Model Investigator (Haven Investigations Book 3) Read online

  Model Investigator

  By Lissa Kasey

  Sequel to Model Bodyguard

  Haven Investigations: Book Three

  With his lover, Kade, missing, androgynous former model turned private investigator Ollie Petroskovic is ready to kick some ass to bring him home.

  Ollie and his ex, rock star Jacob Elias, need to find Kade and free him from the clutches of his manipulative family. But with Ollie suffering from chronic migraines and Jacob unable to bear loud noises, they are hardly the dynamic duo. It takes a lot of sweet talking on the part of Jacob—and patience Ollie doesn’t have—to find Kade. Only Kade’s not whole anymore. The fight for Kade’s heart and mind is far from over.

  It’s Ollie’s turn to guide Kade through nightmares, self-doubt, and PTSD. Kade’s memories are scattered, fragmented with possible horrors, and he’s not quite sure what is real. Ollie will have to draw on his investigative skills to clear Kade of the terrible accusations his family has made and help Kade unlock the truth. But in doing so, he ignores his own health, which could have catastrophic consequences for everyone, especially when digging up the past could be lethal for them all.

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

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  Copyright

  Prologue

  Ollie

  IT ALL happened so fast. Everyone said that sort of thing after a traumatizing event, but it was true. It had all happened so fast. Levi hit me in the head and disarmed me. Jacob was bound. Kade was then shot with my Taser, then his own gun.

  Kade, the love of my life, bleeding.

  A gun pointed at my head with an order to drive. Kade trying to reassure me while he bled out fifteen feet away. The cops chasing us first with sirens blaring and then just in a silent flash of red and blue. Everything else was lost in soundless bursts of memories until the blockade.

  A police car in the road, and Kade shouting my name as Levi came at me. I swerved and slammed on the brakes. Then we were spinning, and my already pounding head hit the steering wheel, dropping me into darkness.

  THE STEADY beep of a machine woke me from the reoccurring nightmare. I couldn’t remember ever being so tired, groggy, and light-headed. The hospital was familiar, but I expected to wake up to find Kade by my side, only it was Jacob, my ex-lover, a rock star, and perpetual pain in my ass, not Kade, who sat dozing in the chair next to the bed. My heart raced as I remembered the blood pouring from Kade and the sound of his pained scream.

  Jacob jerked awake like he’d ripped himself out of his own nightmare. Maybe about the very same event. He glanced at me and sat up. His headphones were back on. Jacob’s hearing had been damaged by a bomb planted in an amp before a show. If he was wearing the headphones, he was still experiencing pain from a burst eardrum. He held up a finger and bolted to the door. Hope filled me. Maybe Kade had just stepped out a minute to get something to eat or some air. Maybe it had all been a nightmare. Maybe he wasn’t hurt and it hadn’t been his blood I kept seeing creep across the floor of the tour bus toward me.

  Only it was Will, San Francisco Police Officer and my elder brother’s best friend, who appeared in the doorway a few seconds later. His handsome face was set in a serious frown and his salt-and-pepper hair askew like he’d been running his hands through it.

  “Where’s Kade?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking even though my voice sounded like I hadn’t spoken in weeks.

  “You should rest,” Will told me.

  My blood turned icy. “Will….”

  He shifted Jacob’s chair away so he could hold my hand and still be at eye level if I turned my head. “You really should rest more first. One too many hits to the head.”

  He was trying to be funny to distract me and failing miserably. There was no tube in my nose or throat. No catheter. Just the IV in my arm. So I couldn’t have been that badly hurt. Even if my head still hurt, I could see okay, ignoring the little sparkles of light on the edges of my vision, and while I ached a little, it seemed to only be bruising. “Tell me,” I demanded.

  Jacob returned and stood at the end of the bed, notepad in hand. He’s gone, he wrote.

  I frowned and shook my head, at first thinking the worst but knowing it couldn’t be true. “He’s not dead….”

  “No. Not dead,” Will assured me, holding my hand tightly and glaring at Jacob. “Missing.”

  “Missing? We were all on the same bus, Jacob’s tour bus, how can he be missing? Levi shot him through the leg. His injured leg!” Kade’s right leg had been badly damaged by a roadside bomb over a year ago. He had trouble with it ever since. The sound of the shot and Kade’s pain made my gut churn, and it was only a fading memory. Then the gun had been pointed at me, and I couldn’t do anything. Didn’t do anything. Just did as told and drove. I could have hit Levi, lunged for the gun, tried to shield Kade. Something….

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Will whispered like he could somehow see inside my head. “You were in shock. In fact, I think you’re still in shock. Why don’t you rest some more, and then we’ll talk about this?”

  “No,” I snapped at him, coming back into the present, though a panic attack was beginning to make my lungs heavy and my chest ache. “Tell me.”

  Will let me go and sat down in the chair Jacob had vacated, making it creak under his weight. “He was already gone by the time I arrived. When I started asking about both of you, the hospital staff got all bitchy. Apparently the closest place to the crash was some tiny Catholic hospital. Shouldn’t have been an issue, but when I brought up that you were each other’s emergency contact, they got stony. I ended up calling Ty in. They wouldn’t even answer any questions about you.” He let out a long sigh. Will must have been desperate if he’d gone to Tyler for help. He and Tyler didn’t get along on a good day. Tyler was another one of my ex-boyfriends, only he also happened to be a powerful attorney. “By the time I got in to see you, made sure you were okay, Kade was gone. The hospital claims they released him to his family.”

  “I’m his family,” I growled, struggling to sit up. I was so going to hurt someone for taking him away from me. “We’re his family. We have all the documents in place and tied so tightly together we might as well be married. And he was shot. How can a hospital release a badly injured man to anyone?”

&nb
sp; Jacob held up both his hands and waved at me to indicate I shouldn’t get up and shook his head.

  Will just put a heavy hand on my shoulder and shoved me back onto the bed, which actually really hurt. I sucked in several deep gulps of air as the room spun. The left side of my temple began to ache with a rising dull throb.

  “You’re not going anywhere yet. Concussion and a couple broken ribs. Your doctor is most worried about the concussion. There will be tests. Lots of tests,” Will assured me.

  “I can’t just sit here. Do you have any idea what his family did to him the last time?” Just the idea of them putting him in another mental institution and loading him with drugs to convince him he was crazy made me nauseous. I had to get to him before it was too late.

  “Probably better than you do,” Will said quietly. He had been the one to save Kade the last time. No one should have to be rescued from their biological family. “We’re looking, Ollie. I promise we’re looking. Britney and I, Ty and Tomas, even Jacob’s got people searching.” He glanced up at the rock star, who still lingered at the end of the bed.

  “They won’t use his name,” I told Will. “They’re smarter than that.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll have to search by other factors. I have everything on file. His DNA, blood type, medical records, dental records, everything. Hell, even the serial numbers for the pieces in his leg and hip.” Kade had been amused by my need to know so much, but he’d complied. “I have everything on my computer.” Which had been in my car. I hoped they’d recovered it from the scene.

  Will patted the back of my hand. “We’re looking. We’ll find him.”

  “I should get up and help.” It was just a bump on the head and a few broken ribs. I could function with those. Maybe, probably.

  “You are going down for a head scan in a little bit,” Will told me. “Jacob is your escort.” He glanced out the open door toward several men dressed in suits with their backs to the door. “And his guards.”

  “You’re going to look for Kade?”

  “Of course,” Will said like I was slow. “I’m sure by the time you’re ready to get out of here, we’ll have him back.”

  But my heart hurt, and fear lodged itself in my throat. Kade had been badly injured. I remembered the mess of bone and tissue that had been his damaged right leg. The horrible stink of burned flesh. Apparently the Taser and his replacement pieces didn’t mesh well. How would he recover if his family was too busy fucking with his head?

  Chapter One

  Five weeks later.

  THE SPARKLES around the edges of my vision were sort of becoming the norm. I didn’t really notice them much anymore unless I was trying to find something and got distracted by them, like I was at that moment as I stood in my bedroom closet. It was like if I stared long enough at the edges, the sparkle would fade. Only it never did, it sort of intensified the longer I focused on it, eating away at my vision until eventually I’d lose the use of at least one eye. Sometimes both. It took almost an hour of rest with my eyes closed to regain my vision, which annoyed me because I had shit to do.

  I’d been stonewalled at every turn. Will and Tyler shut me down when I pressed for answers about Kade or asked for options. I was done waiting for them to decide my fate. I needed Kade back, and it was time I stopped waiting for permission.

  I was repacking my suitcase, adding things that Kade might need, but couldn’t find the sweater I’d been wearing. It was his, and desperately needed a wash, but it was the only thing I had that smelled of him.

  Another headache hinted a march across the left side of my head. A side effect, the doctors said. It would fade, they told me. Only it was almost a daily thing now. The sparkles and the headaches. I’d wash down some Vicodin before I left. What other choice did I have? No more hits to the head, they warned me, then told me the horrors of permanent brain damage. If I found Kade in one piece, I promised to let him take care of me all he wanted to and not fight him tooth and nail for anything.

  Jacob appeared in the doorway to my closet, dangling a pair of teal lace undies on one finger. His dark hair was styled sloppily perfect, like it’d been done by a pro, but I knew it was just products and his fingers. He wore only a pair of snug jeans. No shirt, shoes, or socks. He didn’t smell, so I couldn’t complain too much, but I did scowl at him. He grinned when I snatched my panties from his hand and dumped them in the wash pile that was overflowing.

  “Don’t blame me,” Jacob teased. “Blame your cat. I don’t know why he keeps bringing me your underwear, but it’s nice to wake up to.”

  “Pervert,” I accused.

  “Picking them up doesn’t make me a perv,” he pointed out. “Sniffing them does. And I’ll own up to that. Can’t resist since the cat drops them off so proudly.”

  I grabbed one of Kade’s suit jackets and shoved Jacob out of the closet so I could finish packing. Yes, I was beyond grumpy. Jacob was just being Jacob. Slutty and kind of a pervert was his norm. It really was Newt, my cat, who was being weird. He cried at all hours of the night, stalked the doors and windows, and stole my dirty underwear from the laundry pile and deposited it all over the house. None of this was standard for cats, at least from all I’d read on the internet.

  Tomas, Haven Investigation’s office assistant and my sometimes personal assistant, was supposed to stop by today to pick up laundry. Apparently Ty had been very unhappy about finding another of my stolen panties near the couch yesterday, when they’d visited to reassure themselves I was still alive. I protested that Tomas already had enough to do since he was running the office, including my background check software, and putting off cases. He didn’t have time to take care of me too. Which was one of the reasons my ex-boyfriend now lived in my shadow. But like always, my protests fell on deaf ears.

  Tomas was going to have the people who did his and Ty’s laundry do mine and return everything clean, folded, or in dry cleaning bags. Everything except Kade’s stuff. I refused to give it up. Those I’d stuffed into the suitcase so nosey ex-boyfriends couldn’t take them from me.

  “Do you even have a plan?” Jacob persisted as I zipped the suitcase closed and swung Kade’s jacket over my shoulders.

  I nodded. “Find Kade.”

  “But we’ve all been working on that. How is just showing up on his parents’ doorstep going to help?”

  “I have to do something.” More than just searching medical records and hacking into the computer systems of every mental hospital I could find in the country. Was he even in the US anymore? Could his parents have taken him overseas? It wasn’t like they couldn’t produce fake IDs for him. Maybe I should broaden my search.

  “You are doing something. And a lot of what you’re not supposed to be. Like not sleeping or eating and hacking into things that could get you jail time. Do you think Kade would have wanted that?” Jacob accused.

  I glared at him. Hating all the mothering I’d been getting lately. Hating that I suddenly had a live-in ex-boyfriend who wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. Not even for one second. I suspected it was part of a larger plan by all my friends to not let me wallow. Depression was lapping at me, crawling into my brain with a slow descent into madness. I allowed myself only a few panic attacks in the shower, where no one could see. And sure I’d missed an appointment or two with my nutritionist. But I was tired. So tired of everything. If I didn’t find Kade soon, I’d have no chance of keeping it together. It was grief not all that unlike when I’d lost my brother Nathan to his PTSD. The idea that maybe Kade was gone forever, too, made me sick. “Why are you even still here?” I demanded. “Don’t you have a tour you’re supposed to be on? Go entertain the masses, and leave me alone.”

  Jacob let out a long sigh. “You know the tour had to be delayed. Doc says no loud noise for at least three months, maybe more if the ringing doesn’t stop. Sales are good, even without the tour, and the label put a ton of merchandise up on the website. You should see the massive stacks of get-well cards people are sendi
ng me. My stuff has been getting lots of radio play, millions of downloads.” He pressed the heel of his palm to his injured ear. “But I can’t ignore the ringing and dizziness. We’re a pair, right? You with your weird eye sparkle headaches, and me with church bells in my head.”

  “You have a house four times the size of this and a bazillion servants. Go home.” I really didn’t want anyone around. In fact, I could feel another panic attack coming on just from thinking of the trip down to Carlsbad I’d be making. What was I going to do? Walk up to Kade’s parents’ front door and demand to see him? They’d probably arrest me. But I was running out of options. There was no trace of him anywhere, and even Ty’s legal battle to get Kade’s family to give him up was dragging on longer than he had expected it to. I needed to find Kade, or at least proof that his family had him stashed somewhere.

  “It was a rental, and my family is still living there.”

  “You could buy something,” I offered, because I was just being a cranky asshole. He really was homeless at the moment, his whole life having exploded. Jacob had been changing his staff from his family—who he couldn’t trust to do anything other than steal his money—to people who were screened and vetted with mile-long references in the industry. He helped his siblings find other work but couldn’t bear to even speak with most of them in person. The only one he’d been to see was his youngest brother Joel.

  I understood. I really did. He had a lifetime of blackmail and bullshit to wade through. Sometimes looking at him made me feel old. He was almost reborn. Gone was the superstar rock god that he’d cosplayed for the past fifteen years. Now with his hair an artful mess and falling into his eyes, no makeup, and off-the-shelf clothes, he could have been anyone. Someone with an extraordinary voice—he never really shut up—but just some guy.