Table of Contents
Unraveled
Copyright
Praise for Allie Hawkins
Dedication
Other Titles by Allie Hawkins
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
A word about the author...
Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Unraveled
by
Allie Hawkins
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Unraveled
COPYRIGHT © 2012 by Allie Hawkins
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: [email protected]
Cover Art by Debbie Taylor
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Crimson Rose Edition, 2012
Print ISBN 978-1-61217-553-9
Digital ISBN 978-1-61217-554-6
Published in the United States of America
Praise for Allie Hawkins
“Allie Hawkins has a deft touch with romantic suspense, drawing her characters so they become real to the reader and defining the conflict. The story comes alive, so much that the reader gets lost in the plot. Could not put it down once I started it.”
~Desiree Holt
Dedication
As always, thank you, David,
for your patience and support and encouragement.
Other Titles by Allie Hawkins
Presumed Guilty
Chapter 1
The Country Club Plaza - Kansas City, Missouri
Monday Before Thanksgiving—6:15 A.M
25º Fahrenheit
Hissssss. A faint rustle whispered through the desolate underground garage like steam escaping through a crack in hell.
Quinn Alexander stopped. She tuned out the buzz from the overhead fluorescents, cocked her head, listened and heard...the lights.
Great. Six nights without sleep, waiting for the overdue birth of her first niece, and she was hearing things.
Or not.
Exhaling, she hitched the unwieldy box of doughnuts off her ribs and suddenly felt every one of her thirty-four years. Stale gas fumes overpowered her favorite aroma of sugar and grease. Talk about hell.
Warning—Brain is stressed. May overheat. May even hear bumps in the dark.
A red light on a surveillance camera stared at her like a peeping Tom. She jutted her chin at the electronic voyeur and shuffled onward.
Thank God Pierce never went over security tapes. But if he did, she doubted he’d notice the bags under her eyes or give a second glance to her loose coat. Would he realize she’d lost five pounds?
Five pounds and your mind.
Quinn groaned and shifted the briefcase higher—a micro-inch away from calves abused from walking in skinny, three-inch heels.
Forget Pierce. He doesn’t give a damn you’re sleep-deprived. Or that you could pass for a recently exhumed corpse.
Actually, not that good. She grimaced and juggled the pastry box. Thinking about Pierce proved she needed more sleep. When her brain wasn’t AWOL, she forgot he existed.
Uh-huh.
Hisssss.
Heart stampeding, Quinn teetered on the damn heels. The weight of her briefcase pitched her off balance. She yipped, danced sideways and managed to remain upright despite the pastry box. She stood unmoving. Held her breath. Death-gripped the briefcase. What better weapon against a mugger?
Silence eddied around her. Deep. Scary.
Scary, dammit, because she’d heard something. Not once, but twice. She might look like a corpse, but her ears worked fine. She’d heard...something, but what?
Her stomach clenched. For the first time, she noticed darkness shrouded the nearest corners and posts. She picked up her pace, confident she’d beat her staff into the office. She’d down a gallon of coffee and laugh at how easily six sleepless nights had derailed logic.
Hisssss. A masked figure, sporting a black cape, leaped out of the shadows like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat.
Quinn’s throat closed. Her mind balked. Seeing is not believing.
“Yo! Hot mama!” The guy pirouetted and gave her a half bow. Coming upright, he threw out his chest and snapped one arm up over his head. The cape swirled away from his slim, hard body. Yards of shiny fabric hissed through the air like a giant bat wing unfolding.
“Oookay, these doughnuts are to die for, but this—” The grease oozing from the box proved she wasn’t caught in a nightmare. “Wha-what do you want?”
“Whatever you want to share with me.” His pale green irises were huge, his pupils overly bright, but Quinn detected no hint of booze or pot. Was he high? Sick? Dangerous? How dangerous?
“What’s that mean?” She focused on his bushy orange moustache.
“Whatever you want to share with me,” he repeated in a subtly mocking tone.
“You know we’re being taped.”
“What’s to tape?” The guy caressed his moustache, leaned toward her and wiggled his long nose. “Me sniffing Lamar’s?”
“Here! My compliments.” Knees shaking, she pushed the box at his chest and realized her mistake. Damn, she should’ve set the goodies at his feet. Muscles in her arms quivered, but she lifted the box a millimeter closer to his nose. “Early Thanksgiving appetizers.”
“Appetizers. Cute.” He twirled the cape around his body.
“Cute is me screaming my head off.” Quinn shuffled backwards. Her briefcase banged her knees. She yelled and hopped from foot to foot like a rapper. Drop the damn box.
“Watch out!” A human torpedo, he raced toward her.
Splat! The box broke open and two dozen golden wheels rolled onto the grimy cement. Years of playing first base came back to Quinn. She dropped the briefcase, screamed an enamel-shattering screech, and scooped up four sticky doughnuts.
Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. She fired her missiles at the bastard's head. His orange pigtail whipped across his chest like a mad rattlesnake. He tap-danced in place, dodging her first three pitches. The fourth one smacked him on the cheek.
“Stay back.” She panted, her shoulders rising and falling faster than she could fill her lungs. “I'm—I’m—I’m bringing out the marshmallows next.”
He laughed and vaulted over the golden line. “Let’s talk,” he whispered as if they were good friends about to share a secret. “Just you and me.”
“How about you talk to security? I’m sure the guard’s on his way. He watches the cameras 24/7.”
“I’m thinking he went for chocolate-glazed sinkers. They’d hit the spot, doncha think?”
Her insides sloshed around like a washing machine foaming with too much
detergent. She yanked her briefcase off the floor and held it in front of her, chest high. At five-ten and a hundred thirty pounds, she’d at least give him the mother of all headaches. “Stay back.”
“Careful you don’t drop your shield and break a toe.” Crouched low, cape slung over his shoulders, he circled her, humming.
She rotated in a counter-clockwise parabola, keeping him opposite her. Her biceps screamed. Her throat was so dry she couldn’t feel her tongue. Sweat blurred her vision.
Wild-eyed, he swooped in on her. His cape billowed behind him. He cackled and came so close he blasted Quinn with cinnamon breath.
Dread propelled her thrusts. God, what if she brained this guy?
Riiight. He towered over her by a head. Aiming for his wrist, she lunged. He leaped straight up in the air, turned twice and landed with the precision of an aerialist on a high-wire.
“Hope those aren’t your breakfast, Mama.”
“You—” She sucked in air. “You should cut back on sugar.”
“Heh, heh. Your mistake, Mama.”
Her feet felt like frozen rib roasts as she planted them in a wider stance, hoping to offset the wobble of her high heels. Her arms trembled, but she shoved the briefcase in short, tight jabs. If she wasn’t careful, he’d bash in her brains.
Behind her, a door crashed open. “Freeze! Police!”
The guy’s shriek raised the short hairs on the back of Quinn’s neck. She dropped to the filthy pavement like an extra in a low-budget horror flick. This guy was a nutcase.
He stared at her for an eternity, then tossed a silver canister over her head.
Smoke blinded her. Pride evaporated. She rolled over the doughnuts and hit the nearest wall.
****
Forty-five minutes later, bald, slim-waisted Detective Todd Miller stood in the middle of Quinn’s inner office. His search had revealed no sign of the guy in the garage or an accomplice. “You ought to review that video ASAP, Miz Alexander.”
Oh, goody. Exactly what she needed—a tape of her nosedive.
“Today’s out.” Quinn could imagine—meeting Detective Miller’s steady blue gaze—a furious Pierce insisting they watch the tape. Together. At least twenty times. “I’m expecting a call any minute.”
“Watch while everything’s fresh in your mind. Pure luck the security system rebooted when it did and the guard caught sight of you with Cape Guy and called us. We need details.”
Quinn shook her head emphatically. Her knees burned, her ribs ached, her lower back throbbed. Dirt and oil and sticky crumbs coated her skirt, but nothing mattered except that phone call. “We expect my brother’s first baby any minute. In St. Louis. I can’t hang around reviewing videos of kooks.”
A V appeared between Detective Miller’s thick brows. “How do we know he’s a kook?”
“First, he didn’t threaten me. It wouldn’t surprise me if he swore I attacked him.” She ignored the tingle under her fingernails. “He’s a dim bulb. Creepy, not dangerous.”
“And not your typical stalker.”
Stalker? Quinn shivered. Why not dim bulb? Unnerved, she stared past the policeman to the phone. Ring, dammit.
“Gonna be there for the delivery?” Miller segued to the new subject with an easy, toothy grin inviting openness.
In my dreams. Quinn shook her head. “My sister-in-law’s had a...difficult pregnancy. She wants no one but my brother present.”
“Let me guess. Is he a cop? Or just a workaholic?”
“Investment banker.” Quinn stopped edging the detective out the door. “Michael makes workaholics look like slugs. The less he sleeps, the bigger the deals he closes.”
The smell of her smoky clothes hurt her head, and she was talking too much. But bragging helped ignore the flutters spreading to her chest. “How’d you know?”
“When my wife got pregnant, I racked up major comp time.” Detective Miller smoothed his bald spot, shrugged. “Baaad decision. I should’ve stayed home more.”
“My sister-in-law wants a Stay-At-Home-With-Pregnant-Wives Law.” Quinn rolled her eyes. “She also wants nothing but the best for her firstborn. Think Harvard Law School.”
Detective Miller whistled. “I’d have to work non-stop for the rest of my life.”
“If anyone can balance work and fatherhood,” Quinn boasted, “it’s my baby brother. Lucky for me becoming an aunt’s a no-brainer.”
A sharp pinch twinged under her left breastbone. Another no-brainer?
Giving up fantasies of babies with a man she couldn’t trust. She closed her eyes. Opening them, she caught Detective Miller studying her. She raised her chin, then blasted him with a full-voltage laser smile.
As a rule of safe business practices, Quinn saved full voltage for executives—decision makers—she courted to hire the computer-hotshots she represented. Full voltage never failed, and her executive search business had soared in the past four years despite the Great Recession. Nobody beat her at matching professional computer wonks with prestigious firms. Generous firms that respected their employees’ skills, rewarding them—and her—handsomely.
In the outer office, Detective Miller reverted to cop mode, extracting Quinn’s promise to lock the glass-paneled front door whenever she worked alone. “Incidents like this happen on The Plaza more often than you might think.” His serious blue eyes never blinked. “You can’t be too careful.”
“No, you can’t.” Quinn bit her tongue, smiled, and shook his hand hard enough his eyes widened in surprise.
Did he assume she was dumb as a rock because she was blond? Did he think she’d stayed here late night after night, weekday and weekends, with her door unlocked?
Just doing his job, she soothed her cranky inner critic.
Right now, her job was damage control. Get cleaned up. Dig out new pantyhose. Change clothes. Then...spin the guy in the garage to her three savvy employees without scaring them to death.
****
Five minutes after Detective Miller’s departure, Quinn gasped at her reflection in her tiny bathroom’s mirror, then ignored her wild hair and glassy eyes. If makeup could make the dead presentable, there must be hope for her.
Of course she needed a miracle to get cleaned up before her associates showed up. Straining to hear their voices in the outer office—where she’d left every light blazing—she washed her scrapes and cuts. She ripped open a box of Band-Aids and peeled off a cover. And another. And another. Two strips turned back on themselves, wrapping around her fingers like mutant leeches.
Damn. Damn. Damn. She pried off the ruined adhesive strips, mashed them into a ball and tossed it into the trash. Her back spasmed, and air whooshed out of her lungs. She grabbed the sink, inhaling deeply. Slowly, the sharp needles in her back turned to dull stabs.
Dammit. She didn’t have time for this. Not even if Michael didn’t call.
The back pain receded. She stood, stiff all over, but thanks to half a dozen Band-Aids, she’d manage without a full body cast.
“Lame, Quinn,” she muttered and reviewed her plan to order more doughnuts.
When the order arrived, she’d call Leah, Janelle, and Sami into the conference room. While the three primed their arteries for Thanksgiving, Quinn would ease into the incident in the garage. Her clothes stunk of oil, but she’d downplay the details, stoking her co-workers’ excitement about the baby.
“Fluke,” she mumbled. Not incident. Incident sounded too much like a near-mugging. As she inched the second leg of her spare pantyhose over the mosaic of Band-Aids, the phone in her office rang.
Thank you, God. She lurched to her feet, fighting the pantyhose and staggered out of the bathroom. A close encounter with a wing chair triggered a replay of her nosedive in the garage.
Nosedive, not concussion. She kicked free of her chastity belt and raced for the phone. Who said women can’t handle stress in the corporate world?
Caller ID confirmed her hunch. Michael. Excitement hummed in her veins.
“Yes! Yes!
Yes! This is it, Baby Bro.” She punched the speaker phone and yelled, “Boy or girl?”
“Pierce Jordan’s a rat bastard.”
“Whaaat?” Her brother’s unexpected malice shattered Quinn’s skin-tingling anticipation. His mention of Pierce sent her heart pounding.
Forget Pierce, think baby. Static crackled. Michael’s voice faded, died. Two hundred and fifty miles away, the drone of St. Louis traffic came through loud and clear.
“Michael?” She fell into the leather chair behind her desk, jammed the receiver against her ear, and ignored a Call-Waiting beep.
A flashing red message light replaced the beep. Tough, but Michael came first.
“Earth to Michael. Earth to Michael. Godmother Quinn calling.” She erased images of her younger brother in a car wreck and visualized him behind the wheel of his new Mercedes.
Not the car for a father-to-be, Mom had observed with no criticism in her tone. Still, Quinn had jumped to Michael’s defense. He worked hard. Too hard. He earned the big bucks. Provided for his family. He deserved a reward. A Mercedes wasn’t illegal, immoral or illicit, so where was the harm?
More static, a squawk, Michael’s voice. “...fired...Rex.”
“Whaaat?” Quinn pressed the phone harder against her ear and stared at the light. She and Detective Miller had talked to Pierce’s security czar. He must’ve informed Pierce she was okay. Must’ve tattled about her refusal to review that damn tape.
He’s calling about Rex. The logic-leap made sense. If Michael was so furious about his best friend he hadn’t bothered asking about her, Pierce must be livid—about having a security problem and having to find a new computer wizard to replace Rex.
Her heart twisted. Unwelcome tears stung her eyes. She blinked, reminding herself Michael knew nothing about the fluke in the garage. Expecting him to ask about her was childish. As for Pierce calling to start the search for Rex’s replacement, he could stand in line. Soon-to-be new dads needed to conserve their patience for wailing babies, anxious wives and sleepless nights. Any problem that interfered with Michael bonding with his newborn had to be resolved. Now, if not sooner.
Call Waiting beeped again. Pierce never had considered patience a virtue.
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