For The Wicked (Fantasy Heights) Read Online Free PDF Page B

whole.
    She’d seen him angry before. This was fury.
    “You know something?” he said. “I don’t care who you are, what you’re going through, or how long we’ve known each other. What the hell is the matter with you? You and Brandon have been friends since law school. And now you’d throw him onto the shit heap right along with Yvette to fuel this witch hunt?”
    “I just want to find my son.”
    Thomas’s brows pitched down into that devilish angle. “Yeah. Let me explain why we can’t find him. It’s because he doesn’t want to be found. Jerod went all in with DriveRate. Willingly. If you need help coming up with a reason he might do that, I could name at least one.”
    Hughes turned white, then crimson. “Fuck you.”
    Thomas stood up straight and held his hands out. “Here it comes. This is the part where you blame me for the fact that your son is only human, right? Go home. Comfort your wife. Do exactly what you told Nicole and Ridley’s families to do. Keep hitting the social networks. Pester the TV people to run a follow-up story. Get Jerod’s face in front of as many eyes as possible. Someone will spot him, sooner or later. Not that it’ll do any good.”
    Hughes’s reaction made Amanda take a startled step backward. She watched the older man close on Thomas. Watched him curl up a fist, then think the better of taking Thomas on.
    Thomas didn’t even blink. He started Hughes down with empty, dead eyes. “I guess we know where he gets it from, don’t we?”
    Hughes said, “I don’t know what your problem is, or why you think you can talk to me like I’m some rookie thug, but I won’t stand for it.”
    “And I’m done asking you nicely to stop pissing everyone off. If you keep taking runs at DriveRate and they decide they need to make another correction , it won’t be you they’ll come after. You’re not important enough. I’ll be the one they target. Or Josh. Or Amanda. And God help you if that happens.”
    Hughes glared, but shortly picked up his briefcase and stormed out.
    Amanda watched him go. Stared at the door in mute shock.
    Thomas, too, remained as he was, long after Hughes had gone, until finally he drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Sorry about that.”
    She gave him a sympathetic look. Anyone could see that Thomas hadn’t enjoyed a moment of that confrontation.
    “He almost hit you.”
    Thomas sucked his teeth. “I’d worry less about him, and more about the fact he’s gonna get someone killed if he doesn’t let me do my damned job. Anyway, thank you for taking him to records. I needed a breather.”
    “It was nothing.”
    She recognized the false note in his voice as he spoke again, trying to sound business-like. “On the bright side, Hughes had some news. Marla, Warnous and the mystery henchman plan to plead guilty to all charges. No one wants a trial, I guess.”
    “What?”
    “I know. That’s not how I thought this would go down. All three of them could end up in prison for the rest of their lives. And the henchman was just some bottom-dweller lawyer shilling for DriveRate. He could have dodged some of the accessory charges, but he’s not fighting it.”
    Amanda gave Thomas her most suspicious look. “Do you think they were threatened?”
    “Oh, almost certainly. Either that, or they feel they’d be safer in prison.”
    “Reassuring thought. But what will happen if Warnous’s fans go digging for more information on why he’s in jail?”
    “You must not be spending much time on the Internet. You should hear some of the conspiracy theories the fans have come up with. A lot of their theories are even worse than the truth. Which actually protects us. If anyone posts what really happened, it’ll be discounted right along with the rest.”
    She nodded. It hit her, all of a sudden, how different things were now that Thomas had become a Suit. He hadn’t deserved Hughes’s bureaucrat dig, but he was indeed rather more the agent than savage, these days.