Free Wait for Morning (Sniper 1 Security #1) by Nicole Edwards Page A

eaten their meals in silence after their
run-in with the police, Trace had gone over the article Ryan had provided him
with more than once. Although the three men hadn’t discussed anything further,
Marissa knew it was only because they’d had additional ears too close for
comfort.
    “How’d you stumble upon the Adorites?”
Trace’s tone suggested he wasn’t playing games, nor was he asking her politely.
    Sighing, Marissa gripped the steering
wheel harder as she peered out into the night, her eyes moving across the road
as she drove.
    “I met Max Adorite at a party,” Marissa
began but was quickly interrupted.
    “What were you doing at a party with Max
Adorite?”
    Glaring over at Trace, Marissa frowned.
“Do you want me to tell this story, or not?”
    Trace pinned her in place with his
hardened stare for a brief second but then turned his attention back to the
road, where her eyes should’ve been.
    Taking a cue from him, Marissa stared out
the windshield and continued. “Doug, the journalist Ryan was referring to, had
called me up and invited me. Being that I’ve written several blogs about the
corrupt political goings-on in Texas, he’d been curious about me. Or so he’d
said. I agreed to go because he’d told me I’d get the opportunity to rub elbows
with some of Dallas’s elite.”
    “The Adorites definitely qualify,” Trace
mumbled.
    “Anyway, I didn’t talk to Max for long,
but his younger brother Brent was there, drunk and a little mouthy. I don’t
think he meant to give me a heads up to the feds keeping tabs on them, but I
figured I’d do a little digging of my own.”
    “Brent Adorite isn’t one to run off at the
mouth without good intentions. Drunk or not.”
    Yeah, well, Marissa hadn’t known that at
the time. In fact, she hadn’t known a lot of things by the time she’d found
herself knee deep in a shit hole of colossal proportions.
    “It took me a couple of months, but I
managed to schmooze the right people and did a little detective work.”
    “I thought you weren’t in the PI
business,” Trace asked, his tone hard.
    He was right. Marissa had purposely not
ventured into the world of investigations and security the way her entire
family had, choosing to go the route of a journalist. However, in her defense,
being a journalist required a bit of investigative work, and that was a part of
her job that she found she enjoyed.
    Adventure, a hint of danger.
    “It comes with the job,” she told Trace.
“When I heard the term RICO, I got curious, so I mentioned it to Doug. Since I then
had an in with a few people who were close to the Adorites, Doug told me what
questions to ask so as not to draw too much attention to myself.”
    “How’d that work out for ya?” Trace bit
out.
    “Better than Doug,” Marissa snapped in
response.
    “Your friend Doug was murdered, Marissa.
And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re on their shit list, too.”
    “Whose?” she asked. “Do you think the
Adorites are really after me?”
    “No,” Trace said, the honesty in the
single word drawing Marissa up short.
    Glancing over at him quickly, Marissa
asked, “Then who?”
    “That’s the question of the hour, Marissa.
But just like the last time you asked, I don’t fucking know.”
    ●«»●«»●«»●
      “As
far as I can tell, they’re on their way back to Dallas,” Barry stated firmly
into the phone.
    He noticed the nervous flutter of the other
guy’s voice. “Where are they now?”
    “No clue.”
    Squeezing the phone, Barry was tempted to
shatter the damn thing. His frustration level had reached an all-time high. The
only thing he wanted to do was grab the girl and take her to the Adorites, see
if they knew what was going on as he suspected they did.
    Hell, he’d already called Max Adorite, the
underboss of the Southern Boy Mafia, informing him of what he knew. Screw the
annoying asshole who’d hired him. That shithead had already pissed him off. No
way was he dealing with him