Chance Encounter

by Christy Reece

  Marta, Stewart, and Hazel moved slower, but they headed her way, too. The only one who hung back was Tammy, who gave a bright, enthusiastic smile and said, “Welcome back.”

  No one seemed to notice that Brennan stood in front of Kacie, shielding her. Tara moved to go around him, and Brennan caught her wrist. “Hold on a sec.”

  Even though everything inside him was urging him to act, take down the bitch immediately, he would stick to his agreement and give Kacie the moment she’d wanted.

  “It’s great to see you guys, and I have loads to tell you, but...” Her eyes went to the woman standing beside Brennan. “Tara, can we talk with you for a moment?”

  As if she had nothing to hide, Tara turned back to her office. “Want to go in there?”

  “Fine,” Brennan said. “Let’s go.”

  “What’s going on?” Stewart asked.

  Kacie threw the rest of her employees a reassuring smile. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  Brennan wrapped his hand around Kacie’s arm as they followed Tara into her office. Riley and Justin came in right behind them.

  The instant the door shut, closing them in Tara’s office, she said, “What’s going on? Uh oh, what did I do?”

  “Why, Tara? Why would you do this?” Kacie asked softly.

  “Why what? What do you think I did?”

  “Okay, enough.” Gently nudging Kacie away, Brennan stood in front of Tara and glared down at her. He’d been trained by some of the meanest coaches in football, but nothing could top the training three Navy SEALs had given him on intimidation tactics. If this look didn’t scare the shit and the truth out of her, nothing would.

  “Why are you guys looking at me like that?” She tried to look around him to see Kacie. “Kacie, what’s going on?”

  When Kacie didn’t answer, tears filled Tara’s eyes. “I don’t know what’s happening here, but I refuse to let you try to intimidate me. I deserve better.”

  “Like hell you do, you—”

  Kacie put her hand on Brennan’s arm. “Brennan, no…wait—”

  “Riley, would you escort Kacie into the another office and stay with her until this is over?”

  “No, dammit, I’m not leaving.”

  Riley was smart enough not to argue. She took Kacie’s arm and urged her forward. “This is what we do, Kacie. Don’t worry. He won’t hurt her.”

  Kacie spared one last look at Tara, who was now sheet white and had tears flowing down her face. The look of betrayal seemed completely incongruent with what she was being accused of doing.

  Kacie opened the door and walked out to the lobby area. Surprising her, Riley stood at the door and watched her.

  “Aren’t you going back in to help question her?” Kacie asked.

  “No. Brennan and Justin have this.”

  “But you—”

  “Trust me, the way I’m feeling right now, Tara’s much safer with those two than with me.”

  At a loss as to what she should do right now, Kacie stood in the middle of the room.

  “Kacie,” Molly called from her office. “Is that you?”

  Molly came to the doorway. “Hate to ask you, but while you’re here, would you mind taking a look at some of the mock-ups for next year’s funding gala? If we can get them to the printer this week, they’ll give us a ten percent discount.”

  It was better than just standing here, feeling useless.

  She went inside the office and sat in front of Molly’s desk.

  Handing her a folder, she said, “I like the third one from the top the best, but all of them have potential.”

  Her mind on what was going on in the outer office, Kacie opened the folder, barely paying attention to what she was looking at. Several things registered at once. The door lock clicked, Molly laughed softly, and Kacie found herself staring down at photos of Harrington raping her.

  Molly!

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Brennan was getting a bad feeling about this. Not only was Tara not breaking, she seemed realistically appalled at what she’d been accused of doing. He’d seen liars before, could usually spot one within a minute or two of interrogation. The answers he was getting didn’t feel like lies.

  “Okay, let’s try this a different way. Why did you go to Kacie’s apartment while she was gone?”

  She blushed guiltily and looked down.

  At last he was getting somewhere.

  “I…was going to borrow one of Kacie’s dresses.” She jerked her head back up, an earnest, pleading look in her eyes. “I was going to get it dry-cleaned and have it back in her closet before she got back. I swear I was.”

  “How did you get into her apartment? You don’t have a new key or the security code.”

  “But I didn’t go in. Kacie didn’t tell me she’d changed the locks. When I got to her door and realized I couldn’t get in, I left.”

  “Why did it take you fifteen minutes to figure that out?”

  “What?” She frowned for a second, and then her brow cleared. “Oh. I got a call on my cellphone. Talked for several minutes in the hallway before I went back down.”

  It all seemed reasonable, but this woman appeared to have multiple secrets.

  “Why did you give up your scholarship at Stanford and come back home before you graduated?”

  She huffed out a furious breath. “Not that it’s any of your business, but my mother has dementia. I didn’t have any choice. I had to come back home and take care of her.”

  Brennan glanced over at Justin, who looked as uneasy as he felt. This just didn’t feel right.

  “What about—”

  He looked up when Riley opened the door. “We’ve got a problem. Kacie went into Molly’s office to talk to her about something. As soon as they went in, the door was closed and locked. No one answers when I knock.”

  “All this time it’s been you, Molly? But why?”

  The sweet girl with the twinkle in her eyes and apples in her cheeks was gone. Evil and malice gleamed in her eyes, and her smile had a maniacal twist.

  “Because you deserve to pay for what you did. You got off without paying for your crimes.”

  “For the love of… What crimes, dammit?”

  “For what you did to William Harrington.”

  This was the most surreal conversation she’d ever experienced. “I was kidnapped, drugged, beaten, starved, and raped repeatedly. Tell me exactly what my crime was.”

  “You seduced him, made him do those things to you.”

  “How did I seduce him?”

  “You flirted with him at that party. I saw you.”

  That day, almost six years ago, had always stood out in her mind as the beginning of the end of the life she’d once had. Skylar had invited her to a party, to introduce her to some influential people. While Skylar had been away, William Harrington III had approached her. Having never been around anyone so distinguished looking, she had been both intimidated and excited, and when asked what she wanted to do with her life, she had blurted out her ambition to be a famous model. Harrington had seemed so interested in her career goals.

  A few days later, she’d been both delighted and surprised that he’d called her and told her about an ad he’d seen for an open call for models. Kacie had gone to the location the ad had mentioned, and that’s when she’d been snatched. That’s when her true nightmare had begun.

  “How could you have seen anything? You would’ve been just a child.”

  “I was at the party…with my parents. I saw exactly what happened.”

  “I don’t know what you think you saw, but I did not flirt with that perverted piece of garbage.”

  “Don’t you call my daddy that!”

  Oh, hell…hell…hell. “William Harrington is your father?”

  “He was my father. But he’s dead now, thanks to you and your friends. And now, bitch, you’re going to pay for every second of agony you put my family through.”

  “The agony I put your family through? What about m
e? What about the other girls he raped? The girls he sold into slavery? Your father was a sick, perverted—”

  A drawer slid open and a gun appeared in Molly’s hand. “I suggest your choose the rest of your words more carefully, Kendra.”

  “My name is Kacie Dane. Your father destroyed Kendra Carson.”

  “Not like I’m going to destroy her.” She nodded at her laptop. “Guess you figured out already that the video I posted came from your computer. I cloned your computer in preparation for this.”

  “Why now? Why did you wait—” Realization came. “The Montague deal. You wanted to wait until I had something like that.”

  Molly grinned. “Maximum exposure, maximum fun.”

  “What do you plan to do now?”

  “With one tiny click, every news outlet from here to the smallest village in Australia will receive the video of you seducing my father.”

  “He. Raped. Me.”

  “Because you wanted him to, you slut!”

  Was this woman so delusional that she had no idea that what she’d just said was a complete contradiction?

  “No woman wants to be raped.”

  “Don’t lie to me. I saw the video. You liked what he was doing to you.”

  “He drugged me.”

  “You let him.”

  This was getting them nowhere. While poor Tara was being grilled like a criminal, here she sat with the real thing. Without a doubt, Molly would shoot her if she screamed or tried to leave. Kacie had mace in her purse, but she’d dropped it into a chair on the way inside Molly’s office.

  There had to be a way out of this.

  To distract her, Kacie said, “How did you become Molly Rowe from Brooklyn with a foster dad?”

  Molly giggled. “You think you’re the only one who can create a fake identity? It’s amazing what a hefty trust fund can buy these days. I couldn’t get to the money until I was eighteen, but by that time, I already knew exactly what I was going to do with my daddy’s hard-earned money.”

  “But your other family…”

  “My mother died a couple of years ago…of a broken heart, I might add. My sister and brothers were never close. It was easy enough to pay to get a new identity and then wait patiently until I was ready for the big reveal.”

  “Molly, or whatever your real name is, you were just a child when this happened. I understand that you loved your father, but he was—”

  “My father was a wonderful man, a wonderful father. So he had a weakness for young girls. Lots of people do. He didn’t deserve to die for it.”

  Never in a million years would Kacie regret that William Harrington was dead. However, she was smart enough not to say that to his demented daughter.

  “Did you kill Dr. Curtis?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Strangling a complete stranger is so not me. I did, however, hire a very competent fellow to do the deed.”

  “But why have her killed?”

  She gave a grimacing smile as if it was just a bit of embarrassment. “Truthfully, I didn’t plan for her to die. She caught the guy in the act of stealing your file, and he had to keep her quiet. I didn’t pay him to kill her, so he didn’t get any extra money for that.”

  “So what now?

  Before Molly could answer, someone pounded on the door. “Kacie, are you in there? It’s time to go.”

  “Oops,” Molly said cheerfully, “totally forgot.” She clicked a button at her desk.

  Kacie heard the smooth glide of something mechanical. Turning around, she saw a steel door slide from the wall and across the wooden door. It hit the other side of the wall with a loud thud.

  “See, that’s the nice thing about being charge of an office, Kacie. I get to order all sorts of neat things, and no one questions me. My daddy had one of these in his office. Of course I paid for the door with my own money. Had to pay extra for them to install it during the weekend, but it was worth it.

  “Now, we’re all alone. For real.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Brennan glared at Hazel Johnson. “You got a key to this door?”

  Apparently more terrified by him than by the circumstances, she kept her distance as her trembling hand dropped the key into his palm.

  Even though he’d heard the sound and had already figured out what he would face, Brennan unlocked the door and pulled it open. Exactly what he had expected. A steel wall. Didn’t have a keyhole, no access whatsoever.

  He probed around the edges, feeling more and more desperate as time went on. What the hell was going on in there?

  “Here.” Riley handed him a phone. “I called the number. See if she’ll answer.”

  The phone rang for what seemed like forever. Just when he was about to decide to hand the phone back to Riley, Molly answered.

  “Kacie Dane Foundation. May I help you?”

  “Molly, it’s Brennan. I’d like to come inside. Would you please open the door?”

  “Oh hey, Brennan. Sorry. No can do. Kacie and I are having a girl chat. You know, giggles and boy talk.”

  “Dammit, Molly. How the hell do you think you’re going to get out of there?”

  “Who said anything about getting out of here, Brennan? This thing with Kacie has been brewing for a long time. You really think I’m going to let a little thing like no escape stop me from taking care of business?”

  His jaw clenched so tight he figured it might break, he said in a controlled voice, “Can I talk to Kacie?”

  “Um, not right now. She’s a little busy. Maybe later. Ta…ta.”

  The line went dead, and it was all he could do not to throw the phone across the room. They’d been so damn sure of Tara’s guilt, they had completely missed any clues Molly might have given off.

  He took a breath and turned. “Riley, get on the phone with McCall. See if he can dig deeper than we’ve already gone on Molly Rowe. Find out what we fucking missed.”

  He turned back to Hazel, who seemed to have gotten her composure back. “Is there any other entrance into Molly’s office?”

  “No…well, there’s the window, but we’re fifteen stories up.”

  Superman he was not.

  He turned to Justin, who was in the process of examining the door. “You think we can ram it?”

  “Doubtful. Damn thing is at least a couple inches thick.”

  “What about a drill?” Stewart asked.

  “Hell, it’s worth a try. You got one?”

  “No, but I’ve got a friend working construction a couple blocks away. I’ll give him a call.”

  “What can I do?” Tara’s soft voice penetrated the tense silence.

  Brennan turned to her. They owed her an apology, but right now all he could concentrate on was saving Kacie’s life.

  “Unless you can figure out a way for me to break this door down, nothing.”

  “Maybe if I talked with her,” Marta offered. “Molly and I have always had a special bond.”

  “Hell, it’s worth a try.” He hit redial. Clicking it on speaker, he said softly, “Try to get her to agree to let me come in and talk to her.”

  She nodded, and when Molly answered in the same professional tone she had before, Marta said, “Hi, Molly, it’s Marta.”

  “Hey, Marta. I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “I know, dear, but I thought maybe if we talked, we could figure something out.”

  Molly laughed. “Oh, you dear, sweet old lady. Snickerdoodles aren’t going to fix this problem. But I do have good news for you. Kacie said you and the other office staff can take the rest of the day off. Isn’t she like the bestest boss ever?”

  The line went dead.

  “Shit.” Brennan strode to a window and looked out. Fifteen stories. Even if he could climb out of the window above Molly’s office, how could he—

  His eyes moved to the windows he could see, and an idea sparked to life.

  “There are small balconies on several of the windows. Is there one at Molly’s window?”

  “I�
�don’t know.” Tara looked at Hazel, then Marta and Stewart. “I’ve never paid attention.”

  Hell, it was better than any other idea he’d had lately, which wasn’t saying a helluva a lot.

  He glanced over at Riley, who seemed to be in deep discussion with McCall. He caught her eye, and she nodded. Apparently, she’d heard him.

  “Justin, come with me.”

  They walked into the hallway together and then ran to the stairwell that would lead them to the floor above. On the way, Justin let his thoughts be known.

  “You know this is a damn foolish idea, don’t you?”

  “You gotta better one, I’m all ears.”

  A minute later, they were on the next floor and running toward the office that should be right above Molly’s. They burst through the door, and Brennan let Justin explain the situation to the indignant man who’d been sitting at his desk.

  Brennan ran to the window. Sure enough, there was a small balcony. Thankful this was an older building with windows that still opened, he lifted it and looked out. The balcony was really just thin black railing, obviously intended for ornamental purposes only and not to hold a two-hundred-forty-pound man.

  He leaned farther out… But as he’d hoped, there was a balcony attached to Molly’s window, too. So if the balcony held up, he could hang from the bottom of it and swing himself onto the one below.

  “Shit.” Justin stood beside him. “I doubt if that thing would even hold Riley.”

  “You got any other ideas?”

  “What about the ventilation? We’re too big, but Riley might fit.”

  Apparently getting into the spirit of what they were trying to do, the man behind them said, “I don’t know how small this Riley is, but the last time the building inspector was here, he made a comment about how narrow the vents are.”

  “Then we have no choice,” Brennan said.

  “Even if you make it, how the hell are you going to get in? The window will be locked.”

  “I’ll shatter the glass, swing myself in.” He felt the thinness of the windowpane. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”