Page 32 of Clay

“What did you do with her, bitch?” The voice on the end of the line was a snarl. “I know you’ve got her hidden somewhere, that she came running and hiding to you. She’s mine, no one else can have her.”

Ivy stood frozen for a long moment, but when she answered, she didn’t look to Devin for permission to do so. “Listen here, asshole, you leave her alone. I know who you are, I know what you did to her. You think you’re so high and mighty? Did you think you could have me arrested? That I don’t know people who could get me out of it?” Her voice shook with barely restrained fury.

His reply was a string of curses, then, “You’ve got her hidden somewhere, she always comes running to you. You’ll take me to her, or else.”

“You really think you can threaten me? What could you possibly have, what could you possibly do, to make me frightened of you?”

The silence at the other end of the line was long, and down the table Devin was rolling his finger, telling her to draw it out while he did something furiously on his own phone. “I’m not scared of you,” she said. “You’re a bully with a badge. You should have stayed in South Carolina.”

“Oh, you should be frightened,” his voice had gone from pure rage to silk and immediately made Ivy apprehensive. “It's amazing how much information police databases have now. I’m sitting in front of your house right now.” He chuckled at Ivy’s indrawn breath. “You can call these friends of yours all day long, but they’ve got nothing on me. I’m a U.S. citizen on vacation in Vegas, visiting a neighborhood I’m considering buying a house in. And heck, maybe I’ll become interested in charity as well and go sit at lunch with a bunch of old hags like your mother, Agnes. There’s not a damned thing you can legally do about it. Besides, I slipped the bullshit amateur tail thirty minutes ago. I’ll call you in twenty-four hours with the location for a meet up. Bring Katie to me and you and dear old mom will be safe and sound again.” He disconnected, and Ivy stood there for a long moment, his words echoing in her ears, before she braced her hands on the table and slowly lowered herself into the conference chair. Her pulse thrummed in her wrists, her heart, pounded in her ears. Terror clutched at her throat. “Oh God, oh God, he found my mother.”

Clay picked her up out of the chair and draped her across his lap, folding her into his arms, surrounding her with warmth and heat and safety. “He won’t touch your mother. I’ll kill him first.”

Chapter Eight

Had those words really come out of his mouth? Clay clamped his lips shut and held Ivy tighter, meeting the gazes of his friends.

Devin appeared puzzled, Tate unperturbed, and Jordan a bit concerned. Cali looked proud of him, like he'd passed a test of some kind.

Only Warren truly regarded him with scrutiny, looking at Ivy, then at him over steepled fingers. Then his eyebrows waggled, and a slight smile graced his mouth.

Clay took a deep breath, let it out. Ivy had gone still in his arms, and he was almost afraid to look down at her face and see judgment there. But he steeled himself and glanced down.

She wasn’t looking at him with shock or horror or even pleasure, it was more with a bit of warmth that he wasn’t sure he deserved. And then she broke the tension by reaching up and patting his cheek. “While I appreciate the sentiment, big guy, let’s not go there quite yet.”

Warren chuckled long and loud at her words, breaking the odd silence.

Ivy gave his cheek one last pat, and then disengaged herself from his lap, reseating herself in her own chair. She drew in a shaking breath, ran her fingers through her hair, squared her shoulders and then looked up. “This fucker found my mother. What are we going to do to stop him?”

“Weare not going to do anything,” Devin said. “You and Clay are going to go back to the penthouse, and we’re going to start surveillance on your mom. By bringing your family into this, he’s upped the stakes considerably. I hadn’t considered putting your mother under protection, even after last night’s assault because it didn’t track with what we knew about him. I was wrong.”

Ivy started to say something and if Clay knew her at all it would be to deflect blame, but Dev continued.

“Hamilton is obviously smarter than our initial intel if he ditched our contractor. He's leveraged underground support, but he’s also arrogant, and still thinks you and Katie are on your own. Even though you hinted you had friends helping, he has no real idea that we’re players or even who we are. He probably thinks that the tail he slipped was your only support.”

Clay hadn’t thought about it that way, but it totally made sense.

Ivy’s eyes had narrowed as she stared back at Devin. “I don’t much like sitting on the sidelines, playing the damsel in distress.”

Devin inclined his head. “I understand that you usually take care of your own. But in this case, you’re working against a cop who understands the system. If his record in South Carolina is any indication, intimidation has worked for him in the past. He's going to go with what he knows, which is why we need you to stay safe so we can focus the attention on keeping him away from your mom and finding Katie. Once we lay eyes on him again, it’s all over but the shouting, anyway.”

“Why?” Ivy asked, tilting her head.

“Because as soon as we lay eyes on this asshole, we’re gonna go have a talk with him,” Tate said, his voice a low rumble.

Ivy visibly gulped. Then set her chin.

“Do you think this talk with him will scare him away? That he’ll leave Katie alone after this?”

“Oh, he’ll leave her alone,” Dev said, his voice even, a promise. “Keep in mind that he’s already sunk himself in his own department. He may not really understand that yet, but he doesn’t have a job to go back to. We’re going to strip away his power systematically and brutally. We’re going to break him, and then we’re going to hand him over to LVMPD, who would really, really like a nice long chat with him.”

Ivy shivered. “Okay,” she said. “He threatened mymother. He deserves everything he gets.”

Clay noted her ease with the team, what appeared to be absolute trust, and felt a moment of true pride. They’d done this. More than any other assignment to date, they were helping someone who was truly in need.

Ivy, being Ivy, apparently had to have the last word. “I need to see my Mom, tell her what’s going on.”

Clay could see Devin starting to tell her no, but this time she bowled right overhim. “I totally trust you and your team, but she’s smart. She’ll notice if Hamilton starts showing up here and there, and then she’ll spot whoever you have watching her, and she’ll confront one or the other of you. If she knows what’s happening, she’ll let you do your jobs.”

---