Blindsided (Sentinel Securities) (14 page)

****

When Brie opened her eyes sunlight was streaming through the window. The bed she found herself in was huge. She turned her head and saw that the other pillow was empty. Beneath her, the sheets felt luxurious—she wouldn’t expect anything less in this apartment—the man certainly had an eye for the finer things in life. She slid from between the sheets and placed her feet on the thick carpeted floor as she got her bearings in the very masculine—yet tastefully designed room. Across from her was the ensuite, and beside that another doorway led to a walk in wardrobe. 

She stepped into the bathroom and gave an appreciative sigh. It looked like something out of
home beautiful
or a five star motel from some far off exotic place.

A shower would clear her head and wake her up, so she stepped in and turned her face up to the deliciously hot spray beneath the massive shower head designed to imitate a shower of rain—no painful needle-like spray here. This was like a million little fingers gently massaging her body all over. 

Memories of the night before flashed through her mind as she closed her eyes and tilted her face to the cascade. Goosebumps broke out over her skin as she recalled the feel of Jason’s warm breath against her skin. He’d been so…
thorough
. She shook her head at the sheer absurdity of it all—she couldn’t believe how he’d managed to coax her out of that self-conscious shell she’d forced herself into. He’d refused to allow her to hide from him and she couldn’t believe she’d let him. Her knees still went weak at the thought of the tender kisses he’d planted along the stretch marks on her stomach.
Seriously!
That went above and beyond a casual fling, heat of the moment
,
kind of sex, surely? 

Turning off the taps with a regretful sigh, she stepped from the glass cubical and took a folded towel from a pile stacked on a shelf beside the shower. Wrapping the huge bath sheet around her, she realised her clothes were back in the guest bedroom she’d been supposed to sleep in, but hadn’t quite made it to.

The apartment seemed empty. There was no sign of Jason and she quickly dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt she’d hastily thrown in her bag the afternoon before.

The kitchen was its usual immaculate picture perfect self which is why the note left there stood out so starkly. Picking it up, she read it quickly. Jason’s writing was just like him. Practical and without embellishment. He’d gone down to a meeting and she was to make herself at home.

First things first, she needed coffee. She eyed the state of the art coffee machine in the corner, but kept her distance…the thing looked—evil. It looked like you needed a license of some sort to operate it. Nope—instant would be perfectly fine. At least, it would have been had
Mr
Perfect actually lowered his standards to
own
any. She had a quiet chuckle to herself as she’d tried to imagine what went through his head when she’d given him plain old instant at her place. Staring at the pantry in complete astonishment, Brie simply couldn’t comprehend why a person wouldn’t have a jar of instant coffee in reserve for emergencies…like this! Her thoughts immediately went to the day before and the kitchen downstairs. There was a big jar of coffee there she remembered seeing it on the bench. If all else failed she’d go out for some.

Her gaze rested on the note and a surge of heat crept its way up her neck as an image of Jason flashed through her mind unexpectedly. Did they really do half the things they did last night? She felt her face flame even brighter and closed her eyes in complete humiliation at her insane reaction to the memory.
For goodness sake, Briella! You’re a fully grown woman! You’re not some teenager with a crush on a high school kid!! Get a grip!

She may, very well be a fully grown woman—but she was also a woman who’d gone without sex for a very long time. What if he could tell?
Oh my God,
she thought with a horrified groan—
What if he’d given her pity sex!

An overwhelming urge to keep busy took hold. The contents of Jason’s pantry were nothing spectacular, but he had the basics—she could work with this. She needed to cook something to keep her mind off conjuring up any further complications to her already complicated life.

****

She went to the elevator and
balancing her plate of muffins,
pressed the open button, stepping inside the lift and waiting the few seconds that it took to descend the five or six stories to the basement.

The doors slid open with a soft whoosh and she found herself walking out into a round table gathering of a modern day
Knights Templar
. All that was missing was the suits of armour and a few swords. Her gaze immediately found Jason and she fought to keep the rosy tinge that she felt creeping into her cheeks at bay.

“You didn’t have any coffee…” as far as first words uttered the morning after a night of amazing sex—this wasn’t the worst thing she could have come out with, however, it did strike her as rather odd that they were the first words she came up with once face to face with the man responsible. It didn’t help that there was also an audience.

“It’s on the bench, next to the coffee machine. You want me to come up and make it?”

“No, no…its fine, I remembered spotting some down here–that’ll do…if that’s okay? I made breakfast muffins.”   

“Finally a woman with taste, and talent!” Gracie smiled across at her. “I don’t drink that fancy crap he likes either,” he told her, dropping his voice in a conspirator like tone. “And those muffins smell like heaven.”

“The coffee machine looked a bit too intimidating to tackle without a coffee in me first,” she said with a slight smile back. His smile was infectious.

“I’ll show you where everything is,” Jason said, stepping in between them and taking the plate of still warm muffins from her hand, while indicating she should move across to the kitchen.

“Did you find everything you needed upstairs?” he asked in a quiet voice once they were out of the immediate hearing of the other men.

“Yes, thanks. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was going to go out and get a coffee, but I don’t know how to get out the front door of this place—it’s locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”

“There’s only one way in and out and that’s through here. And you’re not to leave without one of us with you, okay?”

She really didn’t like the sound of that—it had been a long time since she’d been in a position where someone told her what to do.

He seemed to sense her irritation and softened his tone a little. “I just want to make sure you’re safe. Until we sort out this mess—I need to know where you are at all times. Staying here is the safest place you can be right now.”

The jug boiled and she quickly began making coffee, taking down five more cups. It seemed rude to make just one. “How much longer do you think that will be?”

He leaned against the bench, watching her quietly. “Not too long.”

She wasn’t exactly thrilled by his unhelpful answer. But it seemed as though that was as much as he was willing to divulge.

She went to the fridge and took out milk, added some rather disgusting looking sugar- in a sugar bowl that had lumps and the odd granule of coffee mixed through it, and asked Jason to help her carry the coffee cups back to the table where the other men had been talking among themselves. In the centre of the table Brie’s gaze fell upon a plastic bag which contained the same memory stick Jason had retrieved from Mr Snuffy the night before. Carefully, she placed the plate and coffee on the table.

“Thanks,” Gracie grinned. “You can hang around here anytime,” he said around a mouthful of the savoury muffin as he took a bite.

“So. What happens now that you’ve got what you were looking for?” she asked.

She noticed the other men seemed to regard her with varying shades of amusement, all but one. Mac eyed her from across the table and frowned. “We were in the middle of working that out, actually.”

Then you interrupted,
she added silently. Mac scared her. There was something unreachable about the man. He was hard, and cold and… sad. He certainly didn’t seem to like
her
very much. 

“I want to know what you plan on doing about Declan.”

“Nothing. Like I said before, he’s not our concern. If he hadn’t stolen from our client in the first place—we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

“You can’t just leave him with those men…especially since you now have what they want…they’ll kill him.”

Mac shrugged carelessly. He knew what he was getting himself into. He made his choice.”

“But that’s…inhumane.” Surely they weren’t seriously going to just leave Declan there? 

She turned her gaze upon Jason for some support
,
but saw him flinch slightly before letting out a tired sigh.
He agreed with this?
She couldn’t believe it. “Right then,” she said replacing her coffee cup onto the table loudly. “If you’re all too gutless to do something, I will.”

“Like what?” Mac asked almost lazily from across the table.

“I’m going to the police. Like
you
should have done in the first place,” she added.

“Nash—get your woman under control will ya’?”

“Excuse me?” Brie’s jaw dropped at the man’s nerve.
Who the hell did he think he was?

“What Mac was trying to say,” Jason cut in swiftly, “Was that we can’t call the police because at this point we’re not sure who, exactly, the bad guys are.”

“That’s what the police will work out. And in the meantime, they’ll be able to get Declan away from those lunatic bikers.”

“Ain’t happening,” Mac said, folding his arms across his chest stubbornly.

“I’ll tell you what
ain’t
happening,” she threw back at him, narrowing her eyes across at him. “Me, sitting back and doing nothing, that’s what.”

“You don’t get a say. This is business—our business. The only reason you’re here at all is because you had something we needed.”

“Mac!” Jason snapped. “Knock it off.”

So this was reality. Any illusions she may have had about last night and all those confusing feelings that had begun creeping around were now brutally put into place.
She had something they needed.
It should have been completely obvious that someone desperate enough to run their bike into her car would only be concerned with something bloody important. “Well, you can’t keep me here, so what I do isn’t your concern.”

“You won’t be leaving until I say so.”

“You can’t stop me!” she threw back at him even though part of her was beginning to hear warning bells.

“Let’s hope it won’t come to that,” Mac snapped, pushing his chair away from the table, he snatched up the plastic bag containing the memory stick and stalked across the room to the office, slamming the door shut behind him forcefully.

An uneasy feeling settled in the room after he left. “Mac’s under a bit of stress at the moment,” Stone volunteered.

“And I’m not?”

“We just mean, he’s always a bit edgy when things aren’t going to plan,” Jason took over explaining. “He’ll calm down. Look, I know this is hard to hear, but Mac’s right—we can’t go in there and get him. It’s a damn fortress and we can’t call the police in just yet, until we work out what this client of ours is going to do. It’s complicated…you just have to trust us on this.”

“And the longer you leave it—the more chance they’ll kill Declan,” she said miserably.

“They don’t know we found it…so he’s still worth something to them. They won’t risk killing him until they know for sure he’s useless.”

It wasn’t much, but it was something at least…and it was pretty much all she was getting it seemed.

Aristotle Demetriou stared out his window overlooking the bright city lights and nightlife of the busy Gold Coast club strip. Inwardly he was seething
,
but he’d never allowed others to witness his inner most thoughts before, and he wasn’t going to start now.

“So this bike gang doesn’t seem to be making any progress?” he asked waving a dismissive hand in the air as he spoke on the phone to the head of his in-house security team. 

“There was a great deal of movement and they went to a suburban residence late this afternoon, but they returned with Declan and from what we can see, they don’t appear to have the information.”

Aristotle ground his teeth together at the news. What were these clowns he was paying a fortune in retainer fees, doing? What was taking them so long to retrieve his belongings? He’d hired a specialist company to retrieve the stolen formula. The last thing he needed was to be connected to anything if it all went wrong and this was a company made up of trained, ex Special Forces. If anyone could get in and out successfully—he’d thought, surely it would be them. However he was not a trusting man and he’d had his own security team keeping tabs on the men.

“I can’t wait any longer. Meet me here in an hour. It’s time we paid a visit to these bikers and made them an offer they can’t refuse.”