Colters' Gift (Colters' Legacy #5)(46)

Once he got past the initial astonishment of how detailed the information was, he focused in on the client names.

“Holy f**k,” he murmured.

“What?” Seth demanded.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Liam asked in disbelief.

“What?” Dillon and Michael both bit out.

“I doubt the names would mean anything to you,” Noah explained. “Well, some of them would. There are quite a few celebrities listed. Movie stars, pro athletes, entertainers.”

“Where?” Dillon asked, shoving in so he could see the screen.

Noah pointed to several well-known names.

“I’ll be damned,” Dillon murmured. “These are the ass**le’s clients? Men who used women for sex?”

“Women they paid for sex,” Liam said grimly. “Though I doubt the women pocketed nearly what Knight charged. His fees are exorbitant.”

“I’m more interested in these names,” Noah said, tapping the top of the screen.

“That one’s a judge.” He dropped his finger down two lines. “That one’s an aide to the mayor. This one is a state senator from New York. And this one is the one who most concerns me. This one is the police commissioner. Lauren said he had several cops on his payroll. It’s more likely he has blackmail material, and they make damn sure nothing touches Knight because if he goes down, he brings them all with him.”

“Fuck.”

The expletive exploded from Liam as he stood bristling with anger next to Noah.

“This sounds big,” Michael muttered.

“Yeah, it’s huge,” Seth said grimly.

Noah opened another of the files, and there was a list of the women on Knight’s payroll. Real names, social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers and background information.

What drew Noah’s alarm was that there was a list of family members, friends, even neighbors. Detailed information on the women’s personal lives, where they liked to vacation, hang out, the salons they used. It was clear that Knight kept his women firmly under his thumb and that once they went to work for him, there was no escaping.

As he studied it closer, his mouth dropped open. There were notations out to the side of some of the women’s names that sounded ominous.

Situation taken care of.

No longer poses a problem for the organization.

Went to police. Threat eliminated.

Noah turned to Seth. “Is there any way you can discreetly run these names and details of the women with these notations and see if they’re still alive? And if they aren’t, find out date of death and circumstances? Because it sure as hell looks to me like he made notes on the women he killed or had killed.”

Seth’s expression was grim. “Yeah, print it off for me. I’ll do what I can.”

Dillon perched on the edge of the desk, angled so he could see Noah and Liam.

“What does this do for Lauren’s safety?”

“It damn sure doesn’t help,” Liam growled.

“She wants to go to New York and turn in the disk. She wants to nail Joel Knight’s ass to the wall,” Noah said.

“Shit,” Seth swore.

“She took Suki’s death very hard,” Noah continued.

“Suki?” Michael asked.

“She’s the woman Liam and I talked to and who was beaten to death the day after,” Noah replied. “Lauren blames herself. Said that if she’d gone to the police when she left Joel instead of running here to hide that Suki would be alive.”

“That’s crazy,” Dillon bit out. “She’d probably be dead herself. He would have gotten to her before Max ever got there.”

“Exactly,” Liam said. “But she has it in her head that she’s to blame and she wants to rectify the situation by going to New York and handing over the disk to the authorities.”

Seth rubbed a hand over his hair. “Does Max know about any of this?”

Noah shook his head. “We came straight here. I wanted to see what was on the disk before I made any decisions with regard to Lauren.”

“He’s going to flip out,” Michael said.

Liam leveled a stare at Seth. “What do you think, Seth? What are our options here? We have to be careful who we trust. We can’t just ignore the issue. It’s not going to go away. And the minute we relax our guard, that’s when that bastard will show up. For all we know he has someone looking for Lauren now. It’s obvious by looking at his records that he doesn’t take kindly to women leaving the fold. I can only imagine how personally he took it that a woman he considered his possession walked out on him.”

Seth nodded his lips drawn into a grim line. “I agree. From everything you’ve told me about him and from what Max has said, I’m inclined to agree that he’s not going to just forget about Lauren and move on. Which means you’ll always have to be looking over your shoulder unless something is done to stop him.”

“I think we should contact the district attorney and set up a meeting,” Noah said. “On our terms. We name the place and we prepare for the worst-case scenario, which is that the D.A. is dirty and the meeting is a setup to take Lauren out. We make damn sure she’s protected and that he’s on the up-and-up before we let him talk to her. And at no time do we give him any details about where Lauren is now or give him any of her family’s names.”