Chapter 4
PATRICK
New York was not your fault.
Kyler’s voice rang in my ear, but it was hard to believe it.
My job was to keep him and the people he loved safe, and my team failed.
So, I failed. I wasn’t even there. I should have been there.
It reminded me that I couldn’t let my guard down.
Not even for a minute. Especially around those two little ones. They found trouble.
And adding Kylie to the mix. She seemed lost, but she was trained and would be alert as long as she kept her little self in check.
Yeah, she was a little. I’ve been studying her long before she arrived in Las Vegas.
She caught my eye the few times I attended a briefing with Agent Stanley’s task force.
I already knew about her sister; that part of her story was true, but I also remember her face in New York when she was briefed regarding Tinley being targeted because of her kink.
The pointed questions made me think she had some experience.
My own research into her outings in Brooklyn confirmed it.
After Tinley’s briefing at the FBI last month, she watched Josh consoling her, the longing in Kylie’s eyes was hard to miss.
“Excuse me.” She waved her hand in front of my face. “You okay?” When she stood, the top of her head barely reached my chin. At five-five, she wasn’t short, but against my six-two frame, she felt small.
“I’m sorry.” Reel it in, Patrick. “So, you will have access to what you need to do your job. If there’s something we don’t have, just ask and we’ll get it for you. You will discover we have even more resources than the FBI and less . . . restraints.”
She sat back down, contemplating. She had questions, but she wasn’t asking them.
“What’s your hesitation?”
“Not hesitation, just want to be fully aware of what the job will entail.” Her eyes darted around.
“I’ll admit. It’s uncharted territory for all of us, but we have the same goal: to help as many victims as we can. We all have our own motivations.” I stopped myself from saying more.
“Will I have access to Kyler and Josh and the other brothers?” She straightened her shoulders. “I need to see what y’all have done to guide how we proceed.”
I lowered my head to get to eye level. “You will get whatever you need.”
She blinked and looked to the sky, scanning the top of Quad IV. “Can I ask a question?”
“Of course.” I stood up. “But I might not answer.”
“Fair enough.” She laughed, and it seemed genuine. “I assume I’ll be signing some sort of NDA, right? So why would I be limited?”
“Let’s just see how it goes.” I stood and walked toward the door to Quad II. Kylie followed behind me.
“Okay, I have another question. Hopefully, it won’t give away any closely held secrets.” She stopped in the middle of the courtyard but turned toward Quad IV. “Why is that building so much shorter?” She pointed.
A genuine laugh escaped me, a release I didn’t know I needed. “Quad IV is not so much a hotel as a destination. You know about Quad IV. It’s not like it’s a well-kept secret.”
“I’ve heard rumors, but they're just that, rumors.”
“Well, you’ll see it soon enough.” There was a littles’ night coming up and Rayna had been dying to visit again; her last visit, she complained she couldn’t enjoy it because her Daddy was breaking her heart. The dramatics of a little. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to your room.”
We entered the lobby of Quad II, where Kylie’s hotel room was. As the more reasonably priced hotel, the crowd was dense, and the casinos were full and buzzing. We made our way across the casino floor toward the elevators.
“If I accept the job.” She stood next to me and looked up.
Her blue eyes appeared lighter and her face more youthful in this light.
She was twenty-nine years old and had graduated from college and law school by the time she was twenty-three.
She only took a year off when her sister disappeared and accepted the FBI’s offer. “When do I start?”
“When would you like to start?” We stepped into the elevator.
“Well, technically, my vacation is over tomorrow.” She looked up at me with those hopeful eyes. They were going to test my resolve. “If I’m sticking around, I guess I should look into a place to live.”
“Why don’t we have lunch tomorrow? I’ll have an official offer, salary and benefits delivered to you, and we can discuss details then.” We arrived on her floor. “I’ll meet you in the lobby at 12:30 pm.”
“Okay.”
That okay was filled with too much enthusiasm.
She was up to something, but I wouldn't know what until she decided to reveal it.
The FBI trained its operatives to lie undetected.
I had no doubt she would hold everything she could close to her chest. On paper, I should not be inviting this unknown into our circle, but she had something in common with Rayna and Tinley, and it was pulling at me the way those girls had pulled Kyler and Josh.
All of us, really. She seemed like she needed me.
She had an unsettled soul, and it sparked my Daddy Dom nature to be there for her and take care of her. To remove the demons deep-seated in her brain. The FBI had trained her to be anything they needed her to be. I had the desire and the stubbornness to find out the truth from my little agent.
We arrived at her door. “You’re not banishing me to my room until then, are you?” she teased. “I’m not really tired. I thought I’d do some gambling. Maybe go grab a drink and people watch.”
“You are free to do as you please, but…” I leaned down again to eye level. “Just stay out of trouble, alright?”
She swallowed, her throat hitched. She licked her lips before catching the top one between her teeth. The gesture was equal parts cute and seductive, which made alarm bells go off in my head. “Good night. Kylie. See you tomorrow.”
“Night.” She opened her door, but didn’t walk in.
I fought the urge to look back and lost, turning my head just in time to catch the back of her shapely calf as she stepped inside.
My chest tightened. I pressed my palm against it and ran through the list of reasons I shouldn’t fall for this girl. At least not before I got to know what she was after.
My phone rang in my pocket. It was an anonymous number.
“Hi, Randall.” I wasn’t surprised to hear from him. I was surprised he was calling from off-campus. Randall didn’t leave Quad II much. He preferred to be in an environment that he could control. “Where are you?”
“Driving to LA.”
“You know we have planes and even a helicopter or two with your name on them. I’m sure you could have used them instead of driving to LA in the middle of the night?”
“It’s 9:30.” He scoffed. “Besides, I think better when I drive.”
“What are you thinking about?” I rode the elevator down and stepped off. The lobby was crowded and loud. An argument between two couples broke out near the entrance to the food hall. I took a step toward it, but my staff beat me to it. I watched from a distance while they restored order.
“This thing with Kylie.”
I stopped walking. “What thing with Kylie?” My grip tightened on the phone. The turn signal clicked through the speaker. Once, twice.
“Is that business or personal?”
I started moving again, past the walkway to Quad III, past the door to the staff offices. I made it another twenty feet before I realized I’d overshot. “Isn’t it all personal?”
“I’m not questioning your judgment. Just wanted to determine if anything I find out about her, relevant?”
“Is she the reason you’re heading to LA?”
“No, unrelated matter.”
“Is it business or personal?” Throwing his words back at him.
A pause on the line, long enough that I could hear the turn signal click twice more.
“Why does it matter?” I asked. “If it’s personal, I get it all, but if it’s business, I only get what’s relevant?”
“No, if it's just business, it’s a waste of my talent; HR can handle it.” He made a noise that passed for a chuckle, a programmed response he’d taught himself to interacting with other humans. He wasn’t a robot, but he was more cerebral than anyone else I knew.
“Well, then it’s personal in the way my job is personal to me. I want it all.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
His tone felt more ominous than usual. What could he have possibly found out about Kylie already?
“I’ll send you the link.”
“Randall, just tell me what’s going on.”
“Kylie has been busy.” He snickered. He was enjoying this. “She’s made inquiries on the dark web about making a purchase.”
“What do you mean?” I ran a hand through my hair. “Purchase what?”
“Tinley,” he grunted. “She’s inquiring about purchasing Tinley. Offered a 20% broker’s fee.”
That little sneak. “Where did you find this?”
“It wasn’t easy to connect her to it. She’s got some skills.” He seemed impressed. “I thought about not telling you so I could pick her brain.”
“Anyone reply?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s a legit inquiry, and she’s gotten two responses from what I have found.” His car turned off. “I was about to shut them down before they got into details; it was obviously some kind of scam. But I wanted your input—”
“Send me the link and I’ll call you back.” I hung up, fired up my laptop, and bypassed Randall's security protocols to get onto the dark web. I found the link from a messaging server we used and clicked it.
He was spot on with the inquiry. Written on some message board I’d never heard of. Full write-up on her offer along with a request for a broker who can make it happen.
My head started throbbing. The site probably came to Randall’s attention because of the chatter.
A lot of responses warned Kylie against getting into business with the Grants, who obviously had no connections to us or Tinley.
Randall also directed me to two seemingly legitimate offers.
One, with a photo of Tinley on the casino floor from a few days ago.
Another had some details of his connection to our organization.
I read through more of his information. Diving a little further to see if I could figure out who he was.
A message popped up.
Randall: The first could be a hotel guest. The second, possibly a former employee.
I should have known Randall would already be on it. The other end of this was my responsibility. I called him back.
“How do you know it’s Kylie?” Not that I didn’t believe him, but I needed to know how the dots connected.
“I started at the message and worked backwards.” Randall continued to tell me his process like it was a bedtime story. It felt more like a nightmare. “My theories. Kylie’s working for someone else to destroy us. She blames us for her sister and is trying to destroy us. Or...”
I skimmed through more stuff on the site. Randall hadn’t finished his sentence.
“Or, what?”
“Oh, she truly thinks Tinley and Rayna are being held against their will, and she’s collecting evidence . . . to destroy us.”
“Fuck.” I rubbed my face. “And I just offered her a front row seat to our organization.”
“Kyler’s going to love this,” Randall chuckled, and this time, I was sure he meant it.
Here’s hoping Kyler had found his sense of humor.