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I followed closely. I held my breath down the long, wide hallway, bracing myself until he passed by his room and made it to the last door. My master bedroom. I went ahead, tugged back the sheets. When he lowered her onto my king-sized bed, I could breathe.
Yes.
This was exactly where Harper belonged, hair fanned out on my pillow. Next time, perhaps naked, but this was a good start.
For now, Leo had said.
I was being fucking selfish, especially since he’d convinced her to stay—although he would have forced her if she’d said otherwise under the circumstances. He protected people for a living, but when it came to his personal life, to the woman we wanted, he’d do anything to make sure she was safe. She’d been so close to leaving, to going to the police, but that was because Leo had scared the living fuck out of her when he said those things about the O’Sullivan family. I didn’t know much about them, but I knew Leo wasn’t one to exaggerate. He never sugarcoated anything, and while the truth was scary as fuck, it was also what kept her from walking out my front door. She was smart enough not to take chances.
Leo’s foray into the world of an MMA fighter after leaving the Army had put him on a different track from mine. A lot of what went on in that industry was legitimate and above board, but elements were definitely in the gray area. Underground fight clubs. Illegal sports betting. Paying off fighters to throw a match. Its close ties and overlap with security, private investigators and law enforcement. People disappearing, never to be found again. It was no wonder so many of the guys who went into it were ex-military and ex-cops, all mixing in with the underbelly of society. It was no surprise that Leo knew who Shamus O’Sullivan was. I dealt in million-dollar deals over lunch and wore silver cuff links. The semi-frozen dead body was a new one for me and more than enough to make me a believer.
“Should we get her out of her dress?” he asked. Her feet were bare, those ruthless stilettos on the floor by the couch.
“No.” I stared at her in my bed. “Later. Let her rest.”
He met my eyes. Nodded, but shifted his cock in his pants. Yeah, I felt the same way. My dick was pretty fucking hard for Harper. While my brain told me to be a gentleman and preserve her modesty, my dick wanted to strip her bare and do all kinds of dirty things with her.
“We should talk…but not here,” he said, breaking me from the list of what we’d do to Harper when she was awake and into it.
“All right.”
We left the room, and I pulled on the door, but left it partway open. “Were you honestly going to let her leave?” I asked.
He sighed. “Only if she insisted.”
I shook my head. “And what if she did?”
“Then I’d have followed her,” he said, his voice deepening with certainty. “Trust me, I wouldn’t have let it get that far. I was ready to point out that her place probably wasn’t safe, but didn’t have to. She was too freaked.”
I remembered her face after she’d just seen the dead body, how pale it was, how she’d jumped a foot when I’d come into the kitchen. “Good thing you didn’t.”
Leo’s jaw clenched, and I was surprised I didn’t hear his molars crack. “She’s not safe anywhere. If O’Sullivan figures out what she’s seen, he won’t hesitate to have his men looking for her. He knows her name, her business address. Hell, probably even her Social Security number.”
“No one knows she saw the body though, right?” I walked out into the living room and poured myself another drink.
“I don’t think so, but still,” Leo said as he followed, dropping down onto the couch with a sigh. “The place was crawling with his goons. I also noticed a few security cameras on the property. They may even have hidden cameras installed all through the place, for all we know. If anyone saw her come back in the house from the garage—besides me—they’d know something was up. She was freaked out.”
That was a sobering possibility. External cameras would also mean they’d know she left with us. And with hidden cameras, if there were actually some in the garage, both Leo and Harper would’ve been seen. We couldn’t afford to make assumptions either way. “Fuck. We’ll have to cross that bridge if we get to it,” I muttered.
“Agreed. The best thing she can do for now is lay low.” Leo pulled out his phone and unlocked the screen. “I can make a few calls, see if people heard anything unusual went down at the party.”
I pointed at his screen. “Make sure they’re subtle about it. No need drawing unnecessary attention, although we do have to assume O’Sullivan’s aware. We have to stay on the offensive.” I angled my head toward the doorway. “For her.”
I glanced back at my bedroom door. Harper was so fucking gorgeous while she slept, her dark hair spread across my pillow. That made my dick harder than anything else tonight, knowing she was in my bed.
I stood at the floor to ceiling glass windows, cradling my glass of whiskey as I looked out at the city lights while Leo worked from the tiny screen of his smartphone. He grabbed his drink from the coffee table, took a sip.
That was when we heard the scream.
“Harper.”
Bolting from our spots, we rushed down the hallway to get to her side, but found her sleeping. She was trembling, her skin covered in sweat, with her head moving left and right in seeming denial, and her hands closed into fists, each gripping the bedsheets for dear life. When she whimpered out a word I didn’t understand, I sat on one side of the bed, ready to wake her if she screamed again.
“Nightmare,” Leo groaned.
“Sounds like it.”
He disappeared into my ensuite bathroom and emerged with a damp face towel. “Here,” he said, passing it to me.
