"We'll take care of you from now on, Harper. My family will be here for whatever you need." Harper laid her head on his shoulder, her body just overwhelmed with the kindness of a complete stranger. "We'll be fine, love. You'll see. And your sister will regret threatening me too. I'm not without my own resources."
She hoped so. Harper really did hope someone would help her out. Even if it was just for a little while.
Chapter 4
He looked at the notes that he'd been writing and realized that he had no idea what to do now. When he'd found her a few weeks ago he thought to kill her on site, take what he wanted, and leave her carcass for the rats to eat. But he wanted to play with her and the McCades. Just enough, he thought, to bring them out in force so that he could end them. But now she was gone and he didn't know who had helped her.
It was as if she'd had some magical being come to her hiding place and take her away right under his nose. Leaning back in his chair, he thought about what he was going to tell his buyer when he called. And he would, just as he had every night for the last two months.
Ollie Morrison was a man who got things done. Not with fanfare … there were no witnesses to his work. No one was looking for him, and he was positive that there wasn't another soul out there that had as much information about anything as he did. Ollie prided himself on knowing when, where, and how things were going to happen. It was why this thing with the woman was bothering him so much, not that anyone would be able to tell. But she had gotten away from him, and he'd lost a good bit of ground in getting the McCade jewelry. Not to mention, it was putting him behind. He had a plan and now it wasn't flowing the way he'd set up.
His temperament was calm, perfect really for his line of work. After numerous years of practicing how to look bored, to not show anger or happiness, Ollie knew that he had what would be considered the flawless poker face. And he liked it that way. When he sat at a table with buffoons, people who no more deserved to be near him than they did to be breathing his air, they would-out of respect for how good he was at everything-turn to him for solutions. And that was just the way he liked it.
But he'd lost the woman.
The notes that he'd taken seemed to tell him he'd missed something. She'd been in there not an hour before, nursing a wound that hadn't been in his plans either. Dead was fine, wounded was not. It left DNA behind, a way to track where she'd been.
The man, a boy really, had entered the room just before Ollie had been on his way to kill her and take what he wanted. Ollie had heard the woman tell the kid to get out when he was tossed out of the hotel room as if he were nothing more than an old newspaper. And then he just simply disappeared. Incinerated.
That too was something that he'd been pondering. What had killed him? When Ollie came upon his body as soon as it exited the room, he saw him. Only for a second, but it had been enough that he knew whatever power had killed him hadn't been human. His head had caved into his skull, and his chest, what was left of it, looked as if someone or something had reached into inside and pulled his heart free. It lay on his chest, just a mass of blood and a stringy mess, before it too had vanished in a puff of flame.
He'd backed away then. Gone back to his car to wait out whatever had helped her. Nothing came out of the room after the door had been closed, and until he got the call from his business partner in his legitimate dealings telling him that he was needed, nothing had gone in either. Upon his return not two hours later, the room was devoid of even a fingernail. The towels too, anything holding any DNA, were missing. What sort of being could do that, he pondered?
His phone ringing startled him out of his thoughts. It was his buyer; Dave Hardy was right on time with his nightly call. Ollie didn't answer though. He had more important things to do at the moment than listen to the man whine.
Like where was the fucking girl? What had happened at the hotel? And where the fuck was the jewelry?
Pulling his phone closer to him, he thought of Bobby Ware. Fredrick, as he went by just before his death, had said that he was gathering the pieces for himself. He'd been good too; he'd not only had tabs on where one of the pieces of jewelry were, but he also had a lot of information that Ollie didn't. It took him nearly four hours to go through the dead man's house, and an hour more to put it all in the back of his car to bring here. Now it, along with the things that he'd gathered, were spread out around the room so that he could look them over.
"Where have you gone?" He knew that the McCades were more than likely aware of her. He wondered which of the four remaining men would take her into his home. He wouldn't have … not until he rid her of the bastard that she carried. But then he was funny like that, he thought with a laugh … he wasn't going to take anyone's sloppy seconds. "Not even a virgin, either."