Risky Obsession (Wolf Security #3)

24. Grant

CHAPTER 24

Grant

“ W hat do you mean they got away?” I yelled into the phone.

“They got away,” Cooper repeated calmly, although he had an edge in his voice that told me he was anything but calm.

“Fucking hell! All you had to do was get Kane’s map that she mentioned in her text and then kill them.” I shoved back on my office chair and stood. “Now the cops will be after you.”

“No, they won’t. The cops are hunting them. Their faces are all over the news for the murders.”

I wanted to launch down the line and strangle the stupid bastard.

“You killed three people.” I marched to the window. “Three! I didn’t ask you to kill anyone but Kane and Lacey.”

“Gunter was an accident.”

“An accident?” I tried to swallow but it was impossible. “How?”

“He choked to death. He had a bow tie shoved in his mouth, and well, I was interrogating him, and he died.”

“Jesus.”

How could Cooper be so brilliant, and yet so dumb? Beyond the window, the Milky Way that dominated the night sky provided enough light to see the cows in the distant paddock. “I can’t believe you killed those people.”

“Don’t act so fucking pure. You killed that pilot.”

I sucked in a breath. I should never have told him about that.

“I bet you pissed your pants when they found that plane on the bottom of the ocean.” He released a short laugh.

Rage blazed through my brain. “That was self-defense. I didn’t know the fucking pilot was going to shoot me. I just got lucky.”

“Yeah, tell that to the judge.”

I banged my fist against the bulletproof glass that had cost me a fortune. “Shut up, Coop. Why did you shoot the staff at the hotel?”

Cooper groaned. “I panicked, okay? They saw my face.”

The guts dropped out of my stomach. “This is a fucking mess.”

“Shut up,” he hissed. “You think you’re so smart living in your high-tech mansion and hiding behind your encrypted computers while you make me do your dirty work for you. You ungrateful bastard. You have no idea what I’m going through.”

His rage had an edge of emotion to it that I knew only too well.

“I do know what you’re going through.” I softened my tone.

“You promised to help me.”

“I do help you. And we’ll get through this. I promise.”

“Exactly. We’re in this together. You and I are the only ones left. You and me, just like the old days.”

The only ones left? That means he doesn’t know about Beatrice.

Good. I didn’t want him stressing about that evil bitch.

This was nothing like the old days though. We were innocent then, and free.

Yet no matter what he’d done, I needed him, and I wanted to help him. I owed him that.

“You’re right,” I said. “We need to be smart about this.”

A silent beat boomed down the line.

“I’m sorry, Thomas,” he said. “I’ll fix this.”

It sounded weird hearing my real name, yet it was perfect, too. If we played our cards right, I could return to that name. “It’s okay, Coop. You’re under stress. We’ll get through this.”

“I hate it over here. I want to come home. I’m sick of this shit.”

I groaned. It was very unlikely that he could ever come home. And I’d told him that many times. But we didn’t have time to go over that again.

“I know you do. Listen, we have a chance to find the rest of that gold and when we have it, we can disappear together, just the two of us, like you said. We’ll go to Barbados, or Rio.”

“We can do that now. I still have forty-seven gold bars.” He sounded so lost.

“I told you, they have frozen our offshore accounts, Coop. We need to start again.”

“No. I’m over this shit.”

“I know. It’s nearly over and we’ll be together soon.” It was a lie. We could never be together again.

“Prove you mean it.”

I clenched my jaw. “What are you talking about?”

“I want you here. With me.”

“I can’t. That bitch who attacked me saw my face and I think she knows my real name. So I can’t go anywhere.”

“Who cares if she saw you?”

“She’s a cop.”

He released a strangled groan. “Fucking hell. She saw my face, too.”

A giant fist clamped around my brain. “When?”

“She took my balaclava off when I tried to steal the map.”

“Jesus.” I heaved a calming breath. “You need to kill her, Coop, before she figures out who we are.”

He released a sad sigh.

“Cooper. I need you. Please.”

Tiger curled around my legs. It was like my cat was letting me know I wasn’t alone. I scooped him into my arms and sat on the sofa.

Cooper sniffed, and his anguish ripped through me. He was in this situation because of me, but I couldn’t undo that. We could only move forward.

“Cooper, if the cops catch Brooks, the arrest won’t stick, and she’ll tell them it was you. Trust me, she has some kind of photographic memory. Your face will be all over the news in no time. You need to find her and eliminate her before?—”

“I know where she is.” His tone twinged with bitterness.

“You do? How?”

“I told you, they stole my car. It’s a BMW XM. Top of the range. Comes with a tracking device.”

I burst out laughing. “That’s genius. ”

“Never underestimate a wanted criminal with millions of dollars in bullion at his disposal.” He chuckled and it took me back twenty-five years, to a time when our only worry was which chick to take home from the bar.

“Good work. So where are they?”

“They’re in Cuxhaven.”

“Cuxhaven?” I shoved Tiger off my lap and strode to my computer.

“Yeah, it’s a town on Germany’s North Sea coast.”

“Why are they there?” I typed Cuxhaven Nazi connection into the web and the first link that came up was about the Nazis making a final stand at Cuxhaven. “They must have a clue to the gold that led them to Cuxhaven.”

Cooper let out a cocky laugh. “You don’t know that.”

“Think about it, Coop. After everything that’s happened to them, most people would return home. But they haven’t. We know they have a map, right? So they have more clues.”

I opened Google Maps and zoomed into Cuxhaven. My breath caught. “Cooper, Cuxhaven is on the Elbe River.”

“So?” He sounded exasperated.

“The Elbe River is where the submarine that was used to transport three hundred bars of gold was last seen. Jesus. You need to follow them.”

He moaned.

“I’m serious. Just hang back and watch them, see what they do. I bet they lead you right to those missing hundred bars of gold. Cooper, imagine it. You will find gold that people have been hunting for, for eighty years.”

“It won’t be that easy. Look what happened last time.”

“This will be nothing like that. Last time you had to escape a military team who knew you. And look how well you did that! This time, it’s just a woman cop and a dumb treasure hunter.”

His silence screamed down the line.

“Imagine our lives when we have all that gold. Then we really can disappear and start over together. We can pay for plastic surgeons to permanently change our appearances. With all that gold, we’ll live like kings. We can move around the world whenever we want. It’s a great plan, Cooper. You trust me, don’t you?”

He heaved a sigh. “What do I do if they find the gold?”

“Kill them, of course.”