Risky Obsession (Wolf Security #3)

10. Grant

CHAPTER 10

Grant

I snapped my laptop shut, strode across the grand living room, and stood at the massive bullet-proof glass window.

Still no news about that bitch cop, Lacey Brooks.

Beyond the window, my ginger cat, Tiger, stalked something in the line of shrubs that shielded my house from the western sun. Tiger was freer than I was. He had full access to this house and could come and go as he pleased through the cat door I’d installed for him.

He launched into the air, pouncing onto something. His tail sashayed back and forth, then he reversed out of the bushes with a mouse in his mouth. He was a skilled predator, and I never had to worry about him starving when I wasn’t here.

In the distance, a large paddock was dotted with cows and a tractor farmed another paddock. Some said it was peaceful out here. The silence drove me nuts. I needed distractions. Without them, my mind tumbled down a game of ‘if only’ that drove me fucking crazy.

If only I hadn’t seen Frank’s brother, Mason Cole, beat that kid to within an inch of his life all those years ago.

If only I’d gone to the cops instead of taking that bribe.

I was a decent man once, with dreams of a normal life, a family, a successful career, and my own business built on honest work.

But those fucking brothers used me .

Now I couldn’t go back and undo what I’d done. I couldn’t go forward either.

I had probably been the richest prisoner on the planet who wasn’t contained in four walls. I was a walking contradiction. Free but trapped. Rich but so fucking guilty I was scared to do anything with my money.

I pressed my hands to the glass. What good was wealth when I couldn’t be me?

My noose tightened more with each passing year. I wanted to go back to the man I was before I was sucked into a life of corruption. I wanted to be the man named on the Bachelor of Business Accounting certificate I had stupidly displayed on my wall. He was a good son to proud parents, a loyal brother . . . and an innocent man.

But that name was a ghost from the life I’d abandoned. My family believed I was a financial director for Virunga Wildlife Alliance. They believed I was a good Samaritan, working to save the gorillas in the Congo jungle.

I chuckled, and it came out so broken, I barely recognized myself.

The last time I’d seen my parents was twelve years ago. I hadn’t seen my brother since I’d gotten him involved in shit that he would never walk away from.

My parents had looked at me with so much pride when I’d visited them for Dad’s fiftieth birthday that I’d vomited after I left them. Over the years, I’d deposited money into their bank account and sent them electronic birthday cards and letters full of lies about my fake life. But seeing them in person and witnessing their love crushed me. They thought I was across the globe, living rough so I could save the animals.

But I lived in the same state as them. Achingly close, but so fucking distant I wanted to scream.

I missed my family. Especially my brother. But he was at the top of Australia’s Most Wanted List, and he would never be able to return home, let alone see Mom and Dad who had been devastated when they’d been informed of my brother’s crimes. I wanted to tell them it wasn’t his fault, and that he’d been blackmailed into doing what he did.

But it wouldn’t help. He would be on the run forever because of his crimes.

At least I’d been smart enough to change my name before I got involved in Chui and Frank’s criminal empire. Now that they were dead, I could finally kill off Grant Hughes and return to the real me and be the son my parents deserved.

But there was one person who stood in the way of that: Lacey Brooks.

I pulled away from the glass and as I crossed the living room, Tiger darted back and forth across the shag carpet like he had a panther chasing him.

Stupid cat.

Seated at my computer, I once again scanned the top stories for a mention of Lacey Brooks. I’d hacked the hospital records and found her admission form. Severe bruising, cut to her leg that required four stitches, and two dislocated fingers.

I still couldn’t believe how hard she’d fought. She had some serious defense skills.

Bitch.

I’d found her records in the Queensland Police database, but there was very little about her career, giving me the impression that whole sections had been removed.

That was what worried me. She could be working for anyone. I had firsthand experience with enough cops and politicians to know that paperwork couldn’t be trusted. Nobody could be trusted. Someone always had someone in their pocket.

I was fucking sick of being used.

The reporters had been like vultures feasting on reports of my mansion explosion. And the island residents shared their lies about me.

Then again, lies were good.

If they had known who I really was, I would never be able to return to my family who I’d been lying to for decades.

I couldn’t believe that bitch cop saw my Bachelor of Business Accounting certificate, the only thing I still had with my real name on it.

I kicked the wicker basket at my side and when the four rolled-up blankets inside spilled out, Tiger pounced on them like they were rabbits.

Why did I hang that certificate on the wall?

I knew why. That bachelor’s degree was the only honest thing I’d ever done. I had to study hard to get that degree. I’d earned that qualification.

Had that cop seen my real name? I couldn’t fucking focus until I knew.

I stood between the floor-to-ceiling windows and the cold fireplace that I’d never used, pulled my phone from my pocket and rang B for the fourth time in as many hours. The damn bitch liked to think she was in charge, and answering calls on her own time was one of her fucking annoying tactics.

“Hughes. You’re an impatient bastard.” She sucked in air, and I imagined a cigarette wedged between her wrinkled lips.

“I told you to ring me.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but it bristled anyway.

“And I told you I would when I had answers.”

I hated that I needed her, but she had contacts that I didn’t. “And? Do you have answers?”

“I have some.” Her voice was gravelly, and her tone was cocky.

I fucking hated her as much as all the other bastards who had owned me.

Clenching my jaw until my teeth ached, I tried to temper my rage. I huffed out a breath. “Listen. I know you like this powerplay thing, but it’s wearing thin. I have dirt on you. You have dirt on me. If one of us goes down, we both do. I get it, so cut the fucking crap.”

“Well. Well. The brainiac has balls after all.” She released a grainy cackle that sliced through my head like razor wire.

“Beatrice! Have you found her?”

“I have, but you need to pay me a hell of a lot more for this info.”

Fuck! I shuddered, trying to contain my rage.

She must not know that the cops had frozen my bank accounts. And when she found out the offshore business accounts were also frozen, she would fucking implode. Without those funds, Chui’s entire empire will start to crack. My plan was to disappear before that happened. But I had to be smart about it. Thank Christ I’d kept some money in the name I was born with in my Aussie bank accounts.

I hated this game we played. It was a game I had to play with just about every bastard I dealt with. Money poisoned people. “How much?” I kept my voice level.

“Fifty grand. You know where. Once it shows up, I’ll send you the deets.”

“Just tell?—”

The phone clicked. A strangled cry burst from my throat, and it took everything I had not to peg the phone across the room. I stormed back to the desk that I’d barely moved from all morning and lifted the lid on my laptop.

Within five minutes on the dark web, I’d sent Beatrice the money from my personal account, via a series of fake company accounts, to her offshore account that I’d set up for her years ago. The details of her account were recorded in my encrypted files and were a small part of the thorough list of ammunition I had against her. It was leverage that I hoped I would never need, but fucking well would if she ever tried to eliminate me.

Half an hour later, I was pacing the room like a rabid dog and checking my inbox every thirty seconds.

I stared out the window at the stupid cows that belonged to the neighbor I’d never met, and my jaw ached from clamping my teeth. The neighbor on the other side grew crops of corn, but it was the drug manufacturing plant hidden beneath that paddock that provided his lucrative income.

John Coleman was as dumb as dog shit though. He was constantly messing up his records, which meant I was spending way too much time on his rundown farm. The old shack I had to stay in each time had rotten floorboards, cracked windows, and mice in plague proportions, just like the damn flies. But the drug manufacturing plant beneath his paddock of corn made a hell of a lot of money, and John wasn’t getting any smarter. So rather than stay in that dive each time I visited, I had this hide-out built high up in the hills overlooking his farm with state-of-the-art security, a secret escape tunnel, and a helipad.

Each time I choppered in or out of John’s farm, I made sure I didn’t come directly from this place.

But just like my island mansion that I blew to bits, this place wasn’t a home like I had growing up. It was a statement. And the statement was, the owner of this property was fucking loaded. I wasn’t anymore, though. With my offshore accounts and the business accounts that I often siphoned money from all frozen, and the cops closing on the Chui drug empire that had earned me millions, all I had left was about a million in my Aussie bank account and the cash in my backpack.

I owned two properties though, this place was probably worth two million, but with all the security I’d installed, including underground escape tunnels, and the fact that it was built in the middle of fucking nowhere, selling this fortified home would attract attention that I did not want. And now that my ten-million-dollar mansion on Amber Island was reduced to rubble, I could kiss goodbye to getting a return on that asset.

Why hadn’t I invested in shares or bonds?

All these years I’d been saving my cash, and now it was gone. And if Beatrice kept charging me for intel like she was, then I’ll have nothing left for all my fucking hard work.

I should have demanded more money from Frank Morgan and that evil bastard, Chui. Thank Christ they were both dead. Maybe I should have Beatrice killed. Then I could take control of everything.

I heaved a sigh. I couldn’t even do that. While I knew about the flow of money and the names of every single bastard in Chui and Frank’s empires, I had no idea of the logistics behind the drugs or laundering businesses.

I hated that I didn’t see that flaw in my knowledge until it was too late.

Now the wrinkly old bitch and I were tied at the hip. I’d gone from being controlled by Frank Morgan and Chui, to partnering with a sixty-year-old cow who hated men to her core.

I didn’t know which was worse.

My computer dinged. I sprinted to my desk and opened B’s message on our darknet chat.

My gaze snagged on the word Berlin. Frowning, I read the information properly.

Lacey Brooks was taken off duty because of her injuries.

She was ordered by Aria Morgan to go to Berlin with Kane Devlin.

“Who?” Scowling, I copied Kane Devlin’s name into a few dark web sites, then returned to B’s information.

Lacey is working undercover as Tory Parmenter.

B advised that Lacey was provided with a phone, and she detailed the cell IMEI number. I shook my head. Whoever B’s contact was, they had access to some critical intel.

Brooks and Devlin were sent to Berlin. Expected to return in a month.

A month! What the hell?

I entered Kane Devlin’s name into Google. Treasure hunter and antiquities dealer.

I sat forward. Could their trip to Germany have anything to do with Goering’s gold?

I bet it fucking does .

Using an encryption service, I typed Lacey’s phone IMEI number into my location services database. “Let’s see where you are.”

The coordinates jumped around a bit before it drilled in on a small town in Germany.

“Templin,” I muttered. “What’s the attraction in Templin?”

Nothing stood out when I typed the name into Google, so I used Google Maps to search the area. My breath caught.

“Carinhall. They are going after the missing gold.”

Interesting.

I’d been tapping into Chui’s and Frank Morgan’s conversations for years. Most of their communication was cryptic bullshit that I had no hope of deciphering, but I’d known about the five hundred bars of Goering gold for decades.

Additional details had been provided by the documentary about the gold that Aria and her team found. That documentary was released after both Chui and Morgan were dead. I had gone back through the phone conversations and was able to piece together a bit more information.

One hundred bars of Goering gold were yet to be recovered. And now there was a treasure hunter and a cop working together to find it.

I checked real-time data on an encrypted site to see if any text messages had been sent or received on Lacey’s phone. I found three, including an outbound text confirming my assumption that they’d been to Carinhall.

The second text was to Lacey: Thanks for the update. Cooper can afford a lot of spies, so watch your back. Hughes is still a ghost.

I grinned. It was good to know they had no idea where I was. And they used the name Hughes. Hopefully that meant my real identity was still unknown.

In the last couple of days, I’d been obsessed with checking for updates connected to my real name, and so far, there was nothing.

The name Grant Hughes, however, was a different story. They had a physical description of me and my chopper. The composite sketch of my face had been an incredible likeness. Lacey must have a photographic memory to get my image that good. What they didn’t know was that before I’d let that bitch into my home, I’d quickly put on a wig and colored contact lenses that changed my eyes to brown and added a mole on my left cheek which was prominent in the sketch and featured in my physical description .

I’d practiced with my disguise kit many times, and it came in handy when I needed tradesmen at my house. Over the years, I had limited my physical contact as much as possible, and when I did, it was in disguise. It was like I’d been planning to return to the real me ever since the day I left.

I couldn’t change the shape of my eyes, nose, or jawline though, so my disguise wouldn’t pass any real scrutiny. Especially at the airport with my passport photo. Not that I could use any of the three fake passports I’d had made years ago. They’d expired. I couldn’t fucking believe I’d made that mistake.

I was trapped here.

Cooper’s name cropping up in Lacey’s text was an interesting twist, though not surprising. Cooper can afford a lot of spies.

I chuckled. Of course he can. He stole fifty-two bars of gold from Aria and her team.

Unfortunately, converting that gold to cash hadn’t been as easy as we’d thought.

Cooper was meant to bring that gold back to Australia and hand it over to Frank Morgan, but we got a lucky break when Morgan was killed before Cooper even reached the evacuation point. Cooper and the stash of gold had been hiding in Germany ever since.

But although he had been a great soldier, and an even better thief, Cooper was a na?ve fugitive. I’d lost track of the number of times I’d had to send him money because he was too chicken shit to find a dodgy dealer who’d be willing to take the gold.

But his dependence on me worked in my favor. With my assets shriveled to nearly nothing, I needed him, and that gold.

But I still needed Lacey Brooks eliminated.

And Cooper was the only one who could do it.

I read the final text message from Lacey.

Can’t talk. Kane in shower ATM. We are going to antique fair tomorrow to look for old maps of this area. Kane also has a 1945 map from his pops that seems to be connected to Goering gold. Will update after that. Don’t reply.

Kane has a map connected to the gold? That’s interesting.

I opened the dark web again and searched for a town near Carinhall hosting an antique fair. There was only one. I searched the town to see if there were any shops specializing in maps.

Again, there was only one .

I chuckled. That was a little too easy.

Maybe finding that long-lost gold could be my legacy.

I could solve the mystery of the missing gold from the train that everyone else had failed to find. I had inside knowledge from Chui and Morgan that nobody else did. I probably had all the clues, and I didn’t even know it.

I need that map from Kane.

At the very least, that bullion could replace my wealth that was stolen when those bastards froze my offshore accounts.

For years, I’d been trying to outrun my past. It was time to get in front of it.

Smiling, I dialed Cooper’s number.

I needed him to get that map and eliminate that bitch cop and her treasure-hunting friend.