LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance

by Glenna Sinclair

  I glanced at the couch, thinking about the first time Adrienne had been up here. I’d explained to her how the company worked and who might be behind the leak. I remembered her watching me as I explained it all, the way she crossed her legs, the way she scratched at her brow. I remembered thinking I’d like to be doing something other than talking about business with a woman who looked like that. I also remembered how awkward she’d been with the clothes that were clearly new and the little purse that kept grabbing onto her cellphone, making it impossible for her to pull it out with anything like sophistication. I’d nearly laughed that first time when it caught on the lining of the purse.

  I’d never make it as a woman. And Adrienne… She was so beautiful, she didn’t need all those trappings to make her femininity obvious.

  I wished she was here now. I wished she was sitting on that couch, watching all this hub bub with the same look of amusement in her eyes she’d had that day.

  Where the hell was she?

  “There!”

  The man behind the computer suddenly looked up and pointed across the room. Ruben quickly crossed to a bookshelf that sat just off of the door, running his fingers over books and along keepsakes I had set there. He found what he wanted about halfway down, tucked into a corner.

  “What is that?”

  Ruben turned and held up a tiny tube-like object for me to see.

  “A camera. Adrienne set up a camera in here.”

  “A camera? Why?”

  “To catch whoever was sending those emails from your computer,” the man at my desk said. He studied me a minute, then slowly stood and awkwardly came over to me, sticking his hand out. “I’m Robert, by the way. I don’t know if Adrienne ever mentioned me, but I’m Ruben’s tech guy.”

  I nodded as I shook his head. “She mentioned you helped figure out where the emails were coming from.”

  He smiled widely, like a child who’d just been given the best compliment ever. “I was the one who did that. She mentioned me?”

  “Do you think you can figure out what mija saw on this?” Ruben interrupted.

  Robert looked over at Ruben, and the smile disappeared from his face. He straightened up, snatching the camera from Ruben’s hand, and went back to my computer. I moved behind him and watched as his fingers flew over the keyboard. He was doing things to the computer system that I barely grasped. He was moving so fast, but I could see he was connected to an offsite computer and he was overriding some sort of software to get access to the camera.

  “It’s one of ours,” he said, “so it should have backup on our system. But I think Adrienne overrode the system protocols.”

  “Why?” Ruben asked.

  Robert shrugged.

  “Because she knew you thought it was me and she was trying to prove it wasn’t.”

  “Or she was afraid I was right.”

  I glanced at Ruben. He was watching me closely, his eyes narrowed. He still believed I had something to do with all of this.

  “Here,” Robert said. “I’ve got the images.”

  Ruben came around the desk, and we both watched as the camera footage began playing.

  “These cameras only record twelve hours of footage at a time. They record over the footage if the user doesn’t save what was on it.”

  “Did Adrienne—”

  “It looks like she did,” Robert said as he tapped at the keys on my computer keyboard. “She saved footage from last night just after midnight.”

  I nodded slowly. “Her computer was gone. She must have been checking the footage while I was out.”

  “When the ‘kidnapper’ came in?”

  I glanced at Ruben, at the speculation in his voice. “Exactly.”

  “How do we know that you didn’t catch her looking at it? How do we know that she didn’t find evidence that you’d done something to her?”

  “Because I would have been smart enough to erase the evidence.”

  “Or change it.”

  As Ruben said that, he gestured at the computer screen. At 12:07 am last night—while Adrienne and I were driving to San Antonio—someone let themselves into my office and crossed to the computer. The glow of the computer screen as it was woken revealed who the user was. My heart stopped in my chest. Of all the people I had expected to see standing there, this face was the never even on the list.

  “Oh, hell,” I muttered, stepping back until my back hit the windows.

  “You know who that is?” Ruben asked.

  I nodded. “Adrienne saw this?”

  “She saved it at two o’clock this afternoon,” Robert helpfully reported.

  I nodded slowly, my head spinning.

  “Who is it?” Ruben demanded.

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell him the truth. But I couldn’t lie, either. What if she had Adrienne? What if she was the one behind all this? What if—

  “Is there more on there?”

  “Yeah,” Robert said, pushing a button that made the footage move forward again. The camera turned off when it didn’t detect movement in the room, so the next bit of footage didn’t show up until nearly dawn. A little before 6:30 in the morning.

  “Too early for work,” I said softly as Jaime’s face appeared on the computer screen.

  She picked something up from on top of the computer keyboard and placed it in the center of the blotter. Then she began typing on the keyboard, her fingers moving almost as quickly as Robert’s had. And then she looked up and spoke.

  “Who’s she talking to?”

  Robert shook his head. “Can’t tell from this angle.”

  Jaime turned back to the computer, typed a moment longer, then grabbed whatever had been sitting on the blotter and took it with her when she left. The rest of the footage was just normal daily activity in the office.

  “When Adrienne saved this footage,” Ruben asked slowly, “was she saving something specific or just this particular twelve-hour stretch of time?”

  “There’s no way to save just one bit of footage on these cameras. It has to be downloaded onto a computer and edited that way.”

  “Then we can’t know which person she reacted to when she saved the footage.”

  I glanced at Ruben. For once he wasn’t staring at me. He was staring at the footage as it continued to play out.

  “No, not really,” Robert said. “All we can know is that she saw this and she felt it was important enough to the case to save it.”

  “Can you identify who’s on the tape?” Ruben asked me.

  “The woman there,” I said, gesturing as Robert continued to let the footage play and Jaime again came into the office, “is my personal assistant.”

  “Is she supposed to be in here, messing with your stuff?”

  “She is.”

  “What about the other woman?” Robert asked, reversing the footage until the first bit played again. “Do you know who that is?”

  I had to be careful. I couldn’t just tell them. She couldn’t be behind all this, could she? What advantage would she get from all this?

  Jacob, with is wonderful timing, suddenly burst into the room.

  “There’s been another message.”

  Chapter 30

  Adrienne

  “What will he say when he realizes it’s you?”

  She didn’t answer me, but she paused in her movements. It was just a slight hesitation, a movement that wasn’t quite completed. But then she shoved the spoon toward my mouth again.

  “Eat.”

  “Not hungry.”

  “Don’t care. Wouldn’t do if you’re not alive when he asks for proof that you are.”

  “You must know how he feels about me. What do you think he’ll do when he realizes you’re the one who took me? Do you think he’ll forgive and forget just like that?”

  She stood up and dropped the bowl on one of the shelves, splattering the bland oatmeal she’d been feeding me all over cans of tomato paste.

  “You weren’t supposed to figure it ou
t. We didn’t know about the camera in his office.”

  “No one knew. I slipped it in there without telling anyone.”

  “Yeah, well, that was your mistake. We were going to let you go. We were going to get what we wanted and just let you go. But you had to get nosy.”

  “Nosy?”

  She glanced at me. “If you hadn’t put that camera there…” She sighed. “We worked so hard to convince your father that Lucien was doing this to himself. You should have been gone. The case was over.”

  “But I was still investigating.”

  “You didn’t go away. He brought you to dinner after your father told you Lucien was the one who sent the emails. That’s when we realized he really liked you. And he would respond to you going missing.”

  “You keep saying ‘we’. Who else is involved in this?”

  She shook her head. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  She spun around a second, staring at me like she thought she hadn’t heard me clearly. If I’d been able to see her face, I’m sure it would have been pale. But I couldn’t. She continued to insist on wearing that thin ski mask even though she knew I knew who she was.

  “I wouldn’t…I couldn’t do something like that! I can’t even smash a fly!”

  “But you kidnapped me.”

  “I had help.”

  “From who?”

  She shook her head, turning away again. She picked up the bowl and wiped at the spilled oatmeal with a piece of her shirt. She gave up after a second and walked toward the door, her head down, as though she were a prisoner walking to the death chamber, not the prison warden.

  “We never wanted to hurt anyone. We just wanted to help.”

  “Did it ever occur to you to go to him and simply ask?”

  She made a sound that was something like a snort. “We did ask. Over and over again. But he wouldn’t even consider it.”

  “All of this just for a drug you don’t even know will work.”

  She looked at me again, her eyes narrowing slightly as she studied me. “Drug? What are you talking about?”

  “That’s what this is about, right? The Alzheimer’s drug?”

  She stared at me for a long second. And then she began to laugh.

  Chapter 31

  Lucien

  “What does it say?” Ruben demanded, moving around my desk as quickly as he could.

  Jacob held up Adrienne’s phone, revealing the lit screen. I hadn’t even realized I’d left the phone with him. But there it was, more words scribbled across it. Words that would tell us what we had to do to get Adrienne back.

  Ruben snatched the phone away before I could even get close to Jacob.

  “Roses are red, violets are blue. You know where. Be there at ten.”

  Ruben frowned as he stared at the words. But Jacob knew what it meant. I could see it written on his face. And so did I.

  If I hadn’t seen the footage from Adrienne’s camera, I would know now who was behind all this.

  “What does it mean?” Ruben asked.

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  His eyes narrowed as he looked at me. “It must mean something to you. Or the kidnapper wouldn’t have sent it.”

  “Maybe it’s just meant to confuse us,” Robert suggested. “Maybe they know we’re here.”

  Ruben stared at me, his eyes narrowing so much that I could barely see his pupils.

  “No. This one knows what this means.” He gestured to me with the phone. “And I’m guessing you know who’s behind all of this, too.”

  I had a choice in that moment. I could lie to him and make a permanent enemy out of him. Or I could tell him the truth—or at least part of it—and hope that he’d trust me enough to allow me to do what I had to do to get Adrienne out of this mess.

  I looked at Jacob. He was watching me, waiting for me to make a decision. I could see it in his eyes. I wondered what he would do if this was Lynn we were trying to save.

  But, then again, if this was Lynn, it would be a whole different story.

  “The poem refers to something my wife and I used to say to each other,” Jacob said, his eyes on me as he spoke. “The message wants us to meet at a bed and breakfast in Katy where Lynn and I used to spend long weekends.”

  Ruben glanced from him to me. And then he focused on Jacob.

  “We need the address. I’ll send a couple of guys to check it out ahead of time. And then the two of you,” he said, gesturing to me as well as Jacob, “will go at ten, and we’ll watch.”

  “Okay,” I said almost eagerly.

  “Don’t try anything,” Ruben said, pushing my shoulder as I started to turn. And then he was in my face. “If anything happens to Adrienne because you weren’t completely honest with me, you will suffer.”

  His voice sort of squeaked on the last syllable. There was so much emotion in his voice. It was more than clear how deeply he felt about his daughter. But, the thing was, I felt the same way. If anything happened to Adrienne, I would never forgive myself.

  I followed Jacob out of the office. The moment we were clear of prying eyes, Jacob grabbed my arm and dragged me into his office.

  “There’s something wrong with all this.”

  “I know.”

  “Why would something between Lynn and I—”

  “Because Lynn’s involved.”

  Jacob’s face became a thundercloud. “What do you mean?”

  “It was Lynn on the camera.”

  “What camera?”

  “Adrienne put a camera in my office to see if she could prove that someone’s been messing around with my computer. And she caught Lynn in there just after midnight.”

  “Lynn was in your office? How the hell did she get into the building?”

  “She’s your wife, Jacob,” I said, stepping back slightly and glancing over my shoulder, hoping Ruben was standing just outside the door. “The guards all know her; they all know her relationship to you. They would let her in.”

  “What did she do in your office?”

  I shrugged. “She left something on the desk.”

  “What?”

  I shook my head. “A note, I think. But it was gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Jaime took it.” I straightened up even as I said it. “It was on the video. Jaime came into my office before dawn this morning, did something on the computer, and then took the note.”

  Jacob turned away and dragged his fingers through his hair, pacing as he considered what I’d said.

  “How do we know that Lynn being here has anything to do with what’s happening, then? Maybe the note was just that. A note.”

  I nodded slowly. “But Adrienne saw something on the video—”

  “Maybe Adrienne misunderstood what Lynn was doing.”

  “I don’t think so. Adrienne knows her stuff.”

  Jacob glanced at me. “I think you might be letting your feelings cloud your thinking.”

  I shook my head. “Adrienne knows this case in and out. She would know if there was something relevant.”

  I turned and checked the alcove outside our offices, looking for Ruben and his men. But they were all still in my office. I crossed to Jaime’s desk and began searching through it for whatever it was she’d taken. There was nothing obvious at first. But then, tucked into the back of a drawer, I found a small envelope with my name written across the outside in Lynn’s handwriting. I took it back to Jacob’s office and quickly tore it open.

  Lucien, it began, I wanted to apologize for my behavior the other night. I never should have shown up at that restaurant the way I did. I don’t know what I was thinking. But I guess that I wasn’t thinking. I miss you and Jacob and everyone else, and I just… Well, there are no words for what I did. Thank you for your grace in handling the situation, and I apologize if I caused any trouble for you and your new girl.

  It was signed simply with a large, cursive L.

  I handed it to Jacob, who
read it quickly and handed it back.

  “Why didn’t she just leave it at the front desk or send it with a messenger?”

  Jacob shrugged. “That’s not the way Lynn does things. She wants the personal touch. Maybe she was hoping the security guards would tell you she was here.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense. Lynn is sneaking around, Jaime’s hiding the note. And then Adrienne—”

  “Whoever took Adrienne had to have known you were in San Antonio. That person had to have followed you there.”

  “Then it couldn’t have been either Lynn or Jaime, because we left my place at a little after ten.”

  “Did anyone else know you were going?”

  “Just Adrienne and me. It was a last minute decision.”

  “Then somebody was watching the house. Or followed you from Dad’s.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “Doesn’t mean much.”

  “The house is behind a gate. If someone had been sitting outside the gate, or if they had gone through the gate, the security guard would have noted them.”

  Jacob began to nod enthusiastically. “He would have. Call him.”

  I tugged my cellphone out of my pocket and dialed the security gate outside my housing community. When the phone was picked up, I simply asked if a strange car had been noted outside last night or if anyone had come through the gate between the time Adrienne and I arrived and when we left.

  No one. Nothing.

  So much for that.

  “But that’s good news,” Jacob said.

  “How is that good news?”

  “It means that whoever followed you to San Antonio knows you. It means whoever it was knows about the security gate and knew to wait far enough back to not be seen. It means whoever it was is probably someone we know.”

  “How is that good?”

  “Because we can call the hotel where you stayed and get a list of guests who checked in after you. And then we will likely recognize the name, even if they thought they were being smart and used a false one.”

  Jacob pulled out his own phone and began to dial.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “The hotel.”

  “How do you know which hotel it was?”