Undone Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  If you love erotica, one-click these hot Scorched releases… Snow’s Seduction

  The Handy Men

  Payback

  Tempting Her Neighbor

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Lauren Hawkeye. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 109

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Scorched is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Jenn Mishler

  Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill

  Cover art from Shutterstock

  ISBN 978-1-64063-129-8

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition July 2017

  To the Cat in my life, aka the amazing Cathryn Fox. You listen to me whine and you send me virtual wine—what can I say? I couldn’t do it without you.

  Chapter One

  I’d never once set foot in a police station until I found myself in Meadow Ridge, Georgia, and now I was sitting across from the sheriff.

  The place wasn’t like the police stations I’d seen in movies. When Jasper told me we’d be coming here, I’d pictured…well, I wasn’t sure what I’d pictured, exactly. But it wasn’t a building that looked more like a trailer than a police station. Coming in the door, we had to edge our way around a large desk belonging to a girl who looked barely older than a teen, wearing denim cutoffs, with her thick, nut-brown hair in two braids. She glanced up at us briefly when we walked in, but she was surrounded by messy piles of paperwork and largely ignored us, choosing instead to tap away on her cell phone. As we walked down the corridor to the sheriff’s office, the sound of popping bubble gum followed us.

  I’d met Mack Sands before, but seeing him here, in his own habitat, made him seem like something straight out of the old west. He beckoned us in with a gruff “Yeah!” and as we entered, his feet were propped up on the desk, dirty with ancient mud, probably from chasing cattle-wranglers and kids making out at the old kissing spot. His face was thick with a black beard, and the edges of his eyes were stony and carved with wrinkles. His gaze, piercing and skeptical, cut through me like a knife. Two fans ran in the office, causing his hair to flutter in the breeze. Beside one boot, a polished gold plaque reading Sands was the only clean thing in the room.

  “Hello again,” the sheriff said. He didn’t make a move to stand up and greet us. “Have a seat.”

  Jasper pulled out the chair for me. I glanced at the spot next to me, but Jasper ignored it, choosing instead to retreat to the door. He leaned against the frame, crossing his arms and cocking one foot against the wall. My gaze wandered down to his crotch. I could see his gun and wondered if Sheriff Sands could, too. Jasper didn’t seem to be worried. If anything, I felt like I’d walked into a dick-measuring competition between the two men.

  If Sands noticed the gun, he said nothing.

  “We’re here,” I said.

  “Right,” Sands said, nodding. He plucked a file folder from the pile of unarranged paperwork on his desk. While the scene looked like perfect chaos to me, it seemed Sands knew exactly where to find everything. Maybe that was how police work in Meadow Ridge was—imposing order on an otherwise chaotic system. “Had a little problem last night.”

  I grimaced. I’d had a couple of problems last night.

  My mind wandered. I jiggled my feet and tapped my fingers on my thighs. I looked over my shoulder at Jasper. The door behind him beckoned, like a warm house in a snowstorm. Jasper cleared his throat, and I glanced up at him, listening to his commands like one of Pavlov’s dogs. He said nothing but, instead, nodded slowly at Sands. I swallowed hard and looked back at the sheriff. Thinking about Jasper standing behind me stilled my feet and fingers, at least for the time being.

  “Let’s start simple,” Sands said, dragging his feet off the desk. “I want to know where you were last night. Want a drink?”

  “What?” I asked, shaking out of my stupor. “No, no thanks.”

  The sheriff bent down and pulled a bottle of whiskey and two glasses out of the drawer. He glanced up at Jasper, offering him a drink. I didn’t look, but Sands shrugged and stuck one of the glasses back into the drawer. “Your boy seems soft,” Sands said to me. “Can’t handle a little liquor?”

  I waited for Jasper to answer. He remained mute. The awkward silence grew into a monster in the room, and I buckled. “He’s not,” I said quickly. “Soft, I mean.”

  Boy, didn’t I know it—nothing about Jasper could be called “soft” most of the time.

  “He seems to take himself pretty seriously,” Sands said, capping off the whiskey and sticking it back in the drawer. “A man’s gotta relax from time to time.”

  Sands scrutinized me for a moment, sipping at the amber drink. The fans in the room were set to go back and forth and every time the air rushed across my face, it felt like a small orgasm. Since when had it gotten so hot in here?

  “Right!” I said. “Where was I last night?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you, miss,” Sands said. “You seem to be having some problem answering the question. Thinking of an alibi?”

  “N—no,” I said. “I mean, no, I’m not having trouble, or thinking of an alibi—”

  “She was in Atlanta,” Jasper said. “Trust me. I had my eye on her all night.”

  He didn’t wink at me, but he might as well have.

  My face went red hot. Yeah, he’d had his eye on me all night. I guess you could say I had my eye on him, too. Well, parts of him. If the sheriff noticed the six shades of purple my face turned, he didn’t mention anything.

  “You can prove you were together in the city?” Sands eyed me up and down. I swallowed thickly, my throat dry, but it was Jasper who answered.

  “There are security cameras in the lobby and each hallway of the hotel we stayed at.” Pulling out his wallet, he extracted a thin sheath of receipts, tossing them onto the desk. “This is where we stayed. Pull those recordings, and you’ll be able to verify we were there.”

  “Everything was strictly professional,” I said. Immediately I regretted adding that comment, because it hung in the air. I half expected Sands to say if it was strictly professional, why do you need to say it was strictly professional? Instead, he calmly sipped his whiskey.

  “So, you two went off to Atlanta,” Sands said. “And your room at the motel here was broken into while you were there. And this Daly fellow was at the scene.” His stare was off to the side, as though he were looking at some invisible whiteboard on the wall, connecting pictures of Daly and Jasper and I to see how the web all came together. “I looked at your motel room here this morning, after I spoke with that producer of yours. And I can only think of three things, but if you were in Atlanta it pokes some big holes in them.”

  Sands paused to take another sip of his whiskey, and I leaned toward him. The whirring of the fans seemed deafening. Over my shoulder, Jasper was completely silent. My mouth went dry, and as Sands swished the whiskey around in his mouth and swallowed, I forced a lump down my throat.

  “Fir
st off, we found Daly in your room,” he said. “One theory is that you trashed your own room to make Daly look bad. Of course, you didn’t expect him to show up, but it worked in your favor. What better evidence that Daly trashed your room than to physically plant him there? Though if you were in the city, maybe you paid someone else to do it for you.”

  I cleared my throat indignantly, crushing my hands into fists. “Are you saying that I would destroy my own stuff just to get back at Daly?” Keeping my teeth from clenching took more willpower than I knew I had.

  “I’m saying it’s a theory,” Sands said as his eyes wandered across my face. He’d probably noticed how tense I’d gotten. “Theories can be right, they can be wrong, and they can be disproven. Right now, I have a couple of them.”

  “If they all end with me paying someone to trash my own room, then I have trouble seeing—”

  “Cari.” Jasper’s voice cut me off like a razor, and his tone was like a bucket of cold water on my irritation. I stopped talking, opened my mouth to continue, and then closed it for good.

  “The second theory,” Sands said, “was that it was Daly who trashed your room, and you came across him. For whatever reason—maybe you have history with this fellow, maybe you were just hot-to-trot to give him an ass-kicking for breaking into your room—you attacked him in a fit of rage. This doesn’t work if you weren’t there, though it’s still possible you might have had someone else on your payroll.”

  Again, I opened my mouth, but this time I held my tongue. Sands paused for a moment, waiting for me to say something, maybe letting the silence linger so I’d feel compelled to out myself. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  Sands finished off his whiskey and set it on the desk, the glass connecting with the wood with a resounding thud. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Which brings us to our third and final theory: that it was Daly who trashed your room, and you came across him. Being a little lady like yourself, there’s no way you could have given him the ass-kicking he got. Which suggests that you were with someone—maybe some kind of protector. But if your attack dog was with you, that doesn’t work, either.”

  Settling back in his chair, he eyed me with suspicion. I could tell he didn’t like the fact that Jasper and I had both been out of town, but I wasn’t sure if he still thought I had something to do with it—if I had someone on my payroll.

  “Jasper had nothing to do with this,” I said. “And neither did I. I’d like to remind you that we have alibis. We’ve already told you where we were last night, and we have witnesses. And those recordings.” I had no doubt that Jasper had verified the presence of cameras before we’d ever set foot in the hotel.

  “No need to get hot under the collar, miss,” Sands said. “I’m a man of the law. I take no sides, hold no biases. It’s my job to look at a situation like this from every angle.” He leaned forward and stared into my eyes. “Ask me on a personal level? I don’t think you or your boy had anything to do with these happenings.” He leaned back again. “The lawman in me don’t give two squirts about what the man in me thinks, though. The lawman don’t care about opinions. The lawman knows that things aren’t always how they first appear.”

  “Fine. I get it.” I nodded slowly. Casting a quick sidelong glance at Jasper, I felt myself flush with embarrassment. “But we have a witness, on top of the recordings. Jackson. Ask Jackson, and he’ll back us up.”

  “Jackson,” the sheriff said. He pulled the bottle out and filled the whiskey glass again. “Who is that?”

  “He’s…” My words faded, and I cast a helpless glance at Jasper.

  “He’s a colleague.” Jasper’s voice was calm. “He was in the hotel room in Atlanta with us last night.”

  “The three of you in the room together,” Sands said. “What were you all doing?”

  Jasper simply raised an eyebrow as his lips curved into the barest hint of a smirk. I grimaced. Sands coughed on his whiskey.

  Sands produced a bandana from his back pocket and wiped his mouth. “Well, then. Look, Miss Dunn, rest assured the investigation is ongoing. Why don’t you and your friend just go back to the motel, clean up a bit, and try to relax? If I come up with anything, I’ll give you a call. If you have any more problems, you let me know.” Sands pulled a business card from the top drawer of his desk and handed it to me. “Day or night.”

  I accepted the card and tucked it into my pocket. “Thanks,” I said. “Hopefully there won’t be any more problems.”

  “Hopefully,” he said. “Have a nice day.”

  I stood up. Without a word, Jasper led me to the front door and closed it behind us.

  Chapter Two

  “Can you believe that guy?” I cried as soon as I was in Jasper’s truck. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”

  Jasper climbed into the driver’s seat and slipped the key into the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. “Cari, listen…if—”

  “I mean, the first words out of his mouth were practically ‘I think you paid someone to do it’! What is this, the blame-the-victim law? I suppose if I were to get gunned down in the street, it would be my fault for standing in the way of the bullet!”

  “Cari—”

  “I knew we should have gone over this guy’s head,” I fumed. “He’s nothing but a drunk, sloppy, id—”

  “Cari!”

  I turned to Jasper.

  “He was testing you. That’s all.”

  “He was testing me?”

  Jasper nodded. “Testing you. Feeling you out. Poking and prodding to see what you know. I don’t think he believes any of those theories. He said as much himself.”

  “Then why waste the time?”

  “To see what you’d give him,” Jasper said. “To see what you’d blurt out without thinking.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Do you think I gave him anything? I mean, you know it couldn’t have been me, but did I say anything to make him think it was?”

  Jasper shook his head. “No. He’s probably suspicious, but I don’t think he has anything solid. He knows you’re defensive, though, from the way you reacted to that first idea he suggested.”

  “So…what now?”

  “I don’t think Sands knows who it is any more than we do,” Jasper sighed. “No, I think it was someone else. Someone close to you. I think you pissed someone off, and that someone is out for blood. You still have that card Sands gave you?”

  As we turned out onto the road, I pulled out the small cardboard rectangle. “This one?” Jasper took it from me, rolled down the window, crumpled the card into a ball and tossed it outside. “What are you doing?” I looked out the back of the truck, watching the crushed paper tumble down the pavement and into a pile of leaves. “We might need that!”

  “We don’t,” Jasper said. “Sands is no use to us. He’s got no leads, and if we need to call him, we have the emergency number. No, we’re going to have to figure this one out ourselves. Who have you pissed off recently?”

  I propped my elbow on the edge of the door and my chin on my fist, watching Meadow Ridge pass by. Who had I pissed off? Nobody, at least not that I knew of. I got along with pretty much everyone, Daly being the one notable exception. “A fan, maybe?” I tossed out. “That could be it. Maybe it’s not so much who I’ve pissed off as who I’ve turned on.”

  I pursed my lips. I couldn’t imagine anyone being that twisted up over me.

  Jasper gave me a wicked glance. I scowled at him. “You know what I mean,” I said. “Maybe someone is obsessed with me. You know, one of those crazies.”

  It wasn’t likely. Selena Gomez I was not.

  “Have you gotten any weird mail? Emails? Notes stapled to your door, maybe written in blood?”

  “Very funny,” I said with a sneer. “I’m serious. It’s been known to happen. But in answer to your question, no, I haven’t gotten any weird mail, at least no weirder than usual. Sure, the occasional request from a fan for a lock of my hair, or a video of me stepping on grapes
, but nothing that I would consider alarming.” I sighed. “I don’t like this, Jasper. All this craziness is starting to freak me out.”

  “Don’t be freaked out,” Jasper said. “You get freaked out, you get careless. You start making mistakes. The last thing we need is for you to start making mistakes.”

  “I am freaked out,” I reiterated. “I can’t help it. There’s someone out there, and they’re after me, and I don’t know what to do. I feel so helpless. And I’m worried—you don’t know who this person is, either. What if they’re stronger than you? What if you can’t protect me?”

  “Do you trust me?” Jasper asked curtly.

  “Do I trust you?”

  “Yeah. Do you trust me to keep you safe?”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “It’s a yes or no question, Cari. Do you trust me to keep you safe?”

  The question hung in the cab of the truck for a moment. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I trust you.”

  “Good,” Jasper said. “Because I will. No matter what it takes. If they’re stronger than me, I’ll get stronger. If they’re smarter than me, I’ll get smarter. Whatever it takes, we’re going to figure out who’s doing this and put an end to it.”

  I opened my mouth to speak but silenced the thought before it emerged. Jasper was right. I was feeling a hundred different things all at the same time. Fear, love, passion—they were all intertwined right now, and the knot was only getting tighter as time progressed. There would come a time when this was all over, hopefully with me alive and well, when something was going to have to give. I was going to have to stop being in love, or in lust, and stop being afraid. But right now, my insides were a rat’s nest, and removing one emotion was probably going to damage the others wound up with it.

  “We’re not returning to the shoot today,” Jasper said, after a lengthy pause.

  “What do you mean?” I frowned. “Of course we are.”

  “I mean it’s dangerous there. You’re going back to the room. Sands was right. You need to get organized, and relax.”

  “No.”