For The Wicked (Fantasy Heights) (4 page)

Thomas lifted his chin to run his razor over that last spot, and her inner camera seemed to zoom in and pan back at once. Her eyes began to index everything about Thomas: that warm golden skin, his Adam’s apple, the points of his collarbones at his shoulders. The black hair, the black eyes, the ferocious energies, armor, loyalties and sharp edges… Such an enormous force in comparison to her.

He tapped the razor on the edge of the sink and caught her staring. He went very still. A silent, powerful connection formed, built on nothing but eye contact.

She learned a lot in that moment. First, that it was possible to love someone to a terrifying degree. Second, that Thomas could make the air churn with all the conflicted notions percolating behind that armor. It bubbled up into his eyes, spilling out, letting her know that she was not alone. Thomas knew that everything was not okay between the three of them.

She almost asked him what he wanted from her. Instead, she kept quiet while Thomas leaned forward to press a tease of a kiss onto her lips. Reassurance that everything would be all right.

His eyes afterward were smoke, fire and everything calculated to leave her breathless and devoid of any doubt.

Thomas drove her into work, where they parted ways. He headed to the Accord offices, and she to the business office. Paperwork kept her busy all morning and clear through lunch. All the while, she fought a growing sense of disappointment. She wanted to like this job. Though it paid well and she liked everyone on staff, there was no challenge to it. Jennifer set a fiscal policy so rock solid there was no room nor any need for innovation.

To make this job anything more than a glorified admin post, she would have to be more like Steph, whose talents lay in audacious deal-making. Amanda did not possess the shameless cheek it took to keep politicians at arm’s length, or to sign corporations onto their account roster. Her talents were more toward blunt-force asset management and cost control. Every day she saw job listings online within a stone’s throw of Fantasy Heights that she would have jumped on in an instant if not for her commitment to help until Steph returned.

Trouble was, she had no idea how she’d bow out gracefully. Nearly everything and everyone she cared about was somehow connected to this place.

Around two, her cellphone rang. Thomas, this time. She glanced at the clock and felt a rivulet of worry crawl from one side of her ribs to the other. Unless his schedule had changed, right now, he was meeting with Gregory Hughes, Jerod’s father.

“I need a favor,” Thomas said. Right away, she could tell there was trouble. He always had that rasp to his voice when he was angry. “Hughes wants something, and I can’t leave the phones right now. Would you please walk him over to the records archive and let him in?”

She almost groaned, but thought the better of it. If Thomas was asking for help, it wasn’t because he was lazy.

She found the two men in the conference room, the same room where Hughes had questioned her for hours on end. One look at Thomas caught her up short. A knife’s-edge sharpness to his eyes and the set of his jaw warned that Hughes had gotten under his skin but good this time.

Seeing her, Mr. Hughes rose and gave her a shallow bow. Polite, but awkward. He did not approve of her, she knew. He neither liked nor understood her relationship with Jerod, his son. She didn’t either. Their mutual discomfort made friendliness a tall order.

While she waited for Hughes to tuck a stack of files into his briefcase, the landline phone near Thomas’s elbow rang. He bristled and snatched up the receiver.

Yikes. Hughes had Thomas all sorts of tetchy. What had been going on in here?

Finally, Hughes was ready and she led him out into the tunnels. The archive was clear across the quad, closer to the Menagerie entrance. All the way there, she didn’t speak but kept her body language open to give the impression of companionable silence, even though she would secretly like to push Gregory Hughes against the wall and wag a finger in his face. She didn’t care how upset he was about his son. How dare he antagonize Thomas, who was busting his butt to help him?

Neither did Hughes break the silence. They arrived at the archives without saying one word to each other. She swiped her keycard and stood aside so that Hughes could enter the long, narrow room. He headed straight for a section of shelving on their left and began to scan the bankers boxes. He pulled one down and rifled the contents before returning the box to its resting place and grabbing another.

In the middle of the third box, he found what he was looking for: a contract of some sort, protected inside a heavy blue cardstock envelope. He removed and unfolded the contents, flipping immediately to the final page.

“Got him,” Hughes said.

They hurried back to Thomas, who was still on the phone. He looked at Hughes, and then rang off, looking more stony than Amanda had ever seen him.

Hughes was not put off. “I knew I remembered a connection. Brandon Briggs did have at least one encounter with Kay Prescott-Taylor. Here’s proof. I told you so.”

He handed Thomas the contract regarding a residential park area the resort had gifted to the city way back when.

Thomas looked at the signatures, then up at her, then at Hughes. “You’re a prosecutor, and you think this is sufficient proof of anything?”

“Boy. Didn’t take long for that suit to turn you into a bureaucrat, did it?”

“Don’t be a dick, Hughes. I’m giving you a lot of leeway, handing over resort records.”

“Leeway? You said that if I could prove a connection between Brandon Briggs and Kay Prescott-Taylor, you would help me get access to Bill’s files about Kay and Yvette.”

Amanda almost spoke up to say that Thomas had a bunch of FBI agents scouring those notes for help.

Almost.

As she watched, she saw something inside Thomas ignite just a moment before the armor swallowed him whole.

She’d seen him angry before. This was fury.

“You know something?” he said. “I don’t care who you are, what you’re going through, or how long we’ve known each other. What the hell is the matter with you? You and Brandon have been friends since law school. And now you’d throw him onto the shit heap right along with Yvette to fuel this witch hunt?”

“I just want to find my son.”

Thomas’s brows pitched down into that devilish angle. “Yeah. Let me explain why we can’t find him. It’s because he doesn’t want to be found. Jerod went all in with DriveRate. Willingly. If you need help coming up with a reason he might do that, I could name at least one.”

Hughes turned white, then crimson. “Fuck you.”

Thomas stood up straight and held his hands out. “Here it comes. This is the part where you blame me for the fact that your son is only human, right? Go home. Comfort your wife. Do exactly what you told Nicole and Ridley’s families to do. Keep hitting the social networks. Pester the TV people to run a follow-up story. Get Jerod’s face in front of as many eyes as possible. Someone will spot him, sooner or later. Not that it’ll do any good.”

Hughes’s reaction made Amanda take a startled step backward. She watched the older man close on Thomas. Watched him curl up a fist, then think the better of taking Thomas on.

Thomas didn’t even blink. He started Hughes down with empty, dead eyes. “I guess we know where he gets it from, don’t we?”

Hughes said, “I don’t know what your problem is, or why you think you can talk to me like I’m some rookie thug, but I won’t stand for it.”

“And I’m done asking you nicely to stop pissing everyone off. If you keep taking runs at DriveRate and they decide they need to make another
correction
, it won’t be you they’ll come after. You’re not important enough. I’ll be the one they target. Or Josh. Or Amanda. And God help you if that happens.”

Hughes glared, but shortly picked up his briefcase and stormed out.

Amanda watched him go. Stared at the door in mute shock.

Thomas, too, remained as he was, long after Hughes had gone, until finally he drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Sorry about that.”

She gave him a sympathetic look. Anyone could see that Thomas hadn’t enjoyed a moment of that confrontation.

“He almost hit you.”

Thomas sucked his teeth. “I’d worry less about him, and more about the fact he’s gonna get someone killed if he doesn’t let me do my damned job. Anyway, thank you for taking him to records. I needed a breather.”

“It was nothing.”

She recognized the false note in his voice as he spoke again, trying to sound business-like. “On the bright side, Hughes had some news. Marla, Warnous and the mystery henchman plan to plead guilty to all charges. No one wants a trial, I guess.”

“What?”

“I know. That’s not how I thought this would go down. All three of them could end up in prison for the rest of their lives. And the henchman was just some bottom-dweller lawyer shilling for DriveRate. He could have dodged some of the accessory charges, but he’s not fighting it.”

Amanda gave Thomas her most suspicious look. “Do you think they were threatened?”

“Oh, almost certainly. Either that, or they feel they’d be safer in prison.”

“Reassuring thought. But what will happen if Warnous’s fans go digging for more information on why he’s in jail?”

“You must not be spending much time on the Internet. You should hear some of the conspiracy theories the fans have come up with. A lot of their theories are even worse than the truth. Which actually protects us. If anyone posts what really happened, it’ll be discounted right along with the rest.”

She nodded. It hit her, all of a sudden, how different things were now that Thomas had become a Suit. He hadn’t deserved Hughes’s bureaucrat dig, but he was indeed rather more the agent than savage, these days. Not that the suit had changed him in any fundamental way. He was still the guy who might, without provocation, decide he wanted to press her up against the wall, yank her panties down, and give her an orgasm, just because he bloody well felt like it.

Those liquid-black eyes narrowed at her. “What are you thinking about right now?”

“Mmm... I probably shouldn’t tell you.”

“With the day I’m having, I think you probably should.”

Well, maybe she couldn’t give him an orgasm right at the moment, but at least she could tell him his suspicions about her thoughts were spot on. “Honestly? I was thinking about you finger-fucking me into submission.”

Now the eyes were open a little wider, the dilating pupils turning those eyes even more black. He stared so long her nerves began to sizzle, knowing that right now, he was seriously considering carrying out her confessed idea.

She watched frustration burn away his indecision.

He let out a scoffing, resentful grunt of laughter. “For the record, you were right. You shouldn’t have told me that. I have twenty minutes to get to the field office. Which is thirty minutes away.”

Her eyes fell to his open collar, drawn to the warm brown skin. “At least you’ll have something to think about during the drive.”

“I would have been thinking about you anyway.”

She met his eyes again, and the heat there emptied her head of any sense, replaced with raw emotion. Defenseless. Completely defenseless, completely captive.

Oh, help. If this was love, this was not the safe, controllable, trial-sized version she had felt for Darren. Loving Thomas was risk and fire wrapped tightly in joy and potential ruin.

He leaned forward to speak against her mouth. “Gotta go.”

She caught him behind the head and scorched a few more thoughts onto his lips before sending him on his way.

Work. Back to work, she told herself.

She slogged through another hour of phone calls and paperwork before heading into town. There, she picked up flowers, some framed prints, plants and a bunch of pillows and delivered them all to the girls’ apartment. The nurse and guard helped Amanda spruce the place up a bit until the cellphone alarm warned she was due in wardrobe.

Gamers had some fanciful ideas about female armor. Amanda’s on-set version was little more than a bunch of black plastic leaves, sequins and layer after layer of paint and glitter applied to her skin. Kara added a spiky jet-beaded helmet and some skillful makeup, transforming her into an evil wraith queen.

Of course, the armor left nothing to the imagination. There was no makeup on her buttocks or between her legs, just in case the clients decided to veer off script and pull her into the act. Even still, she hated to think how long it would take to remove it all later.

Totally worth it, however. When she’d seen how much the two female clients had paid to bring this fantasy to life, she’d nearly fainted.

When she met up with Ben, the lead exhibition performer, in the greenroom, he burst out laughing. “Holy… Guess what I’ll be dreaming about tonight? I mean, aside from Thomas chasing me with large knives.”

Amanda stood still to let him have a look. Ben, unlike Jennifer, didn’t hold a grudge about the Paramour Project, though she had to admit, she wasn’t sure what to make of Ben anymore. Never, not once, had there been any hint of Ben’s association with the Paramour Project. Amanda had only learned of it when she’d been made an offer that incidentally exposed Ben as a trainer. And now she suspected there was plenty more to Ben Oliver than had so far made itself known.

He hid very effectively behind the humor. Well, hiding wasn’t exactly the right word. The man was rather hard to miss, especially in tonight’s costume—what there was of it, anyway. He wore only a loincloth and special contact lenses. Under black lights, the contacts would make his eyes glow bright yellow.

Amanda would wear something similar on set twice in the days to come. She did not cherish the prospect. Her version were opaque. Unlike Ben, she would be blind the entire time.

Ben went to the window and peered through the blinds. “It’s full dark. Got everything you need?”

She held up the small remote control for the black lights. “All set.”

After he’d gone, she darkened the room and took his place at the window to watch the effects team transform the center courtyard of Thomas’s outdoor set into a spooky-looking grotto. First came the fog machine, then the soft, hidden lights that made the smoke glow and flicker. Speakers added soft, foreboding music embellished with thunder. The spinning centerpiece she and Josh had tested had been altered slightly not to use gravity as a passive restraint. Leather cuffs now adorned the shafts. Otherwise, two racks like the one she’d used with Neil stood ready to receive captives.