“Why did you say you were calling, Mr. Smith?”

“The Better Business Bureau. We’ve had a few complaints lodged in the past couple of days about the owner of your business. Langley Atkinson. Our first step in resolving the complaints is to do a short investigation into his temperament at work as well as his reputation with his employees,” I said.

“Right. Well, Mr. Atkinson doesn’t come into this store much anymore, if at all. We have a General Manager that reports to him a couple of times a month, but he spends most of his time at his newest franchise. Are you sure the complaints didn’t originate from there?”

“This is the address they put, but anything you can do to help me with my investigation will go a long way in repairing the complaints put into us in such a short amount of time,” I said.

“On the other side of the city. Near Rockefeller Center. He scored the place for a dirt cheap rental price for that area because of the maintenance the building needs.”

“Do you know the address?”

“I don’t, sir.”

“That’s fine. When was the last time you saw him there?” I asked.

“I haven’t.”

“Then how do you know that’s where he’s been?”

“He sends out company-wide updates on the place to keep us in touch with how renovations are going. He’s giving employees who already work with him a chance to interview and be moved so we can work there. It’s a great opportunity. I’m looking into it myself.”

“Wonderful. Well, his reputation is off to a great start so far, thanks to you,” I said.

“That’s good to hear. From my interactions with Mr. Atkinson, he seems like a wonderful man. Always smiling. Full of life. Always joking around with someone.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “I’ll make note of that. What is your name again, sir?”

“My name’s Johnny Rampart.”

“I’ll make sure to make a note of your comments. Thank you for your time.”

I hung up my cell phone and tossed it onto the kitchen table. Every fucking place I turned, someone had some positive attitude or compliment to pay Langley. It was sickening. He had the entire fucking city fooled. But with that phone call, I got another avenue my guys and I could research.

Because what we had was turning up nothing.

We couldn’t track down where the hell Roberto Martella was. It was like he dropped off the face of the damn planet. The license plate of the car Langley had been driving the night I spotted him from the window was in an accident and towed off to a fucking junkyard. Martella’s rental shop hadn’t opened for business for three damn days and my guys were still trying to fucking track down Langley’s bank accounts.

If he still had any.

The more they searched, the more I figured Langley cashed out his accounts and was wheeling and dealing with dollar bills. But that meant him draining more than five hundred thousand dollars from his domestic accounts.

And that was a lot of cash that needed a place to be stowed.

“Tell me you got something, Smith.”

“Wilde, you with Abram and Yoake?”

“We’re all here,” Abram said.

“I’ve got something, but it’s not much. One of Langley’s employees told me Langley’s recently rented out a dirt cheap place on the other side of the city. Near Rockefeller Center.”

“You got an address?” Yoake asked.

“I don’t. But how many dirt cheap places are around that area? Wilde, pull up Rockefeller Center, put a bull’s eye on it, and expand the perimeter search by four miles. Pull up any and all recently rented and sold properties in the area. We can ride around. Go door to door. By the sounds of it, the place is still being renovated. The guy I talked to, Johnny Rampart, said the place was cheap because it needed a lot of work.”

“I’ll run that name through the system,” Abram said.

“And I’ll pull up that search,” Wilde said.

“And once we have some places to visit, I’ll get on the road,” Yoake said.

“Wilde, I want you to go with Yoake. No one does anything alone until we can get this guy. I don’t like the way he’s snaking around. Every day that goes by without us knowing where he is convinces me he’s much more intelligent than we thought.”

“We hear you, boss,” Wilde said. “We’re on it.”

“Thanks.”

I hung up the call and leaned back into my chair. Raking my hands down my face, I sighed. It felt like I’d hit a brick wall. Out of all the fucking dusting and combing and searching we did in Alicia’s demolished apartment, we only came up with three partial prints. All the same, but not enough to pull up a match any greater than sixty percent. It was fucking Langley, but it wasn’t enough of Langley to hold up in a damn court. Brendan wanted this asshole arrested for failing to obey a court-order for alimony, but I wanted this asshole off the damn street for good. I wanted a restraining order against him and I wanted his ass tossed in jail for harassment, vandalism, intimidation, and a host of other fucking plights.

But I’d get none of that with a damn sixty percent match on three partial prints.

This building was our only lead, and I was hoping it would push us somewhere. In a direction that was progressive. Because otherwise, we were sitting on our asses watching computer screens until either Langley or Martella fucking popped up.

And that wasn’t the type of productivity I enjoyed.

I heard the water running above my head and I grinned. Every time I heard Alicia kick that damn tub on, all I could think about was her naked body. Soaped with suds and her hair piled high on her head. Her glistening tan skin dripping with water, falling between the valleys of her breasts. Her toned stomach catching loose droplets of water falling from her fingertips as she smoothed the bubbles up her arms. Down her legs.

Between her thighs.

I shook the thought from my head and cleared my throat. The veins in my groin were pulsing and the last thing I needed was to feel the urge to slip in with her. To knock on the bathroom door and ask her if she wanted company. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about how tangled up we had become. How wonderful her toes felt drifting up the backs of my thighs and how lovely her sighs sounded falling from her pouty lips.

But emotionally compromising myself anymore during this job would put Alicia at risk. If we knew where Langley was-- if he was making obvious moves-- maybe I’d make a different decision. That wasn’t what was going on, though. Things were more serious than I was letting on to Alicia.

And the last thing I needed was to be distracted by the scent of her pussy.

The water stopped flowing and I could hear the water sloshing around. I could hear the jets rumbling the water as my cock grew to life. Tenting my pants and pulling a deep-seated ache from the bottom of my balls all the way up to the tip of my cock.

This woman was going to be the fucking end of me.

I could feel it.