Page 77 of Swerve (Boosted Hearts 1)

When I would do the same for him, if the tables were turned?

Instead of telling him that, though, I curled my fingers around the side of his neck, over that sexy skull tattoo, and pulled him down for a soft kiss, showing him how I felt instead. When we finally came up for air, I smiled. “With Scott out of the picture, we can all breathe easier.”

“Yeah,” he said, not looking at me.

Something was definitely bothering him, and not just what happened tonight. But if I asked, I knew he’d deny it, like he had all the other times I’d tried to get him to talk about whatever it was on his mind.

I closed my eyes and an image of Scott’s lifeless body was all I could see. Someone had wanted to shut him up. I’d had a quick look at the note I’d found on him before I got in the shower. There was a date, time, and the word Falcon, which I assumed was code for something, written on it. I wasn’t sure what it all meant, but I’d show Harry in the morning. I hated keeping it from Neco, but I knew if I shared it with him, he’d shut me out of it.

As we settled down, his arm slid around my waist, his hold possessive. We both lay in the dark, me staring up at the ceiling, neither one speaking—clinging to our secrets.

It was a long time before I drifted off.

CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN

Ruby

Harry stared across his desk at me while I paced his office.

“Sit down before you wear a hole in the carpet,” he said in that deep, calm voice of his.

“I’m fine standing.” I stopped and turned to face him. “So, did your contact come through?”

He tapped his pen on the desk. I’d given him the note as soon as I got to work this morning and he’d taken it to a guy he knew, an ex-con who’d been involved with a lot of the heavy hitters in this city before he was locked up. Harry paid him well for the information he gave us, and the guy usually had a lot to give.

“Falcon is a meeting place. The Falcon is an old hotel in Hell’s Kitchen. It’s run down, been empty for years. The owner of this place, one Colin Edwards, uses it to conduct business, the kind he doesn’t want the authorities getting wind of. Edwards has links to drug and arms dealers, but enough legitimate businesses, highly successful businesses, to hide behind, and a good way to clean that dirty money. Besides being loaded, and powerful, he’s known to have a . . . thing for brunettes.”

I stopped and stared at Harry across his desk, an unsettling feeling in my belly. “Define thing.”

“He’s known by police, not for his dodgy business practices, but for the complaints filed against him, restraining orders, harassment, that kind of thing. Nothing has come of it, he’s never been charged. My guess, money was exchanged to keep this shit quiet, to keep these women quiet. No one would want to go up against this guy. Men like Edwards get away with whatever the fuck they want. When I say this guy is rich, I mean this guy is fucking loaded.”

“What does he have to do with Scott?”

Harry sat back in his chair. “You think Scott was trying to warn you, protect you from something . . . someone?”

“I’m sure of it.”

Harry stared at me, an expression on his face that sent chills down my spine.

“You think this Edwards was watching me on that fucking site?”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know; at this point we’re only speculating. But yeah, my guess, this guy saw you, took an unhealthy interest in you. This meeting, the info Scott had, what it all means, I have no idea, but it can’t be anything good. If this guy is trying to track you down, that tweaked out piece of shit was right, you are in danger.”

“But how did Scott know about this meeting? Whoever he was working for before he ran isn’t going to hand him fresh information. And if it was Scott that set this meeting up, why would he try and protect me, if he planned to sell me out to this guy? It doesn’t add up.”

“Agreed, which means we don’t really know shit and we need to be careful. You need to be careful.”

Shit.

This was getting complicated, but I wasn’t prepared to give this to Neco and get shut out of my own case. If this guy wanted something from me, I wanted to know what, and I wanted to be the one to take him down. I wasn’t going to sit back and let Neco play hero, while I played the victim. I wasn’t going to do that anymore.

I was capable, I knew my stuff, and I had excellent, highly skilled backup. Neco wouldn’t see it that way, though. There was nothing I could do about that, he had to find a way to deal with his fears and let me live my own life—and occasionally, that would mean separate from him.

I got that he was scared for me, but I needed him to give me that freedom, to stay sane.

We’d both been shaped by our childhoods. Neco clung tighter as a result of his, and I . . . I needed to be given the room to be me. The Ruby I’d worked so hard to find, the broken girl I’d pulled from the rubble, who’d been buried under layers of insults and harsh words, of fear and sadness. I’d worked so damn hard to find her.

We were like magnets, two negative sides pushing against each other.