His to Take (Wicked Lovers #9)(3)
Author: Shayla Black

Joaquin frowned. “Do I look like a pussy?”

“Hey!” Logan objected.

Hunter barked out a laugh. “Ms. Thang likes cream in his coffee.”

“Fuck you both,” he groused.

“No thanks.” Against his will, the brothers amused Joaquin. He missed this banter and camaraderie. Nate had been a great friend, probably the closest thing he’d ever have to a brother. Joaquin still couldn’t believe he was gone. The loss fueled him with fury all over again.

He shoved the blinding anger down and focused on the case. Nate had done the same until his dying breath.

“So what’s going on?” Hunter asked, filling the mugs with hot brew and sliding them across the counter.

Letting out a breath, Joaquin settled onto a bar stool and leaned in, elbows surrounding his steaming cup.

“I have”—shit—“I had a friend. I worked with him before he left to become a P.I. He took this case . . . A young woman came in, saying she felt as if someone was following her. She never saw anyone, but ‘knew’ she was being watched. According to my pal, Nate, she wasn’t involved with anyone and she couldn’t think of any enemies. Even though he thought she was a bit paranoid, he took the case. It was a buck.” Joaquin shrugged. “Then . . . about thirty-six hours later, he couldn’t find her anywhere. No one had seen or heard a thing. She simply failed to report to work. So he called the cops. Her place had been turned upside down. Signs of struggle were everywhere, but no unidentified prints. No DNA. Nothing. The next day, she turned up dead. Tortured hideously before she died.” He flashed them the crime scene photo on his phone.

Logan grimaced. “Then?”

“Nate was a good guy,” Joaquin said, pocketing his mobile. “He thought he’d let this girl down. He was determined to figure out what he’d overlooked and solve her murder. He went through all her records. Financials looked good. Nothing wrong at work. Her phone records were pretty clean, just one number he looked into. But it turned out to be a burner phone, so IDing who it belonged to was as ineffectual as porn in a roomful of blind men.”

Hunter snorted. “After that? ’Cause it doesn’t sound like Nate is with you anymore.”

“No.” Joaquin clenched a fist and tried to breathe through the fresh grief. “He called the number. Got nothing. Didn’t leave a message. He asked me to see what I could find out. I did and I got an earful.”

“Earful?” Hunter prompted. “If you couldn’t trace it—”

“NSA.” He shrugged. Normally, Joaquin wouldn’t tell anyone what he did or who he worked for, but if he wanted help, he was going to have to be uncomfortably forthcoming.

“That clears up the mystery,” Hunter commented. “Kata has always wondered. Go on.”

Joaquin spared them the boring history lesson about his previous few jobs. He’d worked for different fingers within Uncle Sam’s tight grip. The NSA had simply been the latest.

“I tapped into the signal. And the conversation I heard between these two men shocked the fuck out of me. I tried to call Nate and tell him that he was onto something dangerous.” He cleared his throat, wondering why it was clogged suddenly. Had to be his damn allergies. “He didn’t answer, so I went to his house. He’d been shot execution style.”

The scene had been branded in his memory. Nate’s hands tied behind his back and his brains splattered all around him. Joaquin choked on a violent urge for vengeance. He’d repay these assholes, no matter what it took.

“Shit,” Logan muttered.

“I must have interrupted whoever killed him. They’d started digging into his office, but hadn’t touched the rest of the house yet. Given what I’d heard, his murder coinciding with this woman’s wasn’t random.”

Logan cursed. “Did you find something yourself? Turn the evidence over?”

“I found a treasure trove of shit Nate had recently dug up. I swiped it from the crime scene and took it to my superiors at the NSA. I was told to stop using all the cool gadgets at work for my personal shit. Murder isn’t their jurisdiction, so if what I found didn’t involve eavesdropping on potential terrorists at home, I should drop it.”

“But you didn’t.” Hunter didn’t know him well, but the guy understood him enough not to phrase his reply as a question.

Joaquin scoffed. “No. A woman was mutilated so badly they had to use the serial numbers on her breast implants to identify her. My best”—and only—“friend is dead. From what I’d overheard, none of that was going to stop.”