Blindsided (Sentinel Securities) (12 page)

"Well, I have no idea what it is you're looking for—you've obviously made some kind of mistake."

"I hid it man—I'm telling you—I swear my ex has it for safe keeping. I'll take you there myself." The pleading desperate voice of Declan Cruz echoed around her and Brie jumped, her eyes darting around the room in surprise, until she realised it came from a voice recorder one of the other men held up from across the room in the small kitchen.

"We recorded that a few days ago."

He sounded terrible—the usual cocky confidence in his voice was reduced to nothing more than a whimper. 

"The men who have him aren't exactly the greatest hosts—not big on hospitality, and I dare say if they find out he's lying about you having it, they won't be too happy."

"But I
don't
have it." Fear cursed through her veins at the thought of those men murdering Declan. She may not love him
anymore
, but he was the father of her child and she couldn't stand by and just watch him be murdered in cold blood. "We have to call the police. We have to do
something
."

"If we find what he gave you then it'll be all over."

"How would you guys finding it, ensure Declan is safe from the bikies?"

"He's not our problem. Retrieving that information is."

"So you're just going to let them kill him?" Brie stared at the hard etched face of the man before her. Who were these people? Were they really this cold that they could simply shrug off the life of another human being so casually?

"He knew what he was getting himself into when he decided to play this double cross game with the big boys." Mac shrugged and Brie stared at him completely shocked.

"Look, let’s just take a breather for a while." Jason stepped in after a while, and sent a levelled glare at his friend which Brie was grateful for. They’d been at it for hours now and she was more than a little over the whole Spanish inquisition. In the last few hours she’d sent her child away and been told that a bunch of armed bikers would be descending upon her house…it was too much to deal with right at this very minute.

"Come on, you need some rest." He picked up her overnight bag and handed Brie, the soft toy Lucy had given her as it slid off the top.

"W
h
ere are we going?"

"My place."

Brie stared straight ahead and tried to ignore the stupid nerves inside her stomach, hugging the toy to her chest protectively. It still smelt like Lucy. They took a lift, and it went up three floors, the doors sliding open to reveal a foyer which lead into a sunken lounge room.

"This is your place?"

"Yep."

She took a tentative step out of the lift and walked across the terracotta tiled foyer into the lounge room. "TV big enough?" she asked standing in front of a large plasma TV. "Compensating for something, Nash?"

"Nope."

She lifted her gaze as he moved around her and headed through to the kitchen at the far end of the room. Turning away from the television, she set down her things on the end of the lounge and moved towards the floor to ceiling glass window that gave a fishbowl-like view of the city at sunset beyond.

She pushed open the door, barely distinguishable in the seamless design, and leant against the waist-high glass railing. Behind her she heard Jason's footsteps and turned as he handed her a glass of wine. "This might help unwind some of that tension."

"Thanks," she said, taking the glass from his hand.

"I also bought you this." He handed over a sleek black mobile phone and at her confused frown explained, "You can use it to call your neighbour. Here's the number."

"I thought you said I couldn't contact her in case they somehow traced it?"

"I did. But this phone is secure. They can't trace anything on this one, not that it's likely they could, but we didn't want to take any chances with your daughters safety."

His concern touched her deeply. The thought of calling to make sure Lucy was all right was something that she'd been desperately aching to do all day.

He slipped back inside the unit to give her some privacy and Brie sank down onto a nearby chair on the balcony to make her call.

Nash sat on the lounge, watching the woman outside as she spoke into the phone. He was mesmerised by the way her whole face lit up like a Christmas tree when she smiled, presumably talking to her daughter and he felt a catch in his throat as he saw her wipe a tear from her face after she hung up.

He allowed her some time alone before he got to his feet and went back out to sit with her on the balcony. "Everything okay?"

"Yes. Fine. Lucy's having a lovely time with Gladys's grandkids apparently."

"Are
you
all right?" He saw her smile wobble a bit before she got it under control to lift her gaze to meet his own.

"I'm fine. I just want to get this over with so I can have my baby home."

"We're working on it
,
Brie."  There was an urgency to his commitment on this job. He always gave his best on anything they did, but this time it was different…this time he didn't want to let Briella down. "How did you get mixed up with this guy? I've been trying to work it out ever since I first saw you."

He watched her drop her gaze to the wine glass in her hand, slowly. "I was young and stupid. Haven't you ever done anything stupid before?"

He was rapidly losing his heart to a woman who possibly held the key to their whole case and was mixed up with a sleazebag biker-wannabe…yeah, he'd done something stupid.

"I always wanted to move to the city—bright lights and all that," she gave a small snort. "I grew up in a small town, where there was nothing to do but dream about a big, exciting life waiting for you somewhere far away."

She seemed lost in her thoughts for a moment, but Nash waited patiently for her to continue. He took the opportunity to sit and watch her face as it softened at the memories.

“Dad was never really the same after Mum died and I couldn't bring myself to leave him alone, so I took a job in town at the service station for a year or two. Then he got sick
,
too." She toyed with the stem of her wine glass. "I felt guilty, that I wanted to leave so bad. I should have been happy with the life I had, but I wasn't."

"I'm sure your dad wanted you to be happy."

She lifted her gaze up to his and tilted her head slightly. "That's what he said. Anyway, I applied to university and got in to nursing, and was happy I wasn't the oldest person in the class," she smiled. "I guess I was a late bloomer. Suddenly I had all this freedom and I guess I was making up for lost time. I partied, and had fun…then I met Declan at a party one night and…I don't know, there was something about him. He has this charisma, something that just attracts people to him. I guess the bad boy image was too irresistible at the time and I fell for him."

"How long were you together?"

"Almost two years. It was an on again, off again type of thing. I fell pregnant with Lucy and when I told him, that was the last time I saw him, until just recently."

"You told him you were pregnant and he just left?"

"Yep."

If Nash's low opinion of the scumbag could go any lower, this would have done it.

"I was too angry at myself for being so stupid, as to get pregnant in the first place. I was a nurse for goodness sake! If anyone was in a position to know about contraception, it should have been me. It took a long time to get over that, but I got Lucy and she makes it all
worthwhile
."

"But you did it all alone." He frowned.

"Lots of women do it alone. I was nothing special," she shrugged. "Besides, I wouldn't have wanted Declan in my life. He just seemed to bring trouble with him, and then he got mixed up in this bikie gang and he got worse. There's no way I'd want him in my child's life while he was like that."

"So what changed? Why did you agree to meet him the other day?"

"He called and wanted to come over and I panicked. I didn't want him to know where I was living. He seemed so genuine. He said he'd been thinking a lot lately and wanted to meet his child. I wanted to say no, but I guess I was hoping somehow he'd changed. I knew I wouldn't want him back, but if he’d grown up, then maybe it wasn't fair on Lucy that she didn't have a chance to know her Dad. I agreed to meet him in a park. Somewhere public and neutral, so I could walk away if I felt threatened."

"What happened at the visit?"

"It turned out to be surprisingly civil. We had coffee, talked about Lucy. He played with her a while and then said he had to go."

"That's it?"

"Yep. He wasn't there any more than maybe, half an hour, tops."

"Did you find that strange? Why would he call you out of the blue like that if all he wanted to do was chat for half an hour and then leave?”

“I thought the whole thing was strange,” she muttered dryly before giving a small shrug. “He doesn’t have much of an attention span.”

“Did he make arrangements to meet up again?"

"Nothing concrete."

"If he slipped the recipe to you, where would he have put it?"

Brie shook her head. "He didn't give me anything. I was with him the whole time."

"It's easy enough to hide something if you're a seasoned conman, which it sounds like he is. What did you have with you on the day?"

She let out an impatient sigh before giving up. "My bag. That's all. And I use that every day—I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if there was something in there that shouldn't be."

"We need to check it out. Can I take a look?"

"It's inside."

They went back indoors and Brie handed her handbag over with an unenthusiastic glare.

Tipping the contents out on the small coffee table, Nash gave the items a cursory glance, before switching his attention to the bag itself. He checked all the various zippered compartments, inwardly shaking his head at the amount of stuff women seemed to think they needed to carry with them at all times. He felt through the fabric with his fingers to feel for anything maybe hidden in the lining and then handed it back to Brie with a frustrated sigh.

"I think I would have noticed if he were going through my handbag," she muttered dryly, scooping the contents of her bag back inside.

"There had to be something else." His eyes dropped to the small overnight bag beside the lounge chair she'd packed as they'd evacuated the house earlier that day. His gaze swivelled from her hands to the table outside. "Where's the dog?"

"What dog?" Brie asked confused by his sudden request.

"The stuffed dog Lucy gave you today."      

"Mr Snuffy?" Her gaze dropped to the end of the lounge where she'd put it down. "Why?"

"Did you have this at the park that day?"

"Yes. But—"

Reaching over, Nash snagged the toy and turned it over in his hands. It was well loved and fraying in parts, but just beneath the knitted brown wool collar, he saw a tiny piece of white stuffing poking out. Pulling the collar back, he saw there was a hole in the fabric. Carefully, he inserted a finger inside and felt something.

"What is it?"

"There's something in here. I need to cut it open a bit more to get it out."

"You're not going to destroy that toy.” She tried to grab it from his hands, but he snatched it out of her reach. “Lucy's had it since she was a baby."

"Calm down. I'm not going to wreck it. It'll just need a few stitches to fix it up again. There's already a hole here anyway, I'll be careful."

He went to the kitchen and took out a pair of scissors, enlarging the hole so he could slide two fingers inside. Locating the object he felt before, he carefully withdrew it discovering a small
USB
memory stick. "Jackpot."  

He caught and held Brie's stunned gaze and a thankful relief flooded inside him. She really hadn't known anything about it. He'd believed her before, but it had been based purely on his
desire
to believe she was innocent. But after seeing the shock and disbelief that he knew wasn’t faked, he was able to trust that his original instinct had been spot on—not based purely on attraction.

"He hid that thing in my baby's toy?" her eyes flashed with fury.

"I have to get this down to Mac. Will you be all right here for a minute?"

She gave a curt nod of her head, her body held stiff with outrage and suppressed resentment. He spared her a last, brief glance before rushing out the door.

****

Brie was too angry to sleep.

She stood staring out over the city lights in the distance for a long time before she decided to try and rest. She walked through the apartment, curiously sticking her head into rooms looking for a spare one.

She found what must be Jason's bedroom and cast a brief glance from the doorway. It was much like the man himself. There was nothing flashy about the place. Everything was organised and tidy.