Bek looks at me. “Do I get paid, too?”

“Sure. The extras are coming from the mayor, not me.” I shrug.

“All right,” she agrees. “Lemme grab my files and I’ll head down there.” She disappears up the stairs.

“You want some homework?” I direct to Carlton, standing up.

“Sure. My roommate will only make me watch dumb reality TV.”

“Perfect.” Then I tell him exactly what I want him to do. With the promise of overtime pay, courtesy of Mayor McDougall, of course.

After we’d found the mayor and family not at home, we called it a day, and I went home alone for a hot date with the finding power of social media and a bottle of wine.

Now, I’m regretting the wine, but not my late-night soiree with Facebook and Instagram. Like the credit card reports, Nick has been in town the whole time. His posts on Instagram the last few days have all been of tattoos. Some of them were captioned as throwbacks, but the background looks awfully similar to one of the latest ones he noted as brand new.

Bek’s visit to the studio also gave us our in. Their morning was open after only recently deciding to open on Mondays to make it seven days a week, which is why I’m out of bed by nine and driving out of town to the studio.

I don’t think he did it. But you know. I wanna know if he was stalking her at the very least. And he does have the whole got-away-with-murder thing hanging over him. I didn’t really pay much attention when Drake said it¸ but as it turns out, it was a pretty serious situation. He was eighteen, just graduated, and he and some friends broke into a store. The robbery was armed, but since there was no video proof he held, or shot, the gun, despite the testimonies of his friend—who the gun belonged to—he got away with a couple years in jail and that was that. He moved to Austin right after, then to Holly Woods.

I pull up outside the building and notice Bek’s car already here. She gets out when I kill my engine and mutters something about needing more overtime pay since it’s on the mayor.

I laugh. Yeah, it doesn’t work like that. Only on days off or he’ll dispute my invoice.

The tattoo studio is small and run down. It’s not exactly the well-kept establishment I envisioned when I found out they have to open seven days a week to keep up with demand, but hey. I’ll reserve full judgment until I’ve been inside. I’ll try to anyway, because the rusted sign proclaiming it to be Nick’s Tattoo Studio screwed slightly wonkily into a wall covered with cracked, dirty, white paint doesn’t do much for my confidence.

“Nice place,” Bek tries, the twisting of her lips to her betraying her words.

“Yeah, if you come from the Amazon,” I mutter, pushing the door open.

The radio is on low, and the scent of jasmine hits me. Thankfully, it seems like the outside appearance really isn’t reflective of the interior. Tattoo designs line the walls, and a black leather sofa is in the corner in front of a glass coffee table covered with magazines. Hell, switch the sofa color to red and you have my waiting area. To our right is a waist-high reception counter, and sitting behind it is a guy with dreads that fall long past his shoulders, a septum piercing, and tattoos peeking up from his collar.

“Can I help you?”

“Uh…yes.” Bek walks up to him. “I have an appointment. With Nick?”

“Name?”

“Rebekah.”

“Sure,” Dreads drawls. “Take a seat and—”

“I’m here. Come on in.” Nick appears in the doorway, and. Um. Oh. Shit.

Nick is hot.

And I ain’t talking about his body temperature.

I’m talking brown hair, green eyes, cheekbones-chiseled-into-next-week kinda hot.

“Sure,” Bek replies, her voice cracking. She clears her throat and throws me a holy-shit look over her shoulder.

Holy shit is right. And I am so going to hell.

Nick closes the door behind us and leans against it. His eyes turn calculating as he sweeps his gaze across us, eventually settling it on me.

Uh oh. Busted.

“There’s only one reason a Bond would walk into my studio, and since you’re the only one without cuffs, I’ll save you the awkward explanation about why you’re here.”

“I’m assuming you got my message.”

“Yeah, I got your message.”

“And you didn’t return it because…?”

He laughs derisively. “Because I couldn’t give a shit about my fucked-up ex. That’s why.”

I lick my lips. “Nick… You have heard, haven’t you?”

“That someone bumped her off?” He raises one eyebrow. “Yeah. Not gonna say I’m surprised, darlin’. She messed with the wrong people in the wrong place.”

I’m gonna come back to that one. “What do you know about her stalker?”

“That she was certain it was me, but not enough to leave me the fuck alone. Trust me, I’ve been tryin’ for weeks to get her crazy ass off my damn back.”

“Wait, what?” Bek asks. “She told Noelle she hadn’t spoken to you since she ended your relationship.”

“Since she ended it?” He laughs again. “Little miss fuckin’ perfect strikes again, eh?”

I smile tightly. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“What happened is that Nat was a whore, pure and simple.” He swigs from a bottle of Diet Pepsi. “She couldn’t keep her legs shut. She had her membership at that stupid dom club when we met, but I made her stop going. She did for a while. Then she started again. Something about her sexual needs being more than I could give her. Whatever, yeah? We were happy otherwise, so I told her she could do that shit once a week if I could do what I wanted the same night. It worked. She got her sadist kicks and I got my cock sucked by someone who actually knew what to do with it.”

Delightful.

“’Cept she got dumb. Started lyin’ to me about where she was goin’ and who she was lettin’ tie her up or whatever the fuck it is they do in that place. She started screwin’ people she had no business screwin’ with. Took it past our one-night-a-week agreement. She got addicted to that place and her sick fetishes, so I ended it. Told her to keep her fantasies the fuck away from me.”

“What about the baby?” I question, rubbing my bottom lip with my thumb. “Did y’all make arrangements for that? Buying things, doctor’s appointments, what’d happen after she gave birth, stuff like that?

“Why would I?” He snorts. “She told me the kid was mine, but I ain’t that stupid. I made sure we used condoms when I found out she was letting every Tom, Dick, and fucking Spartacus ride her pussy bareback.”

Straight to the point, this one. He’s so sour that not even Willy Wonka and his army of Oompa Loompas could sweeten him up.

“So, you aren’t the father?” I frown. “Earlier you said she was messing with people she shouldn’t have been. What did you mean?”

Nick runs his tongue over his teeth, his eyes hardening. “People you probably shouldn’t be messin’ with, either.”

“Unless they’re a branch of the mafia or a Mexican cartel, I think I’ll take my chances, thanks.”

His lips tug up. “She was sleepin’ her way to the top. She craved power. She was a manipulator through and through. And that baby was her ticket to the top…to have power over the people already there.”

“Call me stupid,” Bek starts, looking at me.

“Oh I’d call you plentya things, darlin’, but stupid ain’t one of ’em.” Nick grins.

I roll my eyes when a flush creeps up her cheeks.

“You’re not making sense,” she continues, despite her obvious embarrassment. “There isn’t much power in Holly Woods, at least nothing worth having compared to other places. If she wanted power, why not leave?”

“Because she was set for life. Her old man left her that pretty little house so she didn’t have to pay a cent toward it.”

“Nick,” I say, stepping forward. “If you know who the father of that baby was, then I need to know, too. If you’re right and she was manipulating someone, there’s a very real chance they’re her killer or at least connected.”