Discovered (13 page)

Layla suddenly had
a bizarre thought that she had watched a similar scene on an episode of NCIS.
The notion caused her to laugh out loud until she realized that her nerves were
probably making her slightly hysterical.

Jay put his arm
around Layla protectively. “Tell me what happened?” he said as Joey backed out
of the driveway and onto the road.

Layla relayed what
the man had said. Ben was turned sideways in his seat, looking at Layla from
the side of the headrest.

Issy turned her
body half-way around and took both Layla’s hands in hers. “You’re safe now,”
she said quietly. “We’ve got you.”

Ben pulled out his
cell phone and tapped on the front then put the phone to his ear. “Hey,
Fletcher, it’s Ben,” he said into it. “We need to leave town right away.” He
listened to the man’s reply before speaking again. “Yes, Greenwich,” he said,
nodding slightly. “How long until she’s fueled up? Good, good,” he said then
hung up. “She’s all ready to go,” he added to Jay.

Jay nodded, biting
on his lip.

“Where are we
going?” Layla asked.

“I’m taking you
away somewhere,” Jay said. “It’s not safe for you here at the moment.”

“Did you say
Greenwich?” she asked Ben.

Ben nodded but said
nothing.

“As in Greenwich,
Connecticut?” she pushed.

“Yes,” Ben replied
quietly.

“How?” she
questioned. Were they just going to purchase five plane tickets at the airport?
But then she decided that she really didn’t need an answer. They could have
said Timbuktu at that moment for all she cared. Anywhere was fine as long as
she wasn’t stuck home alone.

Jay squeezed his
bottom lip and threw his head back on the headrest, sighing deeply. “Layla, I’m
so sorry about this,” he said, looking up at the ceiling of the car.

“It’s not your
fault,” she answered.

“No, actually it
is
my fault,” he replied. “If I had been strong enough to stay away from you…”

“Don’t do that to
yourself, Jay,” Issy scolded. “You had no way of knowing they’d find you here.”

“Still, I had no
right to…” he trailed off again, wincing. “God, I’m so sorry.”

“Who would find
you?” Layla questioned. “Tell me what’s going on?”

Joey took the exit
for Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

Layla’s head was
turned in Jay’s direction expectantly.

“I’ll explain when
we get out of the car,” he said quietly.

They rode up toward
the two main terminals, but instead of driving over to the nearby parking lots,
Joey took a left, past more parking and on down a narrower road.

Layla was baffled
as to where Joey was going until he slowed down, nearing a hanger at the back
of the airport that was used for private planes.

Out in front of the
hanger, sitting on a smaller runway, was a long, sleek, white plane with the
door already opened and stairs attached. A few airport employees were mulling
around it.

Joey stopped the
car some feet away. He and Ben jumped out of the Range Rover as Jay and Issy
opened the back doors.

Layla climbed out
after Issy and followed her over toward the back of the plane while Ben held
back and walked behind with Jay.

As she walked past
the tail of the plane and around to the stairs, Layla got an eyeful of the name
written across the side:
Vallen Enterprises
.

She stopped short,
momentarily overcome with bewilderment. “That’s that missing billionaire guy,
isn’t it?” she asked dubiously.

No one answered
her.

“What the heck is going
on here? Are we getting on that thing?”

“Yes,” Joey answered
frankly, leading the way to the aircraft. He ran up the steps with Issy and
gave a quick salute to the pilot who was standing at the door, dressed in
traditional pilot clothing.

Layla stood at the
foot of the stairs, reluctant to climb up, unable to make sense of the
situation. She turned around to face Jay and Ben who were quietly standing
behind her. “Why are we getting on this plane?” she questioned.

“We’ll explain
inside,” Jay replied with a solemn expression.

Layla stared at
him, her mind racing all over the place, trying to come up with some sort of
conclusion.

Suddenly a memory
popped into her mind. She remembered the crystal glass she’d found in Jay’s
cupboard along with the drinking glasses—the glass that bore the initials A.J.V.
‘A.V—Arthur Vallen,’
she thought.

“Please, Layla,”
Ben urged impatiently, gesturing for her to climb the stairs.

“Do you…do you know
him?” she questioned, looking back and forth between Jay and Ben.

Ben nodded once.

She turned around
and plodded up the stairs, trying to come up with a reason why they would be
getting onto a plane that belonged to a billionaire. Perhaps Jay’s father
worked for him, she concluded. But if that was the case, why hadn’t Jay told her
that? She seemed to remember that he told her his father did something with
computers, but he was pretty vague about what that was, now that she thought
about it. Maybe someone in Ben’s family worked for Vallen, or Joey and Issy’s.
But the day at Jay’s house when they were watching the news story about
Vallen’s disappearance causing a stock sell-off, why didn’t anyone mention
that?  And why would there be a glass in Jay’s house with Vallen’s initials on
it? Obviously, the glass was just a strange coincidence.

 “Good evening, Mr.
Vallen,” the pilot said formally. “Welcome back.”

Layla turned
sharply to see who was behind her, but there was only Jay and Ben.

“Thank you, Paul,”
Jay replied, then shot Layla an odd, sideways glance.

Okay, so why did
Jay just answer the pilot as if the comment had been directed at him?

“Are you…?” she
trailed off, narrowing her eyes at him. She was about to ask him if he was
related to the billionaire, a nephew perhaps, or maybe even his son. But then
it hit her that his last name was Logan, or at least he told everyone in her
high school that it was.

“Are you…?” she
tried again, unable to form the right words.

“Please, Layla,”
Jay said, ushering her onto the plane. “We’ll talk inside.”

In a thick fog of
confusion, she turned toward the cabin and stopped short, overcome by the
vision before her.  It was absolutely beautiful.  Large, white, leather couches
sat on crisp white carpeting that blended seamlessly with blinding white walls
and ceiling. There was not another color anywhere. She had the instant feeling
of being up in heaven.  She swallowed her shock, walked forward and sat down on
one of the couches.

“You need to sit in
one of these seats for take-off,” Issy yelled over to Layla, her head peeking
out from behind a white curtain.

Layla walked
forward and through the curtain to see Issy sitting in a regular airplane seat,
complete with seatbelt. She sat down in a vacant seat next to the girl and
adjusted the seatbelt around her waist.

“It’s just for
take-off,” Issy said, or at least that’s what Layla thought the girl said. She
was still too baffled to pay much attention.

 She turned
sideways in the seat to look at Issy. “Is he…?”

 “Arthur Vallen? Yes,”
Issy replied matter-of-factly, nodding, answering what she thought Layla was
going to ask.

Layla’s jaw all but
hit the floor. “Wha…What?” she asked, blinking rapidly. “What did you say?”

“That’s what you
were going to ask me, right? You were going to ask me if Jay was Arthur
Vallen?” Issy questioned.

“No, I don’t think
I was,” Layla answered in a dazed voice.

“Oh, well…” Issy
said, lifting her shoulders as if her revelation was no big deal. “I thought
that would have been obvious by now.”

“Are you trying to
tell me that Jay is really Arthur Vallen,
the
Arthur Vallen…the
billionaire…the missing billionaire?” Layla stammered. “But his name is Jay.”

“He really
is
Arthur Vallen,” Issy replied sincerely.  “His name is Arthur John, but he
doesn’t really like the name Arthur, so we call him Jay, the first letter of
his middle name,” Issy answered.

Layla opened her
mouth but closed it again when no sound would come forth.

“I know,” Issy said
sympathetically, tapping Layla’s shoulder.

“But…but what about
Logan?” Layla stuttered.

“Logan is an alias that
Jay uses from time to time. The name Vallen can carry with it a certain
unwanted notoriety at times, especially now that it’s been plastered all over
the news for the last few months. Sometimes Jay uses that name when he wants to
go somewhere and just blend in—”

“Like high school?”
Layla asked incredulously. “Why on earth would anyone want to go to high school
if they didn’t have to?” She was well aware that her voice was way off pitch
from shock. She stuck her head around the curtain and gazed up the beautiful
cabin. Jay, Ben and Joey were talking with the pilot along with another man in
a gray suit that was holding a large, hand-held, two-way radio. Jay leaned back
and laughed at something the man said, then ran his fingers through his hair
the way Layla had watched him do so many times before. She suddenly felt
betrayed, as though they had purposely deceived her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
she asked, turning back to Issy. “Why didn’t
he
tell me?”

“We couldn’t,” Issy
answered, sensing Layla’s agitation. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t tell you the
truth. It was not our intention to lie to you, but Jay is in a bit of danger,
and we couldn’t risk anyone finding out where he was.”

“I…I don’t believe
this,” Layla mumbled, shaking her head. She felt almost dizzy from shock. “What
sort of trouble is he in?”

Issy bit down on
her lip as though she was debating whether or not she should divulge that
information to Layla. “I suppose you have a right to know,” she said, having
made her decision. “Jay has been working on something, a sort of medicine,
something completely breakthrough. Those masked men who tried to grab him
tonight have been looking for him for the past four months. They want to steal
his work, his research. We considered confronting them during the summer, but
Jay was worried that one of us would get hurt, so he decided to flee, to lay
low until we could figure out a plan. It appears that he didn’t hide himself
well enough, though,” Issy explained.

“One of them said
that there were a lot of people looking for him,” Layla recalled, the penny
dropping.

 Issy nodded. “But
as to why he decided to go to school, I couldn’t really tell you. I think he
figured it made his ruse more convincing,” she added. “That or maybe he was
bored sitting around that house all day long.”

“So Jay, whom I
thought was a regular high-school student, is really a mad scientist?” Layla
asked, bewildered.

“Well, the mad part
I’m not so sure about, but he
is
a scientist of sorts,” Issy answered.

“I…I don’t believe
this?” Layla said again, stunned beyond imagination.

Issy reached over
and put her hand on Layla’s leg. “I truly am sorry,” she said. “We just
couldn’t risk anyone finding out who he really was. I hope you can forgive me.”

“I…” Layla trailed
off, trying to wrap her head around everything Issy had said. “Of course,” she
said quietly, realizing that Issy was not to blame.

“If it’s any
consolation, he really cares about you. I’ve never seen him so taken with a
girl before,” Issy added. “It hurt him deeply when he ended your relationship
almost two weeks ago. I didn’t think he should do it, but Ben was pretty
adamant and probably also right to a certain degree. But I guess Jay just
couldn’t stay away from you.”

Layla widened her eyes
and shook her head, trying to absorb that piece of information.

“Also, he’s going
to be beating himself up pretty badly for getting you involved in this,” Issy
stated. “So if you could find it in your heart to go easy on him, I’d really
appreciate it.”

“No, yeah…yeah, of
course,” Layla mumbled, too overcome to even begin to figure out how she felt
about the situation.

“Thanks,” Issy said
sincerely, squeezing Layla’s knee affectionately.

Layla sat quietly
for a long moment trying to come to grips with the startling revelation. “How
is this even possible?” she blurted out. “He doesn’t look a day over eighteen,
maybe twenty-one, pushing it. And where are his parents?”

“Both his parents
died some time ago,” Issy said. “He’s been head of the company since he was
quite young.  He had been around that business for years, knows all the ins and
outs.”

 “How do you fit
into this?” Layla asked.

“We didn’t lie to
you when we said we’d been together since we were tiny children,” Issy replied.
“We really are a family.”

Layla nodded.
“Where are the guys?” she questioned, looking through the curtain and up the
empty cabin.

“There are more
seats like these up front,” Issy explained. “Jay probably assumed that I was
filling you in on everything and decided to give us some time alone.”

Before Layla could say
anything else, the thundering racket of the plane’s engine filled the cabin,
which was a blessing as she really didn’t know what to say and welcomed the
distraction to give her time to think everything through.

Layla thought of
the times she’d spent at Jay’s house, laughing and joking with him, the easy,
comfortable relationship they shared. And then she thought about the billionaire
with an entire corporation to run, one of the most successful and famous in the
world. Where would she even begin to fit into his world?
‘There’s no
room
in our world for a girl like that
,’ drifted into her mind again. At
least that made sense now.

When the plane was
safely in the air, Jay stuck his head around the curtain. “Hey,” he said shyly.

“Hey,” Layla
replied sheepishly.

“Will you come and
sit with me?” he asked. “Can we talk?” He held out his hand hopefully.

Layla nodded and
took off her seatbelt. She put her hand in his and allowed him to lead her
through the cabin and onto one of the beautiful white couches.

When they were
seated, Jay turned sideways to look at her, biting on his lip as he stared at
her, waiting for her to say something.

“Wow…so…yeah…that
was weird,” Layla said awkwardly.

“Um…” Jay breathed,
nodding.

“I’m having a hard
time wrapping my head around this,” she admitted. “I feel like I don’t know
you.”

“I’m still the same
person, Layla,” Jay replied quietly. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you my real
identity.”

“But you’re one of
the riches people in the world,” she said incredulously. “How is that even
possible?”

“It’s only money,”
he said defensively. “It doesn’t define me as a person. I never wanted that.
And up until four months ago, my name probably would have meant nothing to you.
It’s only because of my supposed disappearance, and the way the media have been
droning on and on about it, that the name Arthur Vallen has become so
mainstream. I can assure you, I never wanted that kind of fame.”