Page 94 of Auctioned to the Billionaire Stalker

“Dammit.” That got Reynolds’ attention. “Hey, give me twenty minutes, okay?” He hung up.

“What are you doing? I don’t want to bother them, they just got back…”

I pushed her against the wall gently and held her face in my hands. “You matter, Daisy. You have a lot of people who care about you, and we all want to protect you. Let us.”

Her eyes got wide at the intensity in my voice, but she nodded and even gave me a little smile. “Okay. Thank you.” She crumpled against me, letting me hold and comfort her.

I was going to take care of this, no matter what it took.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Jack

“I’m not going to lie to you, Jack. This shit isn’t great,” Reynolds ran a hand through his usually perfect blond hair. It was still wet, making it clear he’d finished up with Nadine, taken a shower, and hurried over.

His best friend and bodyguard, Byron, a tall, strongly built Black man, stood next to him, and the sheriff, a white guy named Tate Richards, leaned against a wall, looking through a box full of the notes Daisy had kept. “She’s got more than one stalker,” he said abruptly, and I broke out in a cold sweat.

How did he know? Was he psychic or something?

“Or one stalker trying to throw people off his trail,” he amended, looking between two notes. “Look at these.”

Reynolds stalked over to his side, staring at the notes.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying not to show I’d been nervous, but as I looked up, I met Byron’s eyes. He had a slight frown on his face, and I wondered what he was thinking as he watched me. He opened his mouth, about to ask me something, when Reynolds interrupted.

“Come here, Jack.”

Iwalked over and he put the two notes in my hand. I looked at them, read them, and then looked back at him questioningly. “What am I looking for?”

“Pretty girl.”

“What?” What the hell was he talking about?

“Pretty girl,” he said again, poking one of the notes.

I re-read them both, and realized one of the notes called her Daisy, while the other one called her ‘pretty girl’. “Yeah, so?”

The sheriff sighed. “You know the murders that have been happening with more and more frequency over the past few years?”

“Um… maybe?” I didn’t really keep up with the news, but I vaguely remembered that a woman who’d worked for the Salazars had been killed the previous winter.

Reynolds and the sheriff exchanged a quick look.

“We haven’t reported this to the media, but in several of the cases we’ve found notes either on the bodies or in the homes of the women. They were all addressed ‘pretty girl’ just like these,” the sheriff said, holding up the vast majority of the notes in Daisy’s box. “The rest of these are addressed directly to her. So, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say she has two stalkers. And one of them is really fucking dangerous.”

So she had three stalkers? What were the odds?

Shit. My hands were sweaty. For two reasons. One of Daisy’s stalkers was dangerous. Maybe a killer. And? What would they say if they knew she had three stalkers? And I was one of them?

“What do we do?” I asked hoarsely.

Reynolds paced around the condo, and I was glad Daisy wasn’t here for this discussion. Nadine, who’d arrived with Reynolds, had insisted they swing by Cinnamon House for lunch and to hang out with their friends. “I haven’t been over since we got back from the Bahamas,” she’d said. “You can see how much better I am at driving now.” She’d winked at Daisy, who’d looked mildly uncomfortable at the thought of Nadine driving them. But Daisy had been happy enough to leave and let friends distract her from thinking about her stalker for a few hours.

She’d told the sheriff she’d tried to report it andthe officer she’d been assigned to had blown her off once he’d found out she worked for the Salazars. The sheriff’s face had looked like a thundercloud, and he’d assured her he’d find out the name of that officer.

She obviously hadn’t wanted to get anyone in trouble, but we’d all told her sometimes it was for the best.

The sheriff had told Nadine and Daisy not to tell anyone about the stalkers.