by Katie Reus
Fair enough. He wanted to apologize to her, especially after reading Lizzy’s email, but first he wanted to show her the boards he’d set up. He needed to gauge her reaction to that as well.
It didn’t take long for her to finish eating. When she was done, he gave her another banana in case she decided she was still hungry, then motioned for her to follow him back upstairs.
She watched him warily but had no choice but to go where he directed.
“Second door on the left,” he said behind her.
She stepped into the room he’d set up as an office, and before he’d taken one step in past her she’d lunged at the pistol he’d left on the desk.
Moving lightning fast, she whipped it around and held it at him with shaking hands. Her eyes were wild as she tried to point it straight at him.
“That’s not loaded,” he murmured.
And she looked as if she’d never held a weapon in her entire life, though he knew her stepfather had given her one, which lined up with the one he’d found at her place.
Her hands trembled even harder. “Put your hands up!”
He simply shut the door behind him and stepped forward. “Just put it down.”
She stared at him, her pupils dilating, her breathing growing harsher. “I told you to put your hands up!”
“Look—”
Click.
He stared in surprise as she pulled the trigger.
He wasn’t sure who was more surprised—her, or him that she’d actually pulled it.
“Oh my God,” she rasped out, the pistol falling from her hand. “I…”
“Well I’m really glad it wasn’t loaded now,” he said dryly as he picked it up and tucked it into the back of his pants. “It’s not loaded because I didn’t want to risk you getting hurt.”
“Are you freaking kidding me!” She was definitely coming out of her dazed state. “Wait…did you kidnap me with an empty gun?”
“Yes.”
She turned away from him, slowly spinning in a circle as she muttered curses to herself. Suddenly she froze as she started taking in the rest of the room.
He’d set up two giant boards similar to the ones his team had at work. The technology he’d had before had been a lot better but this worked just as well for his purposes. He had most of the knowledge locked away in his brain anyway, but being able to look at everything in such a huge visual was helpful.
“What is all this?” She stared at everything, those pretty green eyes wide in a combination of horror and fascination.
“My investigation.”
“Into…what? And why am I on it?” More indignation punctuated each word.
“Because until this morning I thought you were involved in dealing weapons and laundering money.”
She walked up to the board without even glancing at him. “I recognize this guy,” she said, tapping her finger against Carter’s picture. “I remember because he was so good-looking. This is the guy you—”
“I didn’t kill him,” he snapped out. “He was my partner and best friend. Your stepfather killed him.”
Arianna spun to face him, her eyes flaring with anger. “Oh yeah, sure.”
“Your stepfather works for some very dirty people—and is just plain dirty. And I saw him kill Carter with my own eyes. Carter was my best friend! I was godfather to his kids. I’m sure I’m not anymore but…I loved him like a brother. I never could have hurt him, ever. And if I’d just gotten there a few minutes earlier, I could have saved him. Instead, Vitaly shot him point-blank and didn’t bat an eye.”
If he’d just been a few minutes earlier. He’d replayed that day over and over in his mind, especially at night when he was trying to sleep. It was like an awful scene that was set on repeat.
He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to lock down any emotions that tried to bubble up. He couldn’t release the reins now, not when he needed to convince her that he was telling the truth. When he’d kidnapped her, he’d erased any olive branch of trust that might have grown between them. Even so, he was going to try and see if he could still use her. Well, not use her exactly, but he wanted to see if there was any hope that she might help him.
Because yeah, he was so desperate that he was hoping a civilian who clearly had no weapons training could help him. At least what he needed her for had nothing to do with weapons.
She paused, watching him carefully, and he wasn’t sure what she saw.
This was a lost cause. He just needed to let her go and figure this shit out on his own. Now that he had Lizzy on board he should be able to get more done anyway.
Chapter 5
Arianna watched her kidnapper, a man she actually recognized from the news. He was insanely handsome, something she hated that she noticed now that the mask was off.
It was strange—he had a rugged quality and looked nothing like his mug shots, nothing like the images the news had flashed on the television feeds. In those he’d looked scary and as if he hadn’t had a shower in days. Now? Yeah, he was kinda scary but also very, very handsome. Even with the beard that he could probably stand to trim a little. Heck, it kinda gave him an even edgier, sexier look. His hair was a little long too, as if he hadn’t had time to cut it—which he probably hadn’t since he was busy hiding from law enforcement.
“So you didn’t kill your partner?” she asked carefully, watching him. She’d been going to AA meetings for three years and she was very good at weeding out the liars, the people who couldn’t admit they had a problem and wanted to blame others for every single bad thing in their life. Because if they didn’t take responsibility, then nothing was their fault. Certainly made drinking yourself into oblivion a lot easier.
She’d been one of those people once upon a time and they were easy for her to spot. But that was the thing with recovering alcoholics. Once you admitted you had a problem, you started telling the truth about everything. It was a cathartic type of thing. At least it was for her. Like with smokers who finally quit, and were always trying to get others to quit as well.
She wasn’t sure if Bishop had killed his partner or not, but the grief in his eyes when he’d talked about his dead friend was so very real she felt it like a punch to the gut. She remembered the images of the dead man—he’d had a California surfer-type look to him and the media had gone crazy splashing his image and ones of his picture-perfect family everywhere.
“I don’t care if you believe me. Okay…I do care if you believe me, but I didn’t kill Carter. I’d have taken a bullet for him. Vitaly pulled the trigger. I was there.”
There was something more he wanted to say, she was sure of it, but he tightened his jaw and looked back at the boards.
“Like I told you last night, the bank accounts in your name are real. And I’ve come across some new information this morning that indicates the person who tipped me off you were involved is dead. Which is a mighty big coincidence. I’ll show you everything I have. Someone is setting you up for something. Though I’m not sure what.” His frown deepened.
She didn’t understand any of this. Who would target her? Maybe her stepfather, but…why would he? They might not have a loving, close relationship, but there was no animosity between them. There was nothing between them. Just polite civility when they saw each other. And he even checked in with her during the week.
“Do you recognize any of these men?” He indicated the boards, which included little clusters of pictures. Many of them included her stepfather, but there were a couple sections with pictures that simply had question marks above them. There was also a section on her with another question mark. Some pictures had been taken of her leaving school or her house. Wow. Okay, she was just going to move past that for now.
“I’ve seen two of them in passing.” She pointed at two men. “At my stepfather’s estate in Orlando. Who are the rest of these people?” She looked at every image, curious—and horrified—by all of it.
A pause. “Your stepfather’s associates, mainly.” Another pause. “And
some DEA agents I suspect of being dirty. But mainly known criminals, though not all have records. They’re mostly mid-level assholes who run drugs and weapons.”
She scanned the images again, digesting his words. “What about this guy?” She indicated a grainy sepia-colored image of her stepfather with a man who looked slightly familiar.
To her surprise, Bishop pulled out his phone and pulled up a search engine. Then he handed her the phone.
Tentatively, she took it. “What’s this for?”
“Search for Benigno Saltillo.”
She typed in the name and stared at a few news articles listing the man from the picture as a drug runner from Central America. He was now dead. She looked back at the picture of her stepfather with the guy. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she murmured, but couldn’t put any heat behind it as a lead weight settled in her gut. Because it did mean something.
He took the phone from her then swiped his finger across the screen a few times.
She watched as various documents popped up.
“Just swipe right. I can get you hard copies later, but I just received these documents.”
She looked at the different bank accounts in her name as well as the accompanying documents. There was a big one in Grand Cayman, but a couple other small ones in Europe. They’d all been opened up very recently.
Feeling sick, she looked around again before basically collapsing on the small cot with rumpled sheets in the corner of the room. She vaguely wondered if he’d been sleeping here while she’d been cuffed to the headboard in the other room. “So…I don’t know what to do with all this. But I want to know what you want from me.” She tossed the phone next to her, not bothering to try and dial 911. He probably had the damn phone blocked. A tension headache spread across the back of her skull as she tried to digest all this information. Maybe it was lies, but if it wasn’t… What was going on? And why lie about this anyway?
“I want the same thing I wanted before. I want you to empty out those bank accounts.” There was a sort of desperation in his eyes.
She swallowed hard. “Then what?”
“Then I’m going to use that money to draw your stepfather out into the open. He’s been siphoning that money away without his boss’s knowledge for something. And he’s going to want it back.” His eyes darkened with rage as he talked about Vitaly.
“What if I won’t help you? What will you do to me?” She couldn’t help the tremor in her voice. She was pretty sure her stepfather was into some bad stuff, but that didn’t mean Ellis was someone she could trust. The man had kidnapped her and was holding her hostage. Trust? Ha.
He took a step toward her, his huge body vibrating with…something, and for a moment pure terror punched through her, but then he turned away from her. His massive shoulders were bunched up tight. “Nothing. I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m not going to hurt you. And even if you were just like your stepfather, I…couldn’t hurt you either.” There was a note of self-loathing in his voice as he made the statement, as if he was annoyed at himself.
“Let me go, then,” she whispered, too scared to believe he might actually do it. “Please take me home.” She needed to get away from here, to get away from him.
To her surprise he nodded, though all his muscles were pulled taut. “Fine. Grab your bag. I’ll have to put the hood over your face for the drive back.”
Her heart was an erratic tattoo in her chest. She so desperately wanted to believe he was actually going to take her home. He seemed so earnest and kind of defeated right now. And his stupid gun had been empty. But maybe that was all a ploy to… To what? What if those accounts were real?
She swallowed hard as dozens upon dozens of questions ran through her mind. She couldn’t wrap her head around any of it. She needed to go to someone in law enforcement, needed to talk to somebody about what was going on, especially if random bank accounts had been opened in her name.
As she grabbed her bag, she knew she also needed to acknowledge that the thought of her stepfather killing someone somehow didn’t surprise her. For reasons she did not want to think about right now.
God, how was she going to face him or even talk to him now? Even if she wanted to go back to her life and pretend everything was normal, she couldn’t.
Everything had changed, and she had no idea what she was going to do about it.
Chapter 6
At the sound of a garage door opening and the SUV shutting off, Arianna tensed. But when Ellis opened the door and took her hood off, she realized they were in her garage. He really had brought her home. And he hadn’t tied her up this time—though he had made her lie in the back on the floor again.
“I’ve got your phone but I took the battery out last night before we left. I’m going to dump the pieces at a park about half a mile from here.”
She stared at him as they stepped into the laundry room. “Why?”
“So it’ll take you time to reach your phone and call your stepfather. Or the police.”
“Are you for real?”
“Yes. I don’t think he’ll be able to figure out where I took you, but I’m getting a head start. Also, you need to put a lock on your security system app.”
“Are you seriously giving me advice?” she asked as he shut the door behind them. She was glad to be back home even if it was with him. And even if she was still scared.
“I was able to get into your house relatively easily. Also…I recommend the police over your stepfather. They’re already looking for me anyway, and this way you’ll have some sort of protection. Someone set those accounts up and my money is on Vitaly. He might just decide it’s easier to eliminate you as a problem if you tell him about the accounts.”
She stared at him, confusion swirling inside her, but then she sighed. It was hard to digest that her stepfather could ever want to kill her. But she’d had time to think in the back of the SUV on the way here, and while nothing was clear—at all—she couldn’t think of one good reason why Ellis was still in the country, or even the state at least. It didn’t make any sense. If he was guilty, he should be starting over somewhere. “Come inside with me—unless you want to hang out in my laundry room?” Where she still had some delicate panties hanging up, she realized. Ignoring them, she raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for his answer.
He frowned at her.
“If you’re guilty of killing your friend, you’re going to a whole lot of trouble to stay in the country trying to solve a crime you allegedly committed.”
He followed her into the kitchen, his expression carefully neutral as he shut the door behind him. “Are you saying you believe me?”
“I’m saying I don’t not believe you. All those pictures, all that evidence on your boards, it’s a lot to take in. And the bank accounts… Not to mention you could easily have tried to get a ransom for me or just killed me or done a hundred other awful things.”
His gun hadn’t even been loaded when he took her. And he was so damn earnest, the truth practically rolled off him in waves. She was going with her gut right now. Even if she might regret this later.
“Say we go down to the Cayman Islands. How would I even empty out these alleged accounts?” She wanted to see with her own eyes that they were real, to find out if she had access to them. And if they were real, then…her stepfather was very likely guilty of everything else he’d said. As she sat at the island in her kitchen, she felt oddly out of place. Nothing felt real anymore. It was like the last twelve hours had changed everything and now she was drifting. Not to mention his presence in her home was unsettling.
Ellis leaned against the countertop opposite her, his big arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t know that I want you to empty them out anymore.”
She stared at him. “I thought that was the whole reason you kidnapped me.”
“That was when I thought you were dirty. I thought I’d be able to use you against your stepfather. Now…I’m thinking of a better way to handle things. I don’t want you involv
ed anymore. That might mean you have to go into protective custody once you talk to the Feds or police about those accounts, but—”
“Okay, stop right there. That’s insane. I haven’t seen or done anything. I’m not going into some crazy witness protection program. I don’t even have anything to offer them so why would the cops help me?”
“Whoever set those accounts up is trying to frame you for something. Or they’re using your name to funnel money so no blowback comes on to them. It might not be about a frame-up. I’m not sure yet, but I’m going to figure that part out too.”
“So we take away their power and take away all their money.” Someone was using her freaking name to funnel dirty money? Yeah, screw them. And if it was her stepfather? Ugh. Bishop said he’d seen Vitaly kill his friend. What if…it was true?
“You could go to the police.”
She snorted. She didn’t trust the cops to do anything right. Not state level anyway. Maybe the Feds would be better, but she resisted the urge to sneer at the thought of local cops handling anything. In her experience they were useless.
He frowned slightly, his brow furrowing. “You don’t like cops?”
“They botched two cases I was directly involved in.” So no, not a fan.
His expression sobered. “I know the locals in Orlando handled your brother’s…death.”
She nodded tightly. “Yeah. Obviously you know that my brother died of an overdose since you’ve looked into my family. He was actually my half-brother but I never thought of him like that. He was just my Max, my baby brother. I loved him. And when he died, the cops treated the whole case like garbage. They wouldn’t even entertain the thought that maybe it hadn’t been an overdose. To them he was just a loser junkie who’d gotten what he deserved.”
They’d also completely dropped the ball in her rape case, made her feel as if she deserved what had happened. The on-scene officer who’d originally talked to her had asked stupid, offensive questions. But she shoved that thought down. She was not opening up that can of worms right now. Not with this stranger.
