“Fuck that. Who would even notice a little more danger at this point?”
“Trust me,” she said fervently. “You’d notice. I tried to keep you out of it. I really did. But you kept on tempting me and tantalizing me.”
“Jesus, Elisa,” he burst out. “We could have been working on a solution for this problem together. But you had to shut me out. And now that prick is breathing right down our necks, and I am unprepared!”
“I didn’t want you mixed up in it at all! I wanted to protect you!”
“Guess what?” he snarled. “I want the same fucking thing for you!”
“Don’t think that just because we had sex, that you’re responsible for me now,” she said.
“Just hold it right there, before you really piss me off,” he said. “Sex has nothing to do this.” He laughed sharply, shaking his head.
“My predicament is funny?” she snapped.
“It’s just this town,” he said. “It’s so fucked up. Like, what are the odds, with Kimball, and GodsAcre, and the virus, and the Prophet’s curse? I turn around, and boom, you’ve got this whole other crazy thing happening.”
“Yes!” she agreed. “It’s like, bitch, please. More evil bad guys? That’s why I left, once I screwed up the courage. I wanted to draw my own personal bad karma away from you guys. It has nothing to do with Kimball or GodsAcre, and that seemed like more than enough for you all to cope with. But you just insisted on seducing me, and tracking me, and catching me. And now I don’t know what to do!”
“I know what.” Nate’s voice was resolute. “You’re going to let me help you.”
“Oh, really? With everything the Trasks have going on, you have the time for my crap, too?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s why you stayed in Shaw’s Crossing. Even after the place started drawing too much media attention. You stayed because you need us. Because you knew, on some level, that if anyone could help you, we could. Am I right? So let us fucking help, already. I’m here for it. I have been from the start. The rest of them will be on board, too. In a heartbeat. That’s just who they are.”
“Nate, goddamn it,” she whispered.
“Anton and Mace still have Mitch, Clint and Jim Wong to cover them,” Nate said. “They’re covered. I’m not worried about the Trasks. I’m focusing on you, now.”
They stared out through the wind-whipped boughs. Big sloppy drops that didn’t know whether they were rain or snow pattered down. She felt so intensely alive. Death was so close—but Nate was closer.
It felt strange, to have another person know her secret. The knowledge of Gil’s cruelty and Josh’s danger had been such a constant weight on her. It still was, but now someone else bore some of that weight. And he wasn’t running away from it.
I’m focusing on you, now. Nate’s simple statement scared her to death.
And it was music to her ears.
“You can’t go back to Shaw’s Crossing,” Nate said. “Clemens knows you were there, that you have friends there, that you worked for Demi. He’ll be investigating us all. There’s no safe place for you there. Not until this is over.”
“Agreed,” she said. “That’s why I went. I should have left months ago.”
Nate turned to her, his eyes fierce. “So?” he prompted. “This is the part where you tell me everything.”
She let out a careful, raggedy breath. “Okay,” she whispered. “On one condition. If at any time you decide you don’t want to take this on, promise me that you’ll drop me off at a bus station. I swear I will not judge you. You don’t have to be a hero. If it looks like too much, just cut me loose. No harm, no foul.”
Nate just laughed out loud. “Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with?”
11
Elisa didn’t seem disposed to answer his rhetorical question, so Nate pulled out the clean smartphone, and called his personal assistant in Seattle. “Hey, Gina?”
“Yo, boss,” she said. “What do you need?”
“Would you find me a hotel or a B&B near McLinn, Washington? Someplace nice. Out of the way, but within reach of town. Bonus points if there’s a good restaurant nearby.”
“For one, two, more?”
“Two. Use the usual card and text me the info. I want to check in to the room as soon as possible today.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Gina said crisply. “You’ll hear from me soon.”
He slid the phone back into his pocket. Elisa pulled off the tinted sunglasses, which were spotted with rain. She looked haunted, and exhausted. Rain was pattering down, wetting her hat and shoulders, turning the crimson nylon dark.
“Get into the car,” he said. “We’ll talk in there.”
Once they were inside, the slushy rain started coming down in earnest, the blobs of mixed rain and snow streaking down the windshield in front of them, turning the world into a wavering blur.
Elisa twisted her hands together, like she was gathering her courage.
“So we’re going to stay in McLinn?” she asked.
“Until we come up with a plan. A randomly chosen hotel won’t have bugs, so at least we won’t have to worry about Kimball there. One fucking thing at a time.”
“And the car?”
“Same,” he said. “It’s a rental. It’s clean. So? The story?”
“I’m working on it,” she told him. “Trying to find the best entry point.”
“I suggest the beginning,” he said.
She shot him an ironic look. “Fine,” she said. “The beginning. What do you know about Sheldon Sinclair?”
He was startled. “Wow. That was an abrupt change of subject.”
“Actually, no. But answer the question. What do you know?”
He shrugged. “Just what’s in the news. Sleazebag billionaire inherited daddy’s ill-gotten, outsourced, child-labor-law-violating retail empire, and is now doing his best to snort it all up his nose. Accused of rape by underaged girls, but somehow they all decided collectively to drop the charges. Speculation abounds. Lack of evidence, witness intimidation, organized crime involvement? One thing’s for sure, though. The guy is a certified piece of shit. And this is relevant to you exactly why?”
“Those dropped charges?” she said. “It was Gil who made that happen.”
Nate thought about it. “Huh. I don’t remember hearing Gil Clemens’ name mentioned. Not that I was paying much attention, but it’s a high-profile case. You’d think that a big shot DA from San Francisco getting involved in a case like that would be political suicide for him.”
“Gil is careful to stay out of the spotlight,” she said. “He safeguards his reputation very carefully. Taking care of himself is his superpower. But he slipped up this time.”
“How so?”
“Shel throws infamous wild parties on his Caribbean island home,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve heard about them. He invites politicians, celebrities, famous businessmen, socialites, foreign royalty. He gets them loosened up, and then he videotapes them misbehaving. And Gil got caught in his trap.”
“Ah,” he said. “I think I see where this is going.”
“Yes,” she said. “Shel owned him. When those girls accused him of rape, he turned to Gil for help. And Gil had to fix it for him, by any means possible.”
He nodded, and waited quietly for her to frame it in her mind.
“But one of these girls, Erasma. She got her hands on some of these video clips,” Elisa went on. “The recording of Gil was one of them. She came to see me at my art gallery in San Francisco. She looked terrible. Like a skeleton. She said she was being followed. That they were going to kill her. She wanted to show me something so I would know the truth about my husband. She wanted someone else to know before she died. Someone who might have a chance in hell of getting it to the press.”
“They, who? Who wanted to get her?”
“Sheldon’s thugs, I guess,” Elisa said. “Or Gil’s. Same thing, at this point.”
“Did you believe her?”
he asked.
“Not at first. But then she offered to show me the proof, and I was having doubts about Gil anyhow. Things had gotten…well…bad.”
Nate waited patiently for more.
“It didn’t start out like that, when we first got together,” she explained. “He was so charming at first. Full of compliments. Smart, funny. He convinced me that he was crazy about me. I was so naïve, falling for it. Then my dad died, and Gil found out about the money.”
“The money,” Nate said. “What about it?”
“The Roarke fortune,” Elisa said wearily. “That I wasn’t going to inherit it. At least, not very much of it. My dad was very stern and rigorous in his personal philosophy. He didn’t want my brother and I ruined by extreme wealth. So he gave away almost all of his money to charitable causes.”
“Ah. I see.”
“Gil was just furious,” she went on. “He felt cheated. And after that, the gloves came off. And it got really bad, really fast.”
“What a prick,” Nate murmured.
“Pretty much,” she agreed. “He started trying to bully me into doing some strange estate planning moves. Things that benefited only him. And he started telling me all the many ways that I disappointed him.”
“Disappointed?” he said, incredulous. “You?”
She let out a hollow laugh. “I resisted being molded by the master sculptor, and that frustrated the hell out of him. I was angry at him, and hurt. And curious. So I watched it. Erasma had the key to decrypt the file.”
He waited. She kept looking down at her lap, swallowing. He reached over and seized her hand.
“It was awful.” Her voice was small. “The girl couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and he was hurting her. Hitting her, saying vicious, horrible things to her.”
“I’m sorry you saw that,” Nate said. “I wish you didn’t have it in your head.”
“Me, too. After that, I didn’t need any more convincing. Erasma gave me the flash drive, and she wrote down the decryption key for me. I called a friend of mine in the police department, a guy I knew from college. He was on a task force to combat human trafficking. I told him about the flash drive, and I arranged to meet with him, and then I went straight home to pack. I was going to run away, even though it was my house. I was that scared of him.” Her voice trailed off. She looked like she was steeling herself to say the rest of it.
“I got a call, while I was packing,” she whispered. “A woman on the task force who worked with Willis. She told me he’d been shot to death, right in his home. It was then I knew he’d talked to the wrong person. Someone Gil owned.”
He squeezed her hand. Her fingers tightened around his.
“I’d just finished packing, and the housekeeper had already left for the day,” she said. “And I was watching the security monitor from my bedroom. I saw a stranger walk right into the house. Gil was gone, arguing a big case. So I headed for the panic room. I thought I could wait out the intruder until the police got there.”
“You had a panic room?” Nate said. “Wow.”
“Yes, my dad was into that. He made a huge pile of money in his lifetime, but it never made him feel safe. And the older he got, the more paranoid he became. He installed panic rooms in all of his houses. He always wanted a safe place to retreat to, just in case someone attacked him in his home.”
“I see,” Nate said. “Go on.”
“The guy had already gotten to the top of the stairs as I was coming down,” she said. “So he was closer to the panic room than I was when I got there. I just slipped behind a curtain near the staircase. It was dark outside, so he didn’t see me. Then this guy goes right to the keypad by the door, and enters the code. No hesitation at all.”
Nate nodded. “I see. Who else knew the code?”
“After Dad died, it was just me, my brother, and Gil. No one else.”
“So you concluded that Gil sent the guy after you?”
“Yes,” she said flatly. “The panic room door opened. I ran down the stairs, my shoes in one hand, my purse in the other, right out the front door. I must have sprinted ten blocks before I even remembered that I was barefoot. I must have looked totally crazy.” She blew out a breath. “And I was. I really was. Marrying that monster. Drinking his poison for three years.”
She was shaking. He wanted to hug her, but the console divided them.
“I was so rattled, I didn’t realize my mistake until hours later,” she said.
“What mistake?”
“The decryption key.” Her voice was bleak. “I left it behind. It was lying on my open suitcase as I was packing. Gil must have found it when he got back. So even if Gil didn’t have Josh, I couldn’t just show that to the police or the press. First, I have to break the encryption.”
“Eric can break it,” Nate said.
“Good. My first thought was to try to contact Erasma and just get the key from her again, so I called the number she gave me. But the girl who answered told me Erasma was dead. She’d stolen a car, evidently, and driven it off a cliff, into the ocean. Just hours after she’d come to me. They got her, like they got Willis.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said gently.
She nodded. “Then I saw the interview on TV, in the lobby of a hotel where I was staying. It was Gil. He had Josh with him. He’d told the police that there was a home invasion. That I’d been abducted. He tried to reason with my captors on TV. Urging them to let me go, have a heart. The whole time with his hands around Josh’s neck. His twisted way of telling me to keep my mouth shut, or Josh dies.”
“Shithead,” Nate said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “So that’s it. I’m in limbo. I have the flash drive, but I don’t have the key. If I could get it decrypted, I could destroy him and Sheldon both. But if I make any move against him, he’ll hurt Josh. So, nothing. I’m paralyzed.”
“Where’s the drive?” he asked.
She rattled a bauble that was attached to the zipper of her jacket. It was a Hello Kitty padlock, the kind a little girl might use to close a jewelry box.
“Right here,” she said. “Always with me.”
Nate was silent for a long moment. “Our best plan is to get Eric’s techs to decrypt the drive while we work on breaking Josh out of wherever Gil’s got him.”
She shrugged. “That sounds great. I fantasize about that every single night. But I don’t know where Gil is keeping him. It could be anywhere.”
“You’ve gone to the police?”
“Only that one time, with Willis,” she said. “I learned my lesson. I don’t want anyone else to die. The minute Gil gets the slightest hint of suspicious interest, Josh’s head is on the block.” She took off the glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I just don’t see any way out of this. Josh knows too much. Gil can’t let him go. Me being in the wind is the only thing keeping Josh alive, if he’s alive at all. When Gil finds me, we both die.”
“You’re not going to die,” Nate said forcefully. “Neither will Josh. We’ll get your brother back, and crush this radioactive cockroach.”
She gave him a wan smile. “We?”
“Yes, we,” he said. “Absolutely we.”
“You know, I can pay you for your help eventually,” she said. “And handsomely, too. Just not right now. But if all goes well, and I get my real identity back, I can—”
“Hold it right there,” he said. “This isn’t about money. And you know it.”
She gave him a tight, crooked smile. “Well, thanks very much for that. I appreciate it. But I do look forward to being able to pull my weight.”
The smartphone buzzed. It was Gina. He answered it. “Hey.”
“Good news, boss,” Gina said. “I found you a love nest. The Larsen Hotel and Mineral Springs. A historic hotel with a thermal bathhouse attached where railroad millionaires and steel tycoons of the nineteenth century used to take the waters with their wives or mistresses. Right on the Larsen River Canyon. Very romantic.”
“Gina…this isn’t
actually a—”
“Plus, they have an excellent restaurant on site. Great reviews, famous chef, locally sourced food, blah, blah, blah. You can order from your room.”
“Sounds high-profile,” he said.
“Maybe, but you said someplace nice, which means there’s a woman involved, right? About damn time, if you ask me. I sent the location. You’re in the Astor Suite, which will be ready for you by eleven AM. Tell your friend that John Jacob Astor himself stayed there. It’s super-luxurious. You guys will love it.”
“We’re not going there to relax, Gina.”
“Phooey. All the more reason,” Gina said briskly. “You’re stressed, she’s stressed, life is short. Order every dessert on the menu so she can taste them all. They’re famous for their tortes. That’s layer cake for you pathetic types who don’t know cake. Good luck, Nate. You can thank me later.”
Gina closed the call, and Nate gazed at the phone in his hand, bemused.
“Who was that?” Elisa asked.
“My assistant, Gina,” he said. “She found us a place to stay. A spa resort hotel.”
“Sounds expensive,” Elisa said. “I’d rather find someplace reasonable.”
If he’d needed any more persuading to opt for the Larsen, that was it. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I picked the place, so of course, I pay for it.”
“But why a luxury resort? A motel is fine.”
“I disagree.” He started the engine. “You could use some luxury right now.”
In less than twenty minutes, they were pulling up into the manicured driveway that led to the Larsen Hotel. He found a place in the back parking lot and went inside alone to check in. He came back with the key cards to where Elisa waited for him, still huddled low in the passenger seat of the Jeep.
He beckoned to her, and she got out of the car, glancing back over one shoulder, then the other. A gesture he’d seen her make many times.
Life goals: to see Elisa march across a parking lot bareheaded, barefaced, shoulders back, head high. Looking confidently forward, not anxiously back.
She’d been robbed of that. Somebody needed to pay.
Heedless: The Hellbound Brotherhood Book Four Page 10
