SHANE
It’s cold and snowing when I step outside, close to twenty degrees if I estimate right, which means there is no way Emily, who gets chilled even on warmer nights, is going to be lingering outside. I pull my hood over the top of my beanie and start walking, shoving my cold hands in my pockets, while scanning for Emily. She said I’d never find her, which could mean she’s already left the area. In fact, knowing we wouldn’t have yet found out she’d changed clothes, the most likely move would have been to leave the area.
That means a cab, a bus, or a train, which I have no doubt Seth will have covered, but then, he also thought Emily hadn’t left the hotel. Refusing to be defeated, I start jogging, covering the two blocks that lead me to the always busy 16th Street Mall area where the road is sealed to traffic, the sidewalks framing food booths and lined with shops and restaurants. Any of which she could be hiding inside. I start walking, looking in windows and at the random packs of people.
I cover four blocks, up and back, and despite the impossibility of this task, I know Emily more than any stranger looking for her. If she’s in the neighborhood, I have the best shot of finding her. My cell beeps with a text message and I glance down to find a text picture of Emily from a security picture along with a message: Emily leaving the hotel garage at exactly 8:52. I glance at my watch, to find it’s already nine forty-five. She’s long gone. My phone rings with Seth’s number, and I answer. “Tell me you have more than this photo.”
“I don’t,” he says grimly. “But she’ll have to use an ID to check into a hotel or travel. We just have to hope she didn’t have another fake ID on her.”
“She doesn’t,” I say with certainty. “I’m three blocks from her apartment. I’m going to go check it out. I’ll call you if I find any clues there.”
“I’ll meet you there,” he says, and I end the call, already starting to jog again, my mind going to her brother. Why would he do a half-ass job of setting up her identity? Even if he did it quickly, surely he’d have fixed it by now? My mind tracks back to the night I’d met her. She’d taken a call and been angry, playing it off as a maintenance issue at her apartment. Was that her brother? If not, who was it?
I blink and find myself covered in snow as I cross the parking lot to Emily’s apartment, but once I’m at the door, the realization that I don’t have a key hits me. I grab the frame on either side of me. “Damn it,” I murmur, deciding I’ll have to break the window.
“I’ve got it,” I hear Seth say from behind me.
Pushing off the door frame, I turn to find him approaching, now wearing a trench coat. “You have a key?” I ask.
He stops beside me, and pulls out some sort of tool from his pocket. “Close enough.” He inserts it into the lock and opens the door, but before he walks in, I grab his arm. Seth looks at me and nods his silent understanding, stepping aside. This is my woman and her personal space could contain my personal demons. I enter the apartment and tug down my hood, my heart sinking at the sight of an empty living room and kitchen.
I cross to the bedroom, the only other room in the apartment, and stop dead in my tracks in the frame of the open door. “Holy mother of Jesus,” I mutter, staring at the blow-up bed in the corner, and not another piece of furniture in the room. How did I not know she was living like this? I cross to the bed—if you can even call it that—and squat down next to it, the sweet floral scent of Emily everywhere, while she is nowhere I can seem to find her.
“I take it you haven’t seen this place before?” Seth asks from behind me.
I stand again and face him, hands on my hips. “If I had,” I say, “she would have already been living with me.” And while I have assumptions based on what I’m seeing here, I want to know what an ex-CIA operative thinks before I voice them. “What does this say to you about who and what she is?”
“My initial thoughts,” he says, pausing as if in thought, before continuing with, “This could be a wounded-princess routine meant to manipulate you, but I’d have thought she’d have made sure you saw it before now, if that were the case.”
“It’s not been all that long ago that we met.”
“Agreed, and I’m not saying that she didn’t have a long game that she was playing, but it’s doubtful at this point.”
“Why?”
“I still think she would have made sure you saw this apartment, if it was part of a setup. But that said, this doesn’t mean she told the truth on the phone, either.”
“She’s telling the truth,” I say, no hesitation in my voice.
“I accept your judgment, because I know your judgment as good, but I submit to you that she might have been desperate, on the run, and in need of money and/or her new identity. Therefore, she was ripe for the picking for your family or another enemy to use as a weapon against you.”
“Her brother set up her identity.”
“She says,” he argues. “Think about it, Shane. Who knows what she might tell you to keep you from finding out the truth, especially if she was threatened. Or maybe she regrets her choices and just doesn’t want you to know what they were. Maybe she was promised money she desperately needs, and she loses the money she was promised if you find out. Maybe—”
“Enough,” I snap. “I’m quite clear on the possibilities behind her actions but I’ve looked into her eyes, and you have not. Not like I have. She is running scared, but not from me.” Uninterested in anything but facts, I cut off the conversation. “Let’s search the apartment and get back on the streets.” I cross the room and enter the bathroom, finding a few toiletries and nothing more. The picture I’m getting of her being alone, and now on the run, is cuttingly clear.
I yank open the middle drawer, and stare down at the velvet box inside the otherwise empty space. I reach for it and open the top, staring down at the delicate chain of a bracelet, Emily’s words replaying in my mind: It’s all I have left of her.
“Shane.”
I shut the box and slip it inside my pocket, facing Seth.
“We located her.”
A mix of relief and dread washes over me that I don’t analyze or express. “Where?”
“At Union Square.”
“The train station,” I say in surprise, not because of the location, but rather the fact that she’s still here. “She could have been long gone by now. Why linger there and risk us finding her?”
“She didn’t,” he says. “We found her leaving it, which leads to the question, why go there and leave, without taking a train?”
“She must have thought paying cash would avoid her having to show identification. She didn’t want to be tracked.”
“Which would be an easy conclusion, except for one hole in that theory. There’s a big gap between when she left the hotel and when she left the train station. Surely she would have attempted to buy a ticket when she arrived, and left when she realized she needed identification.”
I pull my phone from my pocket and glance at my call log. “She called me thirty minutes ago and there was no background noise. She wasn’t in the train station, not even the bathroom. I’m guessing someplace close to it. In other words, she went there and something changed her mind. She’s afraid of a group of hackers. It’s reasonable to believe she thought she could pay cash and not show identification in order to buy her ticket.”
“Or,” he offers, “someone’s been pulling her chains, and they may have stopped her departure.”
“Or she decided she needed help after all, in which case, she’ll show up back at my apartment. Where is she now?”
His cell phone rings, and he reaches for it, answering me. “She was walking toward the convention center,” he says, taking his call, and then listening a moment before glancing at me. “Nick,” he tells me. “General update. Nothing new. I’m going to search the kitchen while we talk.”
I nod and he disappears into the other room while I consider the direction of Emily’s path and the possibility it’s not headed back to me. Inhaling a heavy breath, I turn away from the room and do a quick sweep of every drawer and cabinet, finding what few products she has are all generic, bargain brands, which drives home the reality of her empty apartment I wish like hell I’d known about. Walking to the closet, I find a small duffel bag and stuff everything I can find of Emily’s inside. She’s not coming back here. Ever.
With the bag on my shoulder, I exit the bathroom and walk to the side of the bed, grabbing a journal and a few other items she has sitting there, sticking them inside the bag. Zipping it up, I give the blow-up bed a grimace, and turn away. I can’t look at that damn thing. No wonder she didn’t want me here.
Entering the living area, I find Seth in the kitchen, opening and shutting drawers. “Anything?” I ask, leaning on the door frame.
He faces me and presses his hands on the counter. “She’s been eating on paper plates and using plastic ware. She has no mail. No connection to another life. We aren’t going to find answers here.” His phone rings again and he answers, listening several minutes, before saying, “Yes. Do it.”
“What was that?” I ask, walking to the bar that separates the living area from the kitchen where he stands facing me.
“She just entered the Hampton Inn by the Coliseum. Our man followed her inside, which brings us back to her ID and hackers. She can’t travel, or rent a hotel room in her name, which we have to assume based on her actions thus far, she knows. In other words, she could be meeting someone.”
“Or someone rented a room for her,” I surmise, not liking where this is going.
“My thought exactly,” he confirms. “But we have an opportunity here. People show their true colors when they don’t know you’re watching. What she does now will tell you who she is, far more than her true identity on paper ever could.”
“More like who is controlling her.”
“I’ll head over there then,” he says. “And I’ll personally stay the night and let you know if anything happens.”
“I’m going with you.”
“You’re the boss,” he says. “But in my opinion, you’re too close to this to get any closer.”
“All the more reason I need my questions answered.”
“I can answer them for you, and nothing may even happen tonight. Go home, Shane. I’ll call you.”
“One way or the other,” I promise him, “something is going to happen tonight.” I don’t give him time to make his case further, already walking toward the door and exiting. The wind greets me, swiping my face and dusting me in snow flurries, the possibilities of where the next few hours could lead as icy as the droplets they become.
Seth joins me, pulling the door shut behind him, and my cell phone begins to ring. I reach for it, hoping like hell it’s Emily, to find my ex-boss calling instead, no doubt trying to recruit me back to New York yet again. I decline the call and without the hesitation of the past. I have a mess here my family created that I have to clean up, once and for all this time, and lord help them if they’re behind what’s going on with Emily.
I glance up to find Seth already at the driver-side door of his car and I walk to my least favorite place—the passenger side. I don’t like being the one taken on a ride, but then, that’s a trait I share with the Brandon clan. The whole bunch of us prefer the driver’s seat, which wouldn’t be a problem if we all shared the same destination.
Seth clicks the locks, and I toss Emily’s bag in the backseat before joining Seth in the front. He cranks the engine and the heat, placing us in reverse and then forward. “I need to know how you plan to handle any visitor she has,” he says, pulling us onto the main road. “Because we have a chance to watch her and see her true colors.”
“You said that already.”
“And I’m saying it again,” he says. “No matter who shows up to the hotel to meet her, we need to sit back and watch.”
“Negative,” I say. “If Emily has a guest that bears the Brandon name, the game is over. There’s no reason to sit, watch, and wait.”
“And if it’s someone else?” he asks, already pulling us into a spot across from the hotel.
“We sit, watch, and wait.”
His cell phone rings yet again and he kills the engine, grabbing his phone and eyeing the screen. “She checked into a room.” He glances at me. “We’re working to find out under what name.” Another car pulls into the spot behind us, and a light flashes several times in the back window. “That’s Nick,” Seth adds. “I’ll be right back.” He opens his door and disappears, shutting me inside the car, alone.
I eye him in the rearview mirror, watching as he climbs into the black SUV behind us, and then turn my attention to the door, where people come and go, and I don’t look away. Ten minutes pass, then fifteen, and Seth climbs back inside the car with me, an iPad in his hand. “She rented a room with cash using a fake name, but no identification. She convinced the manager she lost her wallet at the airport.”
“And we know this how?”
“The man we had tailing her paid one of the girls at the front desk to get the details for him.”
“At least we now know she didn’t check in on someone else’s account,” I say, motioning to the iPad. “That has a purpose I assume.”
“We have footage of Emily at the train station and then in the hotel, neither of which is eventful.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I say, and even in the shadows of the car, I can see the thinning of his lips, but he swipes the iPad and brings the screen to life before handing it to me. I hit the play button on the video and find a ticket line at the train station at the same moment that Emily leaves the line, her hand pressed to her face, before she digs in her pocket and removes her phone. She dials it and seems to fret about no one answering. Three more times she dials before she rushes toward the exit. The feed cuts to her outside, in front of a drugstore not far from here. She’s dialing her phone again. She paces. But what really gets me is when she squats down on the ground and leans against a wall, her hand back on her head. She’s lost. She’s scared. She’s alone. It punches me in the gut and then twists. The feed shifts again to her going inside the hotel. Her walking to the check-in desk, and after a pleading conversation with the concierge, heading to the elevator bank, the doors closing her inside, and then the video goes black.
I look up at Seth. “Is this it?”
“Yes,” he confirms. “Like I said. It’s far from eventful.”
For him. For Emily, I doubt it’s so simple. It damn sure isn’t for me. “What room number?”
“Shane—”
“Room number,” I bite out, depositing the iPad next to me.
“Room 1211,” he says, “and the garage is your most discreet entry point.”
“Agreed,” I say. “Make it happen.”
He says nothing else, starting the engine and cutting us across the road, to the side of the hotel. His cell phone starts ringing. “Nick,” he says, grabbing it once we pull into the garage. “No doubt, wondering what we’re doing.”
“Make sure that’s it before I get out.”
He answers the call and there is a clipped exchange, before Seth says, “I’ll explain in a minute unless, there’s a change you have to report.” A brief pause and then he adds, “Just watch the door,” and ends the call. “We’re good,” he tells me.
“Call me if I have a visitor on the way,” I say. “Otherwise, I’ll call when I have the answers we need.” I exit the car without another word.
I can be a patient man. I can wait on my adversaries to make the wrong move, or say the wrong thing. But I do not believe Emily is my adversary, nor am I patient tonight. Whoever her enemy is, they are also mine. It’s time for me to meet that enemy, along with the real woman who’s been in my bed. But first, I’m going to remind her why she was in my bed in the first place.
EMILY
I force myself to sit on the side of the hotel bed, willing my heart to stop racing as I reach for the hotel phone again, hoping a public line protects me, but feeling I have no option but to take the risk. Six times I’ve called my brother. Six times since I reached this hotel room thirty minutes ago. That doesn’t count the many attempts before I threw away the only phone I had left in a street trashcan. And just like all the times before, Rick doesn’t answer. This time I don’t bother leaving a message. I press my hands to my face. I’ve given up so much for that man even before this hell started, and this is what I get in return. Tears prick at my eyes and I reject them, furious at myself for being so weak. I stand up again. I don’t have time to wallow in a pity party. I need to sleep and plan for tomorrow, in the opposite order. I remove my tennis shoes and hoodie and then walk across the small room to the desk against the wall, where I grab a pad of paper and a pen.
Returning to the bed, I climb on top, move the mass of pillows to lean on the headboard, and pull my knees to my chest. Pen perched, I start thinking about everything I have to do tomorrow, and how that list varies if I don’t hear from my brother. No. I need to start with a—no matter what—list:
• Disposable phones
• Clothes
• Bank
• A place to stay
I pause. Should I leave town or stay here? Do I dare fly? What if the police are looking for me? I’m sure the hotel has a business center, but I’m afraid to Google my name to find out. What if I trigger attention I don’t need? So, no. No flying. I write that down. Can I take a bus to another city? I add to my list:
• No flying. Research travel documentation needed for a bus.
• Research big cities nearby.
I have to be out of here by noon, and I need a change of clothes again. This isn’t a fancy hotel, but surely they can direct me to a store that can deliver. I set my pad and pen aside and sit up, reaching for the phone at the same moment there’s a knock on the door. My heart leaps into my throat. I go still. Completely, utterly still, not even daring to breathe. Another knock sounds and I wrap my fingers around the down comforter.
“Sweetheart.”
The familiar rumble of Shane’s deep, masculine voice sends a rush of adrenaline through me and delivers a jolt of too many emotions to name. “I know you’re in there,” he adds, his voice a seduction and a command, a skill he masters as well as he does me. “I’m going to need you to open the door.”
I give a silent scream, and look skyward. All I went through tonight to keep him out of this, and he’s found me. All the fear, the running, the panic I felt, and he is here and I am still struggling to save him from me. “Sweetheart,” he repeats, the endearment doing the same funny thing to my stomach it always does. “I’m not leaving.”
I climb off the bed and walk to the door, pressing my hand to the surface and for long seconds we are silent, him there, and me here, so close but so far away.
“Open up, sweetheart,” he prods, his voice softer now, and somehow, I know he knows I’m right here, right in front of him, but divided by a door I both hate and need.
“You have to leave,” I say. “Go, Shane. This is my business, not yours.”
“You are my business,” he replies. “And if I have to sleep in front of your door, I will. Eventually you’ll have to come out.”
“I could call security,” I say, but I sound unresolved in that threat even to myself.
“And that would get attention you don’t want.”
Frustrated, confused, tormented, I raise my voice, giving a guttural, “You’re such an asshole, Shane.”
“If that’s what holding on to you makes me, then you’re right. I’m an asshole.”
He’s stubborn. So ridiculously stubborn and I have to make him leave. I push off the door and start pacing, trying to decide what to do. How do I make him go away? I could tell him I’m working for his family, but that would crush him and only make him demand answers. I could tell him I’m working for the Feds and he’d have to back off, but it’s just another lie I don’t want to tell.
“Emily.”
At the sound of that name, that only one he has made bearable, I stop in place and face the door. He says nothing more, as if he knows what he’s done. As if he knows that using this name, my new name, will shake me. And he probably does. He knows me in ways that defy a name on paper, in ways no other human being has ever truly known me. I walk back to the door. “Shane,” I say. “Please go away.”
“Would you go away if our circumstances were reversed?”
No. My answer is no, and therefore I have to open the door and step into the hallway. I have to give him some reason to let me go, and that idea guts me. Because that means being a bitch. Being mean. Leaving him thinking I’m the monster he feared when he first confronted me. I flip the steel lock slowly, softly, as not to alert him I’m about to exit, then inhale for courage. I open the door and in a blink, his hands are on my waist, and his big body is crowding mine, walking me inside the room. Another blink and the door slams behind him. Another and I’m against the door the way I was in his apartment, him in front of me, his powerful legs shackling mine, his spicy, deliciously perfect scent encasing me.
“You didn’t really think I’d let you get away, did you?” he says, a long dark lock of hair touching his brow, as if he’s been running his hands through his hair, an act of uncontained emotion he rarely allows himself. But if his emotions are freer than normal, his control is still fully intact. He has it. I do not.