Page 108 of Ruthless Ambition
“Don’t be a dick.” Angel yawned and turned to look at me. “Can I go to sleep now?”
“I wasn’t stopping you.” Her huff of laughter made me smile. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Or you could stay,” she whispered. “You’re already here.”
“I am,” I agreed. But I got out of bed and took a few steps away from her. “But I need to clean up and stuff. Go to sleep.”
“Okay, goodnight.”
I left her to sleep as I went downstairs and cleaned up, setting the alarms before heading to my own bedroom, and got ready for bed.
The name of the footballer who OD’d bothered me. Googling him, I finally found an article. Skimming it, I saw nothing of interest until I checked the date. Slowly, I read the article again.
Judd Christie didn’t overdose — he committed suicide. He committed suicide the day after Ryan Carmichael had a car accident.
Ryan lived in Dallas; Christie was from a suburb, Murphy, Texas.
I called Cooper. “Sending you information,” I told him.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asked me.
“Same reason you’re awake.” I sent more stuff. “You got it? Check the guy out.”
“This says he’s dead,” Cooper told me. “You want me to check out a dead kid?”
“Dead kids leave people behind. There’s a connection. I know there is.”
“Ugh, you and your fucking hunches,” Cooper complained. “I’ll start on it in the morning.”
“You’re already awake,” I reminded him.
“And I plan to remedy that very shortly,” he said tersely.
“Crashing?” I asked him.
“Been up for three days. It’s coming,” he admitted.
Like I did when I was younger, Cooper suffered from insomnia. Three days wasn’t that bad; he’d gone a lot worse.
“Sleep,” I told him. “I’ll wake you in the morning.”
Taking my own advice, I lay down and turned the light off. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something. With a grunt of dissatisfaction, I got up and went down the hall to Angel’s room. I crossed the room and got into bed with her.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked me as she turned to me in the dark.
“No.”
“Head too busy?”
“Yeah,” I told her as I pulled her closer.
“You okay?” she whispered against my chest, her lips light against my skin. “Want to do breathing exercises to relax you?”
“No,” I said with amusement.
“It helps,” she protested as she tilted her head back. “Just concentrate on your breathing,” she said as she took a deep breath.
“Angel, you talk to me about breath control, and I’m going to think about my hand wrapped around your throat as I sink my cock into you.”
