I roll my lips together, then nod. “Okay.”
“Far as the world is concerned, all that happened was you came over to my place, and we decided to go to a hotel for the night.”
“Hotel?”
Hans turns us off the highway and onto a side road. “We need a little space from Holly Court.”
I don’t think I’ve been down this road, and from the looks of it, there’s not much out here.
“When you said you had other houses…”
“Not local,” Hans answers. “I had a condo downtown, above my club, but the manager and her family live there now.” He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “Several months ago, the ownership transferred to an overseas entertainment company, so no one should be going there looking. And if anyone does, I have good security.”
I repeat the first part back to myself. “You have a club?”
“I just own it. I don’t run it.”
“Like a nightclub?” I don’t know why I’m so hung up on this.
“More of a venue. Concerts and stuff.”
This doesn’t sound like the sort of thing Hans would like. “Why?”
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “All sorts of people are always coming and going from a place like that. Can hardly tell who’s who half the time.”
His answer is cryptic. And I feel like it might have something to do with the reason he has body bags stored in the back of his truck.
I swallow, thinking about the body bouncing around in the back of the truck. “The guy I killed… He was a bad guy, right?”
I don’t know why I expect Hans to know the answer to that, but I want to feel better about not feeling bad.
“He wasn’t good,” Hans replies. “But I need to get some more information.”
“How do we do that?”
He pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I gotta make a few calls.”
I pat my hoodie pocket, knowing that’s where I put the phone when I was still in the basement.
How did he…？
The phone starts to ring, and I see him look down at it for a second, like he’s deciding something, then he puts it to his ear.
Was he going to put it on speaker and then decided not to?
Even though the audio is going through the phone, it’s still connected to the truck, so the screen on the dashboard shows the call is being made to someone named K.
“Karmine,” Hans greets. “I have a situation.”
K is for Karmine.
Then I hear the unmistakable sound of a female voice on the other end of the line.
The jealousy I feel is so instantaneous I don’t even have time to register what I’m doing until I’m doing it.
My finger presses the screen on the dashboard, switching the audio to the truck.
It clicks over, the speakers humming with silence from the other end of the line.
“Hans?” the feminine voice prompts.
I cross my arms and glare at Hans’s profile.
He glances at me, and from his expression, I can tell he doesn’t understand what’s going on.
“Give me one sec,” Hans says, then reaches for the mute button.
“You called me!” Somehow the woman says it in a way that makes it sound like they know each other well. Like she’s dealt with this sort of behavior from Hans before.
He drops his phone into the little cubby on the dashboard. “What’s wrong?”
“Who is she?” My arms stay crossed.
“Karmine. She’s a… colleague.”
I turn in my seat so I can glare at him harder. “In health inspecting.”
This time, when his eyes dart over to me, he reaches out and grips my forearm. “Stop that.” He pulls, dislodging my crossed arms. “Don’t be mad at me.” He slides his hand down until he’s holding my hand in his. “Karmine and I work together… helping good people and hurting bad people.”
“Have you slept with her?” I snap.
I have no right asking him that. No right to feel this territorial over a man I’ve slept with once. But if he’s gonna be obsessed with me, he’d better be obsessed with only me.
When Hans lets go of my hand, I suck in a breath.
If he’s going to stop touching me while he admits to having slept with her, I’m going to hit him.
“That’s fucking one,” Hans growls.
He presses the button to unbuckle my seat belt.
I try to slap his hand away, not sure what he’s doing, but he catches my fingers and shoots a glare of his own my way. “That’s two.”