Chapter Two
Sawyer
I really didn’t need any more cases to work on.
I had just barely closed one on a missing wife who actually wasn’t missing but was tired of her lazy-ass husband who hadn’t fucked her right in fifteen years and decided to run off with another man and start over.
But I had ten others sitting in my desk and needing my attention.
That being said, when Marg wrote a note on the paperwork saying she thought I needed to give this Riya woman the time of day, I decided to go ahead and do it.
Marg wasn’t usually in the business of telling me my business, which was why she worked as my secretary.
So if she said I needed to see her, I needed to see her.
The second I looked at her, I figured maybe Marg was trying to play matchmaker or some shit like that. She was constantly dropping hints about me getting too old to not have a good woman to come home to.
Because Riya Sweeney, yeah, she was a fucking knockout.
She was on the tallish side, five-seven or so in flat feet, and she was all leg.
Her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, putting her gorgeous face on perfect display.
There was an exoticness to her that was nondescript, hard to place.
It could have been part Indian or part Native American or Romanian or even just Italian.
She had a somewhat square jaw with wide, full lips, thicker and strong brows, and almost see-through light brown eyes.
Fucking stunning.
But as soon as she stepped in, I started to think Marg had less matchmaking on the mind and more helping the damsel in distress.
Because Riya Sweeney had haunted eyes, stiff movements, and seemed like she was ready to bolt at any moment.
Then she started talking, her voice smooth and just a touch husky, either because she just naturally had a bedroom voice or maybe she was getting a cold.
And then I found out that not only was she beautiful, but she might very well be batshit fucking crazy.
Which was wonderful. Just what I needed.
The way she reacted to me thinking she was crazy was either a testament to the fact that she was, seeing as crazy people hated being called crazy just about as much as junkies hated being called junkies.
Or it was possibly the testament of a sound mind in a confusing situation in desperate need of answers.
So, maybe perhaps a bit against my better judgment, I called Hailstorm and had Lo send down one of her nurses. Ashley was an ex-army nurse, battlefield trained and cool under any situation. She would come down, check the girl out, look for injuries, do a rape kit, and run some blood work.
From there, I could decide if I was actually taking the case or not.
“Pretty girl,” Tig, one of my men, said as I walked out of my office toward the reception area.
Tig was a giant of a man, six and a half feet tall, with shoulders so wide he practically needed to turn sideways to get through some doors.
He had rich, deep mahogany skin and light brown eyes.
He was a wall of muscle, with a slight beer gut that in no way slowed him down from chasing down some scumbag or landing whatever skirt he set his sights on.
“Yeah,” I agreed, reaching for the file Marg left on the desk.
“Got a look in her eye I don’t like seeing there,” he said, the big fucking softie. Looked like he had fights with concrete walls in his spare time and won, but the fuck had a big, soft heart, especially when it came to the fairer sex.
I nodded. “Ashley is coming to check her out. Says she lost a year of her life. The last thing she remembers was going to get coffee before work on October third. Of last year.”
Tig’s head cocked to the side, brows drawing together. “Seriously?”
“She seems to think so. Flipped when she thought I thought she was crazy. Which she might be. That’s why Ash needs to look her over and check to make sure she’s not high or some shit like that. But if she’s not any of that…”
“Then where the hell did she lose a year to?”
“My question precisely,” I said, snapping closed the file in my hand.
“This better not be some bullshit excuse to get me down here so you can keep up your incessant flirting with me,” Ashley declared, walking through the doors, her wavy hair flying behind her.
“Because as I have told you at least a dozen times before, I like eating pussy as much as you like eating pussy. Which, if your reputation is anything to go by, is a lot,” she declared, dropping a heavy bag down on the reception desk.
“You know, I wouldn’t exactly be adverse to you know… watching,” I offered, making her roll her eyes. “No. I was serious when I said I have a girl who needs to be looked over. She’s claiming her last memory is from over a year ago. Told me that when she woke up, everything hurt. So she needs…”
“To be checked for injuries and have a rape kit done,” Ashley filled in.
“Exactly. And run her blood to make sure she’s not high or some shit. She doesn’t seem it, but longtime junkies can hide it well when they need to.”
“Alright. Anything else?” she asked, moving to take her bag, which was gone, because Tig had picked it up for her. See? Softy.
“Nah. I just need to know every little bit of what you find so I know what I am getting into if I am getting into it.”
“Alright. This shouldn’t be longer than an hour or so,” she said, falling into step with Tig who led her over toward the exam room.
I went back to my office, firing up my laptop while calling my brother.
While I was the one with actual real-life experience working as a professional private investigator, Barrett was a whiz with computers and fancied himself a PI too, opening his own one-man shop and slowly building a client list, despite getting his ass handed to him at least three times since he started.
But he was learning, and I couldn’t protect him forever.
Besides, I had to keep shit amicable, seeing as he was a good resource for me.
“I don’t want a lecture. She wanted to come to me instead of you. She said you were rude and overbearing in the interview,” he answered.
“I’m not talking about the chick with the cheating husband.”
“You don’t know that he’s cheating. She is just curious about what he is doing…”
“What he’s doing is lying to her while he goes off and fucks a woman half her age with plastic tits and ass-fat-injected lips.
That’s what he’s doing. She wanted to hear otherwise and I don’t lie to my clients.
But, by all means, enjoy her and her very deep pockets while you can. That wasn’t why I was calling.”
“Alright, what’s up then?”
Barrett was a good five years younger than me and softer because his generation as a whole was just softer, used to their video games and cell phones and computers and never learning how to fall out of a tree or walk off an over-the-handlebars crash off your bike so the chicks wouldn’t think you were a pussy for crying over losing half your body’s blood.
But he was also softer because he didn’t jump right into the military out of high school like I did.
And he didn’t spend a nice chunk of his twenties in extensive, ass-breaking training and then in all the hellholes of the Earth doing dirty missions that blacken the soul before finally getting out and starting his own gig.
But without all that down-and-dirty shit, he had a lot more time to work on his computer skills.
Which was why I needed him.
“Can you run a name for me and see what you find? I maybe have a new client, and I want to know all her dirty secrets before I decide to take her on. And I want everything. If you can hack medical or psych files, I want those the most.”
“This will cost,” he said, making me smile as I rubbed a hand down my face. He made it clear when I was barely on my feet opening the agency that he was not giving me any handouts, that he didn’t work for free. Not even for family.
“It always does.”
“Alright, what’s the name?”
“Riya Sweeney.”
“Nice,” he said, and I could hear him writing.
He only ever used pen and paper and the careful fuck wrote in Polish code too.
Knowing everything there was to know about computers, he knew how easily they were hacked.
And while someone might be able to, after a long and tedious process, break his code, it was much more difficult than hacking into a computer system.
“That should be easy. Not like that Jane Smith you sent me once. Jane Smith. Who the hell names their kids something like that nowadays?”
“I need this as fast as possible. I’ll pay double if you drop whatever else you’re working on to get me a file by tomorrow.”
“Can do,” he said, because I knew none of his cases were of the pressing kind. “Oh, well that explains it,” he said a second later, humor clear in his tone.
“What explains what?”
“Riya Sweeney might just be the prettiest woman I’ve seen in years.”
“And that explains what?”
“Your interest in her secrets.”
I paused at that. “I don’t fuck my clients, Barrett.
” I was telling him shit he already knew.
True, I liked a good time, and I had been known to allow women to show that to me, but I was a professional.
I had no interest in having my work reputation sullied because a nice body in a tight dress came into my office and I wanted on.
“No. But I believe you have waited until you’ve closed the case and then took them to bed.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, smiling, “they aren’t clients after the case is closed.”
Barrett snorted, and I could picture him shaking his head at me, as he usually did. “Alright. I’ll get to work. I will drop off the file as soon as I have it.”
“Barrett,” I called before he could end the call.
“Yeah?”
“I want it in fucking English this time, okay? I don’t have hours to spend using the damn key you supply me with to decipher the files this time.”
“Fine,” he said, clearly annoyed at having to shake up his usual methods.
“Thanks, Bar.”
“Yep,” he said, mind already elsewhere.
I hung up and rubbed my hands over my eyes. It was going to be a long-ass day.
“Here, honey,” Marg said, dropping my third cup of black coffee on my desk. “You got the Helsburg file?”
“Yeah, Marg. Thanks for getting it out of storage for me.”
“That girl, you’re taking her case?”
“Pending her physical. Ashley should be able to tell me if she’s nuts too.”
“I hope you can help her,” she said, walking toward the door. “She looked so lost.”
If her story was true, she would.
Anyone would feel lost if they were missing an entire year of their life.
And as I tried to focus on the Helsburg file, I tried like fuck to stifle the thought that I really hoped she wasn’t crazy.
Because that shit was not like me.