42. Jealous As Fuck

Chapter 42

Jealous As Fuck

HUNTER

One week later

I casually cross my legs, somewhat bored, as I address the man hanging before me in the club's cellar.

"Have you considered my offer, Craig? Once you do, I can make this all go away."

His face is bloodied, and he spits at me, "Fuck you!"

"You're a thief," I reply calmly, lifting my hand to gesture toward Parker, who grins and then yanks at the chain linked to the man's wrists.

Craig lets out a painful groan, and I click my tongue. "You shouldn't have taken what wasn't yours to begin with. Your business partner's son died because of your messiness, and you know mothers and their sons. She's understandably upset."

"What happened is not my fault; she's a stupid bitch!"

"Parker," I say calmly, cutting my captive off, and there's a loud crack in the air as the man howls in agony.

I check my watch. The midnight shift has just started which means my favorite little manager is on duty. I need to wrap this up if I'm going to spend any quality time watching her from afar like I do most nights.

"But it absolutely was your fault," I say mildly, unconcerned about the man's broken teeth and his bruised face. "She trusted you, and you stole the funds meant for her son's treatment."

It seems that Craig doesn't have an ounce of remorse within him or a sense of self-preservation. He sneers at me and says, "If she's so broke, then where did she get the money to hire a low life like you? She's a lying bitch."

"Oh, I have a soft spot for mothers and children. I usually take cases involving them pro bono. Even men in my line of work like giving back to the community every now and then."

I tap my fingers patiently on my thigh as my mind wanders back to Megan. I'm wondering if she's taking things easy as I instructed her to. She tends to jump in and "handle" things when the employees aren't completing tasks at the high level she'd like.

She's adorable like that.

These scenarios are all the same. Craig's face tightens in anger as he struggles in his restraints, still refusing to admit his guilt.

"What you're doing down here to me is fucking illegal!"

"Illegal?" I chuckle. "That's funny, coming from you, considering what you did. Now, listen, I think we've fucked around down here enough tonight. Don't you think so, Parker?"

"Yes, boss." He grins.

Parker enjoys toying with these lowlife types as much as I do. Lars, on the other hand, isn't into mind games as much as we are. If I left the interrogation in his hands, poor Craig would already be dead.

"Exactly, so you can either return that money you stole and leave LA alive, or we can take the money by force and arrange to dispose of you in a very inconvenient car crash. The choice is yours."

Craig mutters something obscene, and I sigh in disappointment. It's always the same. Men are either blubbering idiots or super tough guys when they find themselves in the basement of the Blue Whiskey. It would be nice if one day someone would surprise me and be a man about it and admit their guilt.

"Go ahead, Parker."

It's a half hour later that I finally exit the basement. It seems that Craig chose to be a tough guy. As I'm leaving, I run into a grim-looking Vaughn.

"We found something. Six months after Johnathan disappeared, there was a murder of a high-end plastic surgeon in Chicago. His entire family was murdered. At the time, it was considered part of an ongoing serial home invasion. A few families in the area had faced similar fates. The surgeon, Tate Meyers, was the third victim."

He hands me a file and I look at it. The picture staring back at me is of an ordinary-looking man. No one remarkable.

"Smart," I say. "He probably got some work done on his face and then made the doctor his third target. The police would have focused on the first or the last one."

"Explains why we haven't been able to find him."

"What do we know about this Doctor Meyer?"

Vaughn hands me another file out of his jacket. It contains the biodata of a rich brown-skinned woman with a pretty smile and kind eyes.

"There isn't much to say about the poor doctor at this point, but this is one of the nurses at the clinic Meyer worked at. Her name is Rose Grant."

"Young, probably easy to manipulate, especially if you have a handsome face." I study her bright eyes. "Easy to garner sympathy from as well."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking." Vaughn agrees. "Interesting thing is that she quit her job a few months after the murders. Then, she landed in New York City and worked in a hospital. From what I managed to gather, she was dating somebody, although none of her ex-colleagues knew anything about her boyfriend except that they seemed to think he was well-off."

"They never saw him?"

"No."

"And you say they're her ex-colleagues?" I keep staring at the picture of Rose. They're two completely different-looking women, yet something about the look in her eyes reminds me of Megan. "Is she dead, too?"

"She went missing two years into her job. Just straight-up vanished. No communication, no credit card activity. The only thing I've managed to uncover is some security camera footage from a bank near her apartment. On her way to work, she stopped by the bank and withdrew a lot of cash. I corroborated it with her bank statement on that day. She emptied her account. She had a few thousand dollars in it."

I look up at Vaughn. "You think Johnathan took a fancy to her, and they moved to New York? Is he this nurse's rich boyfriend?"

"We weren't looking for a couple, we were always just looking for his shady ass. Maybe this Rose was his cover. No one gives a couple a second glance ."

Johnathan is strategic enough to pull something like this, I think to myself.

"So, she ran," I say. "Nice girl like this probably discovered something and made a run for it."

"And either Johnathan found out and killed her, or she is still out there hiding," Vaughn finishes.

"If she's still alive, then she's our biggest lead. She knows what he looks like."

"Exactly."

"If she's hiding, she wouldn't take another job in the same industry. He would be looking for that. Two years with him would have made her a little smarter."

"So what are you thinking?"

I look at the picture again, willing her to tell me where to find her.

"Look at her family. If she's scared, she may have managed a way to contact them. And also check out the homeless community in New York. Get in touch with our usual contacts there, and I'll reach out to a few as well."

Vaughn is about to leave when he says, "You didn't ask about the clinic or Johnathan's files."

"If she still worked there after the surgeon's death, then she probably stole those files and erased them from the system."

"That would make her complicit."

"Johnathan wouldn't leave evidence like that around, but you're right; I don't think the nurse willingly helped him commit murder. I'm not sure what we're looking at here, but there's something. Put the files in my office."

I have a lot to think about. However, I decide to check on Megan before I go to my office. It's been a couple of days since the incident at my place, and apparently, she's bounced back. Any normal person would be traumatized from being shot at, but Megan has the ability to recover from life-or-death situations quite quickly. It says a lot about how she values her life if I think about it. At first, I thought it was an impressive show of resilience, but now I'm thinking that a certain level of apathy like hers can be pretty dangerous.

Oftentimes, I see a dull acceptance in her eyes that bothers me, like how she deals with those idiots at her school. It's almost as if she's complacent about her life, but then she gets back up and keeps on fighting. How can I not be drawn to that spunk?

I open the door which leads to the main floor of the Blue Whiskey and I'm hit by a blast of dance music. Ignoring the gyrating bodies around me, I cut through the dance floor and meet Gage's eyes who is conversing with a customer. He gives me a discreet nod and then gestures with his shoulder towards the corridor where Megan's small office is.

As I enter the corridor, a tall figure bumps into me, and a sultry voice murmurs in surprise, "Mr. Middleton!"

I look down at the woman, and it takes me a second to recognize the bartender Megan hired. She's still pressed against me, showing no indications of moving back. I stare down at her, oddly repulsed by the look in her eyes, which is an invitation, clear as day.

"If you're quite done, step back," I say coldly.

Her eyes flicker, a flush crawls up her face, and she quickly moves back. I look around before narrowing my eyes at her.

"And what are you doing in this part of the building? This is for managerial staff only."

She toys with a strand of her hair, a coy look in her eyes. I can't believe this type of act works on other men.

"I got lost."

"You've been working here for nearly a month now," I say icily. "If you're this incompetent, I can always hire somebody else."

"Wait, what?" She asks worriedly.

"What's going on?" I hear Megan's voice as the door to her office opens.

She blinks when she sees Diana and me, and then, interestingly enough, I see a flash of a darker emotion move through her eyes as she sharply questions me, "Hunter?"

My lips curl in satisfaction at Megan's first clear display of jealousy and the fact she called me by my first name.

"I told you to stop coming back here, Diana," she quickly reprimands the bartender as she strides forward, her gait a little slower than usual because of her stitches. She inserts herself between Diana and me, who is now wearing a curious expression on her face. "This area is off limits. This is the second time I've had to tell you."

"Sorry," Diana says, her voice a little hostile. "I got lost."

"As you did last time." Megan's voice is cold. "Return to the bar. Now."

My lips curl again.

And my dick approves.

Look at my little, badass, managerial Megan.

Jealous as fuck.