Page 31 of Devil's Retribution
I felt badly for her, but quashed my pity and looked at her firmly. “Come, get something to eat. We will take the matter up again when we have more privacy.”
She gave me a strange look then, one I hadn’t been expecting. An odd mixture of longing, resentment, fear... and something else. If circumstances had been different, I might have suspected desire.
But all she said was, “Understood.”
I nodded and she sat down in the middle of the couch again, leaving one end to me and one to her nephew. “Did I miss anything besides Minecraft and the burrito order?’
“Not really,” I said flatly. “As it is, we are monitoring both his accounts and his images online. His wealth protects him to some extent, but he’s going to have some difficulty with it soon enough.”
She tensed slightly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Later.”
My burrito was stuffed with grilled steak chunks, salsa, avocado, rice, beans, and cheese. A calorie fest that I would need a few days to properly burn off at the gym. It would have been easier with a lover—given enough inspiration, I could have burned off all my extra calories in half that time with her.
I realized I was gazing at Emma speculatively as she ate and quickly turned my gaze back to my food.
She was as attractive as ever, something I grew more aware of with every hour I spent with her. But given how we’d met, and that she was still technically my captive, I was doing my best not to look like I planned to take advantage. The idea of being that kind of creep, or even looking that way, disgusted me.
Still, I wanted her. I wanted the fear and the control and this whole situation to be over and done with, so I could contemplate having her in my arms without feeling like a monster. And then...”
“What is it?” she asked me quietly. I suddenly realized that I had gone back to staring at her and she had caught me.
“It’s nothing,” I lied. It wasn’t. Not at all.
In my mind, the image of her bare, curvaceous body, her glossy hair, her lips parted with desire, rose up to tease me again. Behave yourself, I demanded of that part of me, but of course, I was already flushed with heat, and hard as a rock. Hopefully she wouldn’t notice either.
I would have to be strong to be gentle with this one. This was no time for desire. I couldn’t afford to scare her off for the sake of a roll in the hay.
***
Within half an hour, Nick had eaten his way into a food coma and Emma was gently shuffling him off to an early bedtime. He protested in a low, whiny voice, but Emma was having none of it. “No you don’t, sweetie, you’re back at Uncle Charles’s in your own bed, time to catch up on some sleep.”
They disappeared into the room, and I stood back, listening, still half wary of an escape attempt. I had been as lenient with them as I could afford, but that didn’t make me incautious. I knew what might happen if I let my attention stray for too long. For all the justice in my intentions and for all my desire to keep this from destroying Emma and the boy, I was still the big, scary man who had them in hand, and meant to kill their relative.
Ten minutes later, she came out with a small smile on her face, closing the door behind her. “Out like a light.”
I nodded. “Good. There are discussions we need to have without the presence of little ears.”
“I guess I should thank you for that.” She licked her lips and looked away from me uncomfortably. “You said you wanted to get started looking for things around here.”
“I do.” I gestured toward Charles’s study. “I have a specialist who can get into his computer, but a man his age usually keeps a great deal of his files offline.”
“That’s always been the case with Charles,” she murmured. “He didn’t really understand or trust computers so much. He got passably good at some things, but trying to teach him anything beyond that was like pulling teeth.”
I lifted my eyebrows as I opened the door to the study. “You handled that?”
“Some of it, yes. Once I left, he was pretty much on his own except for the staff. I haven’t heard from any of them, thinking about it.”
His staff. Of course. A man like Charles never did anything or himself that he could get away with foisting on someone else. I made a mental note to have my men track them down and bring them in for questioning. Probably under the pretense of being law enforcement. “Has he ever been in any kind of legal trouble?”
“No.” She moved past me into the room, considering the filing cabinet that lined one entire wall of the study. “Not that he ever allowed me to be aware of, I mean. He could have done something before I was born.” She put her hands on the top cabinet drawer. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“We’ll start with any overseas real estate,” I replied. “Anywhere he might run and hide beyond local reach.” We still hadn’t managed to get a flight plan for him, which troubled me. The fact that he was making his escape so efficiently, only strengthened my resolve to catch him and make him pay.
She nodded and started digging through the filing cabinet, while I turned my attention to the computer. “Hmm. Now you said you taught him most of his computer skills. Is there any chance that you have his password?”
“No, but I may be able to guess it.” Her voice betrayed her tension. I smiled faintly, but she only tensed a bit more.