Page 28 of Clay

“Whoever they are, they’re good, and most certainly not Greg Hamilton. Warren talked to a few of his fellow deputies and the general consensus is that he’s an adequate cop who thinks he’s God’s gift to women. He’s also quicker with his fists than he should be, both with suspects and his partners. Did a stint in the Marine Corps and thinks he’s a fucking SEAL.”

Ivy’s stomach rolled. Had he hit Katie? Worse?

“Warren’s on his way back already. Dev’s working on getting a trace on Hamilton’s phone. Should have it within the next few minutes.” His words were concise and did everything to calm the nausea churning in her stomach.

What had Katie been drawn into?

“And what about the guys on the street yesterday?” she asked.

“That one’s a mystery,” he answered. “The license plate was from a stolen car, but the vehicle itself reminds Jordan of some Southside bangers. They’re obviously not the hackers; that’s a different level of muscle and brains entirely. If Hamilton is in Vegas, maybe he had something to do with it, but he’d have to tap into that element pretty quickly. Jordan will be looking into it, with the blessing of the LVMPD, as soon as we're finished this morning.”

Ivy pondered his words. Saw no real way forward that wasn’t predicated by someone else’s decisions. And it made her twitchy. She didn’t like other people directing her actions.

“So where do we go from here?”

Clay shrugged, seemingly as ill at ease as she was. “We sit tight and see what happens when we find Hamilton.”

Ugh. “Well, if we’re in a waiting game, I’m going to grab a shower and think.” She stood and deposited her cup into the sink.

Clay still sat at the table, the teacup framed by his big hands. “We’ll find her, Ivy,” he said. “Let Dev do his magic. It’s onlybeen a few days since you reached out, and there are other avenues of inquiry the team is pursuing.”

She started to ask what those avenues were, then slowly closed her mouth. By the look on his face, he didn’t want to tell her yet, and she wanted a minute to think and ponder and pull everything apart and put it back together, and there was no better place for that than in the shower.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have any revelations. Didn’t discover any secrets or pull any threads she hadn’t already talked with Clay about. It was frustrating as hell. It also gave her way too much time to think about her protector.

What he’d shared with her last night broke her heart. She’d lost people, most notably her father, and that had devastated her. But to watch your best friend die? To think you were going to be killed yourself, and contemplate suicide rather than capture? She couldn’t even wrap her head around that level of terror, of despair.

She wondered if he’d been this serious before the crash. She got the feeling he had, that what had happened in the desert so far away had been yet another layer added to the weighty shell of responsibility. The call from his father certainly hadn’t dispelled that impression.

It almost felt like a mission to her to help relieve some of that burden.

And while she felt that way most of the time, that interjecting some positivity into people’s lives was part of her cosmic duty, with Clay it was more, bigger than it should have been after only several days.

Like a bolt of lightning it hit her, made her stand stock still in the middle of the bathroom, halfway through drying herself off.

She was falling for him.

It didn’t matter that it’d only been a few days. Something about Clay had called to her from the moment she saw him. Itwasn’t only attraction, it had been more than that from minute one.

The thought simultaneously filled her with joy and trepidation.

Because she was pretty sure Clay wasn’t on the same page. He may be attracted to her, but his heart and soul were so very carefully guarded.

And as she dried her hair, she smiled.

Clay was in for one helluva ride. But finding Katie was their first priority. That and staying unharmed from this secondary danger. Whatever it was.

She entered the living area to find him bent over the dinette, a scatter of paper across the table. He turned and met her gaze.

“Feel better?”

“Physically, sure,” she said. “Mentally, not about Katie or our attackers yesterday. I thought I might have a revelation or two about that. No such luck.” She gestured to the table. “What’s all this?”

“Dev couriered over some stuff,” he said. “And we found Hamilton. He’s in Vegas.”

“Well, hell,” Ivy said, her stomach doing a tumble, all her shower thoughts melting like ice cream in the sun.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Clay stood and grasped her gently by the shoulders. The heat of his hands almost seared her. “We know where he is and what he’s doing. Jordan’s tailing him right now. Katie isn’t with him, and he seems to be doing a lot of sniffing around. We don’t think he knows where she is either.”

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