The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 2 (15 page)

We could be targets for the rest of our lives.

Conrad landed the plane at the same airport from which we took off. Will was waiting on the tarmac, a pleased smile on his face when he patted the nose of the plane like he was welcoming home a good friend.

“Have a good trip?”

Conrad nodded, handing Will his aviation books and the paperwork that had to be filled out with each flight. “You’ll take care of everything?”

“Of course,” Will said much too cheerfully. “You go. Don’t worry about us.”

Conrad helped me down out of the plane and led me, with an arm around my waist, to his waiting car.

“What if I could protect you?” he asked suddenly, as he maneuvered the car in and out of lunchtime traffic. “What if I hired guards to go everywhere with you, if I made sure that no one could ever get close to you?”

“What kind of life would that be?”

“You would be here, with me.”

“And what if we broke up? Would you really want to continue paying for me to be guarded?”

“That wouldn’t happen.”

“What if it did?”

He glanced at me even as he accelerated around a minivan. “Are you planning to break up with me?” he asked with that cocky grin that made me want to kiss him—or slap him.

“Conrad, we have to be realistic about this. The Marshals Service knows what they’re doing, and if they say it is too dangerous for me to stay here, they mean it.”

“But I could protect you.”

“And put yourself in danger, too.” I shook my head. “I can’t allow that. I’ve already lost too much.”

He laid a hand on my thigh. “I know. That’s why I don’t want you to have to leave again.”

I ran my hand over his, telling myself that now was the time to be strong. And, really, it wasn’t as hard as I had imagined it would be.

It was only everything.

“We had a good time. But it’s over now, and I have to go. Can’t we just leave it at that?”

Conrad was quiet as he drove like a maniac the last few miles to Memaw’s house. Even after he pulled to the curb, he didn’t say anything, but he also didn’t let go of my leg.

“It was more than that,” he finally said. “At least give me that much.”

I leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. He turned to capture my lips, but I pulled away. I couldn’t bear the idea of kissing him one last time because I knew it wouldn’t be the last time. One kiss would lead to another, and…it would just be that much more difficult to get out of this car.

“Forget about me,” I said softly. “It’s what’s best for everyone.”

I climbed out of the car before he could say anything else, tears blinding me as I took the front steps of the house two at a time.

The old adage, better said than done, had never been truer.

***

Christy was waiting for me in the living room, Memaw’s belongings boxed up and waiting in a neat pile by the front door. My heart twisted a little in my chest.

At least she got to hold on to her things this time.

“She’s bathed and waiting upstairs.”

“Thank you.”

Christy stood and twisted the key to our front door off her key ring, holding it out to me. “It truly was a pleasure to work for you and your grandmother, Miss Anderson.”

“Mellissa,” I said. “After all this time, you can call me Mellissa.”

Christy smiled, but the smile didn’t go all the way to her eyes. I was a little surprised to see that there were tears there and to recognize that she was fighting her emotions just as I was mine.

Impulsively, I threw my arms around her. After a second, her arms came around me, and we stood there in a tight embrace for a long few minutes.

“Thank you,” I said again. Those words were filled with more emotion than I could express.

Christy nodded, wiped an errant tear from her cheek, and walked away.

***

Madison

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to go in to work today?”

I shrugged. “It’s only a half day. Rawn said he needed me to help him to go through the press clips on the 3D telescope so that we could help Conrad design the new ad campaign. Remember? The one Logan is supposed to star in?”

Annie blushed, a smile coming to her lips. “Oh, yeah. Well, if that’s the case…”

I laughed as I made my way out of our apartment.

I got home late last night and I hadn’t seen Rawn yet, so there was a certain amount of anticipation building in my chest as I took the bus—he would totally be pissed if he knew I was taking the bus—and made my way to the office. I needed to stop by Einstein’s office and collect the laptop I’d been using for the last few months. It technically belonged to Rawn’s former assistant, but she hadn’t shown up yet to collect it, so I didn’t see why I couldn’t keep using it until I could save up the money to buy myself a new one.

Besides, it was an excuse to stop on the lower floor and check in with Mellissa.

That was, of course, assuming she would be there.

“Where’s Mellissa?” I asked Russell as I stuck my head in Einstein’s office.

“Who knows? She didn’t bother to show this morning.”

“Didn’t she call in?”

Russell shot me one of those looks I had grown familiar with in the months we worked together. “Do I look like her social secretary?”

“Okay, okay, don’t bite my head off.”

I crossed the room to my desk, hoping that Mellissa was off with Conrad somewhere, celebrating the fact that the police dropped all the charges against him, and not sick again. My laptop was on my desk, but the charger was trapped in the tracks of one of the desk drawers. I bent low to pick it up, so I didn’t see her walk into the room. But when she spoke—asking Russell where the extra paperclips were kept—chills ran up and down my spine.

It was her.

I couldn’t move. My heart was pounding, my legs refusing to answer the screams of my brain to run. But I managed to catch a glimpse of her through the crack between the two desks.

No doubt about it. It was her.

My kidnapper was standing in Einstein’s office.

***

Mellissa

The halls of the assisted living facility were empty. Most of the residents were either having an early dinner or participating in an art class taking place in the community room. Memaw stared at everything we passed, her eyes lingering on the generic artwork on the walls, the name tags outside each door, and the occasional wheelchair that sat abandoned.

“What is this place?” she asked for the fourth time.

“It’s an assisted living center,” I said, slipping my arm through hers. “This is where you’re going to be living from now on.”

“Why?”

“Because you need more supervision than Christy or I can provide.”

Memaw’s eyes widened. “Was I bad?” she asked in a loud whisper. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Of course not.”

I ran my hand over the top of her arm, my heart breaking into more than a million pieces. Billions. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

“This is your room,” the administrator said, turning toward us and gesturing toward an open door on her left.

“Here we are, Memaw.”

I guided her gently through the door, pleased to see they had already placed the quilt on the bed that I had requested Christy send over. Memaw’s eyes brightened when she saw it. She let go of my arm and went immediately to the bed, ran her hands over the brightly colored squares. It wasn’t the same quilt that had adorned her bed back in New Orleans, and her mother’s before that, and her mother’s. But it was similar enough that when I saw it at the Portland Saturday Market, I knew I had to get it for her.

“This is mine.”

“Yes.”

Memaw turned, her eyes moving over the rest of the room. She smiled when she saw the small, flat-screen television attached to the wall. Almost immediately, she picked up the remote and settled in the rocking chair in the corner to watch her shows.

“You see,” the administrator said in my ear, “she’s going to adjust just fine.”

I sat with her for a while, but I couldn’t sit still. I unpacked her things, fussed over the quilt and the drapes—tasteful, rose-colored drapes—that hung from the single window. I didn’t want to go; I didn’t want to have to say goodbye. But time was drifting by, and I knew that if I didn’t do it on my own soon, Richard would arrive and force me into it.

I pulled a chair up to Memaw’s rocker and touched her hand.

“I have to go now.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You’re going to be fine here. They’ll take very good care of you and keep you safe.”

She focused on my face. “You worry too much, just like your father.”

I took her hand and pressed my lips to her palm. “I love you, Memaw.”

“I love you, too, Melli.” She kissed the top of my head. “I’ll see you later.”

No, you won’t.

But I just smiled and nodded. “Yes. I’ll see you soon.”

I walked slowly across the room, pausing in the doorway to look back at her. She was laughing at something that had happened on the television. “Goodbye,” I whispered.

The tears waited until I was outside, until I doubled up as I pressed my back to the side of the stone wall. And then it all came, the pain of leaving my grandmother, the grief of leaving a city that I had built a life inside of—again—and the hurt and anger and frustration that came with having found a man like Conrad so soon to the moment my bizarre life decided to turn on its axis again and force me to leave.

It all came out with hot, heavy tears that had been sitting in my chest for days now. My time with Conrad had pushed it aside, but it never really left. And now it was taking over, destroying what little control I might have had over it.

Sobs shook my body, a physical pain that made me horribly sick to my stomach. Maybe that was why I didn’t hear her.

“Look at the little baby cry.”

I didn’t even understand what she said at first. And then she grabbed my arm and pulled me to a standing position.

“Are you sad, baby?” she asked. “You should be.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you. I thought, this time, I’ll do it myself instead of trusting those morons to grab the right girl.”

“You? You were behind Madison’s kidnapping?”

“It was supposed to be you. I figured, two birds, one stone…it would have been the perfect plan if those idiots hadn’t grabbed the wrong girl.”

“But why?”

Janet, Einstein’s latest assistant, narrowed her eyes as she stared at me.

“Your uncle is the reason my brother is dead. So I’m going to be the reason you’re fucking dead.”

My heart stuttered as I suddenly realized what was happening here. I jerked my arm from her grip and turned, intent on running into the alley, but pain suddenly flared in my back. My nervous system went into overload, and I began to convulse uncontrollably. I went down, the world going gray around me. The last thing I remembered hearing was her laughter from somewhere above me.

Madison

My hands were shaking so hard that I couldn’t hold on to the water bottle someone had thrust into my fist a minute ago. It slipped and slammed into the floor, miraculously refusing to break despite the impressive dent that appeared in its ribbed bottom.

Rawn reached over and took my hand. I smiled gratefully at him.

“You’re sure, Miss Miller.”

“Positive.”

The detective nodded as he scribbled something into the notebook he seemed to always have in his arms. Like a caricature of a television detective. Had he never heard of an iPad?

“Well, Janet French is not her real name,” the other detective said. “But we’ve got a picture, which will make it easier to put out an APB on her.”

“How quickly do you think you can take her into custody?” Rawn asked.

“We already have uniform cops searching the building. But it looks like she left shortly after Miss Miller here spotted her.”

“But she didn’t see me.”

“Perhaps it was just the knowledge that you were in the building that scared her off,” the first detective suggested. “In the meantime, I’d like to leave a uniform here to watch over you, Miss Miller.”

“We have a security team that can keep an eye on her,” Rawn informed the cop.

The detective nodded. “We’ll call you once she’s in custody.”

As Rawn walked the detectives out of the office, I got up and went to the window behind his desk, my hands still shaking as I pressed them against the cool glass. Just when I was getting to a place where I could leave the house without looking over my shoulder every few minutes, and this had to happen.

How did she manage to get a job here?

“They’ll find her,” Rawn said, laying his hands on my shoulders as he moved up behind me.

“I hope so.”

“In the meantime, I think you should stay at the apartment with me.”

I forced a smile as I turned into him and buried myself in his arms. “Any excuse to get me in bed, huh?”

“Exactly.”

He lifted my chin and kissed me, a soft promise of more to come. But then someone cleared their throat, causing Rawn to stiffen with irritation.

“Did you forget something, detective?”

“I just got here, actually.”

Rawn turned, pulling me against his side as he did. Conrad was standing just inside the door, a charming smile on his handsome face.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. But I was wondering if we could have a conversation.”

Rawn gestured for him to come into the room. Conrad did, closing the door behind him.

“I’m sorry about the whole misunderstanding with the sticky note,” Rawn said, letting go of me so that he could cross the room and shake Conrad’s hand. “But we had to check out every lead.”

“I would have done the same thing in your position.” Then, he smiled a little sheepishly. “Sorry about the punch.”

“No harm done.”

“What punch?” I asked.

Conrad rolled back on his heels, gesturing for Rawn to explain. But Rawn just shrugged it off with a simple gesture.

There was something going on…must have been a man thing.

Rawn gestured to the couch, reaching back for my hand as he settled on the loveseat across from Conrad.

“So, what can we do for you?”

Conrad sat forward and ran his fingers through his hair. “I was meeting with Aurora downstairs and realized there are some things that we should talk about.”

Rawn’s eyebrows rose. “Aurora?”

Yeah, Aurora? I thought Conrad and Mellissa…

If he was about to break my friend’s heart, I wasn’t sure this was something I wanted to hear. I started to stand, when the door suddenly burst open again.

“Thought you would want to know,” McFarren said, sticking his head in, “but they spotted Janet French at 34
th
and Canby.”

“Who’s Janet French?” Conrad asked.

McFarren turned away as Rawn rushed after him. I started to follow, but Conrad grabbed my arm.

“Who’s Janet French?”

“She’s the woman who interrogated me during my kidnapping,” I said, shuddering as the words, spoken aloud, sent another chill down my spine. “She’s apparently been working down in Einstein’s office for the past week, trying to get from the source what she couldn’t get from me.”

I started to pull away, my thoughts only on staying close to Rawn. But there was something about the look on Conrad’s face.

“What?” I asked, not really sure I wanted to hear an answer.

“Mellissa,” he said. “She’s there…she’s at Summer Oaks admitting her grandmother.”

“Summer Oaks?”

“It’s a…” He shook his head. “It’s on the corner of 34
th
and Canby.”

Oh, hell. She was going after Mellissa.

***

Mellissa

I came to as Janet tossed me into the backseat of a bright red Toyota Camry, her arms around me like I was drunk and she was just trying to get me home safely. Someone called out to her, but the voice didn’t seem concerned. Just curious.

“She’s not feeling well. Stomach bug or something,” I heard her say.

Yeah, I wished that was all it was.

I reached behind me and touched a place in my back that still burned. There were two sets of raised bumps there, hot and sore like bee stings. But I knew they weren’t bee stings. Richard had once shown me how to use a stun gun. For the first three years we were in WITSEC, I carried one everywhere I went. But when nothing more than some newshound recognizing me or Memaw from an old newspaper clipping happened, it seemed like a waste of space in my already overflowing bag.

Now I wished I hadn’t stopped carrying it.

The pain flared when I sat up. I turned to the door, intending to try the handle, but it appeared to be gone. I ran my fingers over it, searching for some way to get out, but there was nothing. The same with the other door. I leaned over the front seat, but before I could reach the door handle on the passenger side, Janet was climbing in through the driver’s side door.

“Don’t think so,” she said, slamming her fist against the side of my head.

I fell sideways against the window and slipped backward, slumping into the seat. Right where I had begun.

Janet started the car. It rattled a moment, but the engine caught and we were moving in seconds.

“You won’t get away with this. People are expecting me.”

She glanced in the rearview mirror. “It looks like I’m getting away with it so far.”

“Rawn and the security team at Cepheus are searching for you and your partners. They will find you.”

She laughed. “I was right under their noses and they had no idea. They don’t threaten me.”

I straightened up a little, resigning myself to the fact that I was stuck right where I was for the moment. I glanced out the back window, but I didn’t see anything. We were on a fairly busy street, but it was a little early for rush hour traffic. It was also early for Richard to have been waiting for me, unfortunately. He was probably still in his cushy office, wherever that happened to be.

“Why did your people think they were kidnapping me?”

“They didn’t kidnap you. They grabbed that other girl.”

“Yeah, but they thought they had me. What did they think they were doing?”

She glanced in the mirror again. “They thought you were going to tell them all about Cepheus’ planned releases over the next six months and offer insights into some of the things Cepheus released in the past six months.”

“I’ve only been there four months.”

“Yeah, well, they believe pretty much everything I tell them.”

“Was I the only reason for all this? Was Cepheus just a cover?”

“You know, you ask an awful lot of questions.” Janet lifted the stun gun she must have used on me. “If you don’t shut up, I’ll use it again.”

I sat back as she turned a corner and headed toward the interstate. The speed here was a little more than thirty-five, so attacking her was pretty much out of the question, unless I wanted to risk an accident that might take out both us and some innocent bystander. I couldn’t jump without door handles. And she would have that stun gun on me before I could get over the passenger seat and get out the front door.

I was stuck.

I turned to look out the back windshield again.

“You can look, but no one’s coming to save you.”

But she didn’t see what I saw.

I didn’t notice it the first time because I was distracted. But there was a small, blue car behind us. She probably hadn’t noticed because it looked like just any other car. But there was a dent on the front hood that was beginning to rust. I remembered thinking it was a waste of a pretty car to allow it to be exposed to the elements that way. Raw metal needed to be covered in one way or another or it would rust clean through in a matter of months, especially in this moist Pacific weather.

I remembered because the same car had been parked in the lot at Summer Oak.

Someone was following us.

I settled back in the seat and tried to look defeated. I didn’t want to tip her off to anything. She’d already made the mistake of not paying attention to what was going on around her. All I had to do was wait for her to make another mistake.

Which I discovered less than a second later when my cellphone vibrated in my back pocket.

She had apparently left my bag behind, but it hadn’t occurred to her to search me for anything of importance.

Like a cellphone.

I leaned forward a little and reached behind me like I was checking the sore spots left by the stun gun. Instead, I slipped the phone from my pocket and slipped it under my thigh. With a little careful maneuvering, I was able to move it to where I could see the screen.

“Keep your head down,” it said.

I bit my lip, biting back a relieved laugh.

Thank you, Richard.

“What are you doing?” Janet asked, twisting in her seat as the car slowed for a red light.

Before I could respond, the sound of squealing tires surrounded us. A voice yelled, “Get your hands up.” I dove to the floorboards, making myself as small a target as I possibly could. Janet reached back for me, but her fingers barely scraped the back of my t-shirt before her side window was shattered and she was pulled free of the car.

“Mellissa?”

Hands were on my back, my arms. I climbed out of the car and found myself face to face with Richard. I threw my arms around his neck.

“Thank you,” I moaned.

“You okay?” he asked, pushing me back so he could see my face, his fingers brushing lightly against the cheek Janet had punched.

“Yeah.”

I turned just in time to watch a uniformed cop push Janet into the back of a police cruiser. She looked back at me, hatred written in the lines of her mouth and the lines around her eyes. I shivered, as I imagined that woman interrogating Madison. No wonder she had clung to Rawn so tightly when he came to see her in the hospital. No wonder her voice shook when she talked about the spooky look in her eyes.

I could only imagine what she had planned for me.

“Come on,” Richard said. “We have an appointment downtown.”

***

It was over. So why did I so desperately want to cry?

Richard handed me a cup of coffee, even as the doctor was attempting to assess the lump that was forming on the side of my head from where I hit it against the car’s window. She finally backed away and offered me a sympathetic smile.

“For someone who was just kidnapped, you look pretty good.”

“Thanks.”

Richard leaned back against the front edge of his desk—or whoever this office and that desk belonged to—and studied my face for a long minute.

“She’s right, you know. You do look pretty good for everything you’ve gone through. You’re a damn tough girl.”

“For a half pint, right?” I asked, remembering the nickname he used to tease me with when we first met.

He smiled, clearly remembering the same thing. “Yeah. For a half pint.”

I sipped at the coffee, making a face when the bitterness washed over my tongue. I leaned forward and set it on the desk at his side.

“Where are we?”

He looked around the office as though seeing it for the first time. “Downtown police department. Local chief was kind enough to let us set up our command center here.”

“Command center?”

“We’ve been looking for your friend, Janet French, for almost a year now, Mellissa.”

I sat back in the uncomfortable club chair and pulled my knees up against my chest, wrapping my arms around them for comfort as much as anything else.

“Janet French…not her real name, I would guess.”

“Tough and smart.” Richard smiled. “No. Her real name is Margaret, or Peggy, Duprey.”