Chapter Twelve
Jacob
Icalled Cooper on the way to my car, the plain, brown envelope in my hands. My mind spun as I tried to register what I'd seen.
Who the fuck would send me a crime scene photo of my Aunt and Uncle's murder? They'd died twenty years ago. It was a cold case.
What was the point? I couldn't untangle the fury in my chest far enough to figure out what had me more pissed—the sight of their dead bodies, or the idea that Abigail had been just feet away from whatever sick fuck had delivered it.
She was supposed to be fucking safe. The whole point of her staying with me was to keep her safe.
She was not supposed to get the shit scared out of her by someone delivering a picture of dead bodies to the one place she was protected from the danger that had been stalking her ever since she’d married John.
I needed to get it together. Anger wasn't going to help anyone. Usually, that was my thing. Control. I didn't lose it, ever. I left the elevator and pulled out my phone, hitting the shortcut to the Sinclair Security office.
"This is Jacob Winters," I said when the receptionist answered, hearing the bark in my own voice. Toning it down, I said, "Put me through to Cooper."
"Sir, he's—"
"I don't care," I interrupted. "Put me through."
"Yes, sir," she said crisply. Seconds later, Cooper Sinclair picked up the line.
"Jacob, I'm in a meeting—" he said.
Talking over him, I interrupted. "Someone just slid an unmarked envelope with a crime scene picture of my Aunt and Uncle's murders under my door."
I gave Cooper a minute to filter through all the implications. He didn't disappoint me. Thirty seconds later, he said, "Are you on your way?"
"I'll be there in five," I said. He hung up the phone. I knew whoever he had in his office would be gone by the time I got there.
Not just because Cooper Sinclair and I had been friends since preschool. Not just because he'd known both my aunt and uncle and my parents before they died. This was about more than friendship and family connections.
Sinclair Security was responsible for designing and implementing the security protocols at Winters House. At every one of our residences and businesses.
If someone had gotten through their system far enough to slide an envelope beneath my door, Cooper would want answers almost as much as I did.
While I was the only one with access to the cameras located inside my penthouse, Sinclair Security had the recordings for all activity in the more public areas, including the elevators and the stairwells.
I wanted to see who had been at my door. I needed a face for my target.
I let myself in through the front door of the Sinclair offices, not seeing the gray walls, understated black leather furniture, and sedate charcoal carpet.
I'd been here too many times to notice my surroundings. All I was interested in was whatever Cooper had been able to find out in the five minutes since we'd spoken.
I opened the door to his office to find him sitting at his desk, his eyes trained on a monitor, his younger brother, Evers, beside him.
All four of the Sinclair brothers looked alike—tall, with dark hair and the same sharp cheekbones. Cooper and Evers shared their father's icy blue eyes, though Cooper's build was bulkier than his brother’s since he'd started power lifting in college.
"Evers, I didn't know you were back," I said.
He looked up from the monitor and nodded to me, apparently too distracted by the hole in their security plan to be friendly. That was fine with me. We'd known each other too long to bother with that shit anyway.
"I finished up in Houston early," he said. "Since when do you have Abigail Jordan living with you?"
"Since she came to me asking for help. She said Big John wanted to use her as barter in one of his deals."
"Why didn't you just send her to us?" Evers asked, pinning me with his gaze. "We would've helped her. You know I've always had a soft spot for Abigail. She never should have ended up mixed up with the Jordans."
Under his breath, Cooper said, "Yeah, you have a soft spot, but Jacob has a hard one. He's been waiting years for a crack at Abigail."
Evers straightened, crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes still intent on mine. "I know. That's why we're talking about it. Taking advantage of a woman in a desperate situation? That's low."
An unfamiliar mix of emotions tore through me, a crazy alchemy of jealousy and possessiveness and something else I didn't understand.
"Stay the fuck out of it, Evers," I said. "I need your help keeping her safe, not protecting her virtue. She knew what she was getting into with me. She's fine with it."
Evers raised an infuriating eyebrow, his disbelief clear in his eyes. "Is she? Or is she just doing what she has to? You're no prize, Jacob. Not for a woman like her. She had a shitty marriage. She deserves better. You're a step up from being stuck with Big John."
"Why do you care?" I demanded, offended by the comparison.
Maybe I wasn't offering Abigail a wedding ring, but that didn't make me an abusive sociopath like her father-in-law.
"You don't want Abigail. You've got a hard-on for my cousin." As I'd known it would, the mention of my cousin, Summer, was enough to derail Evers.
"She's a fucking pain in my ass," he complained. Summer had shown up months ago in the middle of a situation with Evers and Cooper's brother, Axel, and his now fiancée, Emma.
Summer was a mystery. Her last name was Winters, an unlikely coincidence, but we didn't know her and she acted like she didn't know us.
Evers had been discreetly keeping an eye on her ever since and had uncovered some interesting information, including her identity as a distant cousin to my branch of the Winters family.
But we'd had our hands full lately, and as long as Summer kept to herself and didn't cause problems, for the moment, we were happy enough to let her be. Besides, she and Evers hadn't exactly gotten along.
Since the day they'd met, when he practically kidnapped her to bring her back to Atlanta so she could deliver evidence for Emma, they'd set sparks off each other whenever they collided.
With those two, it was either fight or fuck, and so far, they'd stuck with fighting.
"Have you seen her lately?" I asked. Evers glared at me, and Cooper hid a grin from his brother.
"No, I haven't, and stop trying to distract me. I'm keeping an eye on you and Abigail," he said. "She needs someone to look out for her."
"She has someone," I said, clenching my fist at my side for the second time that afternoon. "She has me. I'm not going to say it again, Evers. Back the fuck off Abigail. When she had trouble, she didn't come here. She came to me."
"Leave it, Evers," Cooper said. Rotating the monitor so I could see, Cooper pointed to the different segments of the screen, all of which showed specific areas of Winters House.
Some of the screens were frozen, as if Cooper had set them at pause, while some showed live-action.
"Whoever it was, they knew about the security. They didn't know the exact location of the cameras, but it's clear they knew they were being watched. Unfortunately, we don't have a good view of their face. Not good enough to run it for the facial recognition program."
"Can you tell how they got in?" I asked, frustrated. "Man or woman? General height, size, anything?"
"If it's a woman, she's tall. The intruder is about five ten, based on height relative to the elevator door. I'm inclined to think the hair is a wig."
He paused one of the screens and showed me the slightly blurred image of a figure in a long coat, face turned to the side, shaggy hair obscuring the line of the chin and forehead.
I understood what he was saying. Without the hair, it could've been a man or woman, but the style was the perfect choice to hide the intruder's features without being noticeable.
Cooper flipped through the screens, taking the figure back from crouching at my door to where he or she exited the elevator on my floor—a floor no intruder should have access to—to the lobby where they entered the elevator. He sat back in his chair and looked at me, an apology in his eyes.
"I lost him on the first floor. Retail at the entry level is good for business, but it's shit for security. I've told you before that you have too many entrances on the retail level and too many people going in and out of the offices to fully secure the upper floors."
I nodded. I knew this, and when I'd renovated the building, it hadn't been a major concern. Winters House was as secure—more secure—than most luxury condos. We hadn't designed it to be airtight.
There hadn't been a need. As long as we could keep out the paparazzi, we hadn't been worried about it. Now, my priorities had changed.
"Can you put someone on my door twenty-four seven?" I asked. "Until Big John turns his attention elsewhere, Abigail's not leaving my place, but this scared the hell out of her. I want to know she's safe when I'm not there."
"We'll take care of it," Evers said. "No one will get to Abigail."
I nodded again. We all gave each other a hard time. We've been friends too long not to, but as much as I knew Evers would give me shit when he had the chance, I also knew he'd have my back.
His face grim, Cooper raised his chin toward the plastic-wrapped envelope in my hand and asked, "Is that it?"
Pulling on a pair of thin plastic gloves he got from the top drawer of his desk, Cooper pulled the envelope from the plastic bag with a pair of long metal tweezers.
He laid the envelope over the plastic bag and teased it open with the tip of the tweezers. I looked away as he drew the photograph into view.
I knew what they were looking at. I didn't want to see it again myself. I barely remembered my aunt and uncle. A vague impression of cigar smoke and a bristly mustache, the scent of gardenias and the absolute security of tight hugs.
Losing them had been the first great shock of my life, of all of our lives. Their deaths had changed everything, in so many ways.