she’d been. And how furious he was at whoever was playing games with them.
How furious he was at himself.
He’d fucking promised to protect Cara, and instead he’d allowed someone to get close while they’d been dancing and endanger her yet again. As she’d pointed out before, she seemed to be the most vulnerable when she was with him, and as such, maybe if she went away for a while, she’d be off the madman’s radar long enough for Branden to figure out what the hell was going on. That was the only reason he’d arranged for her things to be packed and left her that note. He’d also arranged for Dexter Howe—a member of his security team and a former cop who was a tough-looking son of a bitch with deadly hand-to-hand skills, as well as sniper training—to watch over her, just in case. So far, Howe had spotted no threats to Cara.
“I checked interior security video,” Lee said. “You were right. Someone went through the company computers to send those emails. Either that, or we’re dealing with a freaking ghost or the Invisible Man, because the cameras picked up nothing.”
“What else?”
“Cara’s the only one who’s received the video so far.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Deena created a portal so we can view everything that comes in to Dubois servers when she’s not around. I can do that here or remotely. And that video hasn’t shown up.”
“Not anywhere?”
“No. She also set up auto-monitoring for Web mentions of your name, photos, things like that. The Deets thing is permanently gone and the HotnSaucey clip is, too. There’s absolutely nothing new out there.”
“At least there’s that.” It was also a double-edged sword. Because it confirmed that whoever had made that video was focusing all his insanity on Cara.
Suddenly, keeping away from her didn’t seem the wisest course.
The thought of losing her…
God, when was he going to catch a break here?
“What about the DNA test? Any word yet from the lab Gaunt recommended?”
“Not yet. He told me he was going to rush it, but it would probably be the end of the week at best.”
“What about the background on Rafe Sampson?”
“That’s a little more interesting,” Lee told him. “He was raised in Scarsdale and both of his parents were in the home until he was four. At that time, he got into an accident and he lost a lot of blood. As it turned out, his “father,” or at least the man who was on the birth certificate, didn’t have the right blood type. There was no way that his mother and stand-in-father’s combined blood types could have created his. Daddy left the nest not long after. When little Rafe was a teenager, he tracked his dad down. Apparently, Mom hadn’t told him that she was the one who broke up the marriage. She’d let him believe it was Dad. Dad was more than happy to tell him that he wasn’t his father. You were right about Sampson reminding you about Davis. His biological father was a man named Carl, who his mother worked for when she first got married.”
“So Davies is his father. I guess the DNA test will just confirm that. Do you know if he ever contacted him?”
“Rafe finished high school, and then moved on to Columbia on a full-ride scholarship. The summer of his senior year was when the scandal happened with Davies and Cara’s father. It’s possible that the press from that alerted him to where Davies was and who he was with at the time.”
“My mother,” Branden said.
“Do you want me to go get him and bring him in for a talk?”
“Not yet. All I can really do is accuse him of photographing me. We need more than that. I want to bring the bastard and his bastard of a father down. But right now, I need you to do something even more important for me, Lee. It involves Cara Michal.”
When Cara got to her own apartment, she called Iris.
“Hey, are you working tonight?” she asked.
“Just got off. How’s your big, strong, protective man doing? God, the way he laid that guy flat was so darn sexy.”
“Violence isn’t supposed to be sexy.”
“Oh come on, Cara. You can be so uptight sometimes. It’s not about the violence. That blowhard needed to be popped in the mouth and Branden took care of it. That means something. Men don’t do that for women unless they care a lot about them.”