ONE
EMORY
Emory Holt looped the necktie around his fist in a makeshift garrote and torqued until the man’s face turned red. “Manual coercion,” he called it because he couldn’t tolerate the chit-chat of interrogation.
The blubbering. The begging. The bargaining with God.
Richard Dauer did none of that. Instead, he clawed at his neck to loosen the tie. Downstairs, music blared as partygoers rose in breathless fervor, bewitched by the night and the storm raging outside. The din disguised the scuffle in Rich’s home office. Emory counted the beats bumping against the soles of his dress shoes.
Eight.His shirt was too expensive to chafe that bad.
Nine.God, how he relished squeezing the rarefied air out of Rich’s lungs.
Ten.Emory dumped Rich onto the floor.
Legs akimbo, he gasped for a breath. “I don’t have what you want.”
Emory expelled a quiet laugh. That’s what they all said, as if ignorance shielded them from his scrutiny. He squatted and jabbed his gun beneath Rich’s chin.
“I hate Portland, hate this weather.” Emory tipped his head tothe ruckus downstairs. “Hate these pompous fucks you run with. You think I’d be here if you didn’t have what I want?”
Rich’s glassy eyes drifted to Jack, Emory’s second-in-command, and two other men from the Moriarty syndicate guarding the door.
“They’re not your saviors,” Emory said. The reminder drew Rich’s gaze. “I cut you a fair deal, better than most. It’s time to deliver what you promised.”
Rich licked the blood from his bottom lip and winced as he righted himself against the bookshelf.
“I don’t have it, but there’s someone here who does.” He paused, a tussle with his conscience, perhaps. Rich was as shameless as he was crooked, though, and proved it as he whispered, “Amelia Havick.”
Emory smiled at the bitter irony. Of course, it’d be her. The night, so riddled with oddities, demanded another cosmic jest. And what a fucking riot too.
“Amelia,” Emory repeated with no right to the familiarity he put on her name.
He hadn’t met the girl, not truly—just a fleeting touch, handful of words, and whatever they’d had going from across the room. He could easily pick the stunning redhead from the crowd downstairs, though. Few women could claim such bone-crushing beauty.
Amelia played at timid rather well and had that intangible quality that drove him wild, alluring only when it was genuine. Sexy in an uncertain-of-herself way; doe eyes, dulcet voice, gorgeous body she probably didn’t know how to use. What a goddamn dream. It’d heated his blood and sent the room faintly spinning.
A lesser man would kid himself that only he could show her what to do with those long legs and full lips, that she’d bloom beneath him and him alone. Emory was no ordinary man and planned to prove it to her by the end of the night.
There was a colossal problem, though.
“She’s Cal’s daughter,” Emory said and settled uncomfortably on his heels.
Cal Havick—federal prosecutor and self-righteous prick—was hell-bent on decimating Emory’s organization. If he only knew how his daughter had eye-fucked Emory from across the room. At his silent command, Amelia had even put on a show for him, her fingers discreetly skimming the tops of her breasts and the inside of her thigh. Sweet thing wanted to be fucked hard by a dangerous man, it seemed.
“What does Amelia have to do with this?” Emory asked Rich, because it wasn’t just her looks or the magnetism between them that had garnered Emory’s devout attention. From the sidelines, Amelia had observed the festivities with solemn dread and noticed what the others were too drunk or high to see.
“She knows everything and will sing like a bird, but you don’t have much time.”
“Why?”
“She leaves for Arizona in a few days. Probably thinks she’ll be safe there.”
Rich scowled as if he derided Amelia’s naiveté, as if he weren’t the one battered bloody with a gun to his head.
“I counted at least six men from the Velasco syndicate stalking your party downstairs. Are they here for her?”
Rich nodded. “They’ll do to her what they did to Burt.”
