Read Wraith (Debt Collector 10) for Free Online Page A

can’t avoid the board forever.”
    “Since when can I tell her anything?” Miral juts her chin at him. “Out!”
    Wyatt grimaces, but I take him by the elbow and steer him toward the door. “Best not to mess with them in their natural habitat,” I say in a stage whisper.
    Miral snorts her reply behind me.
    Wyatt doesn’t bite on my joke, just frowns and keeps his tongue until we’re out of the ultra clean room. Then he pulls me to the side, near the supply closet and far enough away that the lab workers can’t hear us over the thrum of the vents.
    All the humor is gone from his face. “You can’t keep putting this off, Alexa. The board just wants reassurance that—”
    “That I’m going to liquidate my shares?” I cut him off. “That I’m going to boost all their payouts by finally taking the company public rather than keeping Sterling in the family? I know what they want, Wyatt. They can wait a little longer.” I’m committed to carrying my father’s mission forward, and not just out of respect for the war he spent his life waging: because it’s the only thing that gives me a chance at atonement. But I can’t do that with one foot dangling off the cliff. I need more time. Once I have it together, then I’m all in, fighting for the cause. And when I find the debt collector who killed my father, I’ll be dispensing my own ironic kind of justice. I ignore the urge to check my palm screen for a message from Jax, but a twitch in my hand makes the coffee slosh inside my cup.
    Wyatt frowns at the near coffee spill. “Even if you put off the board, Lifetime can’t wait. Your father’s bill is going to be voted out of committee the day after tomorrow. They want you to testify—”
    “Senator Lacket wants me to testify? I doubt that very much.”
    “No, the board of Lifetime wants you to testify. Jesus, Alexa, your father has worked on this for two years—”
    I cut him off with a glare. “Don’t tell me what my father did, Wyatt.” He knows the two of us were my father’s right and left hands. And it doesn’t take a psychologist to see Wyatt was the son my father never had. Or that Wyatt was nearly as devastated as I was by his death. If I hadn’t been drowning in my own loss, I could have been there for him. Should have been. But that one secret Wyatt doesn’t know makes everything infinitely more complicated.
    He huffs and digs his hands through his hair. The slow shake of his head is for me: like he thinks I’ve fallen back into the abyss when he wasn’t looking.
    “You look like hell,” he says.
    “Like I said, late night.” My glare grows hot, warning him off. Then I steer him away, just in case. “Any word on the investigation?” This is the secret only Wyatt and I share—we’re not waiting for the LA police to pirouette through their many levels of incompetence. We’re going to find my father’s killer ourselves. The only difference being that Wyatt wants to see the murderer behind bars, and I want to see him under my palm.
    Wyatt rolls his eyes at my obvious diversion. Then he relents. “It seems the police are even more corrupt than I had assumed. And yet strangely not corrupt enough.”
    “You can’t buy your way into the police report?”
    “No takers. It’s like everyone’s afraid of something, some invisible power at play here that I don’t understand.” His jaw works. Not understanding things isn’t how Wyatt operates. He tears into something until he’s figured out all the angles. “I’ve gone ahead and contracted with a private investigator.”
    I raise my eyebrows. Wyatt doesn’t know Jax, and I pay Jax to stay far away from Wyatt. “And?”
    “And he can’t even slash into the police department records to get a look at the evidence. It’s as if the whole thing is completely locked down. Untouchable.” His frustration ticks up another level. “He’s tracing down some leads, but it’s nothing. Just a bunch of theories. We’re assuming it’s a