“Check. My gut feeling, and they’re never wrong, is to talk to your mother sooner rather than later.”
“I don’t like how that sounds.”
“My gut feelings saved my life many times in the service.”
I inhale and let it out, wishing like hell I had time to let my mother recover from her treatments before she has to deal with any of this. “I’ll expedite the talk, but I need to pick the right moment. In the meantime, I need you to get me past the leak in my parents’ building.”
“Already on it. I have backup coming to the hospital tomorrow, to cover you while I meet with the apartment security head.” The elevator buzzes in protest of Jacob holding the button. “My time is up.” His lips curve on one side.
As the steel doors close a cluster of thoughts rushes at me almost instantly, and I force it away, leaving my mind blank. It’s all about control.
The ding signaling the twenty-first floor sounds and I go to my regular suite, turning on the living room/office fireplace before three rapid knocks sound on the door—my regular bellman. Before placing my bags in the closets, he offers me a large yellow special-delivery envelope with my name typed on the front.
Adrenaline rushes through me. It’s the information that I’ve been waiting for for a full week. Feeling like I finally have ammunition for the vengeance I fully intend to enact, I double his tip and send him on his way.
Once I’m alone again I slip out of my jacket, loosen my tie, and settle onto the living room couch. Opening the envelope, I find a stack of papers and, conforming to my request of complete invisibility, a disposable phone with a number taped to the back. From this point forward, there are no names. He is “Doc,” a nickname he uses for his precision at delivering whatever his clients need. As far as he’s concerned I’m nobody, which suits me well.
Setting the phone aside, I begin going through the comprehensive documents. Everything I could ever want to know about Ryan Kilmer, from birth until present, including a complete list of all business transactions his thriving real estate business has ever made. Squeezing my eyes shut, memories jab at my mind of the many times that I’d invited him and Ava into Rebecca’s and my most intimate moments. She’d hated them both, which was why I’d chosen them. To make her hate me. To make sure she didn’t want them. And I did it all under the guise of Master. I was such a bloody fucking asshole.
Cursing, I push to my feet, walking to the glass door and stepping into the blast of snow and wind, intentionally tormenting myself. My hand closes on the freezing railing, a punishment for my actions, though I can never punish myself enough. Before me there is only white and gray, a flicker of lights muted in the core of the murkiness.
Ms. Smith asked who I thought had helped Ava, and the answer is Ryan. Fucking Ryan. I don’t give a damn about his alibi for the night Rebecca died.
And considering our many profitable business transactions, I can think of only one motivation for Ryan’s actions. The same as Ava’s for killing Rebecca, and trying to kill Sara. Pure envy. Maybe of me and Rebecca, or perhaps of the power the club had become for me. I, of all people, know how easily jealousy forms and the poison it inevitably becomes. I curse again and turn my face to the blurred sky.
I shouldn’t have done a lot of things I did where Rebecca was concerned. And I should have done a lot that I didn’t. Ultimately, everything that has happened is my fault—but I’m not the only one who is going to pay.
I silently vow that by morning, I’ll have a plan to unravel Ryan’s life and his money train. And then I’ll dial that phone, and let the real games begin.
* * *
It’s three in the morning when I finally lie down, having left a message for Doc to call me. In my hand is Rebecca’s journal. And as many times as I’ve promised myself that I won’t read more, I can’t help myself. It makes me feel like she’s still alive. It makes me feel guilty and hate myself. It makes me focus on doing right by her in death, if not in life.
I flip open a page, to an entry I’ve read before and I know will shred me, and start reading:
Lunchtime, Friday
Another nightmare. They were gone for months and now they are back, tormenting me as much as ever. I bought a book that said I should write them down to start understanding them, but they still mean nothing I can decipher in any way. But I keep writing them. So, here goes . . .
It started again with me hanging from a railing on the edge of a cable car that’s somehow operating without a driver, and my dead mother is with me. We’re both on the step hanging off the side of the car, but several feet separate us. As the car slowly climbs a hill the air is calm, but my emotions are in a frenzied dance. I remember how I felt as I write this. I don’t seem to be able to see what I’m wearing, and for some reason I need to know. It’s a silly detail that seems irrelevant, but maybe it’s symbolic of some event in my life. . . . I really don’t know.
My mother isn’t smiling in this version of the nightmare, and she did when she first started visiting me. She looks angry, but ten years younger than when she died. The long, sleek brown hair she’d lost during her lung cancer battle is back; her pale skin absolutely luminous. Then I had the sudden realization that we weren’t alone. A man in a suit is sitting near the back. There’s never been anyone but my mother and I in these nightmares, and a sense of foreboding overwhelms me. I strain to see this new visitor, but his face is oddly in the shadows.
The car begins to top the hill and my mother hisses, “Don’t look at him.”
I cut my attention back to her and now her hair is short and thin; her body is thin, her skin now ashy. Memories of her lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life come back to me. “Who is he?” I ask curiously.
“Just don’t look at him. He’s dangerous. He’s poison.”
“Who is he?” I demand.
“No one I ever want you to know.”
And then it hits me. “My father. Is this my father you refused to tell me about, even on your deathbed?”
“There are things it’s best you never know,” she says, repeating what she’d told me then. We start rolling down the hill and she lets go of the rail, balling her fists at her chest. “Do you know how much your anger hurt me when I was dying?”
“Grab the pole,” I order, panic rising inside me. Our speed increases and I repeat more urgently, “Grab the pole!” We hit a bump, and I scream as she tumbles to the street and then vanishes.
Deep, evil male laughter radiates through the wicked wind that lifts my brown hair. My gaze goes to the faceless man and I climb up the step, past the seats, to the center aisle. The car is racing down the hill, too fast for the rails, and I have to grab the edge of the seats on either side to steady myself. “Stop laughing!” I demand, but the laughter just gets louder and louder. “Stop laughing!”
Anger and confusion collide in me, and I don’t even think about the danger to myself. I rush at him, charging forward, but when I get to him he vanishes as my mother had. He’s gone, as if he were never here.
Suddenly the car jumps the rails and takes flight. I gasp, trying to catch my balance, but I fall, sliding down the middle aisle. Scrambling for a grip somewhere, anywhere, I manage to grab the steel bottom of a pole and hold on. Hanging on never saves me in these nightmares, and I remember being conscious of that fact, but unable to fully conceive it. I want to live. I want to survive. (I think that maybe I will survive when I fully grasp the meaning of these nightmares.)
Squeezing my eyes shut, I prepare for what I know comes next. The cold splash hits me like a shock of pain. It’s so real, and it never gets easier, no matter how many times I’ve done this before. I never accept death. As the freezing bay water seeps through to my skin and bones, I swim, trying to find an exit before we go underwater and the trolley drags me down with it. But I can’t get there quick enough, and I’m shivering, my teeth chattering, as the roof is upon me, my hand pressing against it. Inhaling, I draw in a deep breath a moment before the force shoves my hea
d under the water. I’m near a door. I’m going to get out this time. With one hard pull on a pole, I jerk forward to the exit. And all of a sudden my mother’s there, her eyes shut, hair floating upward. She’s dead. Like I’m about to be. And then everything is black. . . .
That’s the last thing I remember before I sit up in bed, gasping for air, the real world coming back to me. I’m in “his” bedroom, in his bed; the spicy male scent of him is everywhere, a sweet jolt of reality.
My Master’s hand comes down on my back. “Easy,” he says. “You’re okay.” He pulls me into his arms and holds me tightly, stroking my naked back, which still tingles from the flogger he’d used on me before bed. And I want to be tied up again, have him take me to a place that leaves no room for the fear I’d felt in those moments underwater.
I whisper his name, the name I never dare write for fear someone will find this one day here at the gallery and read my words—but I said it then. I had to, and he didn’t correct me, as if he knew how much I needed him to be just him, and real—for us to be real. For there to be more to us than a contract. And sometimes, like in that moment this morning, when he’s holding me, when he’s gentle in a way I know he’s not with anyone else, I let myself believe that we are more.
He leaned back then, stroking the hair from my eyes as he promised, “I’m here. You’re here. We’re okay.” But that gnawing feeling I’ve been battling, that we wouldn’t be okay for long, had already returned and I can’t help but worry that’s what my nightmares are telling me. I’m about to lose someone else I love. Him. Us. Lately I feel like I’ve already lost me, like I don’t know who I am anymore. Like Rebecca Mason is just a girl who used to exist and left nothing behind worth remembering.
He laid me down and made love to me, then. Not fucked me, not flogged me. Made love. And it turns out I needed that far more than the flogging. For just a little while, all those other feelings faded. A year ago, that tenderness would carry me for weeks—but now, only hours later, I need more.
I wake at 8 a.m. to the alarm and Rebecca’s journal lying on my chest. For several minutes I stare at the ceiling, replaying some of the hundred drowning entries, most of which involve me in some way. Scrubbing a hand through my hair, I set it aside, although letting go of it cuts me deep in my soul.
I want her back. I want to fix what I didn’t do right, though I’m not even sure where the right and wrong began and ended. Maybe at hello. But I’ll never get the chance to find out.
Pushing to my feet, I walk to the bathroom. I need to look myself in the mirror, to face my sins and my emotions, to rebuild my armor and the Master I’ve lost. Maybe that happened at hello, too, and I just didn’t realize it.
By 8:45, I’m dressed in a custom-made black suit with a red tie, chosen because it’s my mother’s lucky color. While I haven’t believed in luck in a very long time, she does, and that’s what matters.
Going to the desk I used to plot Ryan’s demise, I seal the documents back into the envelope, then walk to the closet and squat down in front of the hotel safe. After placing them inside, I lock it securely. Returning to the desk, I dial from the untraceable cell phone, frustrated when I get the beep of voice mail. Leaving a message that could bite me in the ass later isn’t an option, so I end the call.
At nine o’clock, Jacob is at my door in a black suit and a trench coat. He announces, “It’s snowing like a forest fire outside.”
I arch a brow at the contradictory statement that somehow makes sense. Taking my Crombie from the entryway closet, I step into the hallway, letting the door slam shut as I start walking. Ready to get to the hospital and see my parents. Even more ready to take action than I was last night. I’m done with sitting back, waiting, wanting, burning to death from my own lack of control.
The elevator opens and Jacob and I step inside. “Anything I need to know about this morning, Bossman?” he asks, using the nickname the Allure staff back in San Francisco often call me.
“I want one of your men shadowing Crystal around the clock.”
“Suspicion or protection?”
“Protection. She’s too close to my family and business to assume she won’t become a target.”
“Starting when?”
“Today. And it’s not enough for you to just be on alert for Ava. Find her and whoever’s helping her, before she finds us.”
His jaw is set hard. “We’re working on it.”
My eyebrow goes up. “No denial that she’s working with someone? I thought you were programmed to repeat that police rubbish?”
“More like, told not to encourage you to rip anyone’s throat out in the name of vengeance.”
“But you’re telling me that you think there’s more to Ava’s disappearance? Despite that order from your boss?”
“Yes, I do. And they do.”
“About damn time you grew some balls.”
“I assure you, Mr. Compton, I have balls the size of Texas when I need them. I can also promise you that, despite downplaying it to you, Walker Security is working every angle that could represent danger to you or your family, or even your reputation. They aren’t ignoring any possibility where Ava is concerned, or taking anything for granted where safety is concerned. They’re damned good—which is why I joined them.”
The elevator doors ding open and we step out, then head toward the lobby doors. “Do you have any new information you should share?”
“Nothing on Ava, Ryan, or Ricco that helps us at all.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
“Not if I could rip their throats out for you and call it justice, to spare you the aftermath.”
“I’m not sure what to make of that answer.”
His stoic expression doesn’t change. “I do that to people.” He continues: “I don’t like the setup here. There’s only one door in and out of the hotel. If the press gets too heavy, it’ll be a trap. We need to move.”
Just then the hotel manager spots us from the bellman’s desk and rapidly moves in our direction.
“That’s Ralph Reed,” I explain of the forty-something dark-haired man in a brown suit approaching. “The hotel manager. He’s been around for years, and the hard set of his jaw and his brisk stride means there’s a problem.”
“Whatever it is, it just happened—because I met with him about my security concerns earlier this morning.”
Fighting the urge to curse at what’s certain to be a delay, I glance at my watch. “We have less than an hour to get to the hospital.”
“We’ll get there,” Jacob assures me.
“Spoken like a tourist,” I reply. “You don’t know the city at this time of the day and in bad weather.”
“Mr. Compton and Mr. Parker,” Mr. Reed says as we meet mid-lobby. “Excuse me for getting right to the point, but we have a . . . situation.”
Jacob motions to a corner. “Let’s step to the side, where we aren’t as exposed.”
“Of course,” the manager agrees.
I hold up a staying hand. “I have to get to the hospital. What’s the situation?”
“Someone claiming to be with the press was asking for you this morning. I’ve questioned my staff about the leak, but no one is claiming responsibility.”
“Did you get the name of this person, or their press credentials?” Jacob immediately asks.
Mr. Reed’s lips press together. “Unfortunately, no. The doorman did try, as did the bellman’s desk.”
“Did they confirm that Mr. Compton’s staying here?” Jacob asks.
“Absolutely not,” Mr. Reed assures us. “We took great precautions to keep Mr. Compton’s stay as invisible as possible. However, he is quite well known among the staff.”
“Is there security footage of this visitor?” Jacob asks, pounding away at the issue, which is commendable, but the seconds are also pounding away at my watch.
“We have cameras everywhere,” Mr. Reed replies. “I can arrange the footage.”
“Call me when it’s ready
,” Jacob instructs. “You have my card. And if it can be emailed, please do so.”
I insert, “Right now, I need to be somewhere.”
“Of course,” Mr. Reed says, sounding apologetic. “I’ll be in contact in the next hour.”
I’m already stepping around him and heading toward the door by the time he’s finished the sentence. Jacob again falls into step with me and I say, “Clearly, you aren’t convinced it’s a member of the press asking around about me.”
“My motto is proof before acceptance.”
I don’t ask where that comes from. I’ve looked in the man’s eyes. I’ve seen the hardness that only going to hell and pulling yourself back gives a person, and I approve. People who’ve been through a bloodbath and survived are the strongest, and I expect nothing less than Hercules by my side when it comes to protecting my family and employees.
We step outside to find the Escalade has been pulled around and is waiting for us, the storm gusting wickedly. I wave away the back door a doorman opens for me, choosing the front instead.
Jacob joins me and glances at me, his face expressionless as he starts the engine.
“You aren’t my driver,” I tell him, answering the question he hasn’t asked. “And I prefer being behind the wheel, especially in the city.” I eye my watch. “Step on it.”
We pull away from the curb into blizzard-like conditions, the traffic as heavy as the snow on the bumpers. I’m not going to make my mother’s treatment by car. When finally we begin to move, I direct Jacob to a subway stop and tell him, “Meet me at the hospital. Tell them your name and I’ll have them bring you to me.” I open my door.
“Wait. Where the hell are you going?”
“I’m taking the subway.”
“That’s risky with someone looking for you,” he points out. “Let me park—”
The light turns and I get out, slamming the door shut as horns start blowing.
Four
Mark . . .
I hold on to a pole in the crowded subway car. I’ve had to take three trains to reach the hospital, all done in only fifteen minutes. It would have taken an hour on the city streets.