“One thing, Logan. I pay her in cash, and she mails half her earnings to someone back in Mystic.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw her doing it once and asked about it. She said she had a sick relative. That’s all I know.”
“Dyl, why’d you hire her?” The minute the words were out, he knew the answer and regretted asking.
“You know why.” Dylan’s family had had their own crisis long before Logan’s family had had theirs. Dylan had a younger sister who’d died when they were kids, and he had a soft spot for keeping women safe. “Logan, are you just messing with her? Because she’s been hurt enough.”
“Have you ever seen me walk a woman to work?” Logan shifted in his seat, still uncomfortable with the way his stomach got funky when he thought of Stormy.
Dylan laughed. “Didn’t want to call you on that.”
“Yeah, well, neither do I. Thanks for watching out for her, man. I gotta run.”
A few more phone calls and a little computer hacking allowed Logan to track the IP for the recipient of the SIM-card information collected from Stormy’s phone. Thank God Kutcher was a cheapskate and used shabby products. He’d made it child’s play for Logan to get the information he needed. After shutting down the ability of the tracker and making more phone calls, Logan arranged for Kutcher’s cell to be tossed.
With most of the annoying aspects of his morning taken care of, Logan scrolled to the picture of Stormy he’d taken outside of NightCaps. His stomach clenched at the palpable fear in her green eyes. They were eyes that had seen too much, and last night, when he’d seen her let go, a hint of the fear had remained. He wanted to wash that fear away, every last evil speck of it. Logan had seen people’s looks change once a threat was removed, and Stormy was already beautiful. He could only imagine how she’d look once he nailed that Kutcher bastard to the wall.
He uploaded the picture to Google Images and found four hits immediately. Her high school graduation photo. She was thicker then, curvier, and hell if her catlike eyes weren’t carefree and clear. Logan held on to that image as he wrote down her real name—Stella Krane—and the name of the high school she’d attended. Before now he’d have put the name Stella together with an older woman, stern and spindly. Funny how a face could change the connotation of a name, but in his mind, Stella Krane and Stormy were one sensual, strong woman.
“What is it about you, Stormy Krane?” He still couldn’t think of her as Stella. Not after having to dig up the information. When he’d earned her trust enough for her to tell him her real name, then and only then would he call her Stella.
He checked out a few of the other photos. Several were posted on the Facebook profile pages of girls who had gone to the same high school Stella had attended. She was smiling in all of them. What he wouldn’t give to see her smile like that. He surfed the Facebook images for a while and found one linked to a Mystic Messenger newspaper article about Stella’s mother, Judy Krane. It was an announcement for a fundraiser to help with Judy’s medical bills. Cancer. Fucking cancer. No wonder she sent money home. He pushed back from the computer and pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking of the little sister Dylan had lost. Life was full of ass kickers. Logan was going to make damn sure that Stormy got back to her mother, even if he had to take Kutcher out himself.
An hour later Logan stood in Stormy’s kitchen feeling as though he were peering into her private life where he shouldn’t be. If she were a client and he needed to gather clues, this might be typical. But Logan didn’t sleep with clients, and Stormy wasn’t a client. He forced himself not to think of her as the woman who was stirring up all sorts of emotions in him and did his best to put his feelings aside and turn on his private-investigator instincts.
Logan was methodical in his search efforts. He walked down to the bedroom, planning to work his way back out to the front door. In the light of day the bedroom appeared very much like Stormy, efficient with an underlying womanly charm. He was sure the apartment came furnished, and he was equally as confident that Mrs. Fairly wouldn’t have asked for a social security number or proof of identification. She’d probably taken Stormy at face value.
Being in her bedroom brought memories of the night before rushing back. The muscles on the back of his neck tightened as he was reminded of discovering the rough edges of the scar on the back of her shoulder. When he’d felt the other scar beside her spine, his blood had gone cold, stirring all of the protective urges he usually reserved for family. Those urges had only become stronger in the hours since.