by Sophia Gray
I swallowed hard. “So, what is it? What do you want?”
“Oh, it’s nothing else that I want. Enzo, it’s a little past eleven in the morning right now. You have twenty-four hours to change your mind about giving me your company. Or else, Audrey won’t live to see another day.”
“Bullshit.” I scoffed. “I bet you don’t even have her.”
“Oh, Enzo, you can be such a fool,” Richard said. There was a pause, and then I heard him yell Audrey’s name. There was a blood-curdling, high-pitched female scream in response.
My blood ran cold. “Hodges, you fuck,” I said into the phone. But the only thing in response was a dial tone. He’d hung up.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After Hodges hung up on me, I was a nervous wreck. I couldn’t stop pacing around my office like a caged animal. I knew that I had to do something, but I couldn’t think of what. And Seb hadn’t even shown up yet; I was wondering if Karen had actually found him. I thought of her with a touch of regret. Part of me thought that maybe if I’d treated her with just a slight bit of respect, we wouldn’t be having this problem.
Then I shook my head. Karen was a petty, jealous kind of girl. She’d always been like this. She was the kind of girl who would have been jealous of Audrey even if Audrey was sixty years old and four hundred pounds. It didn’t matter that I was sleeping with her. Karen just hated feeling replaced.
By the time Sebastian poked his head in, I was sitting down with my face in my hands.
“Yo, Enzo, what the hell, man?” Seb sauntered in. His skin looked tan and glowing, like he’d just come from the tropics.
I knew that I looked sallow and pale, a shadow of my former self. I glared at him. Seb and I had always been the golden boys of the office, and I almost resented him for being able to maintain that image while I was sitting there looking like shit.
“I need your help,” I said quickly. “I need to bring this asshole down.” Seb came behind my desk, and I pointed at my monitor. A picture of Richard Hodges, red-faced and grinning like a prize pig, was on the display.
“Oh no,” Seb said. He shook his head and grinned at me. “Whatever this is, bro, I don’t like the sound of it.” He pointed towards the photo of Hodges. “I recognize that asshole. He was here a few times last week.”
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head, unable to tear my gaze away from the greedy gleam in Hodges’ eye. Despite the fact that the picture was an old one, I pictured him exactly like that: sweaty and proud of his own goddamn slimy behavior.
“Man, what’s wrong? You look fuckin’ rough today. Did something happen?”
I swallowed hard, reaching for a bottle of water on my desk. “It doesn’t matter,” I said darkly. “I’ll tell you later when all of this shit is taken care of.”
Seb crossed his muscular arms over his broad chest and lowered himself onto the black leather couch, kicking up his feet on one armrest and laying his head on the other. “Okay, say I agree to help you. What exactly do you need?”
“Something you don’t do anymore.” I got to my feet and paced back and forth in front of the couch. “This guy, he’s out to fuck me, and I can’t let him win. He wants this company, and he’s dead set on getting it. At first, he kept trying to get me to sell it to him, but I refused. And now he’s threatening me.”
Seb’s eyes flashed open, and he stared at me. “He’s actually threatening you? With what?”
I paused. I didn’t want to tell Seb about Audrey. I had a feeling he already knew, but better to keep this as simple as I possibly could.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “I just need to focus on outwitting this guy. I need to dig up some dirt; I need to find things that he’s hidden and doesn’t want anyone to see.”
“I don’t like where this is going.” Seb shook his head. “If you’re talking about hacking, you know I gave that shit up.” He grinned at me. “Scout’s honor.”
“I wouldn’t ask you unless I absolutely had to, and I think you know that,” I replied quickly. “And, Seb, trust me, I’ve thought of everything. But I can’t think of anyone else who could help on such short notice. And I’m in trouble if I can’t fight this guy off. It would ruin the company and ruin me, and probably ruin everyone who works here. No more pensions, no more retirement. Nothing. Everything you saved would be gone.”
Seb winced. I knew that I’d finally gotten to him—he had over four million dollars invested in LennoxCo.
“I really don’t like the sound of this, man.” He raked a hand through his hair and stared at me. “I almost went to jail last time.” Seb let out a little nervous laugh. “And I definitely don’t want that happening again.”
I sighed. “I wouldn’t tell you this unless I had to, but… they’ve got Audrey, Seb.”
Seb narrowed his eyes. “That dowdy little secretary of yours? Why the hell would they even want her around?”
I silenced him with a glare. “Because they know she’s important to me,” I said icily. “And if I don’t act fast, she’s dead. Richard said I had twenty-four hours to turn the company over to him or else he’d kill her. He’s crazy, and I don’t want to call his bluff, but I’m not giving up on LennoxCo. So, I need to find some dirt on him.”
Seb closed his eyes. His face paled as he folded his hands in his lap. “I understand,” he said after a second. “I’ll help you, okay? Not that this is even remotely close to the kind of thing I’d consider again.” He let out a dry laugh. “Only for you, Enzo.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
Twenty minutes later, Seb and I were stationed in the corner of a local Starbucks with his laptop, my laptop, and a hell of a lot of cords and wires. I didn’t even know the first thing about hacking, but watching Seb work was like watching the master. After I got a couple of lattes for us, Seb set up both computers and connected them with a fat, yellow cord.
“My computer is going to be the slave, and yours is the master,” he said in a quiet, low voice as he booted up my computer. “So yours will work through mine, through disguising software.” Seb looked up at me with a wild grin on his face and a glint in his eye.
Even though Seb and I had been friends for years, I’d never seen him his crazed. Not even when the two of us had embarked on a weeklong bender with tons of booze and strippers. It was like coding was what made Seb tick deep down, beneath his airs of being a sophisticated city guy.
I had to laugh. What was it that made me tick, exactly? When Audrey’s face flashed into my mind, I realized that I didn’t want to think about that anymore.
I watched in fascination as Seb logged on to a secure server. Five seconds later, RH Shoes was displayed in a fancy pink font across the screen.
“Bingo,” Seb said under his breath. He moved the pointer around the screen so quickly that I barely had a chance to see what he was doing. “See, Enzo, right now I’m bypassing his firewall and going straight where the secure FTP files are kept. We can take all of them, or whichever ones you want.”
My mouth went dry. I felt like I was finally on the verge of something really powerful. I pulled a flash drive out of my pocket and handed it to Seb. “Take them all,” I said. “And make copies, and send those copies to my secure LennoxCo email. You know which one?”
Seb nodded. For a moment, we shared a tense look. Seb had helped me before, and he’d almost gone to jail for it, but this time I had a feeling we’d both get off without consequence. After all, Seb was a master hacker, and Hodges was wanted by the police. What could possibly go wrong?
After Seb handed me the flash drive, I grabbed my laptop and darted back up to my office. Now that I wasn’t logged into Hodges’ servers anymore, I had to see what Seb had uncovered. I hoped it was enough to lock Hodges away forever, but until I looked at the records, I wouldn’t know.
My heart was pounding, and sweat broke out on my forehead as the elevator carried me up toward the executive suite. This has to be it, I told myself. This has to be it; you’ve got him now. Just che
ck and make sure Seb did his work properly. That’s all you have to look for right now. Just make sure Seb did a good job.
When the doors pinged open, I broke into a run, dashing down the hallway and into my office. After slamming the door behind me, I put my laptop on the desk and whipped the flash drive out of my pocket. It seemed to take an eternity to load. I was bouncing one knee up and down and tapping my fingers on the desk as I waited for all of the files to load.
The folder was named Financial Records. I grinned. This had to be a good place to start!
Opening the first file, I began to skim down. There was a list of all business expenses and acquisitions, and right away I realized that the file didn’t make sense. The expenses were far more than what should have been listed for a shoe store, even a luxury shoe store, and the acquisitions were huge sums of money, often listed with code words. I grinned. This was going to be easy. Richard Hodges was mine.
I said a silent thank you in my head to Seb as I scanned through the rest of the files. The first one hadn’t been an anomaly; all of them were as indiscreet, full of large sums of money going in but not out. And even better, when I found Hodges’ fund records, I saw that he didn’t have nearly as much in legal savings as the sums being pumped into the shoe store. I couldn’t believe he’d gotten away with as much as he had—the money laundering on the statements was some of the most obvious that I’d ever seen.
I rubbed my hands together as a grim smile formed on my face. He may have gotten away with it, but that’s not going to last much longer, I thought. Hold on, Audrey. I’m coming soon.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Audrey
I was cold, scared, and shaking. And worst of all, I had no idea what had happened to Pepper. The last thing I remembered was being in the car with Enzo and that weird driver. Then Enzo had freaked out and started yelling, and the next thing I knew there was a big crash and I woke up in the middle of a warehouse.
I was still wearing my parka, but my purse and everything else was gone. The warehouse was cold and dark, with only a few vents on the top for lighting, and judging by the sounds around me, I guessed that I was somewhere near the waterfront. The sound of waves beating against wood was a hypnotic kind of lull that stayed with me throughout the day.
I had no way of finding out what time it was, or who had taken me. I didn’t remember very much from the crash. I remembered Enzo and the chauffeur bickering about something, and then no matter how hard I tried to think of what had come next, I couldn’t.
Occasionally, I’d hear a loud crash, bang, or thump from the other side of the warehouse. I’d discovered early on not to move around too much—the wooden floor seemed rickety, and a board had snapped under my feet. For a moment, I had a terrible vision of the dark, polluted water below sucking me out to sea. But I tried to shake it off and concentrate on thinking about how to get out.
The warehouse had two sets of doors. Both were covered with heavy iron chains. At first, I thought I’d be able to pull the chains off the door, but I didn’t have any luck. Even when I closed my eyes and tugged hard, I only fell backward. The chains didn’t even move—I guessed they had to weigh a few hundred pounds. My mouth was dry, and I was sweating with the effort of trying to move them, and I hadn’t even made a dent.
Whoever had put me here really wanted to make sure that I couldn’t get out.
I was also starving. I hadn’t eaten since the lavish dinner at Enzo’s favorite restaurant, and even though I felt sick, I knew that I had to eat to keep my strength up. I found a stale dog biscuit and a packet of sunflower seeds in a pocket of my parka and devoured both in record time.
The whole ordeal made me want to cry. I’d never felt so desperate, or been in such a scary situation. Even growing up virtually homeless at times hadn’t felt so scary. I’d had my family, and I’d known deep down that everything would be alright in the end.
Right now, I didn’t feel like anything would ever be okay ever again. As much as I wanted to blame myself and convince myself that it was my fault that I was stuck here, I knew that dwelling on my mistakes wouldn’t change anything. And I was too worried about Enzo to even think about him much of the time. What had happened to him after the crash? Had he been taken, too? Or was he somewhere, waiting for me, wondering what had happened?
When the sun rose up in the sky, I realized it was towards the middle of the day. I’d only been there for a few hours, and it had already seemed like an eternity. The warmth of the sun’s rays did little to change the temperature inside the frigid warehouse, and although I unzipped my parka an inch or two, I wasn’t ready to take it off. I wanted to laugh when I realized that I was supposed to be at work.
“I hope I’m not going to be fired,” I said aloud, shivering at the weak sound of my voice echoing off the warehouse walls. “I couldn’t handle that right now.”
There was a bark, and I jumped up, running to the side of the warehouse. The thought of Pepper alone and scared made my heart race and I closed my eyes as they filled with tears.
“Pepper!” I yelled. “Pepper, I’m in here!”
The dog barked and growled low and I shivered. It wasn’t Pepper. It was another dog, someone else’s dog.
Before I’d had time to think about whose dog it was, the doors to the warehouse burst open. Two pale, muscular men walked in. They were both wearing black pants, thick black sweaters, and gloves. Their faces and a strip of exposed skin on their wrists glowed in the dark, and I tried hard to focus on their features. They both had light blue eyes and hair so blond that it was almost white.
“Hi,” I said, getting to my feet and wincing at the creaking of the boards beneath my feet. “I think there must be some kind of mistake. I’m Audrey, I’m just a secretary.”
The men stared at me blankly. One of them stepped forward—he was slightly taller with lines on his face. I figured that maybe he was the leader.
“There is no mistake,” he said in a smooth, low voice. If I’d closed my eyes, it almost could have been Enzo speaking. But when the man spoke again, I realized there was some kind of thick, eastern European accent. “There is no mistake,” he repeated in a guttural tone. “You are Audrey, yes? We have you here.”
I shuddered as the taller man took another step forward. He was so close that I could see the bright blue veins on his face and neck. “Don’t hurt me,” I begged. “Please, I didn’t do anything wrong! I don’t even know why I’m here!”
“That is not for you to decide,” the man said icily. He began to pull off his gloves and examine his hands. “We are working for someone, and he wanted you brought here.”
“Can you tell me what happened to my dog, please?” I looked into the man’s blue eyes, hoping for a trace of sympathy. They remained stony and cold. “Her name is Pepper, she was in the car with us, I am worried that she’s hurt.”
The man clicked his tongue and snapped his fingers. There was another growl, then a bark, and I gasped—three German shepherds ran into the warehouse. Their coats were thick and shiny, and big pink tongues hung from their mouths. They ran up to the two men and then stopped, sitting on their haunches and staring at me.
The man reached down and petted one of them, then looked at me with a cruel grin on his slender face. “This is your dog?” He raised his eyebrows. “You lose this dog?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head for emphasis. “I’ve never seen those dogs before. I don’t know who they belong to, they’re not mine.”
The man threw his head back and laughed. When his companion joined in, I shuddered.
“You have visit with our boss soon,” the man replied. “He come and visit you—make sure that you are alright.”
“I don’t know who your boss is,” I said, my voice growing to a high pitch. “I told you, I have no idea what the hell I’m doing here! I was in a car with my boss, Enzo, and my dog, and then there was some kind of crash.”
The man smiled at me. He put his gloves back on and patted one German shephe
rd’s head. The other two dogs had their eyes trained on me. I closed my eyes and tried to take a deep breath. I was so scared that my lungs were aching and I thought that I was going to pass out.
“It does not matter,” the man said. He tapped the dog on its haunches, and it rose to all fours. “I leave you with these dogs,” he added with a grin. “For company.”
I sighed. “Okay. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t even know where I am.”
“And I leave Maika,” the man said, nodding at the slightly short blond man. “He will watch you until boss arrives.”
“Are you just going to leave me here?” I gestured around the warehouse. “It’s freezing in here, and I’m hungry. Can’t I have something to eat?”
The man’s gloved hand hit my face faster than I could duck, and for a moment, I didn’t feel anything. Then a hot, painful sting spread through my cheek and jaw, and I winced as tears came to my eyes.
