Hannah, what the fuck did he do to you, honey?
"Dylan! Are you still there?" Derek's voice boomed in his ear.
"Yeah, I'm here. I have eyes on the jerk and his newest victim."
"Good. Stay back. He's already had his goons put you in the hospital once. We don't need a repeat performance."
"I couldn't give a fuck about that. It's these women I care about. Every day that goes by, more innocents are getting hurt."
His brother sighed. "I wish this wasn't your first assignment with us. I admire how much you care, I do. But you have to stay detached. You can't make this personal or you'll make mistakes. It already got your ass kicked once. It's a job."
"You wouldn't say that if Davenport had Rachel... or Mom. I'm not like you, Derek. I can't make this impersonal. You aren't here to see how afraid some of these women are. You aren't here to watch them limp out after surviving God-only-knows-what fucked-up shit goes on inside his house or his warehouse."
"You're right. I'm not there... yet. But I will be by the morning. You've done good, but you're getting too close."
Davenport was pulling out and Dylan waited a respectable amount of time before following. He'd been trading in his rental car every day to keep mixing it up, but he suspected Davenport knew he was still under surveillance.
He returned his attention to the phone conversation. "Listen, he's moving in on women I know for a fact are innocent. He's been working on a bartender at the Four Seasons for a few weeks, and tonight she was his latest victim. I just had the pleasure of watching a beautiful young woman go into his house of horrors and come back out four hours later limping, her clothes awry, and looking like she's gone through hell. So am I getting too close? Fuck yeah. The question is, what the hell is wrong with you and Mitchell that you aren't?"
"You don't know shit about it," Derek said.
"So enlighten me. Why is this asshole even on your radar? He's in California. You all are in Chicago."
"Let's just say he has ties to Chicago and leave it at that. Follow. Take photos. Document. That's it. If you can't do that, just go back to the damn rental house."
Dylan merged into traffic, relieved Davenport appeared to be taking Hannah home and not to his warehouse. They may not know exactly what went on in his warehouse in the seedy part of town, but Dylan knew enough that a good girl like Hannah didn't belong there.
"Fine. I'll just follow, but things need to change tomorrow. We need a lot less watching and a lot more action around here."
"And you need to be patient."
"Fuck patience. I want vengeance."
"All in good time. Tomorrow." The call dropped.
Twenty minutes later, Dylan watched as Jake dropped Hannah off at her small duplex apartment. He pretended to be a gentleman by opening her car door and escorting her to the door. Dylan wanted to scream when Davenport pushed his way inside her apartment. He had his hand on the car door latch to jump out and follow the two inside when Davenport left a minute later to stalk back to his sports car and drive away.
Dylan debated going up and knocking on her door to see if she was okay, but in the end, he knew he'd only scare her more. He'd only talked to her a few times at the Four Seasons bar when he'd trailed Davenport inside. Something about the petite woman called out to his protective side. She tried to project this tough exterior, but he'd seen a vulnerability in her that made him want to wrap her up in bubble wrap and protect her at all costs. Now that he'd been trailing Jake Davenport for a few weeks, he understood it was that exact vulnerability that Davenport noticed in her, too. The difference between the men was that Dylan wanted to protect her—Jake wanted to exploit her.
When Davenport took off in the direction of the warehouse, Dylan put his car in gear to follow. He'd be patient for one more night.
Lukus
Lukus crossed to the coffee maker and poured the last cup of burnt coffee into his Stanford University mug. He was running on only a few hours of sleep, but he was too wired to slow down.
They'd been lucky to find a furnished townhouse available for rent by the month, and turned it into their west coast war room. It was