“Makes sense. You working on something?”

Heath sent him a noisy huff, then glanced down at the tablet’s screen. “Because I dislike loose ends, I reached out to see if I could get a record of everyone who requested a parking pass in Angeles National Forest the day Julia Mullins died. The typical request takes six weeks to process. They’ll ‘rush’ it and give me an answer within two.”

“That’s useless,” Axel quipped. “Like the security footage from the hotel.”

He filled Heath in on Stone’s findings, sipping coffee and trying to figure out how the hell to solve this long-unsolved murder.

“So we’ve got nothing,” he summarized, sending the former MI5 agent a speculative glance. “If you were playing amateur sleuth, who’s your best suspect?”

“Well, until you showed me that snapshot on your phone, I would have suspected some slighted paramour of Mr. Mullins. Certainly, some starlet or another would have liked to cast herself in the role of wife to the famous widower.”

“Good point. I guess the man on the mountain with Mystery’s mother could be hired muscle. But if that’s the case, why is he wearing a perfectly pressed business suit to commit murder?”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice of wardrobe for the occasion.” Heath shook his head. “That white shirt would show every speck of blood. Black is much better for concealing nasty stains.”

“Yep.” Axel had no doubt they both knew that from experience. “So the police report isn’t going to give us anything new. All the follow-ups we have are dead ends. Mystery has told us everything we know. Have you ever asked Mullins about his wife’s murder?”

“I tried once. He made it clear that anything to do with her death was a very closed subject.”

A grieving man wanting to lick his wounds in private? Or something more? Yes, the famous director had been ruled out as a suspect, and he apparently hadn’t hired the Asian Mafia enforcer he’d known to commit the murder. That wasn’t to say, however, that he hadn’t found another capable assassin.

“Have you tried to follow any sort of money trail from Mullins’s accounts around the time of the murder?”

“No. I don’t have any notion if he’s the sort of fellow who would want his wife dead, but I can’t imagine he’d want any harm to come to his daughter. He loves her.”

“That’s my sense, too,” Axel agreed. “I think we’re going to have to talk to Mullins, his daughter, and her aunt today.”

“I’m not hopeful we’ll figure out much, but I’m afraid we’ve got nothing else.” Heath kicked back in his chair, set the tablet aside, and chugged his coffee. “But for pity’s sake, could you put a shirt on first?”

With a chuckle, Axel took his sweet time rising to his feet. He enjoyed a moment of towering over the other man before he trudged upstairs. In the bedroom, he found Mystery stretching, her completely naked body visible to his hungry stare, opening her eyes to the world.

He sat on the edge of the bed and cradled her breast, sweeping down her abdomen to pet her pussy before he leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Morning, princess.”

“Morning.” She winced. “If you have any wicked ideas, you should know I’m awfully sore right now.”

“And you should probably get used to that state around me.” He winked. “But you’re in luck this morning. I’m here for a shirt because Heath doesn’t like the way I’m dressed. When you’re up and ready, come downstairs. We’ll rustle up some breakfast, then we have to talk about who might want to hurt you and why.”

She nodded at him solemnly. As Axel brushed a lingering kiss on her lips, he realized this wouldn’t be easy on her. “All right.”

Reliving both her mother’s death and her own kidnapping would be traumatic enough. Forcing her to look at everyone in her life as a potential suspect on top of that? Absolutely both shitty and heartbreaking.

“We’ll be downstairs.”

With that, he left her in privacy and shuffled back downstairs, tugging his T-shirt over his head. In the kitchen again, he watched Heath pace the room in about three steps in any given direction, each of his long strides eating up ground.

“Better?” Axel held out his arms. Not that he really cared for Heath’s opinion. As long as the asswipe shut up about his attire, that would be great.

“Much. I think we need to talk to Mullins, try showing him this picture your friend procured once more and see if we jog his memory.”

Since he still had to reassure the man that Mystery was fine and had merely misplaced her phone, he could mark two things off his to-do list with one call. Axel nodded. “Go for it.”

Heath yanked out his cell and punched a few buttons, then enabled the speakerphone.

Mullins answered quick. “Heath, anything wrong?”

“Not per se. Mystery and I left Dallas last night and are now at her aunt’s home. We’ve tried to hoodwink whoever is after her by announcing that she’ll be returning to London on Twitter. We think that will buy us at least today to solve as much of this riddle as possible. If we can’t piece it together by then, she’ll probably have to fly home.”

“I’d rather have her here, anyway. Fly her home ASAP.”

“As you know, we’ve tried. Mystery will fight us all on that. We can safely hold her here today, then we’ll get her home.”

The director sighed noisily, obviously not liking the situation.

“Hi, Mullins. Axel here. I’m sure you’ve been trying to call your daughter. She accidentally left her phone at my place. A friend of mine is keeping it safe for her.”

Mystery’s father paused. “Your place. I can track her phone, you know. I know exactly where her phone is.”

Fuck. Axel had hoped her father was low-tech and he wouldn’t have to explain Dominion to his girlfriend’s father. “It’s actually my place of employment. I took her there last night because it’s secure, but she had other ideas.”

“And insisted we reach her aunt right away,” Heath filled in.

Axel shot the other man a shocked stare. Why would the Brit help him out? Or maybe he’d told the white lie to keep the director off Mystery’s back. Either way, it worked in his favor.

“That girl needs to stop being so damn impulsive . . .” Mullins sighed. “So you work there, huh? Do you play there, too?”

Though Axel would prefer to tell Mullins that his sex life was none of the man’s business, if he wanted to be in Mystery’s future, lying to her father wouldn’t get him far. “Yes.”

The man sucked in a breath. “Does Mystery know?”

Translation: Have you played with her? Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’d never really dealt with overprotective fathers before. “Yes. Sir, with all due respect, she’s a grown woman.”

“But she’s always going to be my daughter. How does she feel about your kink?”

“She’s not protesting. Look, I didn’t once touch her in the desert when I rescued her. She was too young and emotionally rattled. Now, everything between us is completely consensual—”

“I know you didn’t touch Mystery back then. She was actually crushed you hadn’t.”

Axel couldn’t help but smile. “She’s made me see the error of my ways since she returned to the States.”

“I don’t want to know what you two do, but if she’s happier, then I’m glad for her.”

Letting out a pent-up breath, Axel sagged into his chair. Thank fuck the man didn’t want to kill him. “I’ll do my best to always make her happy. But we’ll have to talk about that after we’ve dealt with the danger to her. Sir, Heath and I genuinely believe that whoever’s threatening her now had something to do with your wife’s murder.”

Mullins hesitated. “Julia’s passing was never definitively ruled a homicide.”

“But you know it was,” Axel shot back. “A friend of mine spoke to the detective in charge of the investigation when your wife died. He showed me the picture from the hikers.”

“Photos can be doctored,” Mullins pointed out. “I’m not convinced those people didn’t tamper with the photo to sell it to the Enquirer or Star or some other rag that would have paid them a fortune, regardless of whether it was real. Everyone wanted a piece of that story.”