Last Kiss Read Free

probably right.
    “What happened?” I asked him, not wanting to know but needing to all the same. “Where did you find her?”
    “With Vilanakis.”
    Michelis Vilanakis,
the mob boss who I had pinned as a lowlife villain. It was the name I’d expected. Amber was last seen with him. Reeve was also connected to him – I’d seen pictures of the two at various events, as well as a few e-mails to Reeve from him.
    “You just swooped in and rescued her from his house in Chicago? Or…” I left the question open-ended, not able to imagine what the scenario had been.
    “I got lucky actually.” He shook his head, demonstrating his incredulity. “Really lucky. I’d been tailing Michelis for three days before I saw her. I didn’t even realize who she was at first. But while I was in my car watching, she ran out of his house, upset about something. He followed after her, Emily. He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back so hard I swore he was going to break her neck. Then he went off on her. Fucking pounded her face in while she struggled and cried. I don’t know how her screams didn’t draw a crowd.”
    I felt sick. “Maybe his neighbors are scared shitless of him. They ignore what goes on.” Where I grew up everyone turned a blind eye. No one mentioned the drug dealer that lived next door. No one bothered looking in on me when my mother was passed out drunk in the front yard. No one intervened when Amber and I would arrive home with newly purchased designer clothes and unexplainable cash in our pockets.
    “Probably so. He left her like that in his driveway. Whether he was leaving her for dead or planned to come back and get her later, I don’t know. I grabbed her and took off.”
    “Why didn’t you go to a hospital? Or the police?” I understood why Reeve’s men would be wary, but Joe had more faith in the legal system.
    “She refused to go anywhere but here. She was insistent and scared. She’d been to the doctor before, remember? With other bruises, and somehow she ended up back with her abuser. I didn’t know who to trust. So I brought her here.”
    He tilted his head and studied me. “Didn’t figure I’d see you here when I arrived.”
    “Yeah, well.” I’d hired Joe to investigate Amber’s disappearance, but I hadn’t always been forthcoming with him about my own snooping. At the moment, I didn’t want to think about the circumstances of my presence at Reeve’s Wyoming ranch let alone talk about it. “How did you know to look for her there? How did you realize she was still alive?”
    “I didn’t. She’s not why I was following him.”
    I wrinkled my forehead. “Then why…?”
    He gave me an incredulous glance, one that said he couldn’t believe I had to ask. But I did have to. I needed him to say it.
    And he did. “I was looking for you.”
    There was affection in the way he held my gaze, his expression so much easier to read than Reeve’s had been, but equally hard for me to bear, for such different reasons.
    I lowered my eyes to the floor. “Thank you, Joe. For finding her. For bringing her here.” I couldn’t manage to thank him for what he’d done for me. He’d gone willingly into danger, after I’d eluded him and been uncooperative. When I’d put myself in the damn situation after his countless warnings. I didn’t deserve his concern. I couldn’t condone it with gratitude.
    He took a step toward me. “Emily, there’s something else you should know.” He waited until I looked up before he went on. “The tattoos. I found out what they mean.”
    “The V tattoos?” Besides Amber and the Jane Doe from the autopsy, I’d also seen one on an employee of Reeve’s in Los Angeles. “Doesn’t it just stand for Vilanakis? I figured it was some show of mob support. Like a gang tattoo.”
    “It does stand for Vilanakis. But the tattoos aren’t inked voluntarily. They’re like a brand. Anyone wearing the mark belongs to Michelis.” In case I didn’t get the picture, he