Chapter SEVENTEEN
LEAH TOOK OFF with Sara beside her. Evelyn stood by the front door, a box in her hands. A shoe box. And it looked like blood dripping from one corner.
Leah’s heart stopped. She flashed back in time when another shoe box had been delivered. Her chest swelled, and she had to force herself to move closer.
As she got a foot from Evelyn, she saw the note taped on top of the box. “Don’t piss me off.”
She swallowed bile down her throat and took the box from Evelyn’s hands. Leah wasn’t sure who was shaking the hardest, her or Evelyn. Knowing she had to look, prepared to see one of her cat’s mutilated bodies, she opened it.
No body. But internal organs. Oh, God!
She dropped the box and reached for her phone. Barely able to think, much less push the right buttons, she hit the recent calls link. She didn’t breathe until she found the one she needed.
Turning away from the other three people staring at her, she put the phone to her ear and waited for Austin Brookshire to answer.
“If you remember, at first I couldn’t find shit on him,” Tyler said.
Austin sat at his kitchen table, his phone to his ear, his mind rewinding to last night. Rewinding to what happened. To why it shouldn’t have happened. To why he wanted it to happen again.
“I was worried he was illegal,” Tyler continued.
“Yeah, I remember.” Austin had to focus on the conversation. He wanted to mull over what he’d learned about Leah from Tyler. DeLuna was her half brother on her father’s side. The father had been married to someone else. Leah’s mom had been his longtime mistress.
It appeared that after her mother died, her father completely dropped out of the picture. In his obituary, the only kids listed were those from the man’s marriage. The man hadn’t died when Leah was young the way she’d led him to believe. She’d have been around eighteen.
And since they lived in the same small town, Austin couldn’t help wondering if Leah had seen the obituary.
“Then it finally hit me,” Tyler continued. “Surnames. It’s common for Latinos to have two last names. But since he didn’t have his father’s last name, I found both his mother’s surnames. And bingo. Roberto Rivera had nothing on him. But Roberto Marcos, aka Roberto Rivera Marcos, has some history. He was married. Had a kid. Both killed in a car accident.”
“That sucks,” Austin said, meaning it.
“Yeah, but there was one article that claimed the husband and the wife’s brother didn’t believe it was an accident. The brother, a Freddie Gomez, said that his sister and nephew were murdered because she’d witnessed a murder that took place near her house. So I looked up all murders in the area about that time. And you’ll never guess whose name popped up as a person of interest in one of them.”
“DeLuna.” So DeLuna killed Roberto’s wife and kid. F*ck, was there no end to what this guy would do?
“Yup. I knew Roberto had a personal agenda.”
“What does Dallas say about this?” Austin asked.
“He said we need to put our heads together. Decide if we should call him on this, or not. Part of me says it doesn’t change anything, but it feels…”
Austin’s phone beeped with an incoming call. He looked to see the number. His breath caught. Leah. “Gotta go,” he said.
He took a deep breath, clueless to how this call would go. Even though she’d admitted to initiating their kiss, he was prepared to apologize again. She hadn’t been the one to unhook her bra and unsnap her jeans. He’d spent all day regretting his actions. Or trying to regret them.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m glad you called.”
“Are my cats okay?” She sounded breathless.
“What?”
“My cats? Has anyone broken into my apartment today?”
He shook his head “no,” and then said, “I don’t think so?”
“Can you check? Please. Please check on my cats.”
“Sure.” Then he remembered she wasn’t supposed to know he could get into her apartment. Was this a test? Was she onto him? “I don’t have a key.”
“Break it down. I don’t care.”
It wasn’t a test. Panic rang in her voice. But for her cats? “What’s going on, Leah?”
“Just check on my cats, please.” Her voice stuttered.
The fear in her voice reminded him of when she’d left a message with her brother. “I’ll call you right back,” Austin said. “And calm down, I don’t think anyone has broken in.”
Dropping his phone in his pocket, he grabbed his gun from the top cabinet and his lock picks from under the kitchen sink. He hurried out into the hall and turned the knob to her apartment door to see if it was open. It wasn’t.
He went to work. Was done in seconds. He dropped the picks in his pocket. Remembering her fear, he pulled his weapon and quietly opened the door.
Two cats came hauling ass at him. The orange and black ones.
Shit, he’d come to calm her fears and hadn’t considered his own. The cats stopped less than a foot from him and stared as if he was an intruder and they were the guards. He cautiously stepped around them until he could see in the kitchen. It took a second to take his eyes off the two felines. He didn’t trust them. Finally, he glanced up. Kitchen empty.
As he crept past the two creatures again, he listened to see if he heard anything anywhere else in the apartment. Nothing. He stuck his head into the bathroom. It smelled wonderful—soft, sweet, with hints of waffle cone. He went into the bedroom. The other two cats were on the bed, but at the sight of him they both scrambled up and darted under the bed.
Seeing them move so fast had his heart moving with them. He backed out of the room. Before walking completely into the living room, he located the other two creatures on the sofa. Job done, he hurried out the door.
The moment he stood in the hall, he grabbed his phone.
She answered before the phone rang. “Are they okay?”
“Yes. I didn’t get really close, but they seemed fine. What’s going on, Leah?”
“You saw all four of them?”
“Yes.”
He heard her exhale. “Thank you.”
“Tell me what’s up?”
“Someone just played a mean trick, that’s all.”
“This is no trick!” Austin heard a female say in the background.
“What kind of trick?” He got a bad feeling.
“I’ll explain later,” she said. “No, don’t call the police,” Leah said, but she wasn’t talking to him.
“Why would you call the police?” he asked, but too late. She’d hung up.
He stormed into his apartment, snatched his keys, and lit out.
Less than five minutes later, his speed ticket-worthy if he’d been spotted, he walked into Purrfect Pets. Leah stood behind the counter. She frowned.
His heart did a crazy leap in his chest at the sight of her. And damn if his first thought wasn’t of kissing those sweet frowning lips. He spotted the desperate look in her eyes and decided instead of kissing her, he wanted to pull her against him, to let her lean on him.
Leah Reece needed someone to lean on. And as crazy, as utterly ridiculous, as it was, he wanted to be that person.
“You didn’t have to come here.”
“I know,” he said. “I wanted to.” The way he’d wanted to kiss her last night. The way he’d wanted to rid her of her clothes. His mind churned, and he realized he hadn’t considered if coming here was right or wrong. He’d done it on impulse. Suddenly, noticing Leah wasn’t standing alone, he nodded at the three women beside her.
Her posse of women, he thought. And they all looked willing to let Leah lean on them. But somehow he got the feeling she didn’t regularly lean on anyone. One of the posse was a blonde, tall and attractive. One was an older, dark-haired woman, and the other was a redhead who barely looked legal, but dressed like she was.
Leah spoke up. “Austin, who is… just my neighbor, this is Sara, Evelyn, and Jamie.” She waved her hand to each one as she spoke their names.
Just her neighbor? He pushed the thought aside to deal with later. More important matters warranted his attention. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Leah said.
“This happened!” The older woman pointed to a box on the counter. She shot him a quick look, pleading him to talk some sense into Leah. “Where I come from, when people send you bloody packages, it’s not ‘nothing.’ ”
Leah shook her head. “I panicked. After I calmed down, I realized the organs are either chicken or turkey. Someone probably bought them at the grocery store.”
“I don’t care if they belonged to Big Foot or where they bought them,” Evelyn snapped. “They were put in a shoe box, had a threatening note on top, and were dropped off at our doorstep.”
Austin stepped closer. “Where’s the threatening note?”
Everyone looked at Leah.
“She has it,” said Sara, the blonde, speaking for the first time.
Leah pulled the sticky note from her pocket and slapped it on the counter. “It’s not really a threat.”
Austin read the four words. Don’t piss me off.
“Well, it’s not a love letter,” he told her.
“My words exactly,” said Evelyn. “I like this guy. Where have you been hiding him?”
“He’s just my neighbor,” Leah repeated, and damn if it didn’t hurt more the second time. Did she let any neighbor unhook her bra and jeans and…
“What’s not to like? Except the black eye.” The redhead shot him a look of interest.
One he wasn’t even the slightest bit flattered by. She was way too young, and… and didn’t have dimples. He pushed that thought aside.
“It was a stupid prank,” Leah said.
“Sorry, but I agree with Evelyn. This is more than a prank.” His mind started forming questions and he spouted them out. “When did it arrive? Did anyone see who dropped it off? Has anything similar to this ever happened before?”
“You sound like a cop,” Redhead said. “I like cops. Is that how you got the black eye?”
“I’m not a cop,” he said, but she was right, he was acting like one. He needed to watch himself. Then again, someone needed to figure out exactly what was happening before someone ended up hurt. Someone being Leah. “But we should all be thinking like one.”
“I think we should be calling one,” Evelyn said.
Austin looked from Evelyn to Leah. “She might have a point.”
“Call them for what? To interrupt their donut time and have them tell me that they don’t have time to be looking into dead cats? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and I’m not doing it again.”
She stormed off into a back room, but not before he spotted the emotion in her eyes.
Evelyn looked at him and sighed. “I don’t know what’s going on. She’s never been so unreasonable.”
Austin heard Evelyn, but his mind was still digesting what Leah had said. “So this has happened before?” he asked the three women remaining.
“No,” Evelyn said.
The blonde spoke up. “But Leah just said… or basically just said it has.” Her gaze turned to Austin. “It’s never happened here.”
“No one ever told me getting bloody packages was involved in my internship,” said the redhead.
“What’s Leah hiding from us?” Evelyn glared toward the back where Leah had disappeared.
As eager as he was to find Leah, he guessed his best bet at getting information was from these three.
“When did this arrive?” he asked.
“Twenty minutes ago,” Evelyn said. “Which means it’s not too late to call the police.”
He didn’t want to tell her to do it. Something about Leah’s tone earlier sent a warning straight to his gut. “Did someone deliver it? Who found it?” His gut said it was a big, bald guy. The two incidents had to be connected.
Jamie, the redhead, spoke up. “I saw the man who left it. He looked Hispanic, early thirties maybe; he tapped on the window and set the box down in front of the door. I thought it was kittens. Then I saw the blood.”
Hispanic? “Was he tall, short, dark-skinned?” The thought that it might have been DeLuna had Austin’s mind spinning.
She hesitated as to think. “Sort of tall, not as tall or as built as you.” She smiled. “Not very dark-skinned. Just olive. Dark hair, but more brown than black.” She lifted one shoulder as if proud of her description.
And damn if that description didn’t match DeLuna to a T. Not that it didn’t also describe half the Hispanics out there. “You didn’t recognize him, then?”
“No,” she said.
Have you met Leah’s piece of shit half brother? What he wouldn’t give for a picture of DeLuna right now. “Would you recognize this man if you saw him again, or saw a picture?”
“Maybe.”
Could he show her DeLuna’s picture without Leah finding out? He started formulating a plan. “You know, I have a friend who’s a detective. Can you give me your number? He might want to talk to you.”
“Of course you can have my number.” She shot him a sultry look. He saw Evelyn rolling her eyes.
“So do you think this detective will take care of everything?” Sara asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure if he’ll look into it. Leah may need to make an official report.”
“And it appears that we have about a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening,” Evelyn said. “I really don’t understand what’s gotten into that girl. She’s been in a frenzy these last few days. Worried about her brother and then her place is broken into.” She looked at Austin. “Maybe you could talk some sense into her?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We aren’t really—”
“Don’t lie to me. You were the first person she called. And there was enough heat in the look you two gave each other to deep-fry a chicken.”
“I thought he was just her neighbor.” The redhead sounded upset.
“And it wasn’t too long ago you thought Santa was real, child.” Evelyn looked at Austin and pointed to the back. “She’s in her office, first left and last door on the right. See if you can make her see reason.”
Austin got to her office door. It stood ajar. She was on the phone. Pausing, he stopped to listen.