The Men with the Golden Cuffs (Masters and Mercenaries #2)(70)

“You should shelve the innocent girl routine, though. Really, it gets old fast. The whole quiet and shy thing is a little boring, sweetheart. You would make a much better slut.”

Her hand came out in a vicious arc as she slapped him right across the face. Pain flared and something deep inside was satisfied that at least he’d gotten a rise out of her.

“Show me the tape or I will sue all of you. Do you understand me? I won’t stand here and let you talk to me like that. I know that I’m the one who put it in your head that I’m some sort of doormat, but I never did anything to deserve this from you. Now show me the tape.”

Her voice shook. Everything inside Jake told him that she was being brave, that she was holding some well of sadness deep inside, and it was taking everything she had not to break down here and now. If he followed his dumbass instincts, he would pull her into his arms and promise her that everything would be all right, and he would take care of her and beg her forgiveness. But f*ck it all, she couldn’t explain away that tape.

“Here.” Adam held out a bag of ice he’d rolled in a dish towel.

“I’m fine.” Her voice was back to the flat monotone it had been before she’d slapped the shit out of him. “Give it to Jake. His face looks a little red.”

Adam’s eyes widened. “What happened? Holy shit. Did you hit Jake?”

“I took offense to him calling me a slut. I think he was looking out for you. He goaded me into smacking him. Now if I sue you like the greedy bitch I apparently am, he can sue me right back. Mutually assured destruction.”

Adam’s eyes closed, and he took a long breath before he opened them again. “Why don’t we all sit down and talk this out?”

Serena shook her head. “That option is no longer on the table. It was off the table the minute you looked at me like a piece of trash this morning. There’s nothing to talk about anymore, Adam. Just show me the tape and give me my phone and I’ll leave.”

It was exactly what Jake wanted. He wanted her out of his life. Except that the thought kind of made him want to vomit. The idea of not seeing her again was a gaping wound in his chest. He didn’t really want her to walk out. He wanted her on her f*cking knees in front of him, begging his forgiveness. He wanted to force her to work for it, and while he would never really forgive her, he would take her back into his bed because he was f*cking addicted to her. He would screw her until she didn’t have this hold on him, and then he would show her the door.

The trouble was he wasn’t sure he would ever get over her. Serena Brooks had proven to him once and for all time that he hadn’t been in love with Jennifer. He knew that now because he was sickeningly sure he loved Serena.

And he would just have to get over it.

He forced himself to turn and cue up the tape. Client. She was just a client who had lied and gotten caught. He had to think of her that way. He couldn’t think about how good it had felt to slide into the silky heat of her body or how she’d wrapped herself around him, clinging to him like he was the only thing that mattered in the whole world.

Jake forced himself to use his most professional voice. “So you know we got the CCTV tapes from two of the libraries where the e-mail messages came from?”

She nodded, her eyes on the screen. “Yes, you were looking for someone who was at the library at the same time the message was sent. You have two libraries and two messages. If you find the same person at both libraries at the right times, you’ll have a place to start.”

Adam put the bag of ice down, obviously unwilling to fight with her about it. He sighed and switched the feed to the large screen. The black and white tape began playing. The important tape had come from a library in Hurst where the camera was on patrons both entering and leaving the library. “You can see that the tapes are time stamped, so we were looking at the hours before and after the e-mail was sent. It can be hard to catch faces, but I set us up with some really advanced facial recognition software. It looks for similar facial structures based on math. I set it to run before we went to bed.”

He’d set it to run before he’d gone and f*cked Serena’s brains out. Now Jake wished he’d been a little less giving. He could have forced his way in. Adam would have let him. He could have had one more night with her.

“Here it is.” He slowed the tape down.

“I don’t recognize that person.” Serena peered down, her eyes narrowing on the lone figure. The person, obviously female, walked into the library, a huge bag on her shoulder. She wore sunglasses, her figure hidden by a long coat. She stopped in the middle of the lobby and pulled out her phone. She pushed the sunglasses off her face. She smiled as she placed the call, her face turning right toward the camera.

Jake studied Serena carefully, and he felt a punch to his gut as her eyes widened and her mouth dropped.

“That’s Lara.” Her hand came up over her mouth, covering it. She shook her head. “You’re wrong. This doesn’t prove anything.”

“She showed up at the Irving library, too.” He held up her phone. “Would you like to know who she’s calling here?”

Serena had gone stark white, all the color draining from her skin. “I’m sure it was me. It has to be, right?”

“You don’t clean off your messages.” Jake pushed the button and the message played.