Triple Power Play 3 (Obsessed Players Club #3)

1

REECE

Fentanyl. The determining factor in Kyle’s death. Fentanyl .

Charlie tosses a photo of a bloated and deceased Kyle onto the gleaming dining room table. “He wouldn’t go out like that.”

“Report says no one else entered the house.” My voice is monotone, lifeless, my heart no longer in this. Just bury the fucker and let me return to New York.

“Except for Jackson, who knew how to evade you, me, and surveillance.”

Kyle’s Bel Air home is secluded, impossible to monitor. Nestled in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, it’s surrounded by dense trees and thick landscaping. Forest and shrubbery conceal trails leading to the garage, pool house, and off the property.

Any visitor could’ve easily gone unnoticed. We couldn’t exactly park a surveillance van outside Kyle’s gated estate—he would’ve spotted us instantly.

“Jax has been in New York and wasn’t carrying drugs. He wouldn’t be that stupid, not with Aurora, and not with fentanyl.”

Everyone is pointing the finger at Jackson. Is it possible he tampered with his father’s supply? Sure, but it’s more suspicious Ethan met with the head of the Rossi family the day before Kyle’s death.

Honestly, though, who gives a fuck? No one—and I mean absolutely no one —is crying over Kyle’s death, not even the ‘maid’ who found him.

I shuffle through crime scene photos absentmindedly, processing nothing.

I’m in a haze of shock and denial. I can’t accept that my time with Aurora has ended.

One moment, I’m on a bench with her in Bryant Park, wondering if I have a pregnancy kink.

Next, I’m at Jackson’s childhood home, fantasizing about taking my anger out on a corpse.

No pregnancy kink, by the way, just an Aurora kink.

My partner nails me in the forehead with a pencil. “Please, for the love of Yoda, stop moping. Get laid. Meet someone on Tinder. Go to a bar.”

I cringe at the thought of touching anyone else, my stomach curling in on itself. “Not happening.”

“I’m your closest friend, your only friend, and I’m telling you, she was using you to save her boyfriend’s ass.”

Aurora’s loyalty to Jax is unshakable, but I had a close relationship with her before she learned I was an agent. We have a connection, one rooted in friendship, though it sure as hell doesn’t feel platonic.

She didn’t ask me to stay in New York, nor would she. Her attention was on Jackson, fear in her eyes whenever she glanced my way, a silent plea begging me not to take him from her.

Ethan gave me an entirely different look, one that threatened to dump my body in the Hudson River if I dared to arrest his bestie.

“She’s not like that.” Even if she were deceiving me, I’d lay her fiancé’s freedom at her feet. At my core, I’m her bodyguard, her soldier. “Let’s keep searching.”

Kyle was found in bed, an open bottle of laced Percocet on the nightstand—an easy kill or overdose. Possibly self-inflicted, but I highly doubt it.

As Charlie combs through the security footage, I explore the mansion. Following Jackson’s disappearance from the arena, while Aurora was with Ethan, Kyle went silent. He seldom left the house, but there’s no trash or clutter.

I wander through each room, scanning for anything notable before we ransack the place. After that, everything becomes disordered, and significant details can get lost in the chaos.

The interior is meticulous—too meticulous. No family photos. No pictures of a younger Jackson. No hockey memorabilia...

Kyle wasn’t the proud father he wanted everyone to believe.

All the bedrooms resemble generic guest rooms. If any were Jackson’s, you’d never know it. His belongings are gone, along with his mother’s.

Except for the kitchen. Above the stove, I find a shelf of cookbooks, the only thing personable in the entire house. I remove one that appears well-loved, the spine worn and cracked, and set it on the marble counter. Flipping through, I spot notes in the margin in delicate, feminine handwriting.

His mother’s cookbooks. It’s a punch to the gut, and I feel for Jax harder than I expected.

Tucked within a dog-eared recipe for chocolate-chip cookies is a folded sheet of paper—a birth certificate with the name Thad Jackson Vaughn. The mother is listed as Jacqueline Monroe Vaughn, no father. The document matches Jackson’s date of birth—May 12 th —and my palms turn sweaty.

I wipe my hands on my pants and pull out another cookbook, where I discover a matching Social Security card. Holy shit. This is no accident.

Did his mother want him to find these? She must have. Why? Fake documents to run? Did she suspect their lives were in danger? Was she preparing to escape the house of horrors? To save Jax from Kyle’s grooming?

Unbeknownst to her, her son never returned. He was abandoned at a boarding school in Canada and became a professional hockey player at eighteen.

A close-up photo of a pretty blonde and a green-eyed boy falls from the last book. He appears to be about four, missing the scar in his brow. They’re at the beach, wearing identical smiles, his arms wrapped around her neck.

A shudder runs through me. It’s like seeing an altogether different person, his eyes bright and full of life.

I put everything back, my intuition urging me to keep the books and documents for Jax. They belong to him, his story to unfold if he wishes.

Every day, I drift farther from what’s right , no longer a mindless robot. It used to torment me not to follow orders. Now, I just want my heart to beat again, want the light to return to my own eyes.

One of my team members enters the kitchen. “Hey, you gotta check out the pool house.”

I nonchalantly slide the cookbooks back onto the shelf the way I found them. I’ll come back for them later.

Why would someone build a pool so far from their house? What fun is hanging out at the remote end of your property? No BBQ or grill—what’s the point?

The pool house resembles a modest one-bedroom cottage. It’s where Jackson attempted suicide about six months ago, and, judging by the dust and debris, nobody has been here since.

Scattered about are liquor bottles, pizza boxes, and drug paraphernalia. The bed is torn apart, clothes strewn across the floor, the bathroom mirror smashed.

By the looks of it, he spent his time getting high and playing video games.

One of the crime scene investigators, Shandra, dons gloves. “Should I bag and tag these pills?”

“Yeah, sure.” They won’t find anything connecting Jackson to Kyle’s death. If Jax were messing with fentanyl, he’d be dead. “Hand me a pair, will ya?”

She tosses me some gloves, and I squeeze into them, barely. I check the pockets of the jeans lying beside the bed, finding empty baggies and a wad of cash. On the nightstand: weed, cocaine, pills, a half-full bottle of vodka, and a Ducati key fob.

Only Jackson would leave behind a fucking Ducati.

Shandra drops a yellow evidence marker and snaps a photo. “Why wasn’t this place cleaned? Makes little sense compared to the main house.”

“My guess is, whoever killed Kyle wasn’t aware of Jackson’s hideout.”

She raises a brow. “You don’t think it was him?”

“No. He would’ve done it long before now.” I believe the words, but I also don’t. I pushed him too far with my suggestion to use Aurora as bait. She was willing to do it, and it drove a wedge between her and Ethan. Jax was facing not only danger to Aurora but the loss of his best friend.

I didn’t fully understand their dynamic then, but after spending time in New York, it’s clear Ethan is important to Jax and essential to keeping the three of them together.

If Jackson killed his father, it wasn’t solely for Aurora.

The rest of my search is dull—a baseball bat, surfboard, and wetsuit in the closet, a hoodie tossed on a chair. Half under the bed is a pair of sneakers; crouching, I note the size: fourteen.

Nothing remarkable until I catch a glint of light between the headboard and the nightstand. I glance over my shoulder. Shandra is at the bathroom vanity, tweezers in hand, examining potential evidence.

Reaching between the two pieces of furniture, my fingers connect with a cell phone. It has to be Jackson’s; it probably fell when he was fighting EMS.

I slide it into my front pocket to scrub before turning it over and stand to my full height. “I’m headed out to the van. You need anything?”

“No, I’m good. Just finishing up. What’s for dinner tonight?”

“Charlie’s choice, so Chinese.”

“Again?” she groans.

I force a chuckle and step out into the chilly night air. Lanterns cast deep shadows along the tree-lined trails and stone walkways. It reminds me of the parks and gardens I grew up with in the Carolinas, not a neighborhood in West LA.

In the van, I connect the iPhone and wait impatiently for the Apple icon to light up on the screen. It only takes one guess to crack his password—Aurora’s birthday. I shake my head. And he thinks I’m the idiot?

Aurora blowing a kiss is his background picture. Sunlight catching her eyes highlights flecks of gold, giving her an ethereal glow. I take a moment to stare at it, wishing it were me on the receiving end, then force myself to move on.

No hidden apps or files. No email. I refrain from gawking at any more of Aurora’s photos, no matter how much I really, really want to. I tell myself it’s wrong to look at pictures not intended for me—damn morals.

Open in the browser is a home security website. Of course, the password is stored on his phone, and in seconds, I’m connected to cameras inside his downtown penthouse. The entranceway, kitchen, balcony, living room, and primary bedroom—all monitored.

He lived there with Aurora. Was he sitting here watching her?

Worse, he saved videos of them together—intimately—and a few of her alone. My stomach churns. He recorded and watched her, and I doubt she knows.

He can access this website anytime, anywhere, along with any hacker with half a brain. What a moron.

My emotions do a complete one-eighty when I find a recording of Kyle and two other men. I blink in disbelief. The tiny screen limits my view, but a quick scan of the video shows girls dancing and couples coming and going from the living room.

It’s not the only one. Kyle frequently used Jax’s penthouse. My mind races, considering who we might identify, only to realize if I hand this over, my team will have compromising videos of Aurora. I’m sure Jax reached the same conclusion.

Even if he removed Kyle’s videos and deleted the others, he’d still have to explain the source. We could subpoena the website and recover the archived footage, and Aurora might find out the downtown penthouse had cameras the entire time she lived there.

He withheld evidence so his fiancée wouldn’t discover he was a full-on stalker.

I’m so ingrained in my thoughts, I jump when Charlie opens the door.

He peeks his head in. “Hey, man. We got a problem.”

“What is it?” I snap, trying—badly—to sound casual.

He narrows his eyes in suspicion but doesn’t call me out. “I found something on Kyle’s phone.” He hands it over. “You recognize this address?”

“Fuck!” In the message is Aurora’s new address, sent to some unknown perp, along with pictures of all of us, including me. “Did he send these, or did someone else, after his death?”

“Good question.”