Epilogue #4
Benjamin sighs. “On top of the awful news I have for you this is bad. Don’t look at your phone, boy. Please.” He runs his hand through his hair, making what was a perfectly orderly short haircut a ruffled mess. “Who am I talking to here?”
“What awful news?” Confused, Alden looks at his father, checks his jeans pocket for his phone and takes it out but doesn’t look.
“Just wait. Please.” Again he squeezes his son’s shoulder.
“Rafael Navarro,” I tell him.
“I’m Benjamin Somersby.”
He offers his hand and I shake it. I could leave this to stew in his mind, and hope he comes around, though the chances of that are small. On the other hand, I know how the frat board works, how they love getting hooks into new members who have powers they can cobble to their own.
I eye both men, giving the father a chance to say this news he has, but he waits for my answer. Is that pain I see in his eyes whenever he looks at his son?
This situation here needs resolving ASAP. I have to recheck Georgia.
“I can fix this. I can contact a man that you can talk to. He will, I believe, convince you that cleaning this up, all of this”—I sweep my hand out to the side—“is perfectly possible. If we are fucking fast.”
As long as no stray cars, riders, gardeners, or farmers even, or whoever lives around here, don’t decide to use this road.
The sign we passed, a half a mile back, read Somersby Estate, and that probably means we are on land Alden’s family owns.
All of it for tens of thousands of acres, if I know the Brits.
“I prefer my family to stay out of this sort of furor but we cannot hide that.” He jabs toward the hedge.
Furor? Now I recognize him, from a lobbying meeting my family organized for our company. He’s a sitting member in the House of Lords. Interesting friends, my Georgia has cultivated. She said she was snatched off a road in Australia while out riding her bike?
I can’t help using Alden’s idiotic action as part of my reasoning.
“Shooting people in the head when they’re not certified dead is regarded as murder and, yes, I did that too.
That said, I know people who will want this quashed.
For reasons.” How to say this? “The woman on the other side of this hedge needs to be…”
Kept quarantined slash kept captive slash away from the press. Choose one.
“Surely, she is not our problem?” Benjamin folds his arms.
I lamely add, “She’s special. These people I can phone know you, or some of them do. All I need to do is contact one of them and I feel sure they will convince you that we can and should hide this.”
Now he looks angry, bows his head and rubs his finger back and forth, above his nose. “Okay. Okay.”
Only a little angry. I’m impressed. Most people would be terrified by a stranger with a gun standing before them, after having murdered three people.
“Who then?”
I rattle off three names. The ones he is likely to know. CNC Fraternity board members, all of them.
He sighs, sniffs. When he looks up there’s a measure of respect in his voice that wasn’t present before. “You think…you can get rid of bodies and a destroyed Porsche? And what about the pretty, red-headed woman back there. What if she talks?”
“She won’t,” Alden begins. “Those men were sent by Joseph to kill her and—”
“No, they weren’t.”
“Father.” Alden frowns. “I was informed they were coming by Joseph himself.”
“No, you weren’t.” His voice cracks. “Why would he and besides…” He heaves out a shaky breath. “Joseph has been dead for weeks. He was found floating in the sea off the coast of Spain.”
Now I can see why there is a world of hurt wrecking this man.
“Fuck. No! No!” Alden barks out then steps back, shock in the wideness of his eyes. “How long…how long have you known?” His voice drops to nothing. Clearly, they were close, despite the bad things he said about Joseph on the way here.
“A week.” He walks close to his son then opens his arms and pulls him in close.
This is a private moment and I half turn away, giving them space as they hug each other and Alden sobs.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to be here that I told you.
You!” he snaps and turns his head, frowns at me.
“Yes?”
“Do it. Get me this damn person on the phone. The cops have kept Joseph’s murder quiet for weeks, apparently, on the command of some upper office instruction.
An embargo on my son’s death and they have nothing!
No real leads. I want to speak to these people who can hide bodies and fucking cars.
I need to find out what happened to my son. ”
Fuck, there is my answer to this. He needs us. I dig out my phone. This is the perfect lever. Tragic though it is. “Of course. Here.”
The silver-gray Skoda I spotted earlier charges onto the road, scattering branches and leaves.
It screeches its tires, fishtails, and straightens, then zooms down the road in the direction we arrived.
I jog two steps then stop. The horse has been frightened and jitters backward. I hear Benjamin soothing it.
“Georgia’s in that car!” The little bitch is escaping. “Shit.” Now I’m pissed off. I swing back to Alden and Benjamin—he’s recovered the reins. Son on one side, horse on the other.
Once I sort this out, I will have to find Georgia before she does something stupid. Something bloody stupid as the Australians say.
Alden is looking shaken and red-eyed, but is recovering. He clears his throat, swallowing unshed tears, I’ll bet. “That’s Georgia for you. Wild and crazy.”
His father gives me a flat smile. “I’d lend you my horse but Reggie is a bit slow. There’s a car at the house that I can give you to chase her.”
“Thanks.” I thumb through to the best contact, let it ring, then answer at the voice.
“Hi. I have a fuckup on uhhh Sir Benjamin Somersby’s property, Somersby Estate.
Three DOAs. One squashed Porsche. I need you to reassure him we can clean this up.
He has other needs. Something that we can do for him. ” Hint, hint.
I hand Benjamin the phone and head back to the Porsche, certain that they will follow.
By the time we round the gap in the hedge, step through, and are walking past the bodies, the change in the man’s voice says he’s ninety percent won over.
The magic of money and influence. And power.
My family is big but not this big. The board will suck out his marrow, if they can.
Then feed him some of the most jaw-dropping kink parties he has never seen.
Bets are high that this man is like most of the aristocracy, and kinky as fuck.
Benjamin gives a disgusted grunt at the sight of the mangled vehicle. He hands back my phone and I get an update then drop it into my pocket.
He nods at the disappearing phone. “I agreed. We are doing this. So help me, I hope I don’t regret this. Someone out there slaughtered my son and a whole boatload of people and I need to know who, how, and fucking why.”
Shit. My mouth is open. I close it. Worse than I thought then. I’m not telling him that Georgia might be tangled up in the same mess. Or not yet.
“How will you find her? May I ask?”
“I’ve put a tracker on her where she will never find it.” In her shoe.
“Where?” Alden asks, deliberately stepping over one of the bodies. He folds his arms and scowls, looks as if he wants to punch someone. Anyone. “Up her cute little ass?”
I only grunt. I don’t tell him. Secrets are good. I look around but this is where my skills are useless. No one to shoot or wrestle down, or sell armaments to—which is what I should be doing right now.
Dead car. Dead men. And one stupid girl who has gone haring off over the horizon when men are trying to kill her. I promised to be her guardian slash warden, even if she doesn’t know it.
I need a new vehicle, and I forgot to ask them to bring one.
“Your car still okay for me to take?”
“I have seven of them. Sure. Just not my favorites.”
“Thank you. Now we wait for the help to arrive.” I check the time against the ETA of the clean-up crew. “It’ll be quicker to get a lift to your house than walk.”
I retrieve my phone and tap through to the tracking app.
At the blinking of that small white dot on the map, the ashes of that cruel streak I thought I’d quashed forever, flame to life.
This blip shows exactly where my precious girl is.
I’ve held back and done absolutely fucking nothing to her, until now. My patience has shattered.
When I catch her, I will need the utmost control to not upend her and spank her, at a minimum.
Maximum?
If only. I’d take her to one of our parties and lead her about, fucking well collared and shackled, and have her fucked by every Tom, Dick, and Dick.
I raise my head, staring at the blurred trees surrounding this clearing. Or not.
I know what was done to her in that house. Am I a bad man for even imagining that?
But now that I’ve freed my imagination, I’m not sure I can ever stop thinking about doing things to her, and making her do things to me.
Find To Be Red: Tbr <— on