Chapter Thirteen
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 34th 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 34th 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.”
I lay my cheek across my arms and regarded him. “She told me she was his sister.”
“They were estranged for years, but they apparently made amends while he was in prison. When he got sick, she fought the courts to get him a compassionate release, but the nature of his crimes was not to be overcome. He died while she was still fighting.”
“She wanted revenge.”
“And she saw your uncle as the reason why her brother died—instead of the fact that he actually did commit the crimes he was convicted of or that he had an inoperable brain tumor.”
I closed my eyes, wondering how I would feel if my uncle were to die of some sort of disease while he was incarcerated. I might have been angry, too. But I’m not sure I would have resorted to kidnapping.
“Madison’s kidnapping was just her way of trying to get to me?”
“She was working with a group of radicals who believe that all technology should be available free of charge to the general public. These people had an issue with the way Cepheus normally only releases most of their products to the academic and commercial industries, and they’ve been looking for a way to mass produce them for the general public. Peggy—Janet—saw them as a means to an end.”
“But they grabbed Madison instead.”
“Their information wasn’t as accurate as it should have been. I’m guessing that this was because Peggy had pictures of you from when you were a teen, but she didn’t know what you look like now. And you and Madison bear a vague resemblance—if you don’t actually stand next to one another.”
I chuckled a little. “If we don’t stand side by side and the beholder is wearing rose-colored glasses.”
“Anyway,” Richard said, reaching over to ruffle my hair. “She came to our attention about the time Johnny died, but she was living under the radar. We had to wait until she made a move on you before we could catch her. Last week…”
“She took Madison and moved out into the open.”
“Sort of. But it alerted us to the fact that she was in the area. We knew if we waited long enough, she’d make an attempt. We just weren’t expecting it to go down quite like it did.”
“Were you waiting for her to shoot me?”
Richard made a gesture that suggested that was exactly what they were waiting for.
“Hey!” I jumped to my feet and began to pace. “Nice to know the very people who were supposed to be protecting me were hoping for me to be shot.”
“That’s not what I meant. We just needed her to reveal herself.”
I ran my fingers through my hair, the tears I was trying so hard to stave off threatening to spill once again.
“So now what? Where am I going?”
“Home.” Richard crossed to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “There are some people here who have been quite insistent on seeing you. I don’t know if you—”
<
br /> “Wait. What do you mean, home?”
Richard was a large man, probably well over six foot, so he had to bend a little to put his face close to mine. He touched my cheek with a gentle caress that reminded me of the way my uncle would stroke my cheek whenever he came home late at night and thought I was sleeping.
“It’s over, Mellissa. All the people we identified as a threat to your life are either dead or in prison. This Peggy was the last of them, and I would say it’s most likely she will be going away for a very long time.”
“You mean I don’t have to leave Portland.”
“I mean that we will continue to monitor your case, but you are pretty much on your own from this point forward. You can stay here; you can go to Chicago or Mexico or wherever the hell you want to go. Though I wouldn’t suggest you try to return to New Orleans just now…”
“It’s over.”
He smiled. “It is. But you don’t have to be so relieved to see the last of me.”
I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his throat. The tears flowed, unhindered, but they were no longer tears of fear or grief. They were tears of relief.
“There’s a lot of paperwork,” Richard said a moment later as he gently extracted me from him.
“There always is.”
Another smile. I was going to miss those smiles.
“We can talk about it later. In the meantime, you better go see your friends before they break the door down.”
He opened the door, and the first face I saw was Madison’s. And then Annie and Rawn. When I didn’t see Conrad, my heart dropped into my stomach. I hadn’t thought that what I said in the car this afternoon would stick, but maybe it had. Maybe I was rougher than I had imagined.
But then Madison made a subtle gesture. I turned and saw Conrad sitting on a low bench, his face in his hands.
“Hey,” I said, kicking his shoe with the side of my foot, “are you really going to let a little tiff come between us?”
He looked up, his skin pale under that Texas tan. But that cocky smile slipped across his lips, and he leaned back, resting his head in his raised hands.
The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 2 Page 15
