Surrender to Temptation by Ednah Walters Read Free Book Online

his cell phone, opened his eyes, and speed dialed Ken’s number.
    “I thought you blew me off,” Ken said.
    Chase chuckled. “Now why would I do that?”
    “Because you’ve been riding my ass for three months. Since we agreed on updates several times a week, here it is. Deanna Marshal is still in a coma. My informant doesn’t know when they’ll pull her out of it. She has one more operation to go.”
    “Any unusual visitors?” Chase asked.
    “Nope. Just the usual. Her parents, her sister, and her sister’s friend. Our informant said her sister was off somewhere on a cruise. Her so-called friends are still distancing themselves from her, but the few I talked to insist she wasn’t dating anyone before the accident. She was married to her job, and you.”
    Chase winced. “Very funny, Lambert.”
    “The general consensus is she had a huge crush on you and no man could measure up,” Ken teased, chuckling.
    Chase sighed. He’d known about Deanna’s feelings and had originally planned to transfer her to his restaurant in Burbank.
    “This only adds to the list of reasons why she wouldn’t have burned down my restaurant unless—”
    “She was forced to,” Kenny finished.
    “I didn’t imagine a male voice that night, Kenny.” He’d heard the deeper, more masculine voice before he staggered from his office.
    “My people have checked every burn unit in the state, and none of the victims lied about where they were hurt or had any connection with Ms. Marshal.”
    “My competitors?”
    “Business at Java has doubled, but I haven’t found any connection between the owner and Ms. Marshal either. But we found where her family stored her things—at storage unit near her old apartment.”
    “Did you find anything useful?”
    “We found an old desktop with an old operating system, at least five years old, and a new laptop she hadn’t started using, which means she must have had another laptop since we found a power cord. Without her laptop, we can’t find places she’d visited and read her e-mails.”
    “Can’t you find a way around it? Hack into her e-mail and internet provider account?”
    Ken chuckled. “We are working on it. In the meantime, we are looking through the files in her thumb drives. Most of the files she backed up are recipes, but we found some pictures, too. Family pictures and some of her friends.”
    Ken was thorough if anything else, but from the sound of things, the investigation had reached a dead end. “I guess that’s it then.”
    “No, it’s not. You said there was someone at The Haven that night, and I believe you. We’ll find him, Chase. We’ll check her internet and cell phone service provider and see what comes up. Also, I’ll send you a copy of the thumb drive with her pictures. Go through them and see if a face pops up. We showed the pictures to her friends, and there are a few faces they don’t recognize.”
    Staring at pictures on the screen would only aggravate his eyes. “How many pictures are we talking about here?”
    “About five hundred. Might break the monotony of your new life.”
    Chase chuckled. “Jealous?”
    “Wouldn’t trade my chaotic life for anything.”
    “How is Lucas doing?”
    “Talking. He looked at me today and called me ‘dada’.”
    Lucas was only seven months, so that could be fatherly pride talking or wishful thinking. “I’ll believe it when Faith confirms it.”
    “Recorded it on my iPad. Faith agrees with me. He said ‘dada’.”
    Chase rolled his eyes. Every last one of his cousins and siblings with children always had some baby story to brag about.
    “Another genius in the family?” Chase teased.
    “Hey, I hear the sarcasm in your voice. With my genes and Faith’s, that’s a given. Oh, on a different note, I’m also looking at your case from a different angle. Will tell you about it when I have something tangible.”
    Chase frowned. “What angle?”
    “Like I said, I’ll tell you when I find something. Are you