Damage Control Page 5

  “What did Emily say when she called?”

  At the sound of Seth’s voice behind me, I down the contents of the glass and face him, hands on my hips, quickly giving him the rundown. By the time I’ve finished, he’s standing in front of me, his arms folded over his chest, his look skeptical.

  “No names,” he says. “No location. No proof anything she said is valid, but if she’s on the radar of an international hacking operation, we need to know who that is, in case they know who we are.”

  “We can handle them,” I say. “She can’t. But if we assume she is on their radar and we are too, we’d be in a better position if we knew where she was right now.”

  “She’s in this hotel,” he bites out at the same moment his cell phone beeps with a text. He digs it from his pocket, glancing at it, and then me. “Nick needs to see me downstairs.”

  “I smell a problem,” I say dryly.

  He shoves his phone back into his pocket. “Look, man. I’m as good at my job as you are in the courtroom, and you know it or you wouldn’t have brought me with you from New York. I hired Nick because he’s that good too. And I’m also your friend, which is why I know this woman sideswiped you. One minute you didn’t give a shit about anyone. The next she was under your skin.”

  “And your point is?”

  “Who we fuck can best fuck us. If she got out of here with the kind of coverage we have on her, she has skills that scream more than meets the eye, or matches her story.”

  “Being smart does not make her the enemy.”

  “But you have enemies, Shane, and not just your family. The Martina cartel will know that you stand between them and control of Brandon Enterprises.”

  “Points all well taken,” I say. “Go find her.”

  “I will,” he assures me. “Here or elsewhere.” He turns and starts walking.

  I stare after him, repeating his words in my head: Who we fuck can best fuck us. They’re followed by those of my mother not so long ago, in reference to Emily: Once someone is in your bed, they’re dangerously close to you. Watch your back with that woman. Again, I wait for doubt to rush over me. Instead there is a hole inside me that I can almost picture growing bigger, and in it are my father, and Emily. I need a favor, she’d said. It hits me then that Emily had no time to clean up her apartment. There might be information about her or her brother there. I’m also the person most likely to spot her on the street. Intending to change into running gear and head out by foot, I start walking, and I don’t stop until I’m on the second level and in my dark bedroom. That’s when I stop dead in my tracks at the sight of the light burning in the closet. The same light I always turn off.

  The idea that Emily actually came here is ridiculous, but I find myself crossing to the closet and stopping in the doorway, the scent of sweet, floral perfume teasing my nostrils. She was here, and my gaze lands hard on a drawer that isn’t quite shut. I cross to it and squat down, pulling it open, to reveal three of the four beanie hats I use for running. Holy fuck. She changed clothes. I abandon the closet and cross the bedroom, entering the bathroom to flip on the light, the same sweet scent touching my nose. I grab my phone from my pocket, punching in the auto-dial for Seth as I squat next to the bag by the cabinet and find the clothes she’d been wearing.

  I’m already on my feet and entering the bedroom when Seth answers. “She was here,” I say. “She changed clothes. She has on a beanie. Probably sweats and a hoodie.”

  “Holy shit,” he says. “She’s got balls.”

  “She’s got brains,” I correct, stepping into the closet and toeing off my shoes, already working on changing into running gear.

  “Hold on,” he says. “I’m with Nick. Let me have him get the word out.”

  He starts talking to Nick and by the time he turns his attention back to me I’ve pulled on sweats, a black T-shirt, and a hoodie. “Nick’s getting the word out to the team,” Seth says, “and I’m going to grab the security footage to the hotel and try to get a handle on when and how she left the building, if she did.”

  “She has,” I say, grabbing my socks and shoes. “And I know her better than anyone. I’m changing into running clothes and hitting the streets. I’m going to jog in the direction of her apartment.”

  “And if she decides to come back to you? Then what?”

  “She has a key that she’s proven she’s willing to use,” I remind him.

  “If she sees you, she might go underground.”

  “If she’s not underground already, she wants me to find her. I’m leaving now.”

  I end the call, part of my conversation with Emily a grim repeat in my mind. Where are you? I’d asked. And her reply had been a confident: Somewhere you won’t find me. Undeterred, I head for the door.

  She’s smart, but she’s failed to understand that I don’t lose. Not my cases. Not Brandon Enterprises. Not the woman who is either the best thing that ever happened to me or the worst.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SHANE

  It’s cold and snowing when I step outside, close to twenty degrees if I estimate right, which means there is no way Emily, who gets chilled even on warmer nights, is going to be lingering outside. I pull my hood over the top of my beanie and start walking, shoving my cold hands in my pockets, while scanning for Emily. She said I’d never find her, which could mean she’s already left the area. In fact, knowing we wouldn’t have yet found out she’d changed clothes, the most likely move would have been to leave the area.

  That means a cab, a bus, or a train, which I have no doubt Seth will have covered, but then, he also thought Emily hadn’t left the hotel. Refusing to be defeated, I start jogging, covering the two blocks that lead me to the always busy 16th Street Mall area where the road is sealed to traffic, the sidewalks framing food booths and lined with shops and restaurants. Any of which she could be hiding inside. I start walking, looking in windows and at the random packs of people.

  I cover four blocks, up and back, and despite the impossibility of this task, I know Emily more than any stranger looking for her. If she’s in the neighborhood, I have the best shot of finding her. My cell beeps with a text message and I glance down to find a text picture of Emily from a security picture along with a message: Emily leaving the hotel garage at exactly 8:52. I glance at my watch, to find it’s already nine forty-five. She’s long gone. My phone rings with Seth’s number, and I answer. “Tell me you have more than this photo.”

  “I don’t,” he says grimly. “But she’ll have to use an ID to check into a hotel or travel. We just have to hope she didn’t have another fake ID on her.”

  “She doesn’t,” I say with certainty. “I’m three blocks from her apartment. I’m going to go check it out. I’ll call you if I find any clues there.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he says, and I end the call, already starting to jog again, my mind going to her brother. Why would he do a half-ass job of setting up her identity? Even if he did it quickly, surely he’d have fixed it by now? My mind tracks back to the night I’d met her. She’d taken a call and been angry, playing it off as a maintenance issue at her apartment. Was that her brother? If not, who was it?

  I blink and find myself covered in snow as I cross the parking lot to Emily’s apartment, but once I’m at the door, the realization that I don’t have a key hits me. I grab the frame on either side of me. “Damn it,” I murmur, deciding I’ll have to break the window.

  “I’ve got it,” I hear Seth say from behind me.

  Pushing off the door frame, I turn to find him approaching, now wearing a trench coat. “You have a key?” I ask.

  He stops beside me, and pulls out some sort of tool from his pocket. “Close enough.” He inserts it into the lock and opens the door, but before he walks in, I grab his arm. Seth looks at me and nods his silent understanding, stepping aside. This is my woman and her personal space could contain my personal demons. I enter the apartment and tug down my hood, my heart sinking at the sight of an empty living room and kit
chen.

  I cross to the bedroom, the only other room in the apartment, and stop dead in my tracks in the frame of the open door. “Holy mother of Jesus,” I mutter, staring at the blow-up bed in the corner, and not another piece of furniture in the room. How did I not know she was living like this? I cross to the bed—if you can even call it that—and squat down next to it, the sweet floral scent of Emily everywhere, while she is nowhere I can seem to find her.

  “I take it you haven’t seen this place before?” Seth asks from behind me.

  I stand again and face him, hands on my hips. “If I had,” I say, “she would have already been living with me.” And while I have assumptions based on what I’m seeing here, I want to know what an ex-CIA operative thinks before I voice them. “What does this say to you about who and what she is?”

  “My initial thoughts,” he says, pausing as if in thought, before continuing with, “This could be a wounded-princess routine meant to manipulate you, but I’d have thought she’d have made sure you saw it before now, if that were the case.”

  “It’s not been all that long ago that we met.”

  “Agreed, and I’m not saying that she didn’t have a long game that she was playing, but it’s doubtful at this point.”

  “Why?”

  “I still think she would have made sure you saw this apartment, if it was part of a setup. But that said, this doesn’t mean she told the truth on the phone, either.”

  “She’s telling the truth,” I say, no hesitation in my voice.

  “I accept your judgment, because I know your judgment as good, but I submit to you that she might have been desperate, on the run, and in need of money and/or her new identity. Therefore, she was ripe for the picking for your family or another enemy to use as a weapon against you.”

  “Her brother set up her identity.”

  “She says,” he argues. “Think about it, Shane. Who knows what she might tell you to keep you from finding out the truth, especially if she was threatened. Or maybe she regrets her choices and just doesn’t want you to know what they were. Maybe she was promised money she desperately needs, and she loses the money she was promised if you find out. Maybe—”

  “Enough,” I snap. “I’m quite clear on the possibilities behind her actions but I’ve looked into her eyes, and you have not. Not like I have. She is running scared, but not from me.” Uninterested in anything but facts, I cut off the conversation. “Let’s search the apartment and get back on the streets.” I cross the room and enter the bathroom, finding a few toiletries and nothing more. The picture I’m getting of her being alone, and now on the run, is cuttingly clear.

  I yank open the middle drawer, and stare down at the velvet box inside the otherwise empty space. I reach for it and open the top, staring down at the delicate chain of a bracelet, Emily’s words replaying in my mind: It’s all I have left of her.

  “Shane.”

  I shut the box and slip it inside my pocket, facing Seth.

  “We located her.”

  A mix of relief and dread washes over me that I don’t analyze or express. “Where?”

  “At Union Square.”

  “The train station,” I say in surprise, not because of the location, but rather the fact that she’s still here. “She could have been long gone by now. Why linger there and risk us finding her?”

  “She didn’t,” he says. “We found her leaving it, which leads to the question, why go there and leave, without taking a train?”

  “She must have thought paying cash would avoid her having to show identification. She didn’t want to be tracked.”

  “Which would be an easy conclusion, except for one hole in that theory. There’s a big gap between when she left the hotel and when she left the train station. Surely she would have attempted to buy a ticket when she arrived, and left when she realized she needed identification.”

  I pull my phone from my pocket and glance at my call log. “She called me thirty minutes ago and there was no background noise. She wasn’t in the train station, not even the bathroom. I’m guessing someplace close to it. In other words, she went there and something changed her mind. She’s afraid of a group of hackers. It’s reasonable to believe she thought she could pay cash and not show identification in order to buy her ticket.”

  “Or,” he offers, “someone’s been pulling her chains, and they may have stopped her departure.”

  “Or she decided she needed help after all, in which case, she’ll show up back at my apartment. Where is she now?”

  His cell phone rings, and he reaches for it, answering me. “She was walking toward the convention center,” he says, taking his call, and then listening a moment before glancing at me. “Nick,” he tells me. “General update. Nothing new. I’m going to search the kitchen while we talk.”

  I nod and he disappears into the other room while I consider the direction of Emily’s path and the possibility it’s not headed back to me. Inhaling a heavy breath, I turn away from the room and do a quick sweep of every drawer and cabinet, finding what few products she has are all generic, bargain brands, which drives home the reality of her empty apartment I wish like hell I’d known about. Walking to the closet, I find a small duffel bag and stuff everything I can find of Emily’s inside. She’s not coming back here. Ever.

  With the bag on my shoulder, I exit the bathroom and walk to the side of the bed, grabbing a journal and a few other items she has sitting there, sticking them inside the bag. Zipping it up, I give the blow-up bed a grimace, and turn away. I can’t look at that damn thing. No wonder she didn’t want me here.

  Entering the living area, I find Seth in the kitchen, opening and shutting drawers. “Anything?” I ask, leaning on the door frame.

  He faces me and presses his hands on the counter. “She’s been eating on paper plates and using plastic ware. She has no mail. No connection to another life. We aren’t going to find answers here.” His phone rings again and he answers, listening several minutes, before saying, “Yes. Do it.”

  “What was that?” I ask, walking to the bar that separates the living area from the kitchen where he stands facing me.

  “She just entered the Hampton Inn by the Coliseum. Our man followed her inside, which brings us back to her ID and hackers. She can’t travel, or rent a hotel room in her name, which we have to assume based on her actions thus far, she knows. In other words, she could be meeting someone.”

  “Or someone rented a room for her,” I surmise, not liking where this is going.

  “My thought exactly,” he confirms. “But we have an opportunity here. People show their true colors when they don’t know you’re watching. What she does now will tell you who she is, far more than her true identity on paper ever could.”

  “More like who is controlling her.”

  “I’ll head over there then,” he says. “And I’ll personally stay the night and let you know if anything happens.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “You’re the boss,” he says. “But in my opinion, you’re too close to this to get any closer.”

  “All the more reason I need my questions answered.”

  “I can answer them for you, and nothing may even happen tonight. Go home, Shane. I’ll call you.”

  “One way or the other,” I promise him, “something is going to happen tonight.” I don’t give him time to make his case further, already walking toward the door and exiting. The wind greets me, swiping my face and dusting me in snow flurries, the possibilities of where the next few hours could lead as icy as the droplets they become.

  Seth joins me, pulling the door shut behind him, and my cell phone begins to ring. I reach for it, hoping like hell it’s Emily, to find my ex-boss calling instead, no doubt trying to recruit me back to New York yet again. I decline the call and without the hesitation of the past. I have a mess here my family created that I have to clean up, once and for all this time, and lord help them if they’re behind what’s going on with Emily.

 
; I glance up to find Seth already at the driver-side door of his car and I walk to my least favorite place—the passenger side. I don’t like being the one taken on a ride, but then, that’s a trait I share with the Brandon clan. The whole bunch of us prefer the driver’s seat, which wouldn’t be a problem if we all shared the same destination.

  Seth clicks the locks, and I toss Emily’s bag in the backseat before joining Seth in the front. He cranks the engine and the heat, placing us in reverse and then forward. “I need to know how you plan to handle any visitor she has,” he says, pulling us onto the main road. “Because we have a chance to watch her and see her true colors.”

  “You said that already.”

  “And I’m saying it again,” he says. “No matter who shows up to the hotel to meet her, we need to sit back and watch.”

  “Negative,” I say. “If Emily has a guest that bears the Brandon name, the game is over. There’s no reason to sit, watch, and wait.”

  “And if it’s someone else?” he asks, already pulling us into a spot across from the hotel.

  “We sit, watch, and wait.”

  His cell phone rings yet again and he kills the engine, grabbing his phone and eyeing the screen. “She checked into a room.” He glances at me. “We’re working to find out under what name.” Another car pulls into the spot behind us, and a light flashes several times in the back window. “That’s Nick,” Seth adds. “I’ll be right back.” He opens his door and disappears, shutting me inside the car, alone.