Alpha's Irresistible Neighbor
By: J.P. ComeauHowever, when I looked over at Penny, I saw her staring off to the side. I followed her line of sight and found Mikael standing in an entryway that looked like it led into their formal dining room. He held her gaze, and she held his. And as the gruff voice of the detective continued to prattle on, my toes curled in my heels.
Something had happened. Something big had gone down between me getting on that plane in New York City and me arriving at the Charlotte airport, and I simply hoped that Mikael wasn’t in trouble.
Again.
3
Thomas
“Tell me you’ve found something,” Mikael said as he lowered his voice.
I slapped the files I was carrying around in my hand. “Took me damn near two months just to figure out where the fuck that man had set up home base around here.”
He nodded to my hands. “Did those files come from his home?”
I handed them to him. “Just take a look at them and tell me what you think.”
“Do you want to tell me what’s in them first?”
“No, I want your unbiased opinion before I say anything. Just take a look at them.”
As Mikael took the files from me, I stole a glance at the women sitting at the kitchen table. That black-haired girl with the steel gray eyes kept stealing glances in my direction, and it only made me roll my eyes. Women wanted one thing in this world, and that was for a man to toss her around in bed for a little while.
And while I was usually happy to oblige, this was much too important to have that kind of distraction.
“It’s all pretty much nonsense to me,” Mikael said as he handed the files back. “What do you see in them?”
I ground my teeth together before my lips started moving. “I knew he had to have had a home base close to Peachland because a man like him would want to be close to his daughter. But, he’d need privacy in order to do what he was doing. Plus, he didn’t strike me as the kind of man to penny-pinch on the finer things, which is what led me outside the city limits all the way into Charlotte.”
“Okay, but what does that have to do with the files.”
I grinned. “Everything.”
He blinked. “I’m still not following.”
I shook the files softly at him. “I think these files are previous marks.”
Mikael’s eyes widened. “So, you think he’s done this to other people?”
“Not only that, but I think all of the people he’s done it to were trial runs for what he did to you. I mean, think about it. What he pulled off was intricate, and required a great deal of planning. Do you think you could get behind the console board of a plane and automatically fly that shit overseas?”
“He’d need trial runs to perfect his method—.”
“—before going after his intended target, yes.”
He pointed to the files. “And you think these files were other targets?”
I shrugged. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. If there’s one thing I know about men like him, it’s that they’ve always been this way. They’ve always had this—this evil down inside of them, and just like every other skill people pride themselves in, executing that evil requires practice. Now, take a look at this shit.”
“Wait, there’s more?”
I tossed the files onto the formal dining room table before pulling out my phone. “Now, take a look at these documents. There’s a hell of a lot of them, so I didn’t bring them with me. But, I took pictures. Take a look at them and tell me what you think.”
And the second he snatched my phone out of my hand, recognition dripped over his features.
“Holy fucking shit,” he whispered.
I nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
“Are these--?”
“Documents that you should have on your servers at work? Yes.”
Mikael’s gaze slowly came back to mine as he handed me my phone. “Those are sensitive files. They’re only on the servers upstairs.”
“Which explains the hacking you said your friends fielded when they were about to open? Remember how they said the server room was tampered with?”
He raked his hands down his face. “So, what now? Where do we go from here?”
