four a.m. rendezvous was only slightly quieter than last night at Dominion. Can’t you two keep it down?” He sounded somewhere between sour and pissed off.

“We tried.” Axel shrugged. “Protecting your delicate ears wasn’t my number one priority. Where’s Mystery’s aunt?”

“She ran to pick up her dry cleaning and hit the post office to mail off some bills before her big mission trip.”

“Makes sense. You working on something?”

Heath sent him a noisy huff, then glanced down at the tablet’s screen. “Because I dislike loose ends, I reached out to see if I could get a record of everyone who requested a parking pass in Angeles National Forest the day Julia Mullins died. The typical request takes six weeks to process. They’ll ‘rush’ it and give me an answer within two.”

“That’s useless,” Axel quipped. “Like the security footage from the hotel.”

He filled Heath in on Stone’s findings, sipping coffee and trying to figure out how the hell to solve this long-unsolved murder.

“So we’ve got nothing,” he summarized, sending the former MI5 agent a speculative glance. “If you were playing amateur sleuth, who’s your best suspect?”

“Well, until you showed me that snapshot on your phone, I would have suspected some slighted paramour of Mr. Mullins. Certainly, some starlet or another would have liked to cast herself in the role of wife to the famous widower.”

“Good point. I guess the man on the mountain with Mystery’s mother could be hired muscle. But if that’s the case, why is he wearing a perfectly pressed business suit to commit murder?”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice of wardrobe for the occasion.” Heath shook his head. “That white shirt would show every speck of blood. Black is much better for concealing nasty stains.”

“Yep.” Axel had no doubt they both knew that from experience. “So the police report isn’t going to give us anything new. All the follow-ups we have are dead ends. Mystery has told us everything we know. Have you ever asked Mullins about his wife’s murder?”

“I tried once. He made it clear that anything to do with her death was a very closed subject.”

A grieving man wanting to lick his wounds in private? Or something more? Yes, the famous director had been ruled out as a suspect, and he apparently hadn’t hired the Asian Mafia enforcer he’d known to commit the murder. That wasn’t to say, however, that he hadn’t found another capable assassin.

“Have you tried to follow any sort of money trail from Mullins’s accounts around the time of the murder?”

“No. I don’t have any notion if he’s the sort of fellow who would want his wife dead, but I can’t imagine he’d want any harm to come to his daughter. He loves her.”

“That’s my sense, too,” Axel agreed. “I think we’re going to have to talk to Mullins, his daughter, and her aunt today.”

“I’m not hopeful we’ll figure out much, but I’m afraid we’ve got nothing else.” Heath kicked back in his chair, set the tablet aside, and chugged his coffee. “But for pity’s sake, could you put a shirt on first?”

With a chuckle, Axel took his sweet time rising to his feet. He enjoyed a moment of towering over the other man before he trudged upstairs. In the bedroom, he found Mystery stretching, her completely naked body visible to his hungry stare, opening her eyes to the world.

He sat on the edge of the bed and cradled her breast, sweeping down her abdomen to pet her pussy before he leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Morning, princess.”

“Morning.” She winced. “If you have any wicked ideas, you should know I’m awfully sore right now.”

“And you should probably get used to that state around me.” He winked. “But you’re in luck this morning. I’m here for a shirt because Heath doesn’t like the way I’m dressed. When you’re up and ready, come downstairs. We’ll rustle up some breakfast, then we have to talk about who might want to hurt you and why.”

She nodded at him solemnly. As Axel brushed a lingering kiss on her lips, he realized this wouldn’t be easy on her. “All right.”

Reliving both her mother’s death and her own kidnapping would be traumatic enough. Forcing her to look at everyone in her life as a potential suspect on top of that? Absolutely both shitty and heartbreaking.

“We’ll be downstairs.”

With that, he left her in privacy and shuffled back downstairs, tugging his T-shirt over his head. In the kitchen again, he watched Heath pace the room in about three steps in any given direction, each of his long strides eating up ground.

“Better?” Axel held out his arms. Not that he really cared for Heath’s opinion. As long as the asswipe shut up about his attire, that would be great.

“Much. I think we need to talk to Mullins, try showing him this picture your friend procured once more and see if we jog his memory.”

Since he still had to reassure the man that Mystery was fine and had merely misplaced her phone, he could mark two things off his to-do list with one call. Axel nodded. “Go for it.”

Heath yanked out his cell and punched a few buttons, then enabled the speakerphone.

Mullins answered quick. “Heath, anything wrong?”

“Not per se. Mystery and I left Dallas last night and are now at her aunt’s home. We’ve tried to hoodwink whoever is after her by announcing that she’ll be returning to London on Twitter. We think that will buy us at least today to solve as much of this riddle as possible. If we can’t piece it together by then, she’ll probably have to fly home.”

“I’d rather have her here, anyway. Fly her home ASAP.”

“As you know, we’ve tried. Mystery will fight us all on that. We can safely hold her here today, then we’ll get her home.”

The director sighed noisily, obviously not liking the situation.

“Hi, Mullins. Axel here. I’m sure you’ve been trying to call your daughter. She accidentally left her phone at my place. A friend of mine is keeping it safe for her.”

Mystery’s father paused. “Your place. I can track her phone, you know. I know exactly where her phone is.”

Fuck. Axel had hoped her father was low-tech and he wouldn’t have to explain Dominion to his girlfriend’s father. “It’s actually my place of employment. I took her there last night because it’s secure, but she had other ideas.”

“And insisted we reach her aunt right away,” Heath filled in.

Axel shot the other man a shocked stare. Why would the Brit help him out? Or maybe he’d told the white lie to keep the director off Mystery’s back. Either way, it worked in his favor.

“That girl needs to stop being so damn impulsive . . .” Mullins sighed. “So you work there, huh? Do you play there, too?”

Though Axel would prefer to tell Mullins that his sex life was none of the man’s business, if he wanted to be in Mystery’s future, lying to her father wouldn’t get him far. “Yes.”

The man sucked in a breath. “Does Mystery know?”

Translation: Have you played with her? Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’d never really dealt with overprotective fathers before. “Yes. Sir, with all due respect, she’s a grown woman.”

“But she’s always going to be my daughter. How does she feel about your kink?”

“She’s not protesting. Look, I didn’t once touch her in the desert when I rescued her. She was too young and emotionally rattled. Now, everything between us is completely consensual—”

“I know you didn’t touch Mystery back then. She was actually crushed you hadn’t.”

Axel couldn’t help but smile. “She’s made me see the error of my ways since she returned to the States.”

“I don’t want to know what you two do, but if she’s happier, then I’m glad for her.”

Letting out a pent-up breath, Axel sagged into his chair. Thank fuck the man didn’t want to kill him. “I’ll do my best to always make her happy. But we’ll have to talk about that after we’ve dealt with the danger to her. Sir, Heath and I genuinely believe that whoever’s threatening her now had something to do with your wife’s murder.”

Mullins hesitated. “Julia’s passing was never definitively ruled a homicide.”

“But you know it was,” Axel shot back. “A friend of mine spoke to the detective in charge of the investigation when your wife died. He showed me the picture from the hikers.”

“Photos can be doctored,” Mullins pointed out. “I’m not convinced those people didn’t tamper with the photo to sell it to the Enquirer or Star or some other rag that would have paid them a fortune, regardless of whether it was real. Everyone wanted a piece of that story.”

“The hikers never sold that picture to anyone,” Axel reasoned.

Mullins scoffed. “I’m not giving them a medal for their restraint.”

Marshall was a brilliant director and a protective father, but the man was more than a tad convinced the world revolved around him. “If they’d simply wanted money for their picture and to ride your coattails for their fifteen minutes of fame, wouldn’t they have doctored the image to make the man on the mountain with your wife look like you? Or someone you knew?”

A long pause followed. “That would be most obvious, but—”

“Then let’s pretend for a minute that the picture is real. You haven’t seen the image in . . . what? Over fifteen years?”

“No,” he admitted.

“I’ll send it to you again from my phone.” Axel texted the snapshot to him. “Just look at it one more time and tell me if you recognize the man with your wife at all.”

He heard a little ding on the other end of the line, and a few tense moments passed. “No. I have no idea who he is.” A pause ensued, followed by Mullins’s distressed sigh. “God, even seeing Julia in a grainy image like this is . . . It’s so hard. I loved that woman. I wasn’t a good husband. I know it. But she gave me the most precious gift ever.”

At that moment, Mystery skipped down the stairs and raced to the kitchen. “Hi, Dad.”

“Mystery. How are you, kiddo?” he sounded wistful.

“Fine. Heath and I drove most of the night, so I slept in. But I’m good now.”

“Excellent.”

Axel noticed cynically that the man didn’t ask his daughter how she felt about the newfound kink in her sex life.

“So . . .” Mullins went on. “How’s your aunt Gail?”

“I only saw her briefly last night, but she seems well. Nothing much has changed here.”

“I know that would have made your mother smile.”

“Yeah. It’s nice to be here again.”

A million questions swirled through Axel’s brain. He wanted to ask the man about his wife’s death, but he didn’t want to be the one to break the truth about the murder to Mystery. Unfortunately, waiting for the right moment cost time, and that was a luxury they didn’t have.

He took a deep breath and glanced at Mystery. She looked refreshed and beautiful, despite being sleep tossed and wearing yesterday’s clothes. “Have a seat. I called your dad to discuss the day your mother died.”

*   *   *

MYSTERY blinked, then sat slowly. She’d give anything not to rehash one of the worst days of her life, but she knew how necessary it was. “You mean the day she was murdered?”

“You knew that?” her father asked.

“I suspected. You never said anything, but . . .” She choked. Her voice broke.

“I just wanted to protect you, kiddo,” her father protested.

“I know.” And she did. Her mom’s death had devastated him, too. She didn’t understand why he couldn’t have loved her enough to be faithful. It was irrelevant now. “But the press was all too happy to report what they thought happened, and the murder scenario just made more sense.”

Axel squeezed her hand and sighed. “I’m so damn glad I don’t have to be the one to explain that she was murdered and rip your world apart. This is a photo taken by random hikers just before your mother died. Does this man look at all familiar?”

Axel showed her the picture, doing his best to zoom in on the two people on the hilltop in the distance.

“I can only see his back. Maybe if I had a face . . .”

“Do you remember your mother knowing anyone with that height, build, and hair color? He’s probably around six feet, medium build. In this picture, he looks more gray than not.”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. Then a distant memory spun through her head, and she laughed at it. “Well . . . The only person I can think of is this guy who came to one of my dance recitals. I was maybe five or six. When I ran offstage, my mom introduced me to him. He was wearing a suit a lot like this and was graying, too. She called him Peter.”

“Was he the dad of one of the other kids?”

“Probably.” She shrugged. “It only jumped out at me because Mom seemed really nervous, and they were having this very intent conversation until I reached them. Then they were suddenly all smiles.” She winced. “The guy’s stare was kind of creepy. I remember hiding behind my mother and wanting him to leave.”

“Did you ever see him again?” her father asked.

“No.”

“Do you remember anything else? Any detail?” Axel leaned in, face intent.

“I don’t even know why I brought it up. Three years passed between that incident and my mom’s death. I never saw the guy again. They’re probably totally unrelated.”

“You’re probably right.” Axel palmed her crown.

She felt so fortunate to have him here and sent him a faint smile. “I just wish I could help more. I’ve told you what I know about the day she died. Mom and Dad fought about divorce that morning.”

“We never meant for you to hear.” Her father sounded contrite.

“Dad, the whole house could hear.”

“Shit,” he cursed. “We really thought you were asleep.”

“No,” Mystery admitted softly. “Mom had been in my room about ten minutes before you two started arguing. I woke to the sounds of her crying.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” She could almost hear her father’s heartbreak on the other end of the line.

“And I’m sorry to ask either of you to relive it, but the information can only help.” Axel laced his fingers through hers—his silent way of telling her he supported her. “You’ve told me what you know, so I’d like to ask your dad what else he recalls now.”

That made sense. She’d been nothing more than a kid. Her dad would know more.

“I remember more than I’d like to.” Her dad sighed. “I came in that morning about three. I’d been out with . . . some people I was working with on a film.”

“Oh, just stop lying already.” Mystery gave him a frustrated huff. “You were screwing that blonde you were directing in the action/thriller flick you’d been working on, and Mom found out.”

“Yes.” Her father hesitated. “And she was pregnant.”

Mystery gasped, feeling as if someone had punched her in the stomach, and closed her eyes. As if this conversation wasn’t awful enough, the new revelations coming out now made it downright horrifying.

“Was she worth it? Were any of those slutbags you took to bed worth destroying your family?” The anger just poured out. Mystery heard it but couldn’t seem to stop it. It wasn’t as if her father had cheated on her . . . yet it had always felt as if he’d betrayed her, too, not just her mom. For years, Mystery had pretended she didn’t know. She’d never confronted her dad because his love life didn’t matter now that her mom was gone. But deep down, it mattered to her. His wandering dick had ripped apart a marriage, stained her childhood, maybe even somehow cut short her mother’s life. The resulting scars had nearly caused her to walk out on Axel forever.

“No,” he choked out.

Small consolation now. It didn’t really make a dent in her rage. Even if anger didn’t solve anything now, she couldn’t seem to stop feeling it. “So because your whore was pregnant, you asked Mom for the divorce?”

“No!” He was quick to correct her. “She found out somehow and told me that she’d called a lawyer. She wanted to leave. The sex meant nothing to me but a conquest and some fleeting pleasure, but your mother didn’t see it that way.”

No, her mom had seen it as a stab in the heart. Mystery did, too. It had made her wary and a bit cynical of relationships, and that wasn’t who she wanted to be.

“I loved her,” her father swore. “Too much to let her leave. But she asked me for a divorce. Worse, she wanted to take you with her back to Kansas. So we fought. We didn’t resolve anything. I lost my temper and left. That was the last time I saw your mother alive.”

“And the blonde’s baby?” Mystery snapped. “You just left that child to be raised by a single mother?”

“You think that’s the sort of father I am?”

The hurt in his voice ripped through her. Regret followed. As a father, he’d never been anything but attentive and doting. “Sorry. That was unfair. You’re a great dad.”

“Thinking I would soon be a father again, I’d prepared a financial settlement for both the actress and the child, along with a visitation agreement. Then . . .” He sighed. “The baby came out Asian.”

Beside her, Axel reared back at that information. Mystery certainly felt her own jaw drop. “So that wasn’t your baby.”

“No. I had every reason to think I’d fathered that child. I admit it. But finding out I hadn’t was a guilty relief.” He sighed. “I fucked up. Believe me, I know. Your mother loved that forest, but I don’t think she would have been there the day she died if she hadn’t been seeking calm.”

Mystery had thought the same thing herself. But her dad was beating himself up, and she didn’t see the point of heaping more guilt on him now.

“Can you tell us anything else you recall about that day, Mr. Mullins?” Heath cut in. “Anything stand out? Anything unusual?”

“It’s not every day your wife asks you for a divorce then dies, so I’d say the whole day was unusual.”

Axel cleared his throat. “Let’s walk through the events and see if we can find any clue the sheriff overlooked. We don’t know who this man in the picture is, so we need some suspects, and maybe your wife’s behavior will give us some direction.”

Her father let out a rough breath. “I must have done this fifty times for the police, but I’ll try again. Um . . . I came in late. Julia was asleep—or pretending to be. I crashed and woke up about six when she slipped out of bed to wake Mystery for school. Julia wasn’t trying hard to be quiet. She was itching for a fight, and when she returned from Mystery’s room, I could tell she’d been crying. We argued. She told me she knew about my latest mistress being pregnant and she wanted a divorce. She’d hired a lawyer and wanted to move back to Kansas. I told her that if she took Mystery from me, I wouldn’t give her a dime of alimony. We screamed at each other. We’d already been to counseling, and I didn’t see the point of going back.” He hesitated there. “I’m not sure if any of that is helpful.”

“When did you first notice your wife was missing?” Axel asked.

“The school called to say that Julia hadn’t picked up Mystery. She never missed that time with our daughter. Nannies took care of her when we traveled or attended evening events, but Julia did her best to revolve her schedule around picking Mystery up and having a little girl time before homework, bath, and bed. So when the teacher called, I knew something was deeply wrong.”

“Keep going,” Axel encouraged. “Tell me everything else that happened.”

“I left the set and picked Mystery up. I called the police, but of course there was nothing they could do for twenty-four hours. I couldn’t wait that long, so I came home and started looking through Julia’s things to see if I could find any clues. I called her friends, her sister, even her yoga studio. All I could see was that most of her belongings were packed. She’d bought two plane tickets to Kansas City, departing the next day, and she and some of her personal effects were gone.”

Mystery remembered that day—the panic, the fear, the uncertainty. She’d gone to bed knowing deep in her heart that the worst had happened. Her mother would never have abandoned her, and her heart went out to Axel. Yes, they’d both lost mothers, but hers had been taken. His had just walked out as if he didn’t matter. Yet despite the fact that Mystery had left him last night, he sat beside her, comforting her.

He’d proven it the day they’d met and he kept proving it all over again—Axel was a man of strength, integrity, conviction. It hadn’t been fair to assume he had the same roving eye as her father and accuse him. Thank goodness he understood that she had difficulty with trust and had given her a great deal of patience.

“Personal items?” Axel asked.

“Her purse, her car, her laptop.”

Beside her, Axel stiffened, then turned to Heath, who suddenly scrambled to scroll through his tablet. She leaned over to read whatever he acted so desperate to retrieve. What the hell was going on?

The police report, she realized a moment later. They had an electronic copy of it.

They intended to do everything possible to figure out this cold case, and Mystery didn’t have any illusions why. They were doing it to save her.

Even as the realization humbled her, warmth spread to every corner of her body. She was beyond lucky to have them both in her corner. She felt even luckier that Axel cared enough to forgive all her stupid, rash actions over the past eighteen hours. And Heath . . . Mystery hated to think of a man as strong and wonderful, who’d already survived such shock and grief, not finding a happy ending for himself.

“Where did you get that police report?” she asked the pair of them.

“The sheriff’s department,” Axel answered grimly, then he addressed Heath. “Do you see it? Anywhere?”

He scrolled up, then back down, his dark eyes and big fingers moving over the screen. “I don’t.”

Mystery didn’t understand at all. “What? What are you two all agitated about?”

“Did you find something?” her dad asked over the line.

“Your wife’s laptop,” Axel finally answered. “The police found her car and her purse, both intact. There’s no record of them recovering a laptop at the scene. For that matter, why did she take it way out there? There wasn’t an electrical outlet for dozens of miles.”

“At that time, the battery life on those machines was next to nothing,” her father added. “I never thought about it. With so much else going on and the investigation, my grief, Mystery’s upset . . . I never pursued that.”

“What did your wife keep on that laptop?” Heath asked.

“I don’t really know.” He sighed, and Mystery heard her dad’s strain. “She asked for one. She almost never asked me for anything for herself, so I had an assistant find the best money could buy at the time and . . .”

He’d hoped it would make him feel less guilty. Mystery could hear that subtext in his unfinished sentence. “You never saw her type on it? She never told you about anything she was working on?”

“She e-mailed. She’d joined one of those sites where you kept up with your old classmates. We didn’t talk much about it.”

Mystery would bet they hadn’t talked about a lot of things, and that’s how their marriage had fallen apart. Her father hadn’t felt connected enough to his bride to be faithful, and she’d been unable to truly express her sadness and resentment until she’d had enough.

“I remember asking her once what she did with the laptop,” Mystery added. “She said she was keeping a journal.”

“Like a diary?” Axel asked, frowning.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “That’s how she described it.”

“Did she know something that could have gotten her killed?” Heath asked.

“Well . . .” Her father hesitated.

Trepidation iced through Mystery’s veins. Had her mom stumbled across dangerous information that had provoked someone to silence her for good? But what? Mom’s past hadn’t been shady. She hadn’t worked on films anymore or rubbed elbows with politicians.

“If Julia knew as much about all my affairs as she did the one she confronted me about, then she knew about my relationship with the wife of a powerful, dangerous man,” her father admitted. “Actually, it’s possible she knew a lot of secrets. I can’t say more than that. I’m heading into a conference call. Kiddo, stay near Heath and Axel. The fact they’re with you is the only reason I haven’t boarded a plane and rushed to the States myself. I love you. Be careful where you dig. Stay safe.”

Then her father hung up.

As if sensing her distress, Axel curled his arm around her. Mystery melted into his side. What wouldn’t her dad admit? Was he keeping quiet because he worried it would get her killed if he told her?

“Breakfast, anyone? I’m starving. I’ll cook,” Heath offered into the sudden silence.

She appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood but suspected it had far more to do with distracting her so she didn’t ask tough questions about her mother’s murder. With new information coming to light, she wished she’d jumped in with both feet and solved the woman’s killing sooner, rather than following her father’s advice and moving on, tucking all those terrible memories away in a box marked “painful” and letting it gather dust.

This trip to the States had been about more than experiencing Axel so she could get him out of her system. Instead, she felt as if she’d finally come into her own and figured out what she wanted. Now she just had to execute it.