Hold Me (10 page)

Katie didn’t say anything.

“You’re under my protection. I take that very seriously,” he said.

“I know.”

Luc wanted to shout with frustration. He didn’t even know what the hell he was trying to say to her. How could she look at him that way? As if she saw right through him? It was exactly what he’d thought would happen if he’d ever met the girl in the picture.

“You won’t be here for very long,” he said. “We’ll have a better place for you soon.”

Katie studied him with large, clear blue eyes for a long time. “Let’s eat,” she said.

Katie woke abruptly to annoying music playing very close to her ear.

“Wha…?”

Still groggy and half asleep, she fumbled for her glasses and jammed them on. It was morning again. She was in Luc’s bedroom. In his bed. Again.

The music stopped, then restarted, and she finally realized it was her cell phone ringing on the nightstand. She checked the caller ID, and—oh God. It was her mother.

Should she answer it?

Katie’s mind whirled, sleep vanishing. Could cell phone calls be traced? What if Frankie Silvano had her mother’s phone lines tapped or bugged or something? Answering might not only give away her own location, it might put her mother in danger.

The little phone went silent, paused, then started its endless tune again. She wanted to turn it off, but she didn’t dare because her mother would start getting bumped directly to voice mail and think there was a problem. But if she didn’t answer at a time when she should have been available…

Well, her mom wasn’t exactly known for just sitting around.

“Crap! Crap!”

Leaping out of bed, Katie haphazardly threw on some clothes and bolted for the door, the still-ringing phone clutched in her hand.

She found Luc stretched out on the sofa in the family room, reading and looking all dark and attractive in a white T-shirt with his hair still wet from a shower and his chin freshly shaved. He glanced up and smiled when she raced in, Spot jumping at her heels. But his smile faded as soon as he saw her expression. He put down the book and swung into a sitting position.

“What?”

“My mother.” Katie skidded to a halt in front of the sofa, completely out of breath thanks to her mad dash from the bedroom. Man, this house was big. “She called…on my cell phone… Jeez.” She put her hands on her knees and hung her head, panting for a moment before she recovered. “It’s stopped now, but she’ll call back again.”

“Shit. You didn’t answer, right?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I have to talk to her, Luc. If she’s trying to find me, she’s not going to stop with a few phone calls. She’ll probably go over to the apartment.”

Luc cursed again. “David didn’t want to tell your family anything until we know more about what’s going on and can get you somewhere safe. I didn’t think that would work.” He looked at her. “How long can you put her off without calling her back?”

Katie snorted. “No more than an hour if we’re lucky. Unless she’s really freaked. Then all bets are off.”

“Okay. Okay.” Luc stood, pulled up the crutches and paced around the room. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do.” He grabbed another cell phone lying on the small table next to the sofa. “You call her, but use this phone instead of your own. It’s a secure line with caller-id blocked. I just got the number changed so only David has it. We don’t know if her lines are tapped—they weren’t as of last night. Something could have happened in the meantime, but using this should minimize the risk they’ll find us.”

It was like James Bond. It would have been fascinating if it hadn’t been so very frightening.

“What should I say?” Her voice came out as a croak.

Luc ran a hand through his dark hair, rumpling it. “I don’t know. Something to make her think it’s okay that you’ll be out of touch for a little while. We don’t want her filing a police report and drawing attention to herself until we have you safely stashed away and can put the word out that you’ve disappeared.”

Katie swallowed.

“How about saying that you’ve been sent out of town unexpectedly for work?” Luc suggested.

She pulled a face. “Hello, I’m an admin, okay? I’ve never been sent out of town for work in my life and my mother knows it.” She frowned, thinking. “But…”

“But what?”

“Well, they were talking about a corporate retreat the other day. It would only be for the big guys, but Mom doesn’t know that.”

Luc nodded. “That’s good. Use it.” He handed her the cell phone and she took it, stuffing her own into the pocket of her new khaki shorts. “Keep the call as brief as you can without being obvious. And don’t forget to let her know that you’ll be out of touch. And don’t give her any clues about where you are.”

“Jeez, would you shut up? I’m starting to hyperventilate.” Katie looked down at the phone, her finger hesitating over the buttons. “I don’t think I’ve lied to her since I bought scalped tickets for a concert back when I was twenty. Even then she knew about it almost as soon as I got home.”

“Just stay calm and you’ll be fine.”

“She’s psychic or something.”

“She’s not psychic. If you keep your story straight, she won’t have a clue.”

“Shows what you know. Even Fiona can’t get one by her, and that’s saying something.”

“Katie.”

When she glanced at him, Luc’s dark eyes were kind and patient. She knew he could tell she was stalling.

“You don’t have a choice, sweetheart.” His voice was gentle. “You have to convince her.”

Katie took a deep breath because she felt faint. Especially after the unexpected endearment. “I know.”

She dialed. It rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.” Just two simple words, but they made her want to cry. Without thinking about it, she moved away from Luc and walked into the kitchen, appreciating the fact that he didn’t try to follow her. That he trusted her enough to give her some privacy.

“Katie! It’s about time. Where are you?”

Katie smiled, glancing at the clock hanging on the wall. It was only nine in the morning, but her mom sounded like she’d been up for hours. She probably had been.

“What’s going on?” her mother asked. “Why didn’t you answer your phone at home or your cell phone? Why is the caller ID blocked? Is there a problem?”

“No, no. There’s no problem.” Katie tugged her wild curls out of her eyes and made herself focus. “Did you call me? My cell phone’s dead, and I’m at work.”

“At work? Why are you at work on a Sunday?”

“A lot of us are here.” Katie breathed slowly. Keep it short, keep it sweet, keep it on target. Luc was right. The woman wasn’t psychic. But she sure seemed like she was sometimes. “We were…we were told that our department is going on a corporate retreat.”

“A corporate retreat?”

“Yeah. You know, one of those things where they take you out to the woods and teach you how to work together as a team? Pitch tents together. Bond. Like that.”

“The woods, huh?”

“It kind of came up at the last minute. We’ll be gone for a week, and we’re not allowed to call anyone.” Now that was a stroke of brilliance, she thought. That should buy them some time.

“Hmm. Sounds sudden.”

“Oh, yeah. Nobody saw it coming. It was supposed to be a…a surprise.” She grimaced. Wow, that was bad. She was going downhill fast.

Her mother was silent for a second. “When do you leave? I was hoping we could have brunch—”

“No! I mean, no, that’s not possible.” Katie rubbed her forehead with the heel of her free hand. “We’re, uh, leaving a little later this morning.”

“That was short notice.” She was quiet. Katie’s heart pounded. But eventually she only said, “Have fun.”

“Thanks.”

“Katie, please don’t do anything stupid.”

Katie wondered at the strange note in her mother’s voice, but she didn’t want to risk asking any questions. “I won’t, don’t worry. The bears are safe from me! Hah, hah!”

“Just remember that sometimes the consequences of your actions last longer than you ever thought they would.”

Katie frowned. Her mother sounded sad. She might be a great many things, but generally speaking, sad wasn’t one of them.

“Are you okay, Mom?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s nothing. Just a very bad conversation with Barbara yesterday when we were shopping. She, um, well, she said that she’d seen your father…out.”

Out, meaning, out with another woman. Her dad was a handsome man, and there was no trace of softness in him, even at fifty-seven. He seemed to be pure candy for women of a certain age. For most women, actually. In the past he’d let himself get slurped up a time or two.

“Bitch,” Katie said, with feeling. There’d been no call for Barbara to bring that up with her mother.

“Exactly.” Her mom paused. “She, uh, dated your father before he married me, you know. They were pretty hot and heavy for a while.”

Katie blinked. “I didn’t know that.” And wasn’t that just a little TMI. But it did explain Barbara’s general bitchiness.

“I guess she’s still jealous.”

“Maybe,” Katie murmured noncommittally. If Barbara knew what her father had put them through over the years, it might not have been as much of an issue.

“I’m sure the rumor isn’t true.” Her mother’s cheerfulness sounded brittle.

“Hmm.” Katie flashed back to a certain Christmas Eve a long time ago. Mom crying because she’d found out that Katie’s father was having an affair with a woman they’d considered a friend. That he was with the other woman then, instead of with his family.

Katie and Melanie both just turned eighteen, listening at her parents’ bedroom door while her mother wept and raged. The girls deciding to go out after him and force him to come home. The icy roads. Katie’s desperate attempt to control the car when it went into a slide. The accident. Melanie’s scream when her leg was trapped by crumpled metal. The blood. The fear. Her father’s cover-up of where he’d been and all of the other kids seeming to buy it, although Katie knew they hadn’t.

Afterwards, eventually, in spite of everything, her mother had forgiven him. Katie’s own relationship with her father, already strained, had erupted into a full and bitter war. But somehow her mom had forgiven him, had knit something back together resembling a marriage.

Katie didn’t know how her father felt about her mother, but she knew without a doubt her mother loved him, deeply and desperately. He still seemed to take that love for granted, but at least he’d stopped running around after the accident. At least he’d kept it in his pants. Unless Barbara was telling the truth.

Just then the kitchen door opened. Luc stood on the threshold, watching her, his face sympathetic, but sober. He touched his wrist where he would have worn a watch to let her know that time was up.

“I have to go, Mom. I’m sorry. They’re, um, calling me.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I guess I’ll see you at the end of the week anyway. I hope everything goes all right on the retreat.”

“Me too,” Katie muttered. She paused. She knew Luc wanted her to end the call, but it occurred to her that this might be the last time she’d ever be able to talk to her mother. There was so much she wanted to say, so much she wanted to make her understand. She couldn’t let her go, not yet. “Mom, I just want to tell you…” She choked.

“Tell me what, sweetie?”

Katie took a deep breath. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Katie.”

“Anything inside me that’s good is because of you.”

“There’s plenty of good inside you, honey, and it’s not because of me. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Katie sniffed. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.” She cradled the phone against her shoulder, lifted her glasses and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

“Well, okay.” Her mother still sounded concerned. “Call me as soon as you get back?”

“I’ll call you as soon as I can.” Katie’s voice was husky.

“Have a safe trip.”

“Goodbye, Mommy.”

Katie disconnected and walked over to Luc. She handed him the cell phone, and he took it without comment. She was blinking rapidly. She knew that if she didn’t get out of there right away, she wasn’t going to be able to hold herself together.

“I’d better get cleaned up,” she said.

He nodded. She pushed past him and was gone before he had the chance to say a single word.

The Dream Net Casino was huge, one of the biggest in Atlantic City, and Joey Silvano ran the place. So Frankie figured it was a measure of his father’s affection that he’d been given an office the size of a postage stamp right next to the loading dock. Half the time he couldn’t even hear himself think because of trucks idling outside. Poppa used the whole fucking penthouse and mostly he wasn’t even there, but Frankie was shoved into a broom closet. Fucking old bastard.

Frankie sat behind his desk and toyed with a pencil, tapping it repeatedly. When somebody knocked on the door, he called out permission to enter. Arlo Kravitz walked into the room.

“You wanted to see me, boss?” Arlo asked. His face was placid, eager. He was a big man, far bigger than Frankie himself, with a muscular build turning to fat. A beer belly hung over the waistband of his brown trousers and there was no way the jacket would close. He’d been wearing the same suit on Friday.

Friday.

Frankie heard a pop and saw that he’d snapped the pencil in half. He threw it away with a quick gesture.

“Arlo,” he said. “Thanks for coming. Sit.”

“Sure, sure.” Arlo sounded almost pathetically grateful. With some effort, he squeezed himself into one of the visitors’ chairs. “Thanks for understanding, boss.” Arlo leaned forward once he was settled. “You know, about the car.”

Frankie swiveled back and forth in his chair. “You mean, the car you were driving?”

“Yeah, yeah. I wasn’t sure—”

“The car you were driving when you got pushed into a quarry pit?”

Arlo looked concerned now. “Uh—”

“The car you were driving when you got me arrested?”

Arlo sat straighter, definitely on edge. “Boss—”

Frankie studied him. “I’ve never been arrested before, did you know that?”

“Um, yeah. Yeah, I knew that.” Arlo definitely sounded nervous. Sweat beaded on his broad face.

“And the woman, the woman who was driving the other car? She’s a secretary. Did you know that too?” Frankie kept his voice even, but his fingers tapped restlessly on the desk.

“Uh, no. I mean, Yeah.” Arlo was practically babbling now. “I think one of the guys told me after.”

“Turns out she’s not a Fed. Not a cop. Hasn’t had any kind of training, as far as I know. In fact, she’s probably never been involved in a car chase in her life. But she pushed your car into a quarry pit.”

Arlo was mute, eyes huge. He looked like he was finally grasping the seriousness of his situation.