The Innocent Liar (23 page)

“Yes.” She turned, letting him kiss her, and after he gave her lips back to her and returned to trailing his lips across her skin and stroking her back, she fell asleep, lulled by his gentle caresses and sweet kisses.

Chapter Forty

“S
o, I didn’t ask, but where does your mom live?”

Brynn peered at Eli across the table, looking a bit sheepish. They’d taken a two hour nap after their parents had left that morning, and they were just getting around and having some lunch.

“Denver.”

“Denver.” He shook his head at her. “Knew you didn’t come from Kansas City. So you actually grew up in Denver just like I did.”

“Well, I grew up quite a few years after you did. You are just a tad older than I am.” She laughed, and he flipped a chip at her.

“I need to run payroll today. I pay everyone when I close down for a week or two. I’m not really doing anyone any favors if I shut down and leave them without a paycheck. Anyway, I still have some work to do on my designs too. I’ll be there for quite a while.”

“Well, why don’t I come too and do the payroll while you work on your designs? Then I can pack up the loft too.”

He certainly liked the sound of that. “As good an idea as that is, I don’t get work done easily when you’re around. Can’t seem to concentrate on work and not fucking.”

She blushed. She always did when he was blunt, and since he was usually blunt, she was usually blushing.

“What if I drop you off, you run payroll there, and I’ll work on the designs here. My work is already here in my office anyway. Then, when I’ve gotten a few hours done, I’ll come in and help you pack the loft. There’s more than just your clothing. We need to pack up the bedding, towels, cleaning supplies, and get the storage bag on the mattress again. It’s going to be too heavy for you to manage on your own.”

She nodded, and they finished their lunch in silence.

He kissed her goodbye when he dropped her off at the workshop forty-five minutes later, and then he locked himself in his office when he got home. He couldn’t concentrate on his work anymore when he was alone than when she was there, and all he could really think about was her. Actually, it wasn’t so much her as his life. It was unrecognizable from what it had been a couple months before. In the space of time since he’d met her, he’d fallen madly in love, confessed the one and only secret he ever felt the need to withhold from anyone, and she was moving in with him. It left little else to do, but marry her and maybe impregnate her, and he intended to conquer at least the first of those the second she was free and clear from the man who had no business ever touching her, let alone marrying her.

She didn’t belong to that man, and Eli had no problem disrespecting the sanctity of that marriage by bedding her continuously. Her husband lost the privilege of calling himself a husband the moment he hurt her. Eli didn’t know the extent of what the man had done, but he’d heard enough to know it was nothing short of torturous. He simply wasn’t doing anything at all wrong by loving her. She’d be his regardless of how long they had to wait to make it legal and official.

Even thinking such things left him shaking his head in stupefied wonder as his pencil was held in midair over his drafts. His first marriage had been a colossal waste of time. He couldn’t even say for sure what the hell he was thinking. He’d gotten a bit infatuated with her, and they’d rushed into it. They were young, he supposed, and once they were legally bound to one another, they’d realized quickly they had little real interest in each other. The marriage didn’t fall apart right away. They managed to keep the wheels on the sham for a number of time-sucking years, and then she apparently decided she’d had enough. Eli couldn’t pretend to be in love with her, and he also couldn’t pretend to like her. It all meant he’d been a bit of a cold prick.

But Brynn was so completely different from every other relationship, every other person, every other everything that had existed in his life. She felt good. She felt real and honest, despite lying to him at every turn. She gave him a softness and a calmness he wasn’t sure he’d had since he was a child. She felt worth it—worth checking in the past and trading it for a future, worth letting go of the pain and the anger.

He caught himself staring out the window. He was still holding that damn pencil that was getting absolutely nothing done whatsoever. Fucking pencil. He abandoned it on his drafting table, watching it roll quickly down to the ledge at the bottom, and he went right back to looking out the window and thinking of her. He even propped his hands on the back of his head for the occasion. He was enjoying himself.

When his cell rang, he ignored it for a second but eventually pulled himself from his fantasies and answered it.

“Hey, Sam.”

“Hey. Brynn there?”

“Not at the moment. She’s doing some work at the ware—”

“We have a problem.” Eli dropped his feet to the ground, and his eyes snapped to the surface of the drafting table, forgetting all about his fantasies and his beautiful winter view.

“What?”

“Brianna’s home was broken into. We just got back thirty minutes ago, and we’re waiting for the detectives to get here. Nothing of value taken from what we can tell, but ransacked all to shit.”

“And you think this is related to Brynn?”

“Yes. If something were taken then not necessarily, but whoever did this didn’t touch the TV or jewelry or anything else of value. Her office has been trashed, her writing desk in the kitchen too. Don’t worry. Brianna knew better than to have any information about Brynn’s location written down anywhere, but still…”

“Was there any—” His question was quickly interrupted with screaming as the sound of Brianna’s blood-curdling screeches could be heard through the phone, and then it was muffled rustling and the sound of Sam’s feet as he was running through the house. Eli could barely calm the panic, and as he listened, he stood and started pacing around the room. “Sam?” There was nothing. “Sam?” And then the phone went dead.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He dialed Sam back and waited. The phone went to voice mail after three rings, and he redialed. He redialed ten times over the course of five minutes, and he was in a mad panic the entire time. There was no calming the terror at that point, and he’d walked laps around his house by the time he finally got Sam to answer.

“Eli. You’ve got to get to Brynn.” Sam’s voice was panicked, and he was talking loud over the sound of sirens in the background. “We just found Brianna’s friend.”

“What?”

“You have to be quiet and listen. She was tied up in the closet. She’s been beaten pretty severely, and it doesn’t look good right now. Not sure she’s going to make it, but she is alive. Brianna called her and asked her to stop by a few days ago on the morning we left because Brianna thought she’d left the oven on. She’s been here for a few days like this.”

Eli was panting, and he took a shuddering breath as he grabbed his car keys and his coat.

“Eli, she’s not conscious enough to ask what she told Lars, but she knew about Brynn. She knew where Brianna was going. This is her mom’s best friend. She knew everything.” Sam sounded as panicked as Eli was, and as Eli pulled his car door closed after hopping in, he pulled out quickly. “Can you reach her at the workshop?”

“No. The phones are set to go straight to voice mail with an out of office message stating we’re closed. The phone in her loft is on the same system as the main number.” He was speeding and he had to slam on his breaks as he nearly careened into a car when he pulled out of his driveway.

He hung up with Sam after that, afraid he’d get himself killed if he tried to juggle driving and talking at the same time, but then his mind started torturing him. He couldn’t stand the idea of her being there alone. She was all alone. Why didn’t he just stay? He should have stayed. He could have worked there. He’d gotten nothing more done at home than he’d have gotten done there with her. He’d just fucking abandoned her there.

If her husband was behind this, then he’d already had three days to get here and locate the workshop. They were already three days behind this asshole’s plan, and Eli had been the one to drop her right off at the front door alone. She lived there, and her mother most certainly would have known that, and if Brianna knew, then her friend did too. The whole fucking thing was made so simple for Lars. The whack-job would have had enough time to get to Jackson, set up house in the damn workshop, and no one would have been the wiser.

The terror hurt like a noose squeezing around his throat and cutting off his breath. His chest was tight and he could barely swallow, but his brain was alert and focused on every mile he had to pass to get to her. She had to be okay. What if she wasn’t okay? That wasn’t a possibility he could cope with let alone survive. She just had to be okay.

Brynn had decided payroll was the way to start her afternoon, while her brain was still awake and sharp. There were no timecards to collect, so it was straight to her office. As she sat down, her chair creaked, and in the silence of the old warehouse, it was oddly ominous. She reached down by her leg to hit the power button on her CPU. As she did, she bumped her mouse, and her computer screen woke up. Odd. She always powered down completely at the end of the day, she couldn’t imagine she’d left it on. She stared at the screen for a moment but then shrugged her shoulders. It wasn’t the first time she’d forgotten something.

As she reached over without even looking for her notepad, her hand hit the empty desktop. She suddenly felt as though she was sitting at someone else’s desk. As she looked around her desktop, her skin began to crawl and goose bumps popped. Nothing was missing—nothing at all, and everything was just as usual, but she could have sworn her notebook was sitting by her phone. She always kept the book there. Always. She took a moment to calm her nerves, but then she remembered she was safely locked inside the warehouse. She was alone, and that’s exactly what she needed to get through the payroll quickly. But God, what she wouldn’t do for Eli’s company at the moment.

When she pulled up her e-mail, it was full, and she groaned, refusing to pay it anymore attention. They were closed after all, and she wasn’t going to start responding to people now. Her calendar reminder dinged that she had an overdue calendar entry, and she ignored it. There was nothing on her calendar she was any more interested in dealing with than what was in her e-mail inbox, so she minimized the program and opened the payroll program instead.

After fifteen minutes of focusing intently on inputting information, she was finally relaxed again. This was why she’d wanted to come alone. She was a payroll sprint star at the moment. No long distance bullshit for her, no way. She was going to have this bitch of a job done in no time. After she’d been at it for thirty minutes, another calendar reminder dinged again. She dismissed it without even looking at it. She used her calendar to set up cyclical reminders for everything from running payroll, to processing bids, to taking her lunch. She was not surprised at all that her calendar would be trying to get her attention today just like any other day.

Thirty minutes later, another ding.

Thirty minutes after that, yet another.

She was starting to think maybe she was missing something exceptionally important. She stood then, stretching her legs, and as she leaned down to click over to her calendar to put her reminder happy e-mail program to rest once and for all, she paused. She was already up. No better time for a break than now.

She wandered down the stairs, humming as she went, and as she walked by the locker room door, her hum stopped in her throat when she heard a drip of water. She couldn’t say she was surprised there was a leaky faucet in this place, and when she pushed the door open it felt slightly warm and humid, and the light was already on. She paused before entering as her arms started prickling again. She looked for steam. It was crazy really, there shouldn’t be any, but she was looking anyway as though her brain wasn’t entirely sure what she’d find. There was none, and her heart rate slowed as she flipped the switch off and let the door close.

She picked up her rather off-key melody as she continued on her way to the break room, and after getting sidetracked cleaning out month’s old leftovers for five minutes, she snatched up a pop and turned from the fridge. She was ready to be done with this. She didn’t like being here alone. A bit bizarre given she’d lived here alone for well over a month and never gotten the heebie-jeebies once.

She glanced up the darkened stairwell to her loft. She could avoid finishing payroll for a while if she wanted to just get her packing done now, but as she stared into the dark at the top of the long stairs, she shivered again. She was no more comfortable walking up those stairs than she’d been stepping into the locker room. She stared at the blackness, and her eyes started playing tricks on her. She could nearly swear she saw the darkness moving.

“Hello?” Her voice trembled and her heart raced as she waited for an answer she didn’t want to hear. She had to get a grip. She was cracking up. Being terrified all the time wasn’t her life anymore, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to turn into a frightened ninny now. “I’m losing my mind,” she muttered as she turned back to the dimly lit corridor.

She flopped down in her chair when she made it back to her desk with a loud and exaggerated sigh. At least the lighting was bright up here. She woke her computer up with a jiggle to the mouse, and that’s when she saw another reminder had popped up. It was high time she figure out just what it was all these calendar entries were about and what she was apparently supposed to be doing. She clicked over to her calendar, and then she stilled as a shiver ran through her.

There was one entry after another, hour after hour, day after day, and each and every one of them said nothing more than
Wife
. She started clicking through weeks at a time as her heart started pounding again, and then she stood. She stared at her computer. Part of her wanted to think it was a joke, but what about this was funny? And what the hell did it mean anyway? There was nothing terribly ominous about the word itself. Nothing at all threatening, but that in and of itself felt wrong.

She lifted the phone. She was done being scared, and though she still wasn’t even sure what she was frightened of, she didn’t care. She couldn’t be alone even one second longer, but when she lifted the receiver to her ear, it was silent. She hit the disconnect button over and over, but there was nothing. She knew they’d forwarded the phones, but she didn’t think that would disable them entirely—in fact, she was sure it wouldn’t.