Alpha Billionaire’s Bride, Part Four (BWWM Romance Serial) by Mia Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page A

sat up straighter. “Well,
you’re not here to take me in, so what do you want? You name it, you’ve got
it.”
    “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me everything that happened
and everything you know about the woman who started all of this last Wednesday
morning.”
    “Yes. Of course. I’ll tell you everything I know.” She took
a drink of water and readied herself. “Where do I start?”
    Jada flipped open her notebook and prepared to take notes.
     
     

Chapter Five
     
    IN A DIFFERENT RENTAL CAR this time, Ian drove away from
the rundown motel, heading back to the small airport where Raul waited with the
helicopter. He was a little tired and contemplated stopping for coffee.
    Jada sighed deeply. “I’m starting to fade.”
    “Me too. Coffee?”
    “Please.”
    As he drove, he kept an eye out for somewhere to stop.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “We didn’t learn much from her.”
    “I think she told us everything she knew, don’t you?”
    “Yes, and that makes it worse. I was hoping to get more. I
thought she’d be the key to solving the whole thing.”
    “You got her to admit that she lied, that she was bribed to
file a forged document,” Ian said.
    “True, but we already had that figured out.”
    Ian spied a fast food place ahead. “How’s the coffee at that
place? Any good?”
    “It’s not a specialty blend from an exclusive plantation in
Java, brewed with the purest water from the most remote mountain in the
Himalayas and delivered on the backs of endangered ducks, if that’s what you
mean by good.”
    That was a mouthful, Ian thought. He glanced at her to see
if she was joking. Nope. More like bitter sarcasm. “Did my question offend
you?”
    “No. I’m just ... out of sorts. The coffee at that place up
there is plain old average coffee that doesn’t cost a lot. It tastes how you’d
expect ordinary coffee to taste. Does that answer your question?”
    “Sort of,” he said. “So should we go through the drive-thru,
or no?”
    “Yes, please,” she said, and turned her head toward her
window, shutting him out of view.
    Something was wrong, he thought, and it wasn’t merely that
they hadn’t gotten much useful information from Sylvia. He wished Jada would
tell him what it was.
    He’d been impressed with how she’d handled herself all day,
but particularly impressed with how she got Sylvia to open up. At first, when
she’d blown the plan by letting Sylvia off the legal hook, Ian had thought it
was over, that they’d get nothing out of the records clerk.
    But then Jada proved him wrong. Her compassion and her
goodness earned Sylvia’s trust in a way that unspoken threats never could have.
Ian had been wrong about the best course to take, had convinced Jada to use
techniques which had worked for him in countless negotiations and business
deals. But this wasn’t a business deal.
    Jada, being herself, had innately known the right thing to
do, and thanks to her, they now knew everything Sylvia knew. They’d gotten the
outcome they’d wanted and it was too bad Jada wasn’t seeing it as a victory to
celebrate the way Ian did.
    It took only a few minutes to get two coffees from the drive
thru. He pulled into a parking spot so Jada could safely doctor her coffee with
a packet of powdered creamer that would have raised the hairs on the back of
Mrs. Best’s neck had she been there to see it.
    Ian took a sip of his own black coffee. It was bland,
boring, a little weak. It had caffeine, though, so it would do.
    “Want to sit here and go over the notes?” He hoped the
suggestion might brighten her up.
    “No point. Hardly anything there,” she grumbled, stirring
her coffee with a plastic stick.
    “What about the timeline? Let me think. Wednesday morning
before noon, Sylvia met with a tall woman in a disguise of dark glasses, a long
black wig, a floppy hat and—”
    “Don’t be condescending,” Jada interrupted. “I’m not in the
mood.”
    “I wasn’t