“Who, Nasa?” she whispered, searching his face with sad, wounded eyes.
Like a Band-aid, he ripped off the painful truth in one go. “The nurse, Portia Thomas, but she wasn't given a choice.”
“They killed her?” Dillon hissed even as the color rushed back to her cheeks in an angry flush, and though her eyes glimmered wetly, she didn't let a single tear fall.
“Yes.”
She didn't resist when he tipped his chair back and urged her to nestle against him. She leaned in, resting her forehead against his throat, sighing when he pushed his fingers into her hair and massaged her scalp while he shared with her everything he’d pulled together so far.
He could feel Dillon frown against his throat.
“That makes no sense. Why take the girl to the hospital only to turn around and kill someone to find out where she is?”
“No way to tell for sure at this point. She was there for nine hours, and it looks like Portia was on her case the whole time.
"I haven't finished going through it all, but so far there weren't any suspicious characters who came in looking for a beat-up girl.
“My thought is they went old school and called in pretending to be a concerned relative searching for their missing daughter, or a cop checking to see if she was ready to give a statement, and someone made an innocent mistake in confirming the girl was there.
“Once that happened, the Leviathans tracked down Portia, got what they needed from her, then headed to the shelter to try and bust in.
"They got nothing from Patti, but for whatever reason, Patti didn't press charges, and by some divine miracle neither of them had any active warrants out for their arrest, so the bastards walked
“The DNA and fingerprints they left behind at Portia's house wasn't processed until seventy-two hours later, or they wouldn't have been able to come at you.
"I assume Ghost got involved once he heard his boys got swept up by the cops and used the opportunity to get to you first.”
Dillon rubbed her cheek against his shirt, her voice tight and angry. “Patti should have pressed charges. It's protocol. Why wouldn't she have done that?”
“I don't know,” he answered, giving her a squeeze. “I didn't find anything suspicious on her background check, no unusually large deposits into her account to suggest a payoff, no digital trail to follow to bank accounts in a relative’s name, no phone calls to any number I can tie to the Leviathans to say she had connections to them.”
“Is there a detective listed on the missing person’s report Patti filed?”
“The same detective who came around to take Patti's statement after the Leviathans came to the shelter. Bolton, why?”
“Rain Bolton is part of Vanguard. She would have told Patti that Portia had been killed, and Patti should have tried to get in touch with me.”
Nasa frowned into Dillon's hair, massaging at her back, thoughts whirling through his mind.
“Portia was killed on the tenth, the shelter was hit the day after, and Patti didn't call your burner until the seventeenth.
"She didn't leave messages and didn't file the missing person’s report until ten days after making the calls to your burner.”
“I'll ask her why she waited so long after I call Rain and let her know I'm still alive. Can we sit here for a minute?”
Nasa turned his cheek to hers, reveling in the knowledge Dillon needed comforting, and was asking him to give it to her.
“As long as you need.”
*****
She was glad Rain didn't ask how Dillon knew about the missing person’s report. When Rain did ask where she was, Dillon found herself looking to Nasa.
“I'm just outside Austin scouting property.”
Nasa gave Dillon a thumbs up, still in his command chair, knees spread wide in a comfortable sprawl.
While Rain went on to say how the suspects who'd killed Portia were still at large, Dillon found her mind wandering.
She wasn't a stranger to sex, and there had been a moment when Fifty Shades was all the rage that she'd picked up a copy just to see if it lived up to the hype.
Reading the story through the lens of her own experiences, Dillon found the book in general, disturbing. Not sexy in the least. She hadn't been able to finish it.
However, right at this moment, Dillon had the strangest urge to walk over to Nasa and sit on the ground between his spread knees.
He hadn't asked her to, they hadn't talked about his sexual needs as far as BDSM went, but it had been on Dillon's mind ever since having sat in his lap the first time. It was on her mind now to discover what it might feel like to rest her cheek on his thigh and lean against his calf.
“Dillon, are you still there?” Rain asked a little louder, making Dillon wince.
So focused on watching her, Nasa's eyebrows went up in a silent question as to whether Dillon was okay, and she found herself blushing furiously.
“Yes, I'm sorry. I'm still in shock about Portia. Did I hear you say you know who killed her?”
Rain heaved a deeply frustrated sigh. “It's not my case, but yes. The two men are known members of a seriously nasty biker gang. They call themselves, Leviathans.”
Dillon did not like having to lie, but it helped Rain wasn't here to look at her face. “I was just going over the security footage from the shelter and saw two men come in to threaten Patti.
“I was going to ask you about them because they were wearing vests that said 'Leviathan MC' on the back, and she didn't call me to say they'd come around. You know how I am about the shelter security; did Patti say anything to you about it?”
“That is actually my case, and I'm glad you brought it up,” Rain answered, her voice noticeably turning sharp. “Those same two men who busted into the shelter are the same ones
