Damage Control Page 4

  My cell phone begins to ring in my purse where it rests at my hip and I hope this means he’s only now realized I’m missing. Maybe he’ll think I’ve already slipped past Seth and his security team, who, after tonight’s bombshell, I have no doubt are watching me. Worried about time, I start up the steps, unzipping my purse and glancing at Shane’s number on the caller ID. Inhaling, I decline the call and then place my phone on vibrate before slipping it back inside my purse. I’ll call Shane when I’m out of here, and detach myself from the assumptions he’ll be making about me and his family, before I find a cheap hotel to hole up in where I can figure out what comes next.

  Pushing onward, I jog up the next few levels, slowing at the ninth floor, but not stopping. By the time I reach the fifteenth floor, and my destination, my chest is heaving and I’ve ignored two more calls, no doubt from Shane. Cautiously, I crack open the door, glancing through the split to survey the hallway, then widen the gap to confirm my coast is clear. Exiting into the hallway, I don’t walk. I run around the corner and down the hallway toward Shane’s apartment, digging out my key as I go. Once I’m there, I don’t second-guess myself. It’s too late for that. I unlock the door, step into the foyer, and quickly shut myself inside. The familiar scent, all warm spice and masculinity, overwhelms me, twisting me in knots. An array of memories flickers through my mind, some intimate, some fun, while others are intense, emotional even, and I can’t take it. This is gutting me.

  Running across the pale bamboo floor, I cut left and up the wooden stairs leading to the second level and Shane’s bedroom. It could have been my bedroom too had I continued to foolishly play house, without considering these monsters of mine would surely find our window and break it open. The frightening image of Shane being ripped through broken glass has me shivering and shaking. I blink back to the present and I’m standing at Shane’s door, gripping the frame. Nothing is going to happen to Shane. I won’t let it.

  Shaking off the sense of foreboding trying to overtake me, I dash into the dark bedroom, that masculine spicy scent of Shane’s is stronger here, encasing me. My gaze lands on the massive king-sized bed that I’ve shared so very intimately with Shane. I jerk my attention away and dash past the wall of windows to my left, before cutting inside the bathroom. I flip on the light and the sparkling white of the stunning bathroom with a sunken tub comes into view. I set my purse on the counter and squat next to the bags of gym clothing Shane had delivered for our run a few days back. Rifling through the various items, I grab a pair of boyfriend-style baggy black sweats, a black T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Quickly undressing, I pull on my selections and then hide everything I was wearing inside the bags. Looking to hide anything that seems like me, I slip my purse over my head and chest cross-body style, pull a black hoodie over it, and zip up.

  Preparing to leave, I tug the hood over my head and face the mirror. Immediately upon focusing in on my image, I shove the hood back down. No one wears a hood up inside a hotel. Pretty sure I know where Shane keeps several beanies he wears when he runs, I flip off the light and hurry into the bedroom and through the inky shadows to the closet on the opposite side of the bed. Flipping on the light, I pause for several beats, my gaze flickering over Shane’s shirts and jackets. Some unidentified emotion pinches in my chest. Refusing to name it or allow it to control me, I move to the built-in dresser to the right and start pulling out drawers, managing to find a black beanie that I quickly put on and then stuff my hair underneath.

  My phone starts to buzz again, and with a new surge of adrenaline, I exit the closet and rush across the room, flying down the stairs, and I don’t stop until I’m in the foyer, standing next to the coatrack, with one last thing to do before I leave. Certain Seth, who is ex-CIA and resourceful, will track my phone, I unzip my purse and remove the cell that he and Shane know about, but I keep my spare that I can use to call for help and to contact Shane. I stare at the three registered messages. I want to listen to them, the urge nearly unbearable, but that would require time and torment I can’t spare. I turn the volume back on and shove the phone into my coat pocket, where Shane will think I left it earlier.

  Task complete, I inhale and walk to the door, knowing once I open it, I will never return. That very idea is a knife slicing right through my heart, bleeding guilt. I yank open the door, almost expecting to see Shane, disappointed and relieved all at once when I do not. I start down the hallway and contemplate the stairs but I think that would be an easy way to get trapped. No. I have to be bold here and get on the elevator. I round the corner and punch the button, praying when it opens that Shane or Seth are not standing there.

  Holding my breath, I watch the steel doors open and reveal an empty car. I step inside and this time, I punch the garage level, but then have second thoughts. Seth is smart. He’ll be looking for me at the obvious escape route. I’m not dressed the way he expects, so I just have to be determined in my actions. I’ll walk right out the front door. The elevator stops moving and once again, I hold my breath, waiting for the door to open. Waiting for Shane to appear. The steel doors part and a redheaded woman in ridiculously high heels rushes forward, ignoring my need to exit.

  Once she’s entered the car, I walk into the corridor, nearing the lobby and willing my heart to slow before it beats right out of my chest. I have to own this plan and the path I’m walking and I do. I cut right toward the exit, not left as I’d traveled with Shane, and I do not allow myself to look for him. I keep moving and it’s not long until I’m exiting the hotel, cold air blasting me in the face and chilling my neck. I turn left, toward the 16th Street Mall area where there will be plenty of places to disappear. It’s also toward my apartment, which I can’t return to. I’m not sure where I’m going except away from Shane.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SHANE

  Seth and his team search for Emily both inside and outside the property, while I check every spot in the hotel her access key and codes will get her, thinking she could be hiding out to throw off our search. After checking the restaurant and bathroom again, I end up in the gym, which seems like a possible hiding place, only to find it deserted at this nine o’clock hour, with no sign of Emily. Frustrated, I walk to the floor-to-ceiling windows wrapping the spacious facility, pressing my hand to the glass, my gaze sweeping the twinkling downtown lights, without truly seeing them for the fear clawing in my gut. I see again the panic, torment, and terror in Emily’s eyes when we were in that bathroom. She told me the truth tonight. She didn’t betray me, but she is in trouble, and I’ve let her escape to face it on her own.

  My cell phone rings and I fish it from my pocket, answering Seth’s call. “Tell me you have her.”

  “I was hoping you’d say you do. I pinged her cell phone. Shane, it’s in your apartment.”

  “I’m on my way,” I say, already striding through the gym. “I’ll call you when I get there, but her coat is there. She could have left her phone as well, so don’t assume she’s not trying to slip past you.” I end the call and exit to the hallway. While punching in my floor in the elevator car, I try to remember if Emily ever took her phone from her purse. I continue wracking my brain to no avail. By the time I’ve reached my apartment door, I’ve surmised that Emily had been on the balcony when Seth arrived with his bombshell about her. She could have set her phone down there, but she does have a key to get in too.

  I enter the apartment and softly shut the door behind me, listening for any sound that tells me she is here. Seconds tick by like hours, but there is nothing. No sign of Emily. I consider calling out or searching the apartment, but something tells me that won’t be productive. I retrieve my phone from my pocket and dial Emily, and grimace when her coat pocket rings. “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.”

  I shove my phone back in my pocket and grab her jacket, removing her cell. Shoving aside the clawing sensation in my gut, I check her call log and messages. Both are blank except for my number, but if she cleared any calls, the right tech person can find them, and her, I hope
.

  My phone starts ringing, so I stick Emily’s phone in my shirt pocket, and grab mine. I press my hand on the wall by the rack and lower my chin, that damn clawing sensation returning.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Shane.”

  At the sound of Emily’s voice, I go still. “Where are you?”

  “Somewhere you won’t find me,” she says, and there is no noise echoing her words; no wind that says she’s outside, no voices that indicate she’s in a public place in the hotel. “And that’s how it has to stay.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut with the certainty that she not only means those words, but believes they will hold true. “Then why call me?”

  “I needed you to know I didn’t leave because I wanted to or because I’m guilty of being aligned with your family or your enemies. You have to trust your instincts to become the head of the Brandon empire, and I won’t be the reason you misstep.”

  “I’m not doubting my instincts. I know you’re running and I know someone is pulling your strings. I also know I can help you cut the ties.”

  “I don’t need help. I need to explain.”

  “Explain in person.”

  “The night I met you,” she says, going ahead anyway, “I didn’t know we’d turn into what we did.”

  “What we are,” I correct, amending her use of the past tense. “Which is why you should be here now.”

  “No,” she says. “No. It’s why I can’t be there now, and now that I took away your ability to play hero, I can do just what you said. Explain things.”

  “I don’t play at anything, most especially protecting you, me, or my company.”

  “I know that, Shane, but—”

  “You don’t know that or we wouldn’t be talking on the phone right now. We’d be naked and—”

  “You wouldn’t know who was fucking who.”

  “That was—”

  “Doubt,” she says, “of me and your instincts. Don’t tell me it wasn’t. I can tell that you want to believe I didn’t betray you, but you can’t be sure I didn’t. So I’m going to tell you everything I can tell you that is the absolute truth, without pulling you into this.” She inhales and lets it out, still no background sounds to clue me into where she is, before she begins. “I’m blond. Seth’s file won’t say I took the LSAT, but I did. Seth’s file will say my parents died in a plane crash, but that’s not true. That night you were tormented by feeling love and hate for your father, I confessed the same, along with my father’s suicide. That was real. My dad killed himself when I was thirteen, and my younger brother, who is also not in Seth’s file, was eleven. And that suicide was the catalyst to the hell I’m in now.”

  She’s blond. She has a brother. She was honest about her father and she has no plans to come back or be found, at least not now. Much like in a courtroom, I don’t let myself feel anything about these things, but rather stay focused on fact-finding that will help me, and her, later. “Was your father in some sort of trouble when he died?”

  “There was a scandal about his work, and that, along with his death, destroyed us all,” she says. “I mean, my brother and I were too young to understand it then, but we knew what it did to our mother. Not to mention his suicide voided his life insurance, leaving us broke, struggling, and very alone.”

  Which tells me she has no other family. “And then something changed,” I press, knowing somewhere in this story is the reason she likes Bentleys and knows expensive labels down to the estimated price.

  “Only six months after my father died, a rich, good-looking man swept our mother off her feet, and he became her husband and the monster we knew as a stepfather and guardian to my brother when she died six years later. He’s the root of all this hell I’m in, right after my father, who left us to fall into that man’s life.”

  I don’t miss the way she places no blame on her mother. “So the stepfather is a part of this hell you’re in?”

  “Oh yes.” She swallows hard. “He’s dead but it seems like he’s trying to pull us into the grave with him.”

  I don’t like how that sounds. “Tell me about your stepfather and why he was a monster.”

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Anywhere you want. Say what comes to mind.”

  “He told us he worked as a consultant.”

  “What kind of consultant?”

  “A computer analyst. He was ‘solver of tech problems,’ he used to say.” She laughs without humor. “Who also owned two Porsche Carreras, while paying for our two-million-dollar house. Of course, neither me nor my brother knew the price tags for those until I hit high school and started putting two and two together.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I knew something with him wasn’t right, but he hid his secrets well. That is, until he started teaching my brother to hack.”

  I arch a brow. “Hack?”

  “Yes. Hack. As in criminal activity he involved my brother in when he was only fourteen. I was furious when I found out. Turns out, he’d hacked a database to prove it could be done, and then created a firewall to prevent it.”

  “After blackmailing those he’d hacked into paying for it.”

  “Yes,” she concurs, “but like I said, I only know this because my brother got involved. He’s still involved. And when I say involved, I mean, working for a clandestine operation capable of bringing down a small country if they decided to do it. I’ve tried to get him out for years, but he’s addicted to the money and just the high of doing what he does.”

  “This doesn’t tell me why you’re hiding and on the run.”

  “I saw something I wish I hadn’t seen.”

  “That makes you a liability,” I conclude.

  “Yes.”

  “So your brother half-assed you a fake persona and sent you on your way?”

  “He didn’t half-ass it,” she insists, but there is doubt vibrating in her voice.

  “Why don’t you sound certain?”

  “You just told me about the holes in my identity. I haven’t had time to digest what it means but I can’t believe my brother would risk my safety.”

  “He’s who you talk to on the second phone.”

  “Yes. He’s supposed to be fixing this mess.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not telling you that. I’ve said all I can say.”

  Which isn’t enough for me to find her if we disconnect this call. “I know the truth now. Come back or let me come to you.”

  “If knowing the truth erased the need for distance, I would have never left. These people will ruin you, Shane.”

  “The only enemy I can’t fight is the one I don’t know.”

  “There is no fight if they never know you.”

  “If you are in this fight, I’m in this fight.”

  “I have this handled. It will be over soon and until then, I need a favor.”

  “Anything as long as you ask me in person.”

  “In my apartment,” she says, as if I haven’t spoken. “In the top drawer of my bathroom vanity, there’s a bracelet. It was my mother’s and it’s all I have left of her. Can you please hold it for me?”

  “We’ll get it together. I’ll meet you at the apartment.”

  “We both know you’ll stop me from leaving.”

  “Even if I wanted to get the bracelet, I don’t have a key.”

  “I’ll mail you a key to the apartment.”

  “I don’t want you to fucking mail me a key. Bring it to me. Let me hold on to you, Emily. I’ll protect you.”

  “Remember when I said I don’t need a hero?”

  “But do you want one?”

  “Who doesn’t want a hero?” She laughs. “Especially one like you.”

  “Then let me—”

  “You don’t need someone else to save from themselves. You have your brother. But thank you, Shane. For hearing me out. For being a friend. I know you will think this is crazy, since I lied to you, but you were fast becoming m
y best friend.”

  “Then come back to me.”

  “I hope I can one day. Good-bye, Shane.” The line goes dead.

  Cursing, I redial the number she’d called me on only to have it go direct to a voice mail that hasn’t even been set up. That damn second cell I’d seen her with before, which obviously wasn’t about a lost phone she’d replaced, but her brother and her secrets. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! I don’t believe she would have called me if she believed there was any way we could find her at this point. She’s gone and I may never see her again. Worse, I let it happen. I dial Seth only to have his voice mail pick up too. I text him with the number Emily called me on and then try to call him again, with the same empty results.

  Shoving my cell phone into my pocket, I lean on the wall, squeezing my eyes shut, my face lifted to the ceiling, and I replay every detail of the conversation I just had with her. No names. No locations. She was cautious, planned, and I weigh that realization, waiting for a sense of being played. But what reason would she have for doing that when she’s already gone? Unless she’s not? Unless she’s still here and not sure she’s getting away?

  A knock sounds, and hoping for answers, I push off the wall, closing the small space between me and the door. I open it to find Seth. “I gave the number you texted me to Nick and his team.”

  “In other words,” I say, not moving from the doorway, “you don’t have her.”

  “There is no way she’s left the hotel. We have every exit covered.”

  “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

  “Nick—”

  “Is charging us a small fortune to make sure we know what we need to know, when we need to know it, which clearly we do not.”

  His phone beeps with another message, and he reaches for it, while I turn away and start walking, leaving him to come or go, preferably go and find Emily. Rounding the corner, I bring the living area wrapped in floor-to-ceiling windows into view, the memories of making love to Emily on the balcony just beyond the glass ripping through me. I head toward the bamboo minibar to the right of the glass doors, passing behind the leather furnishings I’d inherited from my father when I took over this place. The idea that this is where he used to take his “other” women does nothing to help my mood. I’m just pulling the top off a decanter of stout Scottish whiskey, when I decide I need all-new everything. Preferably, I think as I fill my glass, furniture picked out with me by the woman who was sharing my bed until about an hour ago.