Page 32 of Commit
I reach over and give her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Get some rest then. But make sure you eat all of that first. The last thing you need is to get sick too.”
She nods and picks up a strawberry, taking a bite before moaning in delight. Shit, I need to get out of here before I throw the plan out the window and fuck her blind.
“Come find me if you need me.” I stand and head for the door, stopping with my hand on the knob when she calls my name.
“Hudson?”
“Yeah?” I turn and look back at her.
“Thank you for looking after me,” she says softly.
“It was and always will be my pleasure, Birdie.”
I leave, closing the door behind me, and I head up to my room. I strip out of my clothes and lie on my bed naked with my phone and log into the cameras so I can watch her.
She eats the strawberries and the sandwich, but leaves the chips. I watch her drink the Coke and eat half of the chocolate bar before she sets the tray aside. She doesn’t take any of the painkillers, which I take as a good sign. Sometimes sleep really is the cure for everything.
When she climbs off the bed, she stretches, her top rising to show that band of skin around her belly that I want to trace with my tongue. I slide my hand down to my cock just as my phone rings. Kenzo’s face appears on my screen. I don’t know who the fuck attached a photo to his number, but it makes my cock deflate in a heartbeat.
With a sigh, I answer. “This better be good.”
“Define good?”
“Kenzo…” I warn, closing my eyes.
“Atlas asked me to look into your stripper.”
“She isn’t my anything,” I snap, sitting on the edge of the bed.
He carries on like he didn’t hear me. “She quit working at the club months ago.”
“Atlas mentioned she’d left.”
“I’m surprised he noticed.”
“If she wasn’t working, then what the fuck was she doing there in the first place?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, but maybe she didn’t go there of her own free will.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. You found something on the security footage?” I guess.
“No, that’s just it. There was fuck-all. Not one shot of Emma arriving at all.”
I rub my hand over my jaw. “I know most of the girls know where the cameras are for safety purposes. If they can see them, they can signal for help. But there’s no way she dodged all of them.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what? What does that mean?”
“It means that she didn’t walk in on her own two feet. When the cleanup crew arrived, Ed looked at the scene and said there wasn’t enough blood for her to have been carved up there.”
“So some motherfucker just walked into the club with a dead body slung over their shoulder?”
“Basically, yeah. We found a couple of possibilities, but I need you to come to the club to check them out and see if there’s anything about them that seems familiar.”
“I’m supposed to be off for a few weeks.”
“Yeah, well, suck it up, buttercup. Dead stripper trumps whatever it is you do on your time off.”