Caught (16 page)

“Maybe he was moonlighting, maybe he was selling drugs.” Marcy barked out a laugh. “You helped me get my cut.” She raised an eyebrow and toasted Toni with her coffee mug. “That’s all I care about.”

“You really think Jerry was doing something illegal?” It was probably nothing. She was definitely being paranoid.

Marcy stiffened, instantly sobering. “You don’t think this has anything to do with Kara? She’s fine, right? She wrote and said she’s fine.”

Toni reached out a hesitant hand and laid it over Marcy’s. “You’re right. I’m sure she’s fine.”

She wasn’t sure about anything, except for the gut-deep feeling that Jerry was up to something.

Luckily, she had all the tools at her disposal to satisfy her curiosity about Jerry Kramer. Within a couple of hours, she knew every cell phone call he’d made and received in the past ninety days. Kara’s number was there in black and white, posting a message at seven-oh-three this morning.

And the money. In addition to the offshore account Toni had found when Marcy first hired her, Toni found a new account set up under BioEnterprises, LLC, based in Cyprus. The account had received several deposits in the last six months, totaling nearly five million dollars.

And there were pending transactions as well, from other brokerage and money market accounts. Big transactions, as though Jerry was transferring all of his assets into one single offshore account.

As though Jerry was getting ready to run.

After Toni left, Ethan and Derek finished modifying Jerry’s security system so each person now had a personal security code. As Ethan had explained to Jerry, he’d set it up so that whenever Kara or her brother, Kyle, entered or exited the house, Jerry would receive a message on his BlackBerry.

Ethan hadn’t bothered to tell Jerry that they’d also rigged the system to alert Ethan whenever
Jerry
came and went, or that Derek had hidden a GPS tracking device in the glove compartment of Jerry’s car.

Jerry was definitely hiding something. Even without Toni’s planting the seed of suspicion, Ethan had picked up on Jerry’s skittish vibe, the way his gaze kept slipping when they asked when Kara was coming back. And when Jerry had protested the new key codes, asking why they were necessary, as far as Ethan was concerned that was the nail in the evidence coffin.

“Your daughter took off without telling you. Don’t you want me to try to help you prevent it from happening again?” Ethan had asked, deliberately not looking at Jerry when he answered.

Lots of people could keep a poker face, but few could keep a poker voice. Ethan knew what to listen for, the tones, the inflections, the careful way a person spoke when he was hiding something. Jerry displayed them all.

Ethan didn’t know if it had anything to do with Kara’s disappearance, but his gut was telling him he’d better find out. He was equally sure Toni was busy sniffing Jerry out, but she hadn’t returned any of the calls or texts he’d sent her since she’d left Jerry’s pissed as hell and convinced Ethan was blowing her off.

Frustrated that she couldn’t get past her personal bullshit to give him a call back, Ethan enlisted Derek to help him work out some of his frustration.

Two hours later, they were still at it, sweating through their T-shirts and gym shorts as they squared off on the mats. All three brothers had trained extensively in hand-to-hand combat and sparred regularly to keep their skills sharp.

“If Danny finds out we’re spying on a client, he’s going to be pissed,” Derek said. The muscles of his torso flexed as he balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to fend off Ethan’s charge.

Not to mention they could lose their license if Jerry found out and lodged a complaint. But that wasn’t enough to stop Ethan from following his gut, and his gut agreed with Toni. Not that Jerry’s behavior had given any weight to his hunch. Twenty minutes after Ethan and Derek had left, they had tracked Jerry to his office building. He hadn’t left since.

Ethan feinted right and swung his fist at Derek’s midsection. Derek blocked the blow and kneed Ethan in the right thigh. “I have valid concerns about our client’s security,” Ethan said, ducking to avoid Derek’s punch. “In order to assure his safety, I have to know his whereabouts at all times.”

“Yeah, but usually our clients know what the hell we’re up to.”

“Minor detail. Besides, Toni’s right. He’s up to something.”

Derek gave a brief nod and nailed Ethan with a jab to his chest that stole his breath, then sidestepped to the right to avoid Ethan’s answering blow. “Speaking of Toni. She’s pretty hot, but not your usual type.” He grinned and dodged as Ethan’s closed fist whizzed past his head. “Hey, we said no faces!”

Ethan flexed his fist and blew a drop of sweat off the tip of his nose.

“I guess this means I owe Danny fifty bucks,” Derek continued when Ethan didn’t respond.

Ethan pressed his lips into a tight line and brought his hands up. He didn’t want to discuss Toni with anyone, including his twin. And they shared everything. Not just the usual sexual-conquest stories that Ethan embellished to try to get a rise out of his straightlaced brother, who, as far as Ethan knew, hadn’t seen any action since his last serious relationship had ended a couple of years ago. Unlike Ethan, Derek didn’t view sex as a recreational sport. He didn’t have sex with a woman until he did a full-blown analysis of the pros and cons of getting involved with the female in question.

Complete with spreadsheets.

Still, Derek and Danny got a vicarious thrill from listening to Ethan recount his exploits, and usually Ethan was happy to oblige them. But not this time. Not this woman.

Derek wouldn’t let it go. He knew he had hit a raw nerve and he couldn’t resist applying pressure. “Was she like Danny thought? All eager to please in that pent-up, frustrated-librarian kind of way?”

Derek’s comment summoned up a flood of images and remembered sensations from the night before. Toni, her pale, smooth skin damp with sweat. The scent of aroused woman flooding his senses. The pebbly hardness of her nipples against his tongue. The salty-sweet taste of her pussy on his lips. The hot, slick grip of her clenching around his cock as she came for the second time, fingers digging into the muscles of his ass as she tried to pull him even deeper.

Despite her tough, take-no-prisoners attitude, she’d been completely vulnerable in bed. Uncertain, even a little awkward. But it hadn’t done anything to diminish his pleasure. If anything, it had enhanced it. Instead of a series of practiced moves, sex with Toni was raw, uninhibited, calling up a gut-deep, primitive response that had tested the limits of his control.

Ethan forced the searing images from his mind and slowly circled his brother, trying to get an angle on an attack. Derek threw a right hook and kept himself just out of reach, taunting Ethan with a shit-eating grin.

“It must not have been that good,” Derek said. “Toni didn’t look too happy with you this morning,” he said. “Did you not perform up to your usual standards?”

“Let it go,” Ethan said, striking out with a left hook. Derek turned so that he took the blow to the shoulder instead of the head. He didn’t want to share any of it with Derek. He didn’t know why he couldn’t just forget about it and move on, the way he always did. For him, sex was a pleasant way to spend a few hours, but when it came time to get back to business, he’d never been distracted by a woman. He didn’t want to think how close he’d come to completely losing control.

“Either that or she’s completely hung up on you, like they always are. Which is too bad,” Derek continued, “because unlike your usual hookups, Toni actually seems interesting. All that fierce determination. Not to mention those legs. Since you’ve obviously cut her loose, maybe I’ll ask her out.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Ethan found his opening and drove through. His hands came down over his brother’s arms, and his leg drove into Derek’s hip as Ethan took him down with a combination of anger and brute force. Ethan sat on Derek’s chest with one hand on his throat, the other raised to strike. “Don’t even think about asking Toni out. If I so much as catch you looking at her, I will pound your fucking face into the ground.” He was shocked at the violence of his response. He was not a jealous person, especially not when it came to women. But the idea of Derek pursuing Toni, of Derek so much as thinking of Toni in a sexual way, conjured up possessive impulses he didn’t even know he had.

Derek looked up at him with a satisfied smirk. “So it’s like that, huh?”

Ethan’s chest heaved with his exertion. He had no fucking clue what it was like, he only knew Toni got under his skin Why didn’t she fucking return his calls?

“It’s not like anything, so drop it.”

Derek shifted under him, a vein popping out on his forehead as he tried to break Ethan’s position. “Then why do you check your phone every ten minutes to see if she called you back?”

His attention wandered to his phone for a nanosecond, all the opening Derek required. His twin heaved up under him and executed a perfect shrimp-escape scissor-sweep combo, drove his knee up into Ethan’s leg, and flipped him over onto his back. Now Derek’s hand was at Ethan’s throat, his elbow cocked back. “Don’t lose your focus.”

Good advice, and not just for fighting.

Derek rocked back on his heels and stood, offering his hand to pull Ethan up.

“One more round,” Ethan said, bringing his hands up to the ready.

Derek put down the empty bottle he’d just chugged dry and raised his hands, reluctance evident in every line of his body. They started to circle again when the electronic trill of a cell phone echoed off the high ceilings of the gym.

Ethan hurried to his phone and frowned when he realized it was Derek’s phone ringing and not Toni calling him back. He looked up, saw his brother staring at him with a raised eyebrow, and knew Derek could read his disappointment and the reason for it. His face got hot. What was the fucking world coming to when Ethan Taggart was reduced to waiting by the phone like some teenage girl by a computer nerd who happened to have the best tits he’d ever had the pleasure to suck?

Ethan forced his mind from Toni’s rack to his brother’s side of the conversation. “Really? When? You’re certain? That shouldn’t be possible. Someone good. No, I’ll handle it. Thanks for calling.”

Derek flipped his phone closed. “That was Alex calling from the office. I think I know why your girlfriend hasn’t called you back.”

Ethan didn’t bother protesting Derek’s word choice. He shot him a hard look and nodded for him to continue.

“She’s been too busy breaking into Gemini’s network. She hacked Kramer’s security logs.”

Toni pulled into Kramer’s driveway and checked her watch. Based on the security logs, Kramer had left the house several hours ago. If he worked a normal day, Toni didn’t expect him home for another several hours, giving her plenty of time.

She would have been there sooner, she thought with a pull of annoyance, but it had taken her longer than she’d expected to get into Gemini’s network so she could make sure Kramer was out of the house when she showed up. Whoever did their security was good.

But Toni was better. It gave her no small satisfaction that only a few hours after Ethan had booted her out to have his “confidential conversation about home security protocols” or whatever bullshit, she now knew all of the modifications as well as every household member’s personal PIN.

She slung her oversize purse over her shoulder. It was big enough to hold everything she needed, but not as official looking as her computer bag. She didn’t think Manuela would blink twice, but you never knew.

Toni rang the doorbell and rocked back on her heels, fiddling with the shoulder strap of her bag. She wondered what Ethan was doing right now. Probably counting the big pile of money from Jerry while he trolled for another bed partner.

Manuela opened the door, and Toni pasted a smile on her face as she shoved Ethan’s brutally gorgeous image from her mind. “Hi, Manuela, I was driving by and wanted to see if Kara was back yet.”

Manuela shook her head and regarded Toni with a frown. “Not yet. Mr. Kramer says she’s not coming home for a couple more days.”

“Really? I could have sworn he said later today,” Toni said, feigning confusion. “I wanted to stop by, you know, see for myself that she’s okay.”

“Maybe she can call you when she gets back?”

“Sure,” Toni said and shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. “Umm, is it okay if I use your bathroom?” Toni barged past without waiting for an answer. “It’s really an emergency,” she called over her shoulder and started down the hall at a fast trot.

She ducked in the powder room across from Jerry’s office and opened and closed the door in case Manuela was listening. Toni waited a few seconds and darted across the hall, praying Manuela would keep herself busy on the other side of the house. With luck, Toni could get everything done in the time it would take a reasonable person to use the bathroom.

Luckily for her, Jerry had a separate computer that didn’t go with him to work. She needed to get into his work system as soon as possible, but for now she’d settle for finding out what Jerry was up to in his off-hours. Working fast, she pulled an external hard drive out of her bag, along with a CD. Within minutes, she’d copied his files onto her hard drive and installed both keystroke tracking on his computer and network sniffer software. When she got back to her desk, she could monitor all of Jerry’s computer and network use.

She shoved the hard drive and CD back in her bag, did a quick check to make sure everything was exactly how she’d found it, and pulled the office door to the exact same partially ajar position.

“Just bring it to my office, Manuela.”

Toni felt her blood form ice crystals at the sound of Jerry’s voice. She scrambled into the bathroom and quietly shut the door. Heavy footfalls sounded down the hall. Maybe she could wait until he was busy and sneak out. No, he would have seen her car out front. She flushed the toilet, briefly ran the water in the sink, and sucked in a deep breath, preparing herself to brazen it out.

She waited until Jerry’s footsteps were almost to the door and stepped out, nearly colliding with his bulky form. His thick eyebrows pulled tight and that vein started going in his forehead.