Making sure that no one could ever retrieve those damning pictures again.
“Now, let’s hope that old fuck doesn’t know how to use a cloud,” I murmured.
Everything inside of me wanted to speed back to the clubhouse. But, I knew that my recon wasn’t done. If Ranger found out that all I did was sit at the restaurant for a little while, he’d be pissed. So, I forced myself to turn my sights to another destination.
I needed to get inside Gordon and Naomi’s house.
“Let’s do this,” I murmured to myself.
I pulled the battery and the SIM card out of my burner phone, but I didn’t discard it. I was concerned that I’d need it before I started back to ground zero. I set it on the front seat and weaved in and out of traffic, trying to get to that house just a tad quicker. With Gordon on the road, most likely headed for the clubhouse, that meant I’d have ample time to case the joint.
That also meant I’d be able to grab a few things for Naomi in the process.
Getting to the house wasn’t an issue. Getting in through the back door wasn’t an issue, either. Why most people kept their back door unlocked, I’d never know. But, holding back my anger as I walked through their house was one of the hardest things I’d ever done in my life.
“You didn’t love her one bit, you son of a bitch,” I hissed.
Every step I took throughout the house, there was evidence of him. A coffee mug sitting out with his damn face on it. Pictures of him in his uniform with dates beneath for every promotion he had ever received. There was a trophy case in the living room that had his name etched and scrawled over everything from ‘Best Boyfriend Ever’ to ‘Graduate of the Academy.’
Yet, there was nothing there to symbolize Naomi.
She was nothing but another trophy to you.
By the time I finally made my way up the steps to the second floor, I had turned my sights toward packing up some of Naomi’s things. There was no way in hell Gordon was stupid enough to hide anything incriminating in his home. Everything was pristine, like something out of a magazine, despite the fact that two people who supposedly loved one another lived inside. Hell, even the fucking hallway was lined with either scenic pictures or baby pictures or grown-ass adult pictures.
And none of them had Naomi in it.
“What a fucking prison,” I whispered.
It made it sick, is what it did. She deserved so much better than that. So much better than all of this. I made my way to the end of the hallway and threw open the door, finding myself face to face with the master bedroom. And yet again, it was devoid of anything even remotely resembling Naomi. She had such a colorful personality, and yet the colors of the room were dark. Gray. Dead. I peeked into the bathroom off to the side and found a plethora of men’s products, and alongside that was a little caddy with a few colorful bottles inside of it.
Jesus Christ, the woman didn’t even have her own place at the sink.
“I should fucking kill him just for that,” I growled.
I walked into the bathroom and snatched the caddy off the counter. I ripped the curtain to the shower back, making sure there wasn’t anything in there that she needed. I reached for a pink loofah sponge that looked to have a measly bar of soap in it, and I did my best to stomach my anger as I searched the cabinets for anything else that could have been hers.
Then, I threw open the closet, pulled out a leopard-printed suitcase, and started stuffing it with her things.
I threw open dresser drawers and pulled out her clothes. I stuffed lingerie that still had the tags on it down into the bottom, and fucking hell, the man needed to be arrested just for that. I held up a royal blue pair of boy shorts with no crotch and damn near came in my pants right then and there. With Naomi’s juicy body smashed into these?
God, it was almost too much to bear.
“Focus,” I murmured as I dropped them into the suitcase, “she still needs you, Dutch.”
I made quick work of gathering some of her things, minus her electronics. Those could be tracked, and it wouldn’t have shocked me one bit if Gordon already had a tracker on them to watch her every movement. After packing the suitcase so tightly that I had to sit on it to get it zipped, I did my best to put the room back in working order.
But, something underneath the bed glinted and caught my eye.
“Now, what do we have here?” I whispered.
I dropped to my knees and peered underneath the bed, only to find a lockbox staring me in the face. I grinned as I reached for it, sliding it out and holding it on its end by the handle. Surely, there was something important in there that she’d need for herself. And even if it wasn’t hers, she was entitled to it anyway, in my opinion.
Then I gathered her things, snuck out of the house, and threw her stuff into the trunk.
Before speeding back toward home.
25
