Their Virgin Hostage, Masters of Ménage, Book 5 (25 page)

She reached down and grabbed the shirt.

Riley snatched it away. “You don’t need clothes to wake them
up.”

Her face contorted in the sweetest little frown. “I thought
we were switching to business mode.”

She was under some mistaken impressions. “Business mode does
not mean clothes for you, sweetheart.” He grabbed the shirt. “I think better
when you’re naked. Look at what playing around did. Hell, if you’re naked all
the time, I might solve world hunger.”

She giggled. “Solve mine, at least. I’ll do everything you
ask if you just finish making that sandwich. I’ll be back, but I can’t say I
won’t be dressed. It’s Alaska. If you want me walking around in my birthday
suit, next time kidnap me and take me to Hawaii.”

She turned away, and he watched the hottest ass on earth
sway out of the room. His cock leapt right back to attention, but he tucked
himself into his jeans because he had a job to do.

As she turned down the hall, it hit him that if he was
right, though his time with her had just started, it was almost over. He would
have to go back to the real world. And he would lose her there.

Sometimes it wasn’t so great to be smart.

Law looked down at the tablet. There was a perfectly sweet
photograph of
Kinley
and Annabelle. They were
standing in a gazebo, each smiling and holding wine glasses together as if toasting
one other.
Kinley
was in a yellow sundress, and Law
couldn’t take his eyes off her.

How was this photograph on
Kinley’s
tablet the key to nailing Jansen?

“Who took this, sweetheart?” Riley asked her.

Law looked between the two of them and wanted to ask some
questions of his own. When
Kinley
had come into the
bedroom to wake him, she’d been completely naked. He’d reached for her, intent
on drawing her back to bed, but she’d explained that Riley wanted to talk to
them because his righteously geeky brother had figured out some computer stuff.

He was pretty damn sure she hadn’t gotten dressed, talked to
Riley, and then taken off her clothes just to wake them up. His brother might
like technology, but he also liked their women naked. Something had happened between
Riley and
Kinley
, and Law wanted to celebrate.

But now he had to deal with a bunch of techno crap he didn’t
really understand.

On the bright side,
Kinley
was
naked. His brother had totally called that right.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t wear a robe or something?”
Kinley
asked, crossing her arms over her breasts.

Dominic sat at the kitchen table, crossing one leg over the
other as he looked at her with approval. He, like Law, had put on a pair of
sweatpants. “You don’t need clothes. I turned the heater up. If you need
someone to warm you, you’re welcome to sit on my lap while Riley gives us his
very likely to be long and technological explanation. It will be boring. We
need something to liven up the discussion. Your breasts will do nicely.”

A surprised little grin brightened her face. “Those will
enliven the discussion?”

Hell, yes.
“Baby,
your everything livens up the discussion. Now answer Riley and stop hiding your
breasts. When you put your hands over them, we just look at your pussy and that
fabulous ass of yours.”

Kinley
gave an embarrassed laugh
and rolled her gorgeous brown eyes. But it worked. She visibly relaxed as she
leaned over and glanced at the picture on the tablet. “Greg took that one.
What’s evil about that picture?” She frowned. “Huh. I don’t remember adding
that one, actually. Can you scroll through them all? I didn’t load this
tablet.”

Riley gave her a little “gotcha” smile. “Jansen did, didn’t
he?”

“Yes,” she murmured. “It was a gift from him. I’m kind of
technologically idiotic. I can use my phone to make calls and text, but other
than that, I’m lost. Greg bought my phone, too. Do you think my emoticons are
evil?”

Law stifled a laugh. When he’d been California Mike,
Kinley
had texted him many times. She ended every single
message with a flurry of smiley faces and thumbs-up symbols. He’d kept every
single one.

“Since that’s a readily available app, your emoticons should
be safe. So Jansen loaded the photos?” Riley asked.

“He loaded everything. I gave him a list of the books I
wanted. After I’d read those, I figured out how to buy more, but the last time
I tried, the device gave me a message that I didn’t have room, so I had someone
in my office teach me how to archive my books. Do I have a virus?”

Law sent his brother a long look. He had a feeling Riley was
on the right track. He wasn’t the technophile Riley was, but even he knew that
it was damn hard to fill up a tablet with nothing but forty books, a couple of
games, and some photos. There should be tons of space left. She didn’t have any
video on the system to eat up her memory. No audio, either.

“You don’t have a virus, but you do have a rat fink
bastard,” Law growled. He hated Jansen more and more every single minute.

Riley nodded at him, then turned to
Kinley
,
reaching out for her. She took his hand, and he tugged lightly, pulling her
into his lap.

Yeah, something had definitely happened.
Kinley
seemed awfully comfortable naked in Riley’s lap, and he wrapped his arms around
their bare bundle of femininity with an air of familiarity. Law might not have
to worry about losing his brother after all.

He glanced over at Dominic, who looked both as surprised and
pleased as he was.

“Pet, you amaze me.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t do anything.”

Dominic nodded at her perched on Riley’s lap. “Are you sure?”

Kinley
blushed, and Riley utterly
ignored him, though he tightened his arm around
Kinley’s
waist, pulling her closer.

Then Riley was all business again, pointing at the screen
with his free hand. “It’s all about these photographs. Everything we need is in
here. It’s called steganography.”

Kinley
frowned. “Like
stegosaurus?”

Dominic shook his head, his affection for
Kinley
visible. “No, pet, it’s not a dinosaur. Quite the
contrary, this is on the cutting edge of criminal practices.”

“I’m going to kill that fucker,” Law snarled.

Jansen was willing to let
Kinley
carry his fucking criminal banking information? He was going to die and slowly.
Technology might be Riley’s forte. Dominic might be the money behind their
operation. But Law was the muscle, and that meant he got to kill Greg Jansen.
He knew just how he’d do it, too. He was going to eviscerate the son of a
bitch, but not so much that he died immediately. Oh, no. He wanted to make sure
Jansen suffered for a nice long time.

“Killing aside,” Riley interrupted Law’s vivid fantasy,
“steganography is the act of hiding secret messages in seemingly innocent data.
You see this picture as a whole, but the computer sees it as a series of data
bytes. What criminals do is imbed their information in the very fabric of
whatever they’re corrupting. In this instance, Jansen is hiding his financials
in these photos.”

Kinley
frowned at Riley. “All I
see is a picture.”

Riley clicked a few keys and an entirely different screen
came up. “That’s because you have to know how to extract the code. And there it
is.”

Kinley
gasped. “That looks like an
accounting report. Like one of
my
accounting reports.”

Dominic cursed. “Well, now we know where he put the second
set of books to
Kinley’s
charity. What does it say,
Riley?”

“That Hope House is doing just fine. He’s had a mole in your
organization for about a year as far as I can tell. He’s the one who made you
think your charity was going under. You have an employee named Fred Buck who
sent through these records.” Riley scrolled through the files with a scowl.

“Yes. He was in charge of my donations. Are you saying I
have more than I thought I had?”
Kinley
put a hand to
her mouth. “I feel so stupid.”

Law reached for her. “You aren’t stupid. Baby, they played
you. You couldn’t have known. He sent this guy in before you had even met him.
He selected you as his target, and you didn’t have a chance. I bet Jansen swept
you off your feet, then arranged one distraction after another from the
charity.”

He knew how Jansen worked. He’d seen a ploy like that
before. The last thing he wanted was for
Kinley
to
beat herself up with guilt.

“He absolutely swept me off my feet. Two days after I met
him, he took me on a date to Paris. We spent a week there. In separate rooms,
but I’d never been. I’d never taken the time before. It was so different.”

“He knew how to dazzle you,” Dominic said. “I understand
that Alaska isn’t Paris, but we brought you with us for the right reasons. I
want you to think about that when the tabloids start gossiping about us.”

Law followed Dominic’s line of thinking, and he was in
complete agreement. “Yes. We didn’t play you properly at all.”

Kinley
smiled slightly. “You
didn’t have to. You took off your shirts.”

Dominic and Riley laughed.

Law couldn’t. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing her
now. “I’m just saying that we’ve been real with you because what we wanted from
you in return is real.”

Panic had flooded his system when Riley had shown him the
crap Jansen had put on her computer. Everyone else had seemed happy to find some
concrete evidence, but Law had known it was the beginning of the end. He’d
thought he would have more time with her. He’d thought he could take a week or
two to bind her to them, so that when Jansen was behind bars, she’d stay.

Now… Well, fuck. He didn’t see how it was going to work.

She leaned over the table, her breasts swaying enticingly.
She reached out and cupped his face. “Is it real? I don’t know what’s real
anymore. I thought those were just harmless pictures. Now I have to question
every one of them. Everything. Annabelle tried to tell me, didn’t she? I was
stubborn, and I didn’t want to listen.”

Law knew that story. “She tried to explain her suspicions
about him to you, and you nearly walked out on her. She was terrified of losing
you.”

Tears pooled in
Kinley’s
eyes. “I
was afraid of everything and everyone falling apart around me. She sent you to
save me, didn’t she? I know it sounds dumb, but if I can keep Annabelle, I
think I might be all right.”

“Baby, she loves you. And we approached her. She wanted us
to talk to you, but we couldn’t tell how you would react. If we had, and you’d
confronted Greg… We were worried for you. And given that you’d been a bit upset
when Annabelle tried to talk to you—”

“I was a raging bitch,”
Kinley
acknowledged. “But I felt wretched for marrying a man I didn’t love and didn’t
want to admit it because I thought I didn’t have a choice. I thought my family
would collapse if I didn’t.”

“Given all that, we decided to take a ‘wait-and-see’
approach,” Law explained.

“Until Jansen took out that policy on you two weeks before
your wedding,” Dominic continued. “Then all bets were off. We couldn’t allow
you to marry him and we didn’t exactly have the proof we needed.”

“It was a desperation play.” Riley admitted, cuddling her against
him and stroking her hair. “Although I didn’t think Law would let your marriage
to Jansen happen. When we decided to kidnap you, he practically did his happy
dance.”

“I don’t dance,” Law retorted. “But I was happy.
Kinley
, I know the way we saved you was unorthodox, but we
really were thinking of you. I truly believe he planned to kill you on your
honeymoon. And I think that tablet proves it.”

“He was using me to take his information to his contact?”
Kinley
frowned.

“That’s my guess.” Riley tapped on a few more keys. “And it
looks like he’s using your charity to smuggle something into the country. I
can’t tell what. It’s in a numeric code. Stock 2445. That’s all the description
I’ve got. Damn, that is some expensive shit if I’m reading this right.”

“But what is it?”
Kinley
looked
totally puzzled.

“It could be anything,” Dominic explained. “It could be
cash, bonds, drugs…anything, but he’s moving it through your charity. I suspect
it has something to do with the new manufacturers he found for you. They’re
shipping him something in those boxes. Not a lot of people look through charity
donation shipments.”

“That bastard.”
Kinley
looked
ready to spit nails.

Riley soothed her with a caress. “We’re getting closer to
nailing him. This strongly suggests that he’s using your U.S. based nonprofit
to move funds offshore so the mafia can use it for their purposes. I think this
is what we’ve been looking for so we can get him on RICO charges. A forensic
accountant should be able to take him down.”

Dominic sighed. “I would love to know what kind of product
he’s moving. Please let it be drugs.”

Because that might up the time the fucker spent in the can.
Except Law wanted to make sure Jansen never saw the inside of a jail cell. A
morgue was a better place for scum like him. “Let’s see what the feds say. We
can call them in the morning.”

Dominic nodded and turned to
Kinley
.
“We have some inside contacts at the FBI and the Department of Justice. We’ll
get them out here. I’m hesitant to send them the information. I would rather
talk to them in person. Explain.”

Kinley
reached for Dominic’s hand.
Already she was looking to them for comfort, seeking out her men. He just hoped
her burgeoning trust was enough to make her stay after the dust settled.

“Shouldn’t we go to Washington?”

“Where I can’t control the meeting? Where Jansen has hired
scumbags who might try to pick us off and take you back?” Law asked. “Not on
your life—and that’s what’s at stake. No. The feds will come here and look over
the evidence. We’ll call our lawyers in the morning and set up a meeting. Until
then, we stay put.”

And after everything had gone down? Law didn’t know. There
would be a ton of questions, of course. From reporters, from the feds, from
freaking society. It would come at them from all sides. They would be tested.

He wasn’t sure they were strong enough yet.

Could he handle it if
Kinley
walked away?

He needed more time to bind her to all three of them, to
make her understand exactly what they could offer her.

But time had just run out.

* * * *

“Did you make the call?”

Dominic turned to Riley, who had just asked the question.
Sunlight filtered into the office, showing off the deep, rich hues of the
mahogany and leather furnishings. “Yes. I talked to
Kellan
.
He and Eric will call their contact at the DOJ. Someone from the FBI will call
us soon about arranging a meeting. It could take a day or two before anyone can
get here.
Kinley
signed an affidavit for the feds
stating that she was never a hostage.
Kellan
is
making sure the FBI sees that before he proceeds. Hopefully, that will keep
them from arresting us.”