CHAPTER 20
The idle waiting and wondering had been driving him insane, so in a fit of activity Asher had installed his new headboard in the master bedroom. It wasn’t ever going to be finished to his liking, and since he needed something to do with his hands, he’d impulsively decided to put the damned thing to use.
He had just stepped back to look at the hand-carved piece when an invisible blade plunged into his chest. He staggered back on his heels, bewildered for a moment, uncertain where the attack had come from.
And then he knew.
With a shredding certainty, he realized the pain he was feeling was hers.
Naomi.
“No.” A jagged cry rose up to strangle him. “No!”
The shock and grief she was experiencing tore through him like serrated steel, so agonizing it nearly took him down to his knees. But she was alive. Thank God for that, she was still living and breathing.
He could feel her energy in his veins, telling him their connection hadn’t been severed by anything as unthinkable as her death. But she was hurting deeply. Not because of physical wounds but with a loss she could hardly bear.
She should have called by now. She should have been at Michael’s house several minutes ago by Asher’s estimate.
His body still gripped in her anguish, he fumbled for his phone and called her.
“Asher.” Her voice was wooden, barely a whisper. A sob choked out of her. “Oh, my God . . . Asher, he’s dead. Michael’s dead.”
“Ah, Christ.” He swallowed hard, hating that he wasn’t there with her. “Are you all right? Tell me what happened.”
She explained how she found him a few moments ago, dead of an apparent suicide. She told him that she was outside the house waiting for the police, whom she’d just hung up with in the second before he called.
“He didn’t kill himself, Asher. Slater’s behind this.”
“Yes.” He glanced at the time on his phone and wanted to roar his fury.
It would be several hours before sundown. The woman he adored was eighty miles away and he could do nothing to help her. Nothing to save her, if the danger that found Michael were to lock its sights on her next.
At least he could be assured it wasn’t Cain who harmed her friend. That lethal bastard would be as hampered by the UV light as Asher was.
But without Asher to level the odds, even a human coming after Naomi was a risk he couldn’t take.
“You have to get out of there, sweetheart. Right now. Come home, Naomi.”
“I-I will as soon as I can,” she said, her voice nearly drowned out by the rising wail of sirens. “I told Tyler what happened and he’s afraid the police are going to take him and the other kids away to an orphanage.”
“Jesus,” Asher hissed. “Let him know we’ll never let that happen.”
He heard the small catch in her voice. “I will. I’ll tell him that, Asher. Okay, that’s the police coming now. They’re pulling up to the driveway, and Tyler’s waiting in the—” Her voice cut short on a gasp. “Oh, no. Tyler just saw the cops and ran off. Tyler!”
“Naomi, tell me what’s going on there.”
He heard her breath change as she began walking briskly to meet law enforcement. “I have to go. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
He heard the thump of car doors closing and officers speaking to her in the second before she ended the call.
He drew the phone away from his ear and stared at it with blazing eyes. Fear clawed at him, but this time it wasn’t Naomi’s emotion—it was his own.
He’d never felt so powerless, he the unstoppable killer who had feared nothing, lost nothing—loved nothing—for the entire beginning of his brutal existence.
Now he could do nothing but wait.
And worry.
And pray that the woman he loved wasn’t ripped away from him before he had the chance to tell her how much she meant to him.
He gripped his phone in a crushing grasp, but knew he couldn’t sever the only line of communication he had with Naomi.
So, on a bellow that shook the four walls of his daytime prison, Asher brought his fist back and drove it into the center of the headboard he’d made, splintering the wood into a thousand jagged shards.
# # #
Naomi leaned against Asher’s truck and answered all of the questions the police and first responders asked her.
No, she wasn’t in the house when the deceased took his life.
No, she had no knowledge of drug abuse, financial problems, or any other cause that might have driven her best friend and roommate to tighten a belt around his neck and slowly strangle himself with it.
No, she didn’t know of any other family members who should be contacted about Michael’s death.
There was only her. And the group of parentless kids who were going to be as destroyed as she was to learn that one of the kindest, most compassionate people on Earth was suddenly, inconceivably, gone.
“How many children came and went from Mr. Carson’s home on a regular basis, Ms. Fallon, and what would you estimate their ages to be?”
“Excuse me?”
The female officer from JUSTIS, the law enforcement department comprised of both human and Breed officers, gave her an apologetic look. “I know some of these questions are difficult, but I’m just trying to establish the possible mental state of Mr. Carson in his final hours. Could he have been harboring any secrets or possible guilt pertaining to any of the kids he invited to stay in his house?”
“You can’t be serious.” Naomi gaped, fuming. “No. Of course, not. Michael was the one good thing to happen in any of these kids’ shitty lives.”
The officer lifted her shoulder. “Just trying to cover the bases.”
“Well, consider them covered,” Naomi snapped. “We’re done here.”
Her gaze drifted to the curb where the black zippered bag holding her friend’s body was being loaded off a gurney and into a waiting ambulance.
“Here’s my number,” the JUSTIS officer said, handing her a card with her name on it. “If you think of anything else we should know, just give me a call.”
Naomi stuffed Officer Rachel Reynolds’ card into her pocket without looking at it. She was never going to use it.
She hadn’t told the officer that she already knew what happened to her friend. That Slater or his henchmen had gone after Michael and staged his murder to look like a suicide. She didn’t know the how of it, but she knew the why.
If anyone was harboring unbearable guilt or secrets, it was her.
And now, because of her, her best friend was dead.
Why had she let Michael convince her to let him be part of that last job? He’d been so adamant, but she could have refused him. Dammit, she should have.
As for sharing what she knew about his death with law enforcement, while it might spark an investigation into Slater’s criminal activities, she had zero confidence he would be made to pay for what he’d done to Michael.
Just like he’d never paid for what he did to her mother, either.
Men like Slater were untouchable.
Why she hadn’t come to terms with that fact before it cost Michael his life was a burden she would never be able to put down.
Naomi got in the truck and started the engine. As she backed out of the driveway and onto the street, grief swamped her. It was too deep for tears, the shock wrapping her in a cocoon that seemed to numb her from the inside out. All she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry for a week, but she had things she needed to do. Priority One was locating Tyler and the other kids before they scattered to the wind in fear of being taken away somewhere by strangers.
And then she needed to get back to the ranch.
Back home with Asher.
He would know what to do. He would be able to help her find the kids. They could come back to the city tonight as soon as it was dark and start searching until they found them all.
She hadn’t driven two blocks before her phone chimed with a familiar ringtone.
Michael’s ringtone.
For an instant, as she hurried to retrieve the device from her back pocket and saw his number on the screen, she thought she had imagined this whole horrific day. But the icy reality settled in just as quickly when she brought the phone to her ear and heard an airless, menacing voice on the other end of the line.
One she’d heard only in her nightmares since the time she was eight years old.
“Hello, Naomi. Or should I say Narumi?” She felt the blood drain from her face the way he spoke her given name, full of dark amusement. “Pity about your friend. Suicide is such an ugly thing.”
“You did this.” No need to pretend she wasn’t aware of Leo Slater’s evilness. “You sadistic bastard, you killed him.”
A low chuckle sent a shudder through her bones. “No, my dear. You did.”
She could hardly deny her part in all of this. The guilt washed over her in a black tide, and it was all she could do to keep her sob from choking her. “Keep talking, Slater. I’m going to take everything I know about you straight to the police. Including what you did to my mother.”
“No, Narumi, you won’t.” He sounded so confident, she wanted to scream. “You won’t, because if you intended to do that, you’d still be talking to those officers parked in your crippled friend’s driveway right now.”
She sucked in a shallow gasp. He’d been close enough to see her? Was he still lurking somewhere on the road with her? Her gaze darted to the rearview and side mirrors, taking note of the scores of vehicles that surrounded her. He could be anywhere, following her by himself or accompanied by any number of his gangster lackeys.
“What do you want?” she demanded, knowing there was nothing he could take from her now that meant more than what she’d already lost.
“I’m sure you know what I want. My money. All of it.”
She swallowed, shaking her head as she stared out at the sunlit road and the garish signs that flanked the Strip. “If that’s what you wanted, then you shouldn’t have killed Michael. The money’s in his bank account. I can’t get to it.”
“Find a way, Narumi. And I want the rest of it too. By my accounting, you owe me another two-hundred-and-thirty-seven-thousand dollars in addition to what you and your friend stole from me the other night.”
She scoffed, but her heart was racing with fear. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He exhaled a tight, impatient sound. “You may have cheated me right under my fucking nose, but do not take me for a fool. I’ve seen the video footage from my casinos over the past many months. I don’t know how you did it and I don’t care. I want my money back. Every. Fucking. Cent.”
He was asking the impossible—more than the impossible—and she didn’t think for a minute that he didn’t know that. She’d spent more than half of his money on the kids and helping Michael run the shelter. That money went to food, clothing, countless other necessities. As for the little bit she’d made waiting tables here and there or doing any number of other odd jobs, it wouldn’t make even the smallest dent in what she owed him and besides, her menial wages were gone practically before she even brought them home. “I don’t have all of your money to give it back to you.”
“Then find a way to get it. All of it,” he said again, menace in the calmness of his viper’s voice. “Or you’ll be forcing me to take something else from you if you fail.”
The line went dead. Naomi’s breath gusted out of her, part in relief, part in paralyzed dread. She hardly cared what Slater might do to her personally, but she didn’t want to imagine how far he’d stoop to hurt anyone else she loved.
Her hands were shaking so hard she had to pull over. She sat in a loading zone for several minutes, until a truck blasted its horn at her and nearly made her jump out of her skin.
God, what had she done?
For the last eighteen years of her life she’d lived with the sole purpose of getting even with Leo Slater. Making him pay for hurting her mother, for taking her away and destroying everything Naomi had.
For nearly two years now, she’d been chipping away at the monster of her past. Cutting him where he would hurt, in the only place a man like Slater would bleed. But even as she was taking his money, each of those little victories felt hollow. That’s why she kept going, kept hitting him for more and more and more.
Now, she was the only one who’d lost.
And even if she had the chance to take every last nickel of Slater’s fortunes—even if she could be assured that one day she could destroy him completely before stabbing him in his black heart—she knew that would be an empty triumph too.
Simply put, Leo Slater didn’t matter.
The cost of her vengeance was already too high.
She just wanted it to be over.
If she could, she’d surrender all of his damned money right now, just as he’d demanded. But she didn’t have access to Michael’s personal bank account, nor did she have the more than two-hundred grand she’d taken from Slater’s casinos over time.
But she had some.
And she could never spend it anyway, knowing every penny she took from Slater was now stained with Michael’s blood.
Numb and wracked with tears she refused to let spill, she glanced at her phone and tapped one of the numbers stored on the device.
A perky voice answered. “Anytime Private Vaults, can I help you?”
“Yes,” Naomi said. “I need to empty my safe deposit box.”