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My teeth clench so hard, I’m afraid they’ll crack. There’s no audio, but I don’t need it to understand what’s going on. I see Abby running to the swinging door but not making it in time. She scrambles back as Levi comes through. Princess cowers in the corner, and Abby moves in front of her.
Bubba is baring his teeth, and Abby—fucking Abby steps in between Levi’s raised gun and my dog. I tap the button to stop the video.
Slowly, I twist to look at her, and her gaze drops. “Are you stupid? You stepped in his line of fire?”
Abby looks reticent for about one second and then glares at me. “I wasn’t about to let him shoot Bubba.”
I snarl a curse word at her and turn back to the video. I watch the rest of it play out. Hellman clearly threatened Bubba again, and Abby led him to a kennel. She then tried to physically stop Hellman, and he backhanded her. A low rumble of fury rises through my chest. She goes after him again, and he smacks her open palmed, hard enough to send her to the floor.
That’s all I need to see. The video is still rolling as I push away from the counter and head for the door. “I’m going to kill him.”
Abby yells. “Wait! No!”
Her hands are at my shirt again, trying to hold me back, and she’s no more bothersome than a fly buzzing around me.
But Griff moves quickly, and he’s at the door, blocking my exit. “Sorry, dude… can’t let you go commit murder. You know, being a federal officer and all.”
“Get the fuck out of my way. I warned him what would happen if he came near Abby again.”
Griff crosses his arms over his chest.
“Kellen, please,” Abby wails, moving between me and Griff. She places her hands on my chest, and I look down at her. “It is not worth getting in trouble. And if you go there and hurt him, you’ll get in trouble.”
That only infuriates me more. I can’t palm her cheek because I don’t want to hurt her, so I take her by the chin. “He put hands on you. He hit you… twice. He aimed a gun at you. Now, I can’t involve the police because you had stolen property, and that will come out. But I can sure as shit make him regret what he did.”
“I’m begging you not to, Kellen.” Abby pleads with her eyes and then throws her arms around my waist, burying her face in my chest. “Please… I don’t want anything to happen to you. Not when I just found you.”
Fuck. That’s dirty, but I find myself wrapping my arms around her to provide comfort. I look over her head at Griff, and he’s shaking his head with a grin. His expression seems to say, “Women are pure evil genius when it comes to shit like that.”
“Justice needs to be served,” I grumble. It won’t come through the court system, so the only thing I know to do is deliver pain.
“Actually, I might have a way to give you two justice without needing to lay a hand on Hellman,” Bebe says from the kitchen table. She’s been unperturbed by my explosion and the drama going on at the door. Leaning forward, she taps away on her keyboard. “Hellman’s got bank accounts in the Caymans. It’s a lot of money. Far more than he’d ever make breeding dogs.”
“How much?” I ask, turning toward her, my arm slipping around Abby’s waist.
“He claims around three hundred thousand a year from the breeding operations, but he’s got over seven million spread among four accounts in the Caymans. The deposits range from fifty thousand to two hundred thousand at a time and extend back at least four years.”
“He’s into something dirty,” Griff says, his interest as a law enforcement officer piqued. He moves behind Bebe and looks over her shoulder at the screen.
“Definitely,” she agrees. “But I can’t tell what. We’re going to need to get a little creative.”
“How creative?” I ask.
“I would suggest planting a tracker on his car and following his movements. I’d plant listening devices in his house.”
“And I’m leaving and not listening to this,” Griff says as he straightens, arms outstretched. He pivots and walks out the door.
Bebe doesn’t spare him a glance, but Abby looks up at me with a frown. “Why did he leave?”
“Because what Bebe’s suggesting isn’t legal, and he can’t be part of it.”
“Oh,” Abby says, and then her eyes sparkle at the thought of doing something underhanded to investigate Hellman. “I’m up for anything. We can sneak—”
“Yeah.” I clap my hand over Abby’s mouth and pull her back into my chest, wrapping another arm around her waist to hold her in place. “You are absolutely not going to do anything of the sort. You’re going to stay away from that asshole.”