Broken (14 page)

A muscle jerked in his jaw and he swallowed against the knot in his throat. Voice gritty, he muttered, “I’ve got to go.”

A frown darkened her face as he turned away.

Sara scowled at Quinn’s retreating back and muttered, “The man has a hot/cold switch I can’t quite figure out.”

One minute he was teasing her, smiling . . . she thought he had even been thinking about kissing her, despite what she’d told him about not being able to afford him in her life.

She had certainly been thinking about him kissing her. Thinking about how it would feel, how he would taste . . . whether or not he’d try. If he had tried, she would have let him. She would have enjoyed it. Then later, she probably would have kicked herself.

But it would have been good while it lasted.

Then he went and pulled some iceman act, pulling back and away while something cold and ugly moved through his eyes. For a brief moment, he’d stared at her almost like he didn’t quite recognize her, and then when he did, he’d flinched.

Sighing, she rubbed a hand over her chest and took another deep, slow breath. “You need to just stay the hell away from him,” she muttered. “Just like you’d already decided.”

Yes. She definitely needed to stay away.

It wasn’t going to be all that easy, if he kept looking at her like he wanted to kiss her. But if he could just keep that iceman act handy, she could probably manage it.

“I’VE grown tired of your incompetence.”

Don flinched at the sound of the scathing voice on the other end of the line. “James, truly, I’m doing everything I can think of, considering the restraints I have to work with, the obstacles that keep popping up.”

Don knew that if James had been any less arrogant, he would have already given up on having Don find her. Then he would have taken care of it himself. But James’s arrogance blinded him—he couldn’t imagine one of his employees betraying him. Especially considering the leverage he had over Don.

He clenched a fist, forced it to open. He could handle this. James would never suspect him of anything.

“Clever men know how to handle restraints. They expect obstacles and deal with them accordingly. Since you’re obviously incapable, we’re taking a different approach.”

“A different approach . . .” Okay, James would never suspect him, but he had obviously run out of patience.
Careful, Donnie. You gotta be careful here.
“James, you realize we would need to proceed with caution. Your wife isn’t going to be as easily satisfied as the police. Don’t forget there are other issues.”

The moment he said it he knew he’d made a mistake. James’s angry voice came back over the line, icy and cold. “Do you think I’m a fool? You think I’ve forgotten anything?”

“Of course I don’t think you’re a fool. I know you fully understand those other issues. There is a lot at stake here for you and I’m just trying to protect your best interests. That’s what I do.” He kept his voice meek and consoling, using that wheedling tone he hated so much. It was effective, as he had expected it to be.

“Of course. Yes. I understand the need to be cautious, but caution is one thing. Cowardice is another.” There was a moment of silence and then the sound of paper rustling. “You realize that this is trying my patience, don’t you, Don? Two years. This has gone on for two years.”

“I know, James. You’ve been very patient.” James had been patient, but Don wasn’t fool enough to think it was anything magnanimous on his part. He hadn’t wanted the extra attention, hadn’t wanted anybody to know that his wife had up and disappeared.

Disappeared and stayed gone for two full years.

Two years—a hell of a long time to keep this charade up. Although after the first few months, it hadn’t been that bad. Not until now. Not until the past few weeks. Early on, Don had been forced to keep up this tap-dancing routine, lying to the man who signed his checks, playing a risky game and knowing it wouldn’t go well for him if he screwed up. Risky games, he amended silently. Too many—he was juggling too many chain saws in this game and if he got through without dropping one, it would be nothing less than a miracle.

He’d managed it, though, and had started to breathe easier. James’s interest seemed to focus elsewhere, and he’d been satisfied with the half-assed reports that Don had passed off to him semi-regularly.

Then things changed. Suddenly, drastically, things changed, and once more, Don had to figure out the best way to get through this mess without having it blow up in his face. There were certain things he had no control over—certain things on a specific timetable. So very little that left him maneuvering room. So very little.

Sweat beaded on Don’s upper lip as James said, “Just be aware—my patience is rapidly coming to an end.”

The call disconnected and Don lowered the phone, staring at it nervously. Damn it, he didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t the sort of mess he had signed on to handle.

But how could he walk away? Anytime he tried to even consider it, he remembered the bruises. The blood. Soft white skin swollen and discolored.

Don didn’t see himself as a particularly strong man, and definitely not a brave one. He was a numbers man, a facts man. A knight in shining armor, he was not.

Truly, there was only so much he could do. Only so much that he could be expected to do. Only so much he knew how to do.

JAMES Morgan disconnected and tossed the phone to the desktop, eying the neatly typed list that rested on the blotter. He’d been debating this next step over and over for quite some time.

It was completely unacceptable for his wife to remain hidden for as long as she had, but up until the past few months, he’d forced himself to wait. To bide his time.

He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, staring out his window at the glass-and-concrete canyons of Los Angeles. It had been two years. Legally, he could’ve started divorce proceedings after one year. It would be a time-consuming process of forcing a spouse who had abandoned him. So many things he’d have to do that would require he share his private business with others. He would much rather find his wife and deal with her his way.

Quietly, of course. He sneered, remembering Don’s comments about proceeding with caution. Foolish little weasel. Nobody understood the need for caution more than James. He had to handle this quietly, but he would handle it.

It was hard enough to deal with the cops under good circumstances. Harder still under bad circumstances. A rich man like him, and his wife disappeared. The police would automatically assume he had something to do with it. He’d already dealt with that once, and he had no desire to catch their interest again.

So he had kept calm, remained quiet, and trusted Don to do his job. Sooner or later, she’d mess up. Sooner or later, he’d find her. Then he would deal with her.

Deal with the humiliation of having her leave him. She’d pay for that. She’d pay for all the inconveniences he’d suffered. And it would be sweet—now that the heat of his rage had passed, once he did find her, he would be able to thoroughly enjoy her punishment.

Vengeance, after all, was a dish best served cold.

Don, as James had expected, still had no news. If by some slim chance there
had
been news, James would have been rather surprised. Very little surprised him, because he knew people. He understood their motivations, how they thought, how they reacted, what drove them to succeed or fail.

It had taken some time, though, to realize why Don had failed, time and again. Don wasn’t finding James’s wife because he didn’t truly
want
to. It was a sobering realization and one that had him picturing using Don’s skinny, ratlike face as a target for his many frustrations.

“James? Am I interrupting?”

He glanced up and realized he wasn’t alone. Pushing back from the desk, he made himself smile. “Not at all, Alison. You’re never an interruption.”

“
Y
OU have to leave. Take as much money as you can, don’t use your credit cards. Don’t get a P.O. box. You need a job where they pay you cash, because if you pay taxes, he can find you like that. You can’t use a regular cell phone—get one of those pay-as-you-go.”

Blister packs were a creation of the devil, Sara thought as she used a knife to slice open the prepaid cell phone’s package. She barely missed nicking her finger and ending up dropping the knife.

It was the one day a week she had off. After her new cell phone charged for a while, she was taking the old one to Best Buy and tossing it in the recycle bin. She’d already wiped every last call from it, then took the added precaution of wiping it down so that none of her fingerprints would be found on it.

Using gloves, she’d opened a new box of sandwich bags, put the cell phone and cord inside one bag, and then tucked that bag into another. She’d used the outer bag as a “glove” of sorts when she dumped it, keeping her prints off the phone and the bag that held it.

Even if somebody was so inclined to go through the damned recycle bin, there was no way to link it back to her. Paranoia, it was a lovely way to live. She knew all of her precautions were probably overkill, but she felt better doing them.

Once she managed to get the fricking blister pack open and the phone out, she plugged it in to charge. Then she settled down with a map she’d bought a few days earlier.

Plotting out her next route, figuring out her next move. It wasn’t something she really wanted to do, but she didn’t have much choice.

She’d been in St. Louis for close to three months now. It was time to move on. It was harder to think about than she’d anticipated, which meant she’d already waited too long.

Too long, and a huge part of the reason started with the letter
Q
. Although how in the hell that had happened, she didn’t know. They hadn’t so much as had a date. Other than that one very excellent kiss, they’d never even touched. Of course, during that very excellent kiss, they’d managed some very excellent touching as well.

Morosely, she muttered, “Why couldn’t he have been a lousy kisser?”

If he had been awful at kissing, no matter how hot he looked, she wouldn’t still be having all the hot and sweaty dreams she’d been having. But he was a very excellent kisser.

Still, kisses shouldn’t be enough to slow her down, make her change her routine—she couldn’t let them be.

Leaving shouldn’t feel so wrong.

Leaving
him
shouldn’t feel so wrong.

How had he become such a dominating presence in her life? She just didn’t get it. No dates. They never called each other. They knew next to nothing about each other.

Well, not entirely nothing. He knew she hated exercising and made herself do it anyway, and she knew that fact amused the hell out of him. He had gone running with her two more times in the past week, appearing silently out of his apartment in the basement while she stood out in the side yard. He ran alongside her and when she grumbled under her breath about how much she hated running, he teased her.

She knew he had a protective streak in him that probably should have her backing off, yet it was oddly appealing. Maybe it was because it seemed like some old-world chivalry more than anything else—something that should have seemed out of place with him, but instead, it fit.

She’d seen him come up out of his apartment to help Theresa carry in groceries. There had been a few nights when she’d gotten off the bus to find him waiting there—it might have freaked her out to some extent, except she had a feeling he was . . . well, watching out for her, in the protective kind of way, not in some uber-creepy stalker sort of way.