White Rabbit: The Rise (The Kingmaker Saga Book 1) Page 3

  “Mr. Paxton,” Uilleam greeted formally as he stepped inside the warmly lit room that smelled of the clove cigarettes the man was smoking. “I understand you have a proposition for me.”

  Paxton looked up, his expression anxious. “Are you really him? The man who can fix anything?”

  Uilleam gave an immodest shrug before helping himself to a seat in one of the brown leather armchairs. “That’s what they tell me.”

  He didn’t miss the way Paxton glanced over at his personal security—who remained standing in front of a closed door with his hands folded in front of him.

  While Paxton seemed almost relieved that he was still there, his guard was not.

  It was clear he didn’t trust them. And even as he had no idea why, he had every reason to be suspicious.

  Uilleam could easily make Paxton’s problem, whatever it turned out to be, go away without as much as a blink—that was how good he was—but only if it interested him enough to invest his time.

  As he was known to accept the oddest of tasks, he also had a tendency to decline any job that bored him.

  And boredom struck him often.

  At this point in his career, whatever a person’s proposition, it needed to be worth his time.

  Paxton cleared his throat, trying to affect an air of importance, and even that he was in charge of this conversation—but they both knew he wasn’t. “I have a problem.”

  “A two-hundred-thousand-dollar problem, by the looks of it,” Uilleam returned, reclining back in his seat. “Though that amount only warrants me listening, you understand. I haven’t agreed to anything.”

  “Of course. Yes, I understand.” Paxton’s throat hollowed as he dragged in a lungful of nicotine, letting the smoke billow out from between his lips before he continued. “But I’ll pay whatever price you name.”

  “Then by all means,” Uilleam said with a gesture of his hand. “Why don’t you tell me how I can be of assistance?”

  Paxton cleared his throat once more, grinding out the butt of his cigarette before reaching for another from the pack on his desk. Between placing the cigarette between his lips and lighting it, then standing and crossing the floor, gesturing for his guard to move out of the way, he seemed to make a decision.

  One that appeared to be weighing heavily on him.

  “It was an accident,” Paxton explained quickly, practically tripping over his own words. “I was in the middle of something, and she interrupted me. We … fought, but she was fine when I left her, I swear.”

  Uilleam found himself more curious than he had anticipated as he watched the man stop at the lone closed door in the room.

  Skorpion didn’t look nearly as at ease as he felt as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, ever ready for someone to make a move against them, but it was easy enough to guess what Paxton had hidden behind there, even without his near confession moments ago.

  Uilleam could read people as easily as a book. It was all about foresight—anticipating the moves of his opponents before they acted. Like a game of chess.

  It was what he did best.

  So before the door even opened and he could see a hint of a pale arm stretched out across the floor, he had a good idea that whatever lay on the other side was something Paxton would pay an obscene amount of money to be rid of.

  Whoever this girl was … she was the source of Paxton’s discontent.

  Without waiting for an invitation, Uilleam got to his feet and moved across the room to stand behind the man, wanting a clearer picture for himself before Paxton could further paint his own narrative.

  He couldn’t see with the door blocking much of his view—the curl of fingers with neat, painted nails. The curve of a leg bent at an awkward angle. A heel resting on its side some feet away.

  He saw the violence of it all.

  “Who was she?” he asked. “And how long has she been here?”

  “Her name is … was Miranda Abernathy. She was my … well …” He stumbled over his answer, clearing his throat again—a tell that was quite apparent.

  As if Uilleam really had time to play word games. “Mistress?” he offered with an arch of his brow.

  With one press of a gloved finger against the door, he sent it swinging wider, getting a better picture of the scene in front of him.

  Early twenties, if he had to guess. Black hair that was slightly damp for whatever reason, eyes closed within a heart-shaped face.

  A once beautiful girl.

  The thought made him frown.

  “Yes. Yes, she was my mistress, but I broke it off with her weeks ago. No one knew about her,” he added on quickly, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Just my security, Phil.”

  And judging from the way that Phil had acted at the very sight of them, he hadn’t opened his mouth to anyone about what had happened here. The sort of man who was loyal to a fault … even if that meant covering up a murder.

  “My company is in the middle of a merger,” Paxton went on in a frantic breath. “I can’t afford for this to get in the way of that. Not right now.”

  Murder did have a tendency to end a business deal.

  “So you’re asking if I can get rid of this for you?”

  “Your price, any price, just name it and it’s yours.”

  There was always great business in desperate men.

  Uilleam studied the body for another moment, wondering if he should have felt something more than casual interest. Repulsion, at the very least. Maybe even condemnation for the man who had so clearly committed the brutal act.

  But he wasn’t thinking of what was or what should have been.

  He was facing the problem in front of him. All of it served his endgame.

  He shifted his gaze from the woman to Paxton. “Let’s begin.”

  Present Day …

  There were few luxuries money couldn’t afford him.

  Since he would be staying here in New York for quite a bit longer than he’d anticipated before arriving, that meant he needed to make his current accommodations suitable for his work.

  It took no time at all to call down to the front desk with a list of his needs, and within the hour, two more flat-screen televisions were brought in and mounted to the walls opposite the one already present. Three brand new laptops came in unopened, as well as a number of burner cell phones should he have need for one.

  As well as the treadmill he was currently running on.

  And considering the sheer amount he was paying for not just the room itself, but the amenities it included, he didn’t doubt he’d also have their discretion.

  From the moment he had agreed to the job for Paxton—and given him his price (which had even made the billionaire blink in shock)—he’d been waiting.

  For this very moment.

  It might have been only ten in the morning—late considering how early he woke up everyday—but already, news of Paxton’s lover’s death was being broadcasted on every news station.

  He should have been used to it by now, but it was always a little disconcerting knowing the intimate details of a person who was virtually still unknown by so many.

  The details of their lives always played in the background of his mind when he watched these reports.

  “Investigators have not determined how the mysterious woman fell to her death, but as of now, foul play has not been eliminated.”

  It would be by the end of the investigation.

  Uilleam had seen to that.

  What he did as a fixer wasn’t a one-man job.

  It involved various moving parts and a score of individuals who knew little more than the person who came before them.

  And what had clearly looked like the murder it was a mere week days ago now looked like a suicide.

  He would give it another day or two before news of her passing became a distant memory.

  Before her tragedy became just one in a long line of them. Because that was the way the world worked.

  Death came for everyone eventually.
>
  The only thing Uilleam needed now was confirmation.

  3

  What Wasn’t Said

  Before moving to New York, Karina had always wondered how it was possible for the majority of the population not to own a car.

  How did they get around at all hours of the night?

  What happened when they needed to go grocery shopping?

  She was used to the shops being farther away—where she could spend hours looking out the window at everything they passed whenever they ventured into the city—for it to be a journey. She hadn’t realized just how close everything was—Manhattan, especially, wasn’t as large as she had thought—or how she would become accustomed to taking the metro or a cab everywhere.

  And with the way traffic was on most days, it always seemed faster to use public transportation.

  Today, though, since she had time after the late lunch she had taken, she climbed into the back of a cab and let the sound of traffic be her background noise. She opened up the compact laptop she carried and went over everything she already knew—which was very little, she realized.

  The reason she needed to make this visit to the police station to see whether she was seeing the ghosts of something that wasn’t there, or if there was something to really pay attention to.

  Earlier, she had shot off a text to a friend who helped her out with information that she couldn’t get for herself.

  This time, it had been a picture of the woman whose death she was looking into.

  Twenty minutes later, a name was sitting in her messages.

  She wasn’t sure what program or software he used to find the information she needed, but she didn’t ask either.

  A name made it easier for her. Now whichever detective was assigned to the case wouldn’t pretend as if they had no idea the victim she was talking about when she asked about the case.

  Miranda Abernathy.

  It was a ten-minute walk from the stoplight where she was dropped off to the 32nd Precinct.

  The sidewalks weren’t so crowded out here, making it much easier for her to walk without bumping into another person.

  A flutter of anxiety always flitted through her whenever she passed a police station. Every time, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was the day her secret was found out. Whether someone would run her license for whatever reason and find that under close scrutiny, it was fake.

  And today, she was willingly going inside one.

  The artist who had made her the fake license was one of the best, always making sure that it was as close to the real thing as possible.

  So while she might not have enjoyed spending a time in police stations, today’s visit was a must.

  Though sometimes it didn’t always pan out the way she wanted, she followed every case until the very end. And she would do the same for this one, even as there were already whispers that they believed it was a suicide.

  Detective Bradon was the lead on her case, and an overall decent human being, though he had a tendency to be a bit blunt at times. She’d been trying to catch him for a couple of days now, but according to the receptionist she spoke with once a day, he was never there. Finally though, he was here at the precinct, taking a break from whatever had kept him away for so long.

  Most people preferred to talk to his partner, but Karina had waited for him specifically.

  He wasn’t what one would call a “people person,” but he was damn good at his job, so Karina was willing to put up with it.

  Unlike Pinkerton though, she didn’t have any favors she could call in with him. Instead, she had to hope he was in a sharing mood. Otherwise, she would be leaving here with nothing, and that wouldn’t do.

  She made it past the front desk with a flash of her press badge and a show of her license. The woman barely glanced at both before waving her on.

  Bradon’s desk was to the right of the bullpen. He sat in the short, uncomfortable looking swivel chair with his legs kicked up and a phone cradled between his ear and shoulder, oblivious to everything around him.

  His expression remained neutral when she walked toward him as if he already knew why she was there and had prepared for it. The police were a close bunch, so she wouldn’t be surprised if Pinkerton had given the man a heads-up.

  Considering he wasn’t shaking his head or sending her on her way just yet, it was as good a start as any.

  Bradon’s gaze cut to her a moment before he lifted a finger, silently telling her to wait. She didn’t mind waiting for him to finish his phone call—it gave her a chance to glance over the documents on his desk.

  In their attempt to prevent her from seeing one thing, people had a tendency to forget everything else.

  Very carefully, she pulled her phone from her pocket, making sure the flash was turned off before she snapped a couple of pictures of his desk, figuring she would sort through it later.

  “Yeah, all right. I’ll call you back for an update later.” He hung up the phone before moving to his feet and extending his hand. “Karina Ashworth, right?”

  She shook his hand. “That’s right.”

  “Pinkerton says you’re one of the good ones.”

  Karina shrugged. “I do what I can.”

  He nodded before gesturing to one of the hardback chairs with a stained cushion. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was looking for information on the case you’re working. Victim’s name is Miranda Abernathy.”

  Bradon shuffled through the folders on his desk until he found the one he was looking for. “This was the—this is off the record, right?”

  They always remembered too soon. “Of course.”

  He blinked pointedly.

  She pulled her phone out with a sigh, setting it and her tape recorder on his desk. “Off the record.”

  “Ran her prints through the system and got a hit for a DUI. Besides that, she was clean. Dumped her phone and found next of kin who came out to identify the body. Nothing else of value really.”

  He stated the facts as if he was reading from a textbook rather than the case folder of a woman who’d died in her twenties in his hands.

  Blunt, Karina remembered. “Anything else?”

  He shrugged as if the fact they hadn’t found anything else was odd. “Hell, the only thing interesting about it is that it happened two weeks before Paxton’s merger.”

  That was why she had remembered his name.

  She’d caught it at the end of a news program one day after work, though she had only been half listening at the time. Now, it all came rushing back, filling in some of the blanks she had about William Paxton.

  His company was merging with some other conglomerate in the city. A big deal in the tech world, she thought, though she didn’t remember the particulars.

  “Could be one of his competitors?” she blurted out, hoping to see whether he had considered the same.

  “Don’t know,” Bradon said with a shrug. “Far’s we can tell, it had nothing to do with no one.”

  “Then why was she there?” Karina asked, as much of a question to herself as it was to him.

  “Why does anyone go anywhere when they …” He waved his hand as if to encompass everything he had seen.

  “Still personal,” she said.

  At the very least, whether something had happened to her or if she had done it herself, the building—or the man who owned it—had something to do with it.

  “If that’s all there is, I’ll be on my way. Other cases.”

  Right.

  His attention had to be split—hers didn’t.

  Bradon inclined his head as he stood, grabbing his suit jacket before striding away as if they had never talked.

  Blunt, she remembered.

  But she had gotten everything that she could possibly get at this stage. If there was anything left to find, Bradon wasn’t the one she needed to get those answers from.

  There was one last person she needed to pay a visit to.

  Making her way down to the precinct
’s morgue was surprisingly easy considering she wasn’t permitted to be down here, but she had always been rather good at moving without being noticed.

  The temperature decreased drastically once she stepped off the elevator.

  She wasn’t a stranger to death, by any means. Beyond the man in the snow who’d died from a gunshot wound to the face, there had been her great-grandmother’s funeral—though she hadn’t had to actually see her since the casket had been closed. Even the funeral for the first man her mother had loved and lost.

  No, she was quite familiar with death.

  But that didn’t make being down here in a hallway that seemed to smell of death any easier.

  She still felt the same level of discomfort as she had otherwise. Like the way her stomach seemed to twist itself into knots.

  She purposely averted her gaze from the clear windows that showed a wall of freezer drawers as well as an exam table that she didn’t want to think about. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could leave.

  Down the lengthy hallway, she scanned over the names on the doors until she found the one she was looking for. It was already cracked open, so that allowed her a chance to glance in at the man she had come down to see.

  The same one who had been at the crime scene earlier.

  He was tucked behind an old but tidy oak desk with a pair of thick oval frames perched on the end of his nose. Whatever he was reading formed a pinch of frustration between his brows and had him tapping his thumb against the papers.

  “Mr. Paul?” she called with a sharp knock on his door. “I’m Karina Ashworth.”

  “Nice to meet you, Karina,” he said politely, albeit hesitantly, his gaze skirting past her as if he expected someone to come in after her.

  “I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions,” she said even as she helped herself to a vacant chair before he could tell her otherwise, “about Miranda Abernathy.”

  Any other coroner, she reasoned, would have at least appeared momentarily perplexed, or maybe might have taken a moment to look up the name, but Lincoln Paul did neither.

  Instead, he cleared his throat rather harshly, training his gaze on her face without flinching.