I insist on going with Vaughn to break into Brent’s place.
He flat-out says no.
“We’re in this together,” I remind him, standing my ground. “Either you take me with you, or I follow you on my own. Either way, we both know I’m safer with you.”
Vaughn grits his teeth. “Damn you. Can’t you see I’m trying to keep you out of trouble?”
“Maybe that’s not your job.” I take pity on him, standing there looking all noble and protective. And dangerously hot. “Look, I promise I’ll be careful. But I won’t just sit around while you go out and risk everything. This is my future on the line too, you know.”
So we go together, staking out Brent’s building in Tribeca until he leaves on the arm of some hot, Swedish blonde. Of course he’s got a fuck-pad in the city -- all paid for by Ashcroft Industries corporate accounts. The same company he’s doing his best to destroy.
“Come on, stay close,” Vaughn tells me. He grabs my hand and pulls me across the busy street. But instead of going to the lobby, he heads around the back of the building. “Too exposed,” he explains. “The fewer people who see us, the better.”
He pulls a baseball cap low over his face and gestures for me to put up the hood on my sweatshirt. I do it, feeling a thrill of excitement. Dressing in a disguise, sneaking in. It’s dangerous, but still, I love the buzz.
Vaughn finds the service entrance open, propped by a trashcan. “I slipped a guy a twenty.” He winks, ushering me inside.
“Top floor,” I tell him. “Penthouse suite.”
“Nothing but the best,” Vaughn drawls.
We take the stairs, climbing fast. I shiver, remembering the last time I was in a stairwell like this, when someone pushed me hard enough to send me tumbling. Was it Brent? I wonder. And if it was, what else would he do to steal the company he’s fixated on as his rightful inheritance. He’s willing to dismantle the whole thing to keep it from anyone else. Just how twisted is he?
Vaughn checks the penthouse hallway. All clear. We hurry to the front door, and I pass him the key. It wasn’t hard to get a copy. It belongs to the company, after all. I just had to call the management, pretending to be Brent’s secretary. I said we needed spares for redecorating, and had them message one over to the office.
Now, my heart catches as Vaughn swipes the card and the door clicks open. I exhale with relief.
“Careful,” he warns me, stepping inside. He flips the lights on, and looks around. “We still have the alarms.”
A tell-tale beeping comes from the box on the wall. I cross over, and tap in the code I scribbled down earlier. I pulled the same routine on the security company, and had them send over the info.
The beeping stops. “We’re in!”
Vaughn sees my grin and chuckles. “You little criminal.”
“What? I’m not breaking any laws,” I point out. “This was part of my inheritance. It’s all perfectly legal.”
“Tell that to Brent.” Vaughn looks around. “Where do you want to start?”
“The office, I guess. That’s where he’d be keeping all the business info.”
“Then let’s get started.”
We find the office down the hall. I flip on the lights, revealing a sleek room filled with porny art and hi-tech computers. Vaughn tries tapping at the keyboard, but he shakes his head. “Password protected.”
“Try ‘Brent is the greatest’,” I joke, rifling through a cabinet. Vaughn tries out a few combinations, but has no luck.
“We don’t want to risk it,” he sighs. “He might have a tracker installed, to tell him if someone tries to log in.”
We look through every drawer and cupboard in turn. “I think I’ve found something.” I call him over. A stash of papers in a drawer, a rough draft of some kind of contract with notes in the margins.
“It’s with Excaliber Finance!” I read the dense print. “Something about establishing a partnership...”
“He’s sold you out, just like we thought,” Vaughn says grimly. “He’s agreed to support the takeover, in exchange for a co-head position of the new company.”
It confirms all my worst suspicions, but it still hurts. It’s one thing for me to have considered walking away when I first got news of my inheritance, but Brent’s spent years watching his father build the company. He knows everything it means, and still, he’s happy to tear it all down.
“What about Excaliber?” I ask. “Does it have any more information about who that guy is?”
“There’s a signature, right here,” Vaughn flips to the last page. “Martin Ridley. Fuck.”
“What?” I see his expression change. Shock, and realization.
“It’s their old partner.” Vaughn looks at me, clenching the contract. “Back when my father and Ashcroft started the company, they brought on a third guy, the money. He disappeared, went to jail on tax charges. I always figured Ashcroft set him up too, to get him out of the picture.”
“And now he’s back, plotting with Brent.” I frown, trying to make sense of it. “And he’s the guy he’s been meeting?”
Vaughn taps his phone, bringing up an image search and typing in the name Martin Ridley. “Shit,” he says, showing me the results. Martin Ridley, the guy Brent and Carter have been sneaking around with. “I should have checked this earlier. It’s him.”
“But what does it mean?” I ask him, confused. “This guy has been planning to take back the company all this time?”
“Seems so,” Vaughn answers, putting the contract down. He goes back to searching the room, checking the waste paper basket and smoothing out discarded papers. “You said this Excaliber company had been trying to bid for the company before, but Ashcroft always turned them down.”
“Which means this Ridley guy is bad news.” I look at the contract again, leafing through the pages. There are notes in the margins, in handwriting I recognize as Brent’s, and another even scrawl. I try to make out the words, looking for any clues at all about what they’ve got planned. “We’ve got to stop him. If Ashcroft didn’t want him back at the company, there’s a reason.”
I check every page, looking for something, anything at all. And then it hits me. Not the words themselves, but the handwriting.
I’ve seen it before.
“Vaughn,” I gasp, chills running down my spine.
“What is it?” He’s at my side in an instant.
“Look.”
With shaking hands, I unfold the photo of my mother I’ve been carrying around in my wallet. The surveillance photo from Ashcroft’s attic, the one with the bullseye on the front.
You’re running out of time. I promise, the people you love will suffer if I don’t get what I want.
It’s the same. The notes on the contract. The threat on the photo. Written by the same man.
“Ridley,” I swallow, another chill gripping my body. “It’s him. He was the one threatening Ashcroft, promising to hurt my mother and your father. He’s who Ashcroft was trying to protect them from. This is all because of him.”