The Men with the Golden Cuffs (Masters and Mercenaries #2)(48)

“I think she might have a new big bad Dom. I saw the way Jake was looking at her.” Liam sat down on the edge of the desk. “You two planning on double-teaming the girl?”

That was the plan. He actually felt a little bad for Jake. It wouldn’t be easy for him to keep his hands off Serena. He would most likely end up with f*cking blue balls. “We’ve been playing it slow and easy with this one. I like her.”

Liam nodded. “I like her, too. She’s an odd one, but I like her openness. I think Jake’s in as deep as you are. Are you absolutely certain she doesn’t have anything to do with this?”

Adam groaned. He was sick of this question. “Yes. I’m sure.”

Liam held his hands up. “I’m not judging the girl. People can have a lot of reasons to pull a stunt like this. I ain’t some perfect man. I don’t expect a woman to be perfect either. I’m just saying that Jake’s got a chip on his shoulder about honesty, and if he finds out she’s been lying, it won’t go so pretty for either of you.”

If there was one thing Adam was certain of it was that Serena was scared of this person. She wouldn’t be scared if she was doing it herself. “I’m sure about Serena.”

Liam went quiet for a minute and then looked at the computer, his eyes squinting as he read the code. “I’m glad you’re sure, man. I got a couple of things that bug me about this case. I read through Evie’s profile. She’s a bit confused, I think.”

“She says this guy must be bipolar.” He hoped somewhere out there the * was getting back on his f*cking meds.

Liam’s head shook. “She said she thought he must be since the notes and e-mails are so radically different. But I was actually thinking something else. I knew this girl back in Ireland. She had a—what do you call it here? You know, when a guy ain’t got the balls to tell a girl he wants in her pants?”

“Secret admirer,” Adam replied.

“I call them pussies. Anyway, this friend of mine started getting chocolates and then dirty notes. Not the bad kind. The kind that got her hot under the collar, if you know what I mean. So she was thinking that he was trying to play both sides with her. The notes with the chocolates were real sweet, all about love and how pretty she was, and then the other ones were just about f*cking. Well, she thought she’d hit the jackpot.”

Adam could see where this was going. “It was two guys, right?”

“Oh, yes. One was a boy who sat next to her in science class, and the other was his * best friend who had made a bet as to which one she would prefer. She told everyone she wasn’t interested in either one, but she made arrangements to meet with the dirty boy after school let out. He was a dumb shit. Had to marry the girl eight weeks later. Now they have four kids, and he drinks too much. Really, he’s living the dream. But my point is, she didn’t know it was two men. She simply responded to the darker side of what she assumed was one man.”

Adam looked up from his work. “How do you know she thought it was only one man? She could have figured it out. Someone could have told her.”

“Because I was the dumbass kid who sent her the chocolates. She talked to me about it. She told me she liked the chocolates, but she really liked the bad boy side of her admirer.” Liam’s fingers drummed along the surface of the desk, his mouth frowning.

“You think this could be two people?” Adam hadn’t considered it. It seemed far too coincidental. Some celebrities had multiple stalkers, but Serena wasn’t well known.

Liam shrugged. “I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I would say these are different people.” He opened the folder and pulled out copies of the notes Serena had been sent. “This one likes to use the internet. And she talks about the work. She’s mad about the characters. And quite frankly, she sounds like a nagging woman. When I picture this one, I see a shut-in who probably has multiple cats and gets more invested in fictional characters than in the world around her. The point is, she’s pissed that her favorite characters didn’t do what she wanted them to. She talks about that, not about Serena herself.”

A good point. “But couldn’t she have just gotten mad enough to hate Serena?”

Liam shrugged. “Then why keep going back to it? Look, there’s a pattern. It’s all about these characters in her new book until roughly two weeks ago. Then the really nasty stuff started. Then it shifts to attacks on Serena herself. The person who wrote those notes hates her as a writer and as a woman. The attacks get vicious and personal. And it feels like this is a man. Listen to the way he talks. He talks about her tempting men. He talks about sin and judgment. This person doesn’t read her books. He hates them.”

But Eve had explained how this could happen. “Look, if this chick or guy or whoever is off their meds, she could careen wildly. She could behave almost like two different people.”

“You know I love Evie, but she’s always looking for the most interesting mental problems. I think she’s overthinking it in this case. She’s looking for zebras when she should be looking for horses—two to be exact. It’s two people you’re looking for. Just think about it. I think you have two perps, one dangerous and one a whackadoodle who probably wants to talk Serena to death. The key is going to be catching the dangerous one while not getting distracted by the whack job.”