Logan (Wild Boys After Dark, #1)(23)
“I’ll be there.” Logan would never miss another dinner with their mother.
After they ended the call, Logan called his buddy Marco.
“Yo.” Marco Ortega was a mean son of a bitch with long black hair, tattoos on every inch of flesh save for his face and neck, and the kind of voice that made a man’s blood run cold. Marco had been in and out of jail for most of his twenties, which afforded him firsthand knowledge about the underworld of what goes on behind bars. He was one of those guys who were on the right side of the wrong side of the law, doing things that skirted the legal line, but always for good purpose.
“It’s me. I need a favor.” Logan filled Marco in on Mike Winters and hired him to tail Winters for the next four weeks. “I want to know everywhere he goes. Leave out no details. I wanna know when this guy takes a shit, got it?”
“Got it, boss.” Marco was loyal to Logan for many reasons, the least of which was that Logan had cleared his brother of a felony by tracking down the real perp when no one else had given a damn. “And if he goes near the bar or the girl?”
“Detain him until I can get there.”
His next call was to Dylan at the bar. Logan didn’t expect Dylan to spill his guts. Like the rest of the Wilds and Bads, he was one loyal son of a bitch, and by his reaction to Stormy last night, Logan assumed that stretched to her now as well.
“What took you so long?” Dylan knew him well.
“Had a few things to take care of. You working all day?”
“Yup. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“You know anything about her past?” Logan trusted Dylan to give him enough to go on, even if he didn’t want to breach Stormy’s confidence.
“Probably less than you know after the time you spent with her.”
He heard the smile in Dylan’s voice.
“One thing, Logan. I pay her in cash, and she mails half her earnings to someone back in Mystic.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw her doing it once and asked about it. She said she had a sick relative. That’s all I know.”
“Dyl, why’d you hire her?” The minute the words were out, he knew the answer and regretted asking.
“You know why.” Dylan’s family had had their own crisis long before Logan’s family had had theirs. Dylan had a younger sister who’d died when they were kids, and he had a soft spot for keeping women safe. “Logan, are you just messing with her? Because she’s been hurt enough.”
“Have you ever seen me walk a woman to work?” Logan shifted in his seat, still uncomfortable with the way his stomach got funky when he thought of Stormy.
Dylan laughed. “Didn’t want to call you on that.”
“Yeah, well, neither do I. Thanks for watching out for her, man. I gotta run.”
A few more phone calls and a little computer hacking allowed Logan to track the IP for the recipient of the SIM-card information collected from Stormy’s phone. Thank God Kutcher was a cheapskate and used shabby products. He’d made it child’s play for Logan to get the information he needed. After shutting down the ability of the tracker and making more phone calls, Logan arranged for Kutcher’s cell to be tossed.
With most of the annoying aspects of his morning taken care of, Logan scrolled to the picture of Stormy he’d taken outside of NightCaps. His stomach clenched at the palpable fear in her green eyes. They were eyes that had seen too much, and last night, when he’d seen her let go, a hint of the fear had remained. He wanted to wash that fear away, every last evil speck of it. Logan had seen people’s looks change once a threat was removed, and Stormy was already beautiful. He could only imagine how she’d look once he nailed that Kutcher bastard to the wall.
He uploaded the picture to Google Images and found four hits immediately. Her high school graduation photo. She was thicker then, curvier, and hell if her catlike eyes weren’t carefree and clear. Logan held on to that image as he wrote down her real name—Stella Krane—and the name of the high school she’d attended. Before now he’d have put the name Stella together with an older woman, stern and spindly. Funny how a face could change the connotation of a name, but in his mind, Stella Krane and Stormy were one sensual, strong woman.
“What is it about you, Stormy Krane?” He still couldn’t think of her as Stella. Not after having to dig up the information. When he’d earned her trust enough for her to tell him her real name, then and only then would he call her Stella.
He checked out a few of the other photos. Several were posted on the Facebook profile pages of girls who had gone to the same high school Stella had attended. She was smiling in all of them. What he wouldn’t give to see her smile like that. He surfed the Facebook images for a while and found one linked to a Mystic Messenger newspaper article about Stella’s mother, Judy Krane. It was an announcement for a fundraiser to help with Judy’s medical bills. Cancer. Fucking cancer. No wonder she sent money home. He pushed back from the computer and pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking of the little sister Dylan had lost. Life was full of ass kickers. Logan was going to make damn sure that Stormy got back to her mother, even if he had to take Kutcher out himself.
An hour later Logan stood in Stormy’s kitchen feeling as though he were peering into her private life where he shouldn’t be. If she were a client and he needed to gather clues, this might be typical. But Logan didn’t sleep with clients, and Stormy wasn’t a client. He forced himself not to think of her as the woman who was stirring up all sorts of emotions in him and did his best to put his feelings aside and turn on his private-investigator instincts.