For The Wicked (Fantasy Heights) Read Online Free PDF

stone’s throw of Fantasy Heights that she would have jumped on in an instant if not for her commitment to help until Steph returned.
    Trouble was, she had no idea how she’d bow out gracefully. Nearly everything and everyone she cared about was somehow connected to this place.
    Around two, her cellphone rang. Thomas, this time. She glanced at the clock and felt a rivulet of worry crawl from one side of her ribs to the other. Unless his schedule had changed, right now, he was meeting with Gregory Hughes, Jerod’s father.
    “I need a favor,” Thomas said. Right away, she could tell there was trouble. He always had that rasp to his voice when he was angry. “Hughes wants something, and I can’t leave the phones right now. Would you please walk him over to the records archive and let him in?”
    She almost groaned, but thought the better of it. If Thomas was asking for help, it wasn’t because he was lazy.
    She found the two men in the conference room, the same room where Hughes had questioned her for hours on end. One look at Thomas caught her up short. A knife’s-edge sharpness to his eyes and the set of his jaw warned that Hughes had gotten under his skin but good this time.
    Seeing her, Mr. Hughes rose and gave her a shallow bow. Polite, but awkward. He did not approve of her, she knew. He neither liked nor understood her relationship with Jerod, his son. She didn’t either. Their mutual discomfort made friendliness a tall order.
    While she waited for Hughes to tuck a stack of files into his briefcase, the landline phone near Thomas’s elbow rang. He bristled and snatched up the receiver.
    Yikes. Hughes had Thomas all sorts of tetchy. What had been going on in here?
    Finally, Hughes was ready and she led him out into the tunnels. The archive was clear across the quad, closer to the Menagerie entrance. All the way there, she didn’t speak but kept her body language open to give the impression of companionable silence, even though she would secretly like to push Gregory Hughes against the wall and wag a finger in his face. She didn’t care how upset he was about his son. How dare he antagonize Thomas, who was busting his butt to help him?
    Neither did Hughes break the silence. They arrived at the archives without saying one word to each other. She swiped her keycard and stood aside so that Hughes could enter the long, narrow room. He headed straight for a section of shelving on their left and began to scan the bankers boxes. He pulled one down and rifled the contents before returning the box to its resting place and grabbing another.
    In the middle of the third box, he found what he was looking for: a contract of some sort, protected inside a heavy blue cardstock envelope. He removed and unfolded the contents, flipping immediately to the final page.
    “Got him,” Hughes said.
    They hurried back to Thomas, who was still on the phone. He looked at Hughes, and then rang off, looking more stony than Amanda had ever seen him.
    Hughes was not put off. “I knew I remembered a connection. Brandon Briggs did have at least one encounter with Kay Prescott-Taylor. Here’s proof. I told you so.”
    He handed Thomas the contract regarding a residential park area the resort had gifted to the city way back when.
    Thomas looked at the signatures, then up at her, then at Hughes. “You’re a prosecutor, and you think this is sufficient proof of anything?”
    “Boy. Didn’t take long for that suit to turn you into a bureaucrat, did it?”
    “Don’t be a dick, Hughes. I’m giving you a lot of leeway, handing over resort records.”
    “Leeway? You said that if I could prove a connection between Brandon Briggs and Kay Prescott-Taylor, you would help me get access to Bill’s files about Kay and Yvette.”
    Amanda almost spoke up to say that Thomas had a bunch of FBI agents scouring those notes for help.
    Almost.
    As she watched, she saw something inside Thomas ignite just a moment before the armor swallowed him