Chapter 33
Logan Bane
Logan’s phone rang, interrupting his late meeting. He glanced down at the screen and frowned. “I need to get this.”
He answered and held the phone to his ear, “Bane.”
“Logan, this is Jake Crews. I never thought I’d say this again, but I may need your help.”
“Crews,” Logan said, unsure he wasn’t being punked. “This is a surprise. What is it that I could possibly help you with?”
“We have a woman in common. One I’m getting a bit worried about.”
“Really? Which one?”
“Ryley St. James,” Crews answered. “You probably know her and her brother better than I do, and I’m worried.”
“You’re worried about Ryley?” Logan arched a brow.
“My Ryley? I just left her at the diner,” Tucker said in hushed tones.
Logan held up his hand, cutting off Tucker’s words and nodded. “Why are you worried about her?”
“She has a ridiculous number of locks on her door, and she uses tape as a security measure to detect intruders. When she arrived home tonight her door was unlocked, and the tape was broken.
“Sounds innocent enough,” Logan said even though his muscles tightened in response.
“Yeah, I would have chalked it up to her being forgetful, or a ghost annoying her to where she might have forgotten, had it not been for the spent bullet I found on her dresser while checking for intruders.”
Logan leaned forward. “You found a spent bullet on her dresser?”
Tucker jumped from his chair. Logan shushed him, hoping he’d calm the hell down.
“Yeah, any idea what that might be from?”
Logan lowered his head and clenched the phone tighter. “Yeah, I might, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it. Are you there now?”
“In the parking lot,” Crews answered.
“Good. If you don’t mind staying put, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“She was going to bed, Logan.”
“I didn’t say I was going inside,” Logan answered. “Ten minutes.”
Tucker was already waiting at the door when Logan hung up and grabbed his keys from the drawer. “Looks like you’re going to need to get her security detail here tonight instead of tomorrow. Someone broke into her house and left a bullet on her dresser.”
Tucker visibly swallowed. “Probably the same one she shot into our father. It looks like he’s using a more personalized approach now than in years past.”
“I’ll take the first shift until you get the bodyguard set up.”
Tucker nodded.
Logan checked his gun clip and shoved it back into place with an angry crack. “The good news is that breaking and entering is against the law. Let’s hope he tries again while I’m there. She’s going to be pissed you told me the rest of the family secret.”
“She’ll get over it. I’ve gotten smarter since I was sixteen. I’m not adverse to getting help to protect the people I love.”
“Apparently, neither is Crews.”
Logan filled a coffee Thermos and drove to Ryley’s apartment complex. He pulled in, parked next to Crews, and signaled him to leave.
Crews got out and of his car and slid into Logan’s passenger seat. “Care to tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Care to tell me what you were doing in her bedroom?” Logan asked, scanning the area.
“I came to talk to her about my mother, not that it’s any of your business,” Crews said.
“Fair enough.” Logan sighed. “I’m sure your mother is already aware, but, in the event she hasn’t told you, Ryley and her brother weren’t always in a good place. Her father used her for her abilities. He’d take her in the middle of the night to meet some very unsavory people. Tucker didn’t give me specifics, but he did say that when she was little, she shot her father, and every year on the anniversary, he tracks her down and mails a letter taunting her that he knows where to find her.” And that was despite the siblings ongoing effort to disappear.
“Seriously? That’s jacked up.” Crews rubbed at the stubble on his jaw.
“Sending her a letter is one thing. Tucker hired me to track down their father’s location.”
“And?”
Logan glanced up at the apartment door. “The last thing I found was that he bought a bus ticket into town.”
Crews turned his gaze toward the apartment building again. “The bullet was him showing her not only had he found her, but he can also get to her.”
“Yep,” Logan agreed. “When I told her brother about the bus ticket, two seconds later he was already on the phone calling in favors to get someone he trusts to watch her. They weren’t arriving for another two days. The anniversary is Saturday. But with this new development, Tucker is calling them in early.” Logan glanced at Crews. “So, if you see someone following her around, and he’s not old enough to be her father, don’t arrest him. I’m not sure Tucker is even going to tell her what he’s doing.”
“She’s smart enough to figure it out.” Ryley was clever. She was gifted with more than seeing ghosts. The fact she’d used tape implied she had street smarts too. Too bad that behind her pretty face and sexy body was a woman with trust issues that had been building for years.
Crews opened the door and climbed out.
“Thanks for waiting for me to get here.”
“I’ll put extra patrol in the area.” Crews said.
“Thanks.”
Crews shut the door and climbed back into his vehicle and pulled out of the parking lot.
Ryley’s apartment complex wasn’t the safest neighborhood in town, nor the worst. Though the bushes needed to be trimmed, the street lights worked, and reducing the number of dark corners a perpetrator could use to hide. Logan could find a place, but his expertise was vast. He studied the three-story structure. The doors were all facing him. No patios. Only a little kitchen window next to the door. Small enough a grown man probably couldn’t climb in through.
Now, a kid could do that.
Her door had more locks than the others. Tucker suggested Ryley was serious about her safety. They both were. This was her sixth apartment since moving back to
