Chapter Seven
IT WASN’T HARD to track down Kutcher. There was only one inmate in Connecticut with that surname, Carl Kutcher. The trickier part was tracking down the people who had been associated with him on the outside. If Logan could prove that Kutcher was still dealing drugs while in jail, it would make keeping him behind bars much easier. It had been Logan’s experience that major dealers don’t stop dealing because they’re in the pen. They just get more creative.
Using his sources, he was able to track down four possible drug connections, two outside Connecticut, two within an hour of Mystic. He jotted down the information on the connections and eyed his vibrating cell phone on the edge of his desk.
Heath.
He’d expected a call, especially after what his mother had said. Heath possessed all the qualities that were common of being the eldest child. He was overprotective of his very capable younger brothers, each of whom had bodies built for a brawl and sharp minds that didn’t need babysitting. He’d always gotten superior grades, and of all his siblings, Heath was the one who had gotten in the least amount of trouble over the years. He was prone to being just careful enough never to get caught, whereas Logan, Jackson, and Cooper had always been a little reckless.
He answered the call while scrolling through the information on his computer.
“Hey, bro. Thanks for helping out last night.”
“Sure thing. Ma said you came by.”
Logan heard voices and shuffling in the background and knew his brother was doing rounds at the hospital.
“Yeah. I was out that way and just checking in.” He didn’t want to admit that the attack on Stormy had rustled up bad memories and driven him to check on his mother.
“Good. She was glad to see you. I had coffee with her this morning before work.” Heath covered the mouthpiece and said something Logan couldn’t make out, then came back on the line. “Sorry, man. Listen, I’m just calling to see how Stormy is doing. Please tell me you got her real name before you took her home.”
Logan was only half paying attention, as he had another hit for a connection to Kutcher, this one on the outskirts of Mystic.
Bingo.
He jotted down the information. “That would be a negative, but I’ll get it.”
Heath didn’t respond.
“What, Heath? Spit it out.”
“Just…you know, Logan. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you look at someone like you were looking at her. Possessively.”
“She was hurt. I had just nailed her attacker.” He’d deny whatever he was feeling to his brothers until he understood it himself. Hell, he didn’t even know why he was telling Stormy that he felt so much for her after one night. It wasn’t like him to latch on to anyone. He’d never had a serious girlfriend, and he sure as hell wasn’t looking for one.
“Listen, she’s obviously got some shit going on. I’m just trying to find out what it is. It is my job, you know.”
“Yeah, okay.” He could tell by Heath’s voice that he wasn’t buying it. “Well, dinner at Mom’s Sunday night. You’re on for the wine.”
“I’ll be there.” Logan would never miss another dinner with their mother.
After they ended the call, Logan called his buddy Marco.
“Yo.” Marco Ortega was a mean son of a bitch with long black hair, tattoos on every inch of flesh save for his face and neck, and the kind of voice that made a man’s blood run cold. Marco had been in and out of jail for most of his twenties, which afforded him firsthand knowledge about the underworld of what goes on behind bars. He was one of those guys who were on the right side of the wrong side of the law, doing things that skirted the legal line, but always for good purpose.
“It’s me. I need a favor.” Logan filled Marco in on Mike Winters and hired him to tail Winters for the next four weeks. “I want to know everywhere he goes. Leave out no details. I wanna know when this guy takes a shit, got it?”
“Got it, boss.” Marco was loyal to Logan for many reasons, the least of which was that Logan had cleared his brother of a felony by tracking down the real perp when no one else had given a damn. “And if he goes near the bar or the girl?”
“Detain him until I can get there.”
His next call was to Dylan at the bar. Logan didn’t expect Dylan to spill his guts. Like the rest of the Wilds and Bads, he was one loyal son of a bitch, and by his reaction to Stormy last night, Logan assumed that stretched to her now as well.
“What took you so long?” Dylan knew him well.
“Had a few things to take care of. You working all day?”
“Yup. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“You know anything about her past?” Logan trusted Dylan to give him enough to go on, even if he didn’t want to breach Stormy’s confidence.
“Probably less than you know after the time you spent with her.”
He heard the smile in Dylan’s voice.
“One thing, Logan. I pay her in cash, and she mails half her earnings to someone back in Mystic.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw her doing it once and asked about it. She said she had a sick relative. That’s all I know.”
“Dyl, why’d you hire her?” The minute the words were out, he knew the answer and regretted asking.
“You know why.” Dylan’s family had had their own crisis long before Logan’s family had had theirs. Dylan had a younger sister who’d died when they were kids, and he had a soft spot for keeping women safe. “Logan, are you just messing with her? Because she’s been hurt enough.”
“Have you ever seen me walk a woman to work?” Logan shifted in his seat, still uncomfortable with the way his stomach got funky when he thought of Stormy.
Dylan laughed. “Didn’t want to call you on that.”
“Yeah, well, neither do I. Thanks for watching out for her, man. I gotta run.”
A few more phone calls and a little computer hacking allowed Logan to track the IP for the recipient of the SIM-card information collected from Stormy’s phone. Thank God Kutcher was a cheapskate and used shabby products. He’d made it child’s play for Logan to get the information he needed. After shutting down the ability of the tracker and making more phone calls, Logan arranged for Kutcher’s cell to be tossed.
With most of the annoying aspects of his morning taken care of, Logan scrolled to the picture of Stormy he’d taken outside of NightCaps. His stomach clenched at the palpable fear in her green eyes. They were eyes that had seen too much, and last night, when he’d seen her let go, a hint of the fear had remained. He wanted to wash that fear away, every last evil speck of it. Logan had seen people’s looks change once a threat was removed, and Stormy was already beautiful. He could only imagine how she’d look once he nailed that Kutcher bastard to the wall.
He uploaded the picture to Google Images and found four hits immediately. Her high school graduation photo. She was thicker then, curvier, and hell if her catlike eyes weren’t carefree and clear. Logan held on to that image as he wrote down her real name—Stella Krane—and the name of the high school she’d attended. Before now he’d have put the name Stella together with an older woman, stern and spindly. Funny how a face could change the connotation of a name, but in his mind, Stella Krane and Stormy were one sensual, strong woman.
“What is it about you, Stormy Krane?” He still couldn’t think of her as Stella. Not after having to dig up the information. When he’d earned her trust enough for her to tell him her real name, then and only then would he call her Stella.
He checked out a few of the other photos. Several were posted on the Facebook profile pages of girls who had gone to the same high school Stella had attended. She was smiling in all of them. What he wouldn’t give to see her smile like that. He surfed the Facebook images for a while and found one linked to a Mystic Messenger newspaper article about Stella’s mother, Judy Krane. It was an announcement for a fundraiser to help with Judy’s medical bills. Cancer. Fucking cancer. No wonder she sent money home. He pushed back from the computer and pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking of the little sister Dylan had lost. Life was full of ass kickers. Logan was going to make damn sure that Stormy got back to her mother, even if he had to take Kutcher out himself.
An hour later Logan stood in Stormy’s kitchen feeling as though he were peering into her private life where he shouldn’t be. If she were a client and he needed to gather clues, this might be typical. But Logan didn’t sleep with clients, and Stormy wasn’t a client. He forced himself not to think of her as the woman who was stirring up all sorts of emotions in him and did his best to put his feelings aside and turn on his private-investigator instincts.
Logan was methodical in his search efforts. He walked down to the bedroom, planning to work his way back out to the front door. In the light of day the bedroom appeared very much like Stormy, efficient with an underlying womanly charm. He was sure the apartment came furnished, and he was equally as confident that Mrs. Fairly wouldn’t have asked for a social security number or proof of identification. She’d probably taken Stormy at face value.
Being in her bedroom brought memories of the night before rushing back. The muscles on the back of his neck tightened as he was reminded of discovering the rough edges of the scar on the back of her shoulder. When he’d felt the other scar beside her spine, his blood had gone cold, stirring all of the protective urges he usually reserved for family. Those urges had only become stronger in the hours since.
He’d get this asshole if it was the last thing he did.
In the closet he thoroughly checked each hanger, seeking a stick-on tracker or a chip adhered to the plastic. He searched every seam and pocket of the few pieces of clothing she had in her closet, then moved to the backpack and other things on the shelf above. Once he was satisfied that there were no tracking devices in the closet, he searched her bedroom, inspecting the lower drawers of her dresser first, but avoiding the top drawer women usually reserved for lingerie. He searched her perfectly folded jeans and tops. The Wesleyan T-shirt was telling. People who were on the run generally took the items with them that meant something. He’d already discovered that she was a Wesleyan graduate, and the shirt told him that she was proud of that accomplishment. He’d seen Stormy’s harsh exterior slip several times, and he wondered how much she’d had to change since running from Kutcher.
Forcing his personal interest in Stormy away again, he searched through her top drawer. Sifting through her bras and panties sent his mind right back to being inside her, ravishing her delicious mouth, seeing her lips wrapped around his cock.
Fuck. Now he was hard.
Logan closed his eyes and counted backward from fifty. At five he was still at half-mast. There was no ridding his mind of her.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to at least think like the PI that he was. He reached into the drawer and assessed her lingerie. Matching lace bras and panties, although not high-end, were not department-store brands either. Another bit of intel for his Stormy file. At some point, she probably had a pretty good life.
The more he tried to disengage his personal feelings, the more difficult it became. Standing just a foot away from where he’d been when she’d taken his cock in her mouth and swallowed everything he’d had to give made it nearly impossible. His cock stirred just thinking of their slick bodies moving together as he held her knees at his sides and she met each powerful thrust with a lift and tilt of her hips.
Great. He was hard again.
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and slid his eyes from the bed to the framed picture of her mother. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his erection softened. He took out the photo and found a tracking device attached to the inside of the frame. He tore the fucker out. He knew exactly what it was, because he’d used them a dozen times. This one was a cheap piece of shit, like the traceable SIM card Kutcher had put in Stormy’s phone. A knockoff brand that sent data through the Internet. The guy knew what he was doing. He’d probably used them in his drug business.
He pocketed the device, then carefully put the picture back into the frame and set it beside the bed. He picked up the pillow and brought it to his nose. Freshly washed. He had a feeling that the harshness Stormy portrayed wasn’t the only change she’d made either for Kutcher or while running from him. He’d had the distinct feeling when they were together that she was acting how she thought she should rather than how she might if she weren’t trying to escape her fear for a few hours. He was all for rough and dirty sex, but Stormy wasn’t the type of woman you fucked hard and walked away from. She was the type of woman you made love to, while reserving the hard fucking for the intimate, wild, sexy nights couples shared. But day-to-day? She seemed more the flowers and wine type of girl, and the more he looked around her apartment, the more pieces of her life he put together, and the more he wanted to know about her.
Logan methodically checked every item in the bathroom and the laundry closet, then worked his way through the pantry and the kitchen cabinets. He eyed the calendar on the wall and flipped back through the pages. She’d marked off the date Kutcher had been put in jail, and had been counting down the days until his release, marking each one with a red X. He couldn’t imagine the fear she carried with her every moment of the day. He flipped back through the months, finding angry black marks every few weeks. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that those were the dates Kutcher had taken his hands to her.
Son of a bitch.
There was no way in hell he was going to feed Stormy to that wolf. He went back into the bedroom and packed her bags, careful to take everything, from her mother’s picture to her toothbrush. Then he went through the motions of checking all the places he thought Stormy might hide cash or other valuables she wouldn’t want someone to steal. He checked under the mattress, in the ceiling tiles, above the cabinets, under the sink. He looked beneath the table to see if she’d taped anything there. Nothing. He looked around the room, trying to climb into Stormy’s head. The trouble was, he didn’t think Stormy was in her own head lately. She was in the head of the woman she’d become, and he had no idea how to discern the difference from this standpoint. He eyed a ceramic cookie jar on the counter and on a whim lifted the head of the ceramic cat and reached inside.
Bingo.
A thick envelope full of cash.
Christ, Stormy. He made a mental note to teach her about safer hiding places for her valuables.
His heart did that funky thing it had been doing since he’d met her. He ignored it, aware of the time ticking by, and stuffed the envelope in his back pocket. He brought the bags out to his car and went to pay a visit to Mrs. Fairly.
She answered the door wearing a light blue housecoat. She looked older than Logan’s mother, with gray hair and a friendly, round face. Recognition spiked in her eyes, and she smiled warmly.
“Hello there.”
“Hi, Mrs. Fairly. I’m Logan Wild.” He held out a hand and was met with a limp handshake.
“Yes. You’re Stormy’s friend.”
“That’s right. She asked me to come by to get her things. We’re going on a trip, and I wanted to settle up her remaining lease.”
“Oh, my. Is she leaving for good?” A crease formed between her brows.
“Yes, I believe so. How much rent are you due?” He thought of his mother, and the idea of her needing to take in a stranger for money bothered him. Mrs. Fairly had opened her house to Stormy, and even though he’d just met them both, he was thankful that Stormy had found a safe place to live.
“She’s on a month-to-month, dear. She’s paid up for this month.”
His soft heart got the better of him. “And how much was she paying per month?”
“Nine hundred dollars, but she’s all paid up, as I said.”
After giving her a check for six months’ rent, Logan gave her a talk about not opening the door for strangers and then he headed back to his office. It was too late to drive to Mystic if he wanted to pick up Stormy after her shift, and at least for now he knew she was safe. She may not like it, but until he could ensure that Kutcher would never bother her again, she was stuck with him.