What the Heart Needs (30 page)

“When you’re done snooping, I can help you with your case, Miss. Clary,” a deep, ridiculously masculine voice said to her side.

She jumped and stumbled backward, turning to face him. “I’m sorry. There… there wasn’t a bell or anything,” she said, accusingly.

Xander Rhodes was nothing like she had pictured. When you thought private detective you thought mid-forties, hardened ex-cop. Xander Rhodes looked like someone you didn’t want to meet in a dark ally at night. He was well over six feet of muscle, his shoulders wide like a football player and his arms unnecessarily muscled.

She wondered, fleetingly, if he was that muscular everywhere. A blush crept up her face as she scolded herself for where her mind was going lately.

He had black hair, somewhat long and falling over his eyes. His face was all strong, hard features. Fierce eyebrows and a wide jaw. Deep eyes, almost black and a long scar that split both his upper and lower lips from top to bottom. He looked like someone who would have won if forced to take part in a cage fight.

“Yeah I get a lot of complaints about that… being bell-less,” he said, dead tone, sarcastic. He walked over behind his desk, slowly. A deliberate kind of walk. “So, Miss. Clary. What brought you all the way down here?”

“It’s Hannah,” she said, feeling her spine straighten at his tone. Like she was some spoiled rich kid who had never been in a bad neighborhood before. “Someone is threatening me.”

Xander waved her toward the black metal fold-up chair and she sat, feeling the coldness even through her pants. “Alright,” he said, grabbing a piece of paper and a a pen. “tell me how it all started.”

“It started when I started… dating someone,” she evaded. He looked up from his desk, an eyebrow raised like she was wasting his time being there. “they had snuck into my office and carved something into my desk. And then there were letters. Like a hundred of them,” she said.

At his silence, she felt her anger rise. How dare he act like she was being ridiculous? She pulled the top off the box, stood, and dropped all the letters onto his desk, covering his arms. Unfortunately, she didn’t get the rise she was hoping for out of him. He casually reached for a letter, read it, then another, then another.

“Alright,” he said, brushing them out of the way to find his paper and scribbling. “you’re going to leave these with me so I can go through them. “Anything else?”

“Emails,” she said, holding out a sheet of paper. “That’s my name and password for the email. They are in their own folder. I figured you would need access to the originals.”

“Yep,” he said, taking the paper and sticking it to his. “Anything else?”

Hannah never quite felt so irritated by someone she had just met before. No wonder he worked such a crummy job- no one would ever tolerate him as an employee.

Xander looked up at her and sighed, sitting back in his chair, his hands holding a pen between them across his chest. “Look, I get it. You’re upset. You should be,” he said, holding up a hand at her when she was about to interrupt. “I just need all the details. Just because I am not grilling you for every minute detail doesn’t mean I am not taking this seriously.”

“Fine,” Hannah said, no less irritated but relenting. “Um. They broke into my house. And um… stole my guinea pig.”

At that, Xander’s head shot up and he looked like he was about to laugh. He brought his hand up over his mouth for a second, presumably to cover a smile. “Seriously?”

Hannah sighed. “Yeah. He was gone and in his cage was a…”

“What,” Xander asked, noticing her discomfort and ignoring it.

“A picture of me and… someone else. In a compromised position.”

Xander’s eyebrow raised as he jotted something down. “Any chance I can get a hold of that picture?”

“Not a one,” she said automatically. It was printed on regular paper. Like off a computer. No special markings or anything.”

“Alright,” Xander said, writing and writing away.

“So, I kinda freaked and I left town. Went back to my hometown to get away from it all for a while.”

“Normal,” he said back.

“Yeah well. Whoever it is sabotaged my car.”

“How?” Xander asked and she felt her nerves prickling at his monosyllabic questions.

“Cut the brake lines. There was gas all over the engine. And something about the crankcase or something. I don’t know when it happened. Maybe it was before I left for there…”

“No,” Xander said, looking at her with his dark, almost black eyes. He had unnaturally thick black lashes. On any other face, they would have been pretty. “cut brake lines fail quickly. It had to have happened in your hometown. Which is?”

“Stars Landing. In Pennsylvania,” she supplied.

“Ok. No chance you still have the car, right?”

“No,” she admitted and he nodded. “And that’s most of it. Today when I left my assigned parking space and came back, someone had sprawled ‘You were supposed to die, whore’ on the ground underneath.”

“Okay,” Xander said, finished writing. Hannah peeked and he had actually filled an entire page of yellow lined paper. “Well obviously this person has an issue with you and your new… boyfriend,” he said, the word leaving his mouth reluctantly as if he didn’t like it.

Hannah nodded.

“Who is he?” Xander asked and watched her face rise with panic. “Look sweetheart,” he said the word automatically, as if he called all women it. “I don’t care who he is. But I need to know.”

“Elliott Michaels,” she supplied and Xander’s brows raised as if he was surprised.

“Of EM Corp,” he said, writing it down and eyeing her again.

“Right.”

“Well that certainly doesn’t cut down the pool of suspects,” he said, noticing her raised eyebrow. He picked up a stack of papers. “I read every paper,” he explained. “He has been in it a lot. He’s dated a lot of women. Well, ‘dated’ wouldn’t be the right word…”

“Yeah I know. He sleeps around. I know,” she said, defensive.

Xander surprised her by smiling. It was off-putting, inappropriate. Like he was amused by unusual things. “I’m not judging. I’m just saying. A man like him has to have a trail of angry women behind him.”

“Yes well. I need to know who it is. Discreetly,” she added, poignantly.

“Oh, sweetheart I specialize in discreet.”

“Good. Do you need anything else from me?”

“Just a couple more questions. One- where have the letters been showing up?”

“Work, mostly. Home sometimes.”

“Two- do you have a doorman or some kind of security?”

“I bought extra locks. But no. No doorman. I’ve been thinking about moving though.”

“That would be a good idea. Three- has anyone you know, especially at work, been off lately?”

Hannah laughed. A humorless, sad laugh. “I’m going to level with you. Elliott is my boss. And while no one has ever seen us be anything but professional, someone has been spreading rumors about me and just saying nasty things.”

“Such as?”

Hannah sighed. “That I’m a slut. That I’ve slept with every guy in the office building. And that I’m fat.”

“You’re not fat,” Xander said too quickly, like a kneejerk reaction from having heard women say it too often. “And I’m assuming you’re not the office slut either.”

“Hardly.”

“Alright,” Xander said, sitting back in his chair and studying her. She felt like squirming under his gaze, steady and piercing. Like he could see all her secrets. “I’m going to dig into this for a day or so and then I can get back to you. It’s a pretty risk-free case for me so I guess it will run you about… five-hundred bucks.”

Hannah nodded. She had been expecting worse. “Okay. No problem. Should I pay you now?”

Xander shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get paid eventually.” It sounded like a threat. Like if she stiffed him he would track her down. Looking at him, she realized he probably would.

She pulled out her wallet and counted out the money in twenties. She handed it to him, putting the rest of her money back in her purse.

“You’re in this neighborhood with a thousand dollars in your wallet?” he asked as if she had gone daft.

“Not my fault your place of operation is in a hellhole,” she said with a shrug.

Xander smiled and put the money into a drawer in his desk. “Regardless, I’ll walk you to your car,” he said, getting up and leading her out of the door. He didn’t bother to lock it, despite the large sum of money he had just put in an unlocked drawer.

He walked next to her, his long legs coming up to her hip. It wasn’t correct to say that he walked. He seemed to practically swagger. Someone so impossibly comfortable in his own skin.

“Yours, I’m assuimg,” he said, nodding toward her Mercedes. There was a group of teenagers looking in her windows and she felt her heart start to pound. She nodded up at him, her eyes wide with concern. Xander let out a quick, loud whistle. The group looked up slowly as if they weren’t just thinking about committing a crime. Once they spotted Xander, they stood up straight, eyes wide and fearful. “Get,” he said to them and they scattered away on gangly young legs.

Apparently Xander Rhodes was one scary guy.

And that’s exactly who she needed on her side.

--

Hannah rushed back into her office, her breath coming in quick gasps. She hadn’t meant to spend so much time at the private investigator’s. She closed the door and her heart leapt into her throat when her office chair swung around.

“Well now,” Elliott said, his lip quirked up. “taking personal time in the middle of the day are we now?”

Hannah almost laughed, but wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking or not.

“Come here,” he said and she did without hesitating. “I think you need to be punished.”

Hannah tried to step away at the last moment, the intention clear in Elliott’s eyes. He grabbed her and pulled her across his lap in one swift motion and landed a hand across her butt hard. She giggled, pulling herself off him only to have him pull her into a seated position across his lap.

“How was your day?” he asked and she felt her body jerk at the question. Since when did Elliott Michaels ask everday mundane questions like that? Since when did he care about how someone’s day was?

Hannah shrugged. “No complaints.”

“Not even James congratulating us on our sex?” he asked, his hand absent-mindedly rubbing her thigh.

Hannah sighed, enjoying the intimacy and rested her head against his shoulder. “That is just James being James,” she said and planted a quick kiss against his neck. She didn’t know where the urge came from. She hadn’t ever considered herself an overly affectionate person before.

“So I was thinking,” he said, kissing her on the lips. “how about sushi for dinner?”

Dinner? Elliott Michaels was asking her to go out to eat with him? She stifled the urge to ask him what alien lifeforce had taken over his body. And she silently fretted over what they could possibly talk about during dinner. She found herself saying, “Sushi is good.”

“Good,” Elliott said, patting her thigh so she would stand up. “I have to have a drink with a client in a few. Meet me at the house when you’re done here.”

“Okay,” Hannah said, feeling lightheaded from the change in direction of their relationship.

Elliott smiled. A quick, pleased smile. Then he grabbed her by the front of her pants and pulled her against him. His arms wrapping around hers so she couldn’t move them and kissed her hard for a long minute before releasing her and walking to his office.

Hannah’s hand slammed down on the desk to get her balance. What was going on? Was Elliott trying to actually… date her? The thought hit her warm, swimming in her belly and she realized she really wished that were the case.

She drove home right after the rest of the staff filed out. She didn’t want to be there after dark. She knew it was childish and that she would have to return eventually, but the idea of going back when it was light and people would be milling around was comforting. The light was on as she left it, but she left the door open behind her, rushing to her closet and stuffing a mixture of clothing into a bag.

She wasn’t sure how many nights she would be spending at Elliott’s. She needed clothing for work. And makeup. Shampoo and conditioner. She would just keep it all in the trunk of her car. Just in case.

Just as she was walking back into her living room, she froze, the bag falling to the ground. Her entire living room wall was covered in a makeshift mural. A giant figure of her sprawled out, red paint representing blood pooled all around her, a huge dagger stuck in her chest.

Hannah felt sick, her stomach rolling and the bile rising. She reached for her phone, snapping a picture to send to Xander.

Xander Rhodes: 6:03 PM: Yeah. I saw that when I broke in earlier. Took me under a minute. No wonder that psycho got in.

Hannah grabbed for her bag, too upset to even be put-off that her hired private investigator had broken into her apartment. She grabbed her bag, walking out the door and down to the car in a daze. Her mind raced as anger and fear mingled to a toxic cocktail as she drove.

Elliott was waiting in his office, a drink in his hand. He stood as she walked in, his hands reaching into his pocket and pulling a box out.

Hannah felt her nerves sharp and frazzled as he walked up to her, smiling and held the box out to her. She looked down at it dumbly for a minute. “Open it,” Elliott said, his voice sounding far away.

Her fingers searched for the seam and pulled it open. Nestled inside was gorgeous necklace. A shiny chain with a large simple, impossibly shiny round diamond. Hannah saw it as though through a telescope, far away. A few seconds passed and Elliott reached for the box. “Turn around,” he instructed and she did.

His fingers carefully brushed her hair over one shoulder and then put the chain around her, clasping it with ease. He bent and kissed the back of her neck before brushing her hair back. At her long silence, Elliott spoke, a bit more surly than he planned. “Well do you like it?” As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t sounded so nasty. He had wanted to do something nice, to give her something that would make his intentions more clear. And she was looking at him like he had three heads.