Chapter 8

• Carter
• I blink my eyes a few times, “Okay first off asshole, it’s too fucking early to be yelling at me and second, how the fuck am I stupid?”
• He grunts again, “Phil tells us that a woman beat the shit out of him and snuck off with information pertaining to you and you dip out of the event early and don’t tell me or anyone that you left and I find out from the gate security guards that you brought a woman back to the house with no one around to help you if shit hit the fan and you’re asking me how you are stupid!?”
• I’m about to hang up on him for continuing to yell at me, “Xander…shut the fuck up and stop yelling at me.”
• He sighs slightly, “Fine, I’ll stop yelling if you admit that you were a dumbass last night.”
• I roll my eyes, “Like I told you earlier this week, it will take a lot more than a single woman to bring me down, I don’t care how bad her vendetta is against me, and to top it off, there could have been plenty of opportunities for the woman that I brought back with me last night to off me and she didn’t, so I’m fine and you can stop having a conniption.”
• “What was the name of the woman you brought back with you last night? I want to make sure that we have tabs on everyone that you surround yourself with.”
• Xander is good at his job but sometimes he sounds like a nagging mother, “I don’t know her last name, but she has a unique first name, Amira.”
• He’s silent for a few seconds as I pull up to the warehouse, “Okay, I’ll look at the guest list to try and find her, and for the love of god can you keep your dick in your pants until we figure this shit out?”
• I turn off the car and the call audio goes to my phone, “Wow I haven’t heard that line since I was sixteen coming from my mother.”
• I hang up the phone as I walk towards the doors since Xander and Preston are inside and the second that I walk through the doors I see the frustrated look on Xander’s face.
• “You’re still a dumbass. No matter how you justify your horny actions.”
• I smirk at him as I put my jacket over one of the chairs, “Just because I am capable of detaching myself from the women I get involved with doesn’t mean you have to bitch and moan to me about my lifestyle.”
• He rolls his eyes at me as he brings me a cup of coffee, “It’s not that and you know it…it’s just that I really feel like we’re coming to a head on this and now isn’t the time to be making reckless decisions.”
• I sigh, I know he has a point and he’s looking out for me; he’s been looking out for me since we were kids and older kids would try and pick fights with me, we’ve been best friends for years and he always had my back, “I hear you; I will refrain from my promiscuous activities until we know who the mystery woman is.”
• He nods his head at me in a thankful manner and we get to business, although my mind keeps wanting to wander back to Amira, I have never thought about a woman this long after doing the ditch routine. When we fell asleep last night there was a sense of calm when she was sleeping peacefully beside me, I have never done sentimental things other than maybe aftercare if it was needed but…watching her sleep, running my fingers through her hair made me wonder if I didn’t want to keep her close for more than just one night. She’s clearly got a will stubborn enough to handle me but I don’t know if she could handle the life I lead, the bloody, gruesome and damned path that I willing chose for myself; I want to know more about her, if she has walls hiding things in her life that have molded her into the strong woman I saw last night.
• A few hours later I got a text message from Glenda saying that Amira left the estate and didn’t have any questions compared to other girls like when they might see me again and so on and so forth so that’s another way that sets her apart from everyone else dammit…I’m snapped out of my thoughts with the sound of Preston coming up next to me and handing me a folder with papers in it.
• “Amira Campbell, thirty years old, graduated summa cum laude at Cornell University with a bachelor’s in economics and-”
• I interrupt him, “And interpersonal communications, yes I know that she told me that last night.”
• I raise an eyebrow at him as he continues, “So she didn’t lie about that I suppose, it looks like she moved here when she was ten and went to a private school on the upper east side.”
• I flip through the pages and see a few pictures of her along with some of the honors that she graduated with and her private business information and then I peek up at Xander, “See, nothing wrong with her.”
• He rolls his eyes at me and goes back to what he’s looking over which is mostly just anything on the guy we got earlier this week but Preston sits down next to me with a laptop and clears his throat, “Phill gave me the footage from the house, there’s some from the outside of the house and footage of him getting has ass beat.”
• I chuckle slightly, “Alright, let’s see it.”
• He plays the footage and whoever this woman is has clearly been trained in stealth and tactical cover because I almost didn’t see her on the outside footage and if I had blinked I would have missed it. The camera angle doesn’t allow us to see how she slipped past his security system on the inside of the house and if the camera’s on the inside didn’t have nighttime sensors she probably would have slipped in and out with no problem and that was probably the only reason Phill caught her. Seeing him come down the stairs and practically being ambushed by her doesn’t surprise me on how she got the upper hand on him so quickly although I think after watching her kick the shit out of him I don’t think that even if he had seen her coming would he have had a chance against her.
• I rub my hand through my hair, “It’s hard to hear her on the video but do you think Val could try and work his tech magic and get some actual usable audio to try and figure out who she is?”
• Preston shrugs his shoulders slightly, “I will ask him, it might take him a few days or a week to figure it out.”
• I nod my head, “I think that is a reasonable timeline if he can give us something useful.”
• He nods his head and pulls out his phone to call Val and walks away from the table and I look at Xander, “Amira is gone from the house, how about you and I go see this Ethan guy?”
• He raises an eyebrow at me, “You want to interrogate him?
• I chuckle slightly, “Well I have a feeling I’m going to have to get more involved eventually if you are in fact correct and the end of this shitshow is starting to come to a head.”
• Xander gives me an agreeable look, “You’re not going to kill him are you? You know what happened the last time you handled an interrogation.”
• I roll my eyes and stand up to stretch slightly, “Yes I remember, I lost my temper and stuck a piping hot rod down the guys throat, sometimes the smell of burning meat in kitchen reminds me of that night.”
• I finish my coffee as Xander stands up as well, “Yeah, I think that because of that night I can’t stand any red meat cooked past medium.”
• I smirk at him and we head out the door so we can head back to the estate, I kind of wish Amira was still there but I push that thought far back into my mind because I don’t need that kind of distraction right now.