Elbow on the counter, I face Gia, intending to compliment her, when she softly asks, “Won’t Meg know this place?”
“No. She knew far less about me than she thought she did. I bought this apartment under a holding company and we’re simply the newest renters.”
She tilts her head, studying me a moment. “You really never let her in until you were desperate to save Lara.”
“Amy,” I correct. “That’s who she’s become to me, because that’s who she had to become on her own.”
“But you stayed Chad?”
“I’ve been many people.”
“Who were you to Meg?”
“I dared to be Chad to Meg, but it didn’t matter, now, did it?” I ask, digging for that hole Jared may have found. “Meg knew who I was from the moment I met her, and she played the poor, desperate, beaten woman that day in the subway station.”
I watch her, looking for some flicker of unease, but I get more. “That’s how she got you?” She sounds shocked, appalled even. “She played desperate and beaten? No wonder you don’t trust me. That’s despicable.”
My relief is instant. I don’t know what Jared discovered, but if Gia’s acting, it’s an Oscar-winning performance, and I would be the first to give her the statue. “Do you expect less from anyone associated with Sheridan?”
“I thought he was a good man. I won’t lie about that—I did, Chad. I was completely fooled. I was a fool.”
Every bit of relief I’d felt is gone. The torment in her reads like a confession and an apology I don’t want to hear. “What are you saying?”
“Mr. Wade,” the attendant says, surprising us, “the real estate agent actually only just called when our office opened this morning. We changed the locks on the apartment, as is standard procedure, and the maintenance team is bringing me the keys. They’re on their way to the lobby now.”
“Understood, and more than acceptable,” I confirm, considering I’d woken the broker I use for several New York properties early this morning. “Our decision to take this property over another was rather sudden.”
“You’re welcome to go to the coffee shop off the lobby to wait, if you like, and I’ll find you.”
“We’ll do that,” I reply, wrapping my arm around Gia’s neck, and turning us to face Jared, who is standing in a corner, arms over his chest, legs wide as he watches the door.
Seeming to sense our approach, he glances up and meets us in the middle of the lobby. “We’re supposed to wait on the key in the coffee shop.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the door,” he replies. “I’m on edge just being in this city.”
Giving him a nod, I turn Gia and myself toward the coffee shop, and we enter and sit in a corner, where a waitress quickly takes our order. And while I fully intend to redirect Gia to the topic of her confessionlike statement before our arrival, she beats me to the punch. “I’m nervous like Jared, too, Chad. I can’t help it. We’re targets.”
“We’re fine, Gia. I need to know what you were talking about back there.”
She straightens, shoving her dark brown hair behind her ear. “What? I don’t know what you mean.”
“You really thought he was a good man. What did he convince you to do?”
“It’s not what I did; it’s what I could have done.”
“What does that mean?”
“You didn’t hear the conversation I did. The man has a God complex. If he gets the cylinder, the world will not be the same. The idea that I was helping him, even looking up to him, is just . . . it’s hard to swallow. He was like a father figure to me.”
“A fucking father figure? How close to him were you?”
“He took the time to get to know all of us on the team.”
“How many were there?” I ask.
“Four.”
“Only four? So you knew him well?”
She shakes her head. “No. No, that man I overheard talking was not the man I knew. The man who killed your parents is not the man I knew. He showed us a façade of a man who was all about honor and changing the world for the good.”
I laugh bitterly. “Right. All about changing the world for the good. Or rather, his good. How did he get close to you?”
“Our group had weekly dinners. I feel stupid, but he’s a gifted deceiver.”
The coffee arrives and I wait for the waitress to leave, finding Gia’s eyes clear again, as if she’s regained control. “Why do I feel like you’re still not telling me everything?” I lean closer to her, my voice soft, but firm. “I told you, Jared is the best hacker on the planet. He’s going to look into you, Gia. I’ll find out what you don’t tell me.”
“Mr. Wade,” I hear, looking up to find the hotel attendant. “Here are your keys.” He slides a small envelope in front of me. “We’ve left a concierge services menu in your apartment, along with a variety of property information. I had your luggage sent up already. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“We have a few retail deliveries that should arrive soon.”
“I’ll make sure they’re sent up promptly.”
“Thank you very much.”
The man departs and I stare at Gia, needing the truth, no matter how brutal it might be. “If you started out as an ally of Sheridan,” I begin.
“You’re an ass,” she whispers fiercely. “You tell me not to trust you and yet you demand I do in all kinds of ways. And then when I dared to share a part of my heartache over this, what happens? You accuse me of basically donating my body and soul to Sheridan’s efforts to be the most powerful man on the planet.” She stands and I follow her, lacing my fingers with hers and stepping close, our breaths mingling.
“Hurting you is the last thing I want to do. I just don’t want to get burned.”
Her gaze jerks to mine, her hand flattens on my chest, and I know she must be able to feel the racing of my heart. “I don’t either.”
“This was the wrong place for this. Let’s go upstairs, where we can be alone.”
She lowers her chin, no longer allowing me to see her eyes. I want her to look at me, to let me see that the answers she hasn’t given me aren’t going to make her the enemy. But there are too many people here, and the window of opportunity is lost.
“Come on,” I say, deserting our coffees to lead her toward the shop exit. I stop dead in my tracks as we clear the line crowding the entryway and see Jared talking on a phone.
“Who would he be talking on the phone with that you consider safe?” Gia asks beside me.
“Not a damn soul.”
Seems I’ve been busy worrying about the wrong person.
THIRTEEN
I CHARGE FORWARD and Gia keeps pace with me. Jared seems to sense our approach, ending his call and punching a few buttons, which does not diminish my growing anger before he starts toward us. We stop toe-to-toe, him explaining his actions before I can demand answers.
“I have alerts set up on Liam Stone, Sheridan Scott, and every member of the consortium Sheridan works with, and my program leaves me voice mails.” He shoves the phone in my direction. “Take it. Check.”
Despite knowing he’d had time to erase any evidence, I don’t hesitate to take the phone, determined to catch anything he might have missed. Glancing down at the screen, I confirm the message alert, but a frisson of my initial unease lingers and I don’t stop there. I go to his call log and check for anything further, but then, he could have cleared his log in expectation that I would look at it.
Still, I scan it, and it gives me nothing. I should be comforted. This is Jared, the man who helped me save, and hide, my sister. It’s then that I realize my “trust no one” philosophy hasn’t been as pure as I thought. Until this moment¸ I trusted Jared.
Eyeing my longtime “friend,” I hand him back his phone, watching as the anger seeps into his brown eyes. “You asshole,” Jared accuses in a low, vehement tone. “I see what’s in your face. How can you think that I’d betray you, you son of a bitch? I exposed myself to Liam St
one, and thus Sheridan, for you, and I don’t even know your damnable secret.” His gaze flickers to Gia and back to me. “Do you want to talk about what I just found out here, or elsewhere?”
It hits me then that he doesn’t trust Gia any more than I would a stranger in the mix, and he’s been investigating her. I’d expected it. I knew it was coming. And I hate the dread I feel in my gut right now over what he might have found out. “Upstairs,” I reply.
We stare at each other for two hard beats, and then in unison we turn and start walking toward the elevators. I have the strong need to separate him from Gia by putting him on my left and Gia on my right, where I hold onto her arm. Inside the elevator, no one talks, the explosion seeming to wait to happen until we are certain to be free of recording devices.
Finally, we’re on the forty-ninth floor and we enter the two-bedroom, four-thousand-square-foot apartment, walking across black hardwood floors toward the floor-to-ceiling windows with huge white beams at the corners. Stopping in the center of the room, Jared and I face each other. “The master bedroom is behind me, Gia. Jared and I need a few minutes.”
“Yes, but—”
“You’re next,” I say, not liking the idea that she feels any need to preface this conversation with her own statement.
I sense her hesitation, but she grabs at least one suitcase from beside the door and rolls it toward the bedroom. I wait for the door to shut, and when it does, Jared immediately demands, “I need to know what I’m dealing with here.”
“And I need to know what you just found out.”
“Among other things, Liam Stone, a man known to be rather reclusive, is making a rare public appearance on Friday night, with his fiancée by his side.”
I blink at the unexpected news that has nothing to do with Gia. “Why, and where?”
“A fundraiser for the governor’s upcoming reelection campaign. It’s not his type of event. No event is his type of event. And Wes Wells is on the guest list.”
A chill goes down my spine at a name I know to be part of Sheridan’s consortium. “That can’t be an accident.”
“The question is, does Liam Stone know Wes is attending? No. Scratch that. The real question here is, what the hell am I involved in, Chad?”
I run a hand down my face and walk to the window, resting my hands on a small wooden handrail there. Jared joins me and the two of us stare out across the city, where trees and buildings jut upward here and there.
“Sheridan, the consortium, and who knows who else believe that there’s a cylinder that creates enough clean energy to render all other forms of energy, oil included, unnecessary. I don’t have to tell you what kind of power a cylinder that creates enough energy to power the world would have. If it’s in play, a second device wouldn’t even be needed. And of course I don’t have to tell you what being the only person to possess that kind of power would mean to Sheridan.”
“He hired you to get it?”
“Yes,” I confirm.
“And?”
“And I told Sheridan I couldn’t find it the day of the fire. Rollin offered me five hundred million dollars for it and I told him I can’t give him what I don’t have.”
“Do you?”
Responding to the weight of Jared’s stare, I cut him a look. “Someone got to the man who had it before me,” I say, and it’s the truth—just not all of it. “Rollin accused me of having it. He said someone in The Underground told him I did.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t tell anyone in The Underground anything about this, and Rollin didn’t name names. But he and his father clearly thought I was entertaining bidders, since he tried to kill me and everyone in my family.”
“You couldn’t give it to him dead.”
“I couldn’t give it to anyone else, either. He wants to know who has it now, but in the meantime he’s trying to duplicate it. Gia isn’t a secretary. She’s a chemist who was working on a project to attempt the recreation of the cylinder, with no success thus far. She thought he was going to use it to save the world. Then she overheard him talking about my captivity and saying he was going to use it to hold the world hostage. That’s how she got involved.”
I expect him to lash out at Gia, but instead Jared asks, “Why is he so convinced you have it?”
“It hasn’t shown up,” I repeat. “Do you know how many people would do just about anything to get it?” And knowing that could include Liam Stone, I straighten, facing Jared. “Does Stone have access to the party’s guest list?”
Pushing off the rail, Jared turns to me, his hands on his hips. “Not officially, but generally Liam Stone can get just about anything he wants.”
“No. He gets what he’s allowed to get.” And just that fast, I’m angry—or maybe it’s not so fast at all, but rather a festering black spot that’s been growing since Jared’s return that I didn’t want to acknowledge. I grab Jared’s shirt and shove him against the railing over the window. “Why didn’t you get my sister out of Liam Stone’s hands?” I demand, realizing now how much that’s been under the surface, bothering me since he told me about Stone.
He grabs my arms. “I’ve seen what you haven’t. She won’t leave him unless it’s in captivity. I’m sorry, Chad, but I had no idea if you were ever returning. Me locking her away in a cage was too far for me to go. You want to go after her now, fine. But you need to understand that that man has a hold on her, and he won’t easily let go of what he considers his.”
“His, my ass.”
“He has more money and power than you do, and as harsh as the truth is, he has her trust. You’re going to have to earn it back—and it’s going to be a war.”
The truth of those words crushes what’s left of my heart and I let Jared go, running my hand down my hair. I can’t lock Amy away eternally. I have to deal with Liam Stone, but I’m going to have to do it after I know she’s safe. “I need a way to get to her before Friday night.”
“I’ll start working on it.” He glances toward the bedroom. “I hacked Gia’s personnel file at Sheridan’s company. Her story matches what you just told me, but there’s no mention of a top-secret project.”
“That’s because it’s top secret.”
“Four people. That’s all that special team comprised, and Sheridan handpicked them all.”
“None of this is news to me,” I say, relieved it’s the truth. “But those other three members will be working to re-create what Gia destroyed. We need to know who they are, and what their motivations are.”
“I’m working on making files on the others, but my point wasn’t about them. The bottom line here is that Gia was close to Sheridan by being a part of this project. Now I see her getting close to you. She could be another Meg.”
“We don’t know where Meg came from, or how she found me. We know where Gia came from.”
“And we need to know those things about Meg, too. I need everything you can give me from your life before she found you. But that still does nothing to tame my worries about Gia.”
“Gia’s not another Meg, for all kinds of reasons, and I have no intention of letting anyone screw me over again. On that note, Gia and I need to have a conversation sooner rather than later.” I turn to leave.
“Be careful, Chad.”
I consider a number of replies, none of which I’d accept if I were him, so I opt to scrub my jawline that’s in desperate need of shaving and simply say nothing. I cross the room to enter the master bedroom, likewise wrapped in windows, and Gia greets me at the door, her pale skin like ivory, her dark brown hair draping her shoulders, and worry etched in the furrow of her brow. She is beautiful. She is here. She is mine, if only for now, and I have every intention of keeping her.
I kick the door shut and she takes a step backward, giving me space I do not want. “You have to know that party is a setup. You can’t show up there.”
“I take it you listened in on our conversation.”
“Yes. I did. Chad—”
She yelps
as I grab her, rotating her to press her against the door, trapping her legs with mine. “He hacked your personnel file.”
“Of course he did. I don’t trust him.”
I tangle rough fingers into her hair, tugging just enough to force her blue eyes to mine. “He doesn’t trust you.”
“Like you?”
My answer is a deep, hungry kiss. The taste of her, addictively sweet, fills my senses, stirs a craving for more. She makes me crave more. Escape. Passion. That indefinable sense of needing what only she can give me. She moans, a soft, sexy sound I feel in the tightening of my body, the burn in my limbs. My free hand caresses her hip, her waist, the curve of her breast, and I want nothing more than to be lost at sea with this woman, floating on an ocean of waves, so far away from the rest of the world we can’t be found. But I have to settle for here. Now. Lost in her. With her.
Only, she’s not with me. I feel it in the tentative caress of her tongue, the uncertainty and reserve of her fingers barely flexing against my chest, and I tear my mouth from hers. “I fucked up in the lobby. But Gia, in a very short time, you’ve gotten inside my head and under my skin in a way no one else has. You know the real me, and that’s dangerous for both of us.”
“Dangerous. Right.” She shoves against my chest. “Let me off this wall.”
“Gia—”
“It’s my turn to say stop talking. I can’t take the back and forth we have going on. You tell me not to trust you, and then use other words to demand the opposite. I can’t be this conflicted about you and us when I’m struggling with all I’ve lost.”
“When I tell you not to trust me, it’s not about the here and now. It’s about the future, after the dust settles. You can’t be with me. I will always invite danger. I am a part of a world you can’t understand.”
“I’m a part of this world now, too, and I need to understand to survive.”
“You aren’t. You can’t be. I won’t allow it.”
“You can’t change what already is. You think that if I’m out of your sight, I’m safe? That’s a fantasy, Chad, and I’m not willing to live in a fantasy that could kill me. I want to fight Sheridan. And I want to protect the cylinder, which I know you have.” She balls her fingers around my shirt. “It’s not enough to convince him you don’t have it. One day this world might need it. You have to come up with a way to make sure it gets to the right person.”