by Julia Derek
Okay, he was really grasping for straws right now, so I just released myself from him and turned to the others. All four of them were looking uncomfortable, like they’d rather be anywhere else but here with us right now. I couldn’t blame them; our public display of affection had gone on much too long.
I extended my hand to the first of Nick’s buddies, the red-haired man with the bulbous nose.
“Hi, my name is Elisa, but you can call me Elle,” I said as he took my hand and shook it. He introduced himself as Frank. The other guy was called Bruno.
Both Nick and Chase thanked Bruno and Frank for having watched out for Chase all night, then Nick told them to go home and get some much needed rest.
When it was just me, Chase, Gabi, and Nick, Chase shook Nick’s hand and kissed Gabi’s cheek, thanking them both for having done such a good job taking care of me and looking out for him. The four of us took a seat around the white cafeteria table where Chase had just sat, having lunch with Frank and Bruno.
“So what happens next?” Chase asked Nick and Gabi. “How are we going to get hold of these guys? And the woman.” He turned to face me. “You still don’t remember where you heard that laughter?”
I shook my head. “Unfortunately not. Maybe part of my brain got damaged when he dropped me on my head, because by now, you’d think I’d remember, right?”
Chase smiled and pinched my left cheek affectionately. “I’m sure your brain works just fine, wifey.”
Nick raised a brow at us, but Chase and I both chose to ignore him. “Let’s hope so,” I said to Chase, not as convinced.
“It’s going to be a challenge to figure out who these people are and why they did what they did to you,” Nick said to us. “If these thugs are even remotely bright, they wore latex gloves when they ransacked Elle’s place.” He looked at me. “Since they managed to get into your building and not only trash your apartment but also abduct you, it tells me they’re no dummies. That means they didn’t leave any fingerprints. Without having fingerprints and you guys not knowing what the perps look like, it’s gonna be even harder to find them.”
“Well, we did see the face of one of them,” I reminded him. “The one who shot Chase. We only saw him briefly, but it was very bright in that room and at least I think that I might recognize him if I saw him again.” I turned to Chase. “Did you get a good look at him?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I got a pretty good look, but I’m not sure I’d be able to recognize him if I saw him in a photo. Except for the handlebar moustache, he looked pretty nondescript if you ask me.”
I pictured the man in mind, the way he had looked when he ran up to us with the gun in his hands. Dark brown, curly hair and upset expression on his face. Fair complexion and of medium height and build. But Chase was right; except for that big moustache, nothing about his features had stood out. I couldn’t even remember what he had been wearing, just some dark shirt and pants. He wasn’t one of the guys who had come to our room, though, which meant that we knew there had been at least three guys involved. We had already guessed this based on what had happened when Chase had been assaulted by two of them on the street. He was almost one hundred percent sure that those two had been the same ones who’d come to our room repeatedly. Since they had only been wearing dark shades and baseball caps at the time of his abduction, he’d gotten an idea of what they looked like, though not good enough to be able to know their faces. He was fairly sure the man with the moustache had been the one driving the van, though. He hadn’t dared turning around to verify this as the two other goons had taken him to the house.
“Shouldn’t we at least try to find them among photos of criminals on file?” I asked Nick.
“I suppose it’s worth spending a day or two at the station just to be sure,” Nick said. “You could try checking the catalogues,” Gabi said, “but it’s really a longshot. It would be far better if we could figure out who the woman in charge of this could be.”
I sighed heavily. “Trust me, I know. If only I could figure out where I’ve heard that damn laugh!” I shook my head in frustration. “Maybe I haven’t actually heard it. Maybe I just thought I recognized it.” I looked at the three of them helplessly. “I mean, don’t you think I’d have figured it out by now otherwise?”
Gabi pursed her broad mouth and nodded slowly. “Yeah, it’s unfortunately possible that you just thought you’d heard it before. When people are under a lot of stress, strange things can happen to their brains’ cognitive abilities. Like make them hallucinate stuff. Or maybe her laughter just reminded you of someone’s laughter, making you think that this was someone you’d met before. You had a gun pressed to your head after all. It’s must be hard to think clearly under those circumstances.”
“I have to agree with Gabi on that one,” Nick said. “You might only have thought you heard this laughter before. Which makes this an even tougher nut to crack. Try the photo library at the station, but I think your best bet is to go through what women might have a grudge against the two of you. Or who would benefit from your being gone.”
Chase sighed. “We already spent plenty of time doing that while we were in that room.” He swung an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “We couldn’t come up with many who hated Elle, at least not to the point that they’d kidnap her and potentially kill her. And even though I know there are both men and women who resent me in the finance world, I can’t think of someone who’d go to such lengths they’d have me kidnapped. But the world is full of crazy people, so I might be underestimating them. Anyway, none of the ones I could think of seemed to even be aware of Elle’s existence.”
Nick looked him straight in the eye. “Think harder. Because, if I’m gonna be brutally honest with you guys, I don’t think the two detectives the NYPD put on this case will ever solve it. At the moment, there’s nothing for them to go on. Surely the goons will turn out to be hired hands. Hired hands generally know how to disappear and won’t be connected to you in any way. But the woman obviously is connected to you somehow, so you need to figure out how for anyone to get to the bottom of this.”
Chase rubbed his stubbly chin. “Okay, we’re gonna have to try harder to find out who she could be. That being said, how should we proceed to live our lives from now on? What if she makes another try? It could very well happen, right? Do we need to get bodyguards?”
“At the very least, you need to get handguns so you can protect yourselves,” Nick said.
Chase gave something between a smile and a pleased smirk. “I already have one of those.”
“You do?” I gazed at him, amazed.
“Yep. The same kind as the goon we took down in the bedroom had.”
Ah, I thought. No wonder he’d been so happy when he’d seen what kind of gun we’d gotten our hands on then. He’d known exactly how to use it.
“I assume you have a permit to use that gun as well?” Nick said, only half asking.
“Of course I do,” Chase replied.
“I would need a gun as well, right?” I asked.
“Definitely,” Nick and Chase said with emphasis, almost in unison. We all laughed.
I frowned. “But doesn’t it take a while to get a permit and all that?”
“Not when you know us,” Gabi said and squeezed my arm. “We’ll make sure you get one and that you know how to use it, too.” She turned to Nick. “I’m sure the FBI will make an exception considering her circumstances and issue her a permit ASAP, don’t you agree? If we push them a little?”
“I’m gonna need an automatic one,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to figure out how to fire a regular one if I get really scared.”
“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “You’ll get one you can use and as Gabi said, we’ll teach you how too. I’m not sure what you want to do about the bodyguard situation. You’ll really only need one if you’re alone a lot. I don’t think either of you will have to worry about finding yourself abducted in your apartments. I highly doubt these guys are so stupid th
ey’ll try the same thing again. It doesn’t take much brains to figure out that the security will be upped in your buildings. And since Chase was already assaulted on the street in the middle of the day, they must realize that both of you will pay lots of attention when outside from now on.” He looked at Chase. “Part of the reason they were so successful in kidnapping you was because of the surprise factor, correct? I’m sure the last thing you expected to happen that morning was for two armed goons to appear and take you away in a van.”
Chase nodded. “You could say that again.”
“Which is why I really don’t think they’ll be trying to abduct you again,” Nick said. “They might be trying something else, though. Obviously this woman has an issue with the two of you. I hate to be so darn negative here, but I’ve gotta tell you what I think. If I were you, I’d take some vacation, get out of the city for a while. And I’d spend a big part of that vacation trying to figure out who this woman is. If she’s as nutty as you guys have described, it’s more likely that the two of you will run into a car driving too fast on the street—or even get a bullet in your head. Whatever her motivation was for doing what she did to you, I can tell you one thing for sure. Psychopathic minds don’t like it when they get outmastered.”
Chapter Sixteen
Chase and I both contacted Goldman Sachs to take a leave of absence as soon as we got to my apartment. We had decided to take Nick’s words seriously and take a vacation and try to figure out who it was that was out to get us and why. We would never be able to relax again if we didn’t. Just hiring bodyguards and always carrying a firearm was not enough protection. There really was no other answer unless we wanted to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders.
Gabi suggested that we might as well come with them back to L.A. and spend some time there for our vacation. I wasn’t sure why that hadn’t popped into my head immediately and that I had thought we should head to Mexico instead. L.A. was as far away and I’d get to see all my friends again, not to mention my family. Okay, so it might be slightly riskier to head back home as well as easier to find us since Chase and I would be staying with my mom in her house in Beverly Hills. But it couldn’t be helped; I really wanted to go home and Chase was happy to join me.
We did spend the following day at the police station going through tons of photos of criminals on file in the computers there, but as Nick had already predicted, it yielded nothing for us to go on. Several of the men we saw could have been the guy with the handlebar moustache, so it didn’t take many hours until we decided to give up that route. At least twenty of the criminals sported this particular facial hairstyle, and more than half of those were dark haired—out of which the majority were rather plain-faced.
Who had known handlebar moustaches were so in with bad guys? Even if this hadn’t turned out to be the case, to complicate things further, it was quite possible that our guy had only recently grown such a huge snot catcher. And if he had in fact ever been arrested, he might have been barefaced at the time of the mug shot, which meant that he was really one of all the other hundreds of dark-haired men we’d seen and quickly discarded.
In the early evening of that day, I was the proud owner of a Glock semi-automatic handgun. Nick took me to a shooting range in downtown Manhattan to practice shooting with him while Gabi hung out with Chase. After that we all met up for a late dinner at one of Nick’s favorite restaurants, a little Italian place in Tribeca that happened to be close to the shooting range. There we had lots of pasta drenched in creamy tomato sauce and cheese served with spicy Italian sausages and meatballs. Between the four of us, we split three bottles of the best red wine I had tasted in a long time. For dessert we had tiramisu and three sorts of gelato that tasted heavenly. As if that wasn’t enough, Nick insisted that we have some espresso and biscotti, the house specialty, to complete the meal. Apparently this was a rule among Italian families and Nick’s parents were Italian. I wasn’t sure if he just made up that rule, but I still went along with it. I could use some sobering up and the espresso would help with that.
When it was time to leave, I had been so full my stomach had ached, but I had also been happy. I’d had lots of fun in New York so far, but tonight had definitely taken the prize. Chase and I decided to let Gabi and Nick stay at my place, while he and I would stay at his for the night. We all agreed that as long as we weren’t on our own, Chase and I were safe, especially since we were both going to sleep with our guns close by. Which I now felt somewhat comfortable using thanks to Nick’s crash course at the shooting range.
Chase’s apartment was just the way he was—polished, attractive and manly but with a distinctly metrosexual feel. He clearly wasn’t afraid of using color and thoughtful designs in the way he had decorated his house, unlike most men I’d known so far. His velvet couch was a dark purple and the lamp shade at the top of the big floor lamp was a stark blue, while another, smaller lamp was a bright green. His shiny black coffee table had an interesting banana shape to it and there were several candles spread out in the living room, giving it a warm feeling. The white walls were adorned with two huge paintings, one of a woman’s face in various intense colors and another of the New York City skyline, also in many different colors but more subdued ones.
When he noticed me admiring the city panorama painting, he said, “It’s a lot better than the one on those cheesy posters in that room, huh?”
I nodded slowly. “Yep. Miles better.”
Then I noticed that there was huge, oval aquarium in one corner, full of shimmering fish of varying size swimming around. I walked up to it to get a better look of the pretty, little things.
“They’re so beautiful,” I said, running my index finger along the glass. A purple fish came up to greet me by trying to kiss my finger tip through the glass. Chase joined me and put an arm around my shoulders. He sprinkled fish food into an opening in the aquarium’s glass ceiling. Several fish rushed up to nibble at the many little flakes that floated around in the water now.
“When was the last time they got fed?” I asked.
“Yesterday.” He returned the food container on a small, white shelf next to the aquarium on which a couple of other fish food containers sat. “I had my doorman go up and put some food in the feeder.” He pointed at a black, tube-like thing that I hadn’t noticed. “When I know I’m going to be gone a while, I pour fish food into the feeder. It dispenses enough food for all the fish during several days. So I don’t think they’re too starved.”
He turned to face me and cupped my cheeks, barely grazing my skin on the right side where my big, ugly bruise was. He gazed into my eyes. “I’m starved though.”
My mouth dropped open. “Really? After that big dinner we had?”
He smiled. “Not for food. For you.”
“Hmm… Really? Well, still. It wasn’t that long ago since you… you ate me…” I giggled, gazing up at him through my eyelashes, feeling both clever and naughty at the same time. I was really enjoying myself right now.
“Well, I guess I’ve become addicted,” he said slowly. “Now that I’ve tasted you finally, I just can’t get enough. I told you. I’ve wanted to do that for the longest time.”
“Ah.” I pulled away from him and ran around the purple couch. “That’s too bad for you because you can’t have any more of me.” I smiled teasingly at him, then bit my lip and threw him my best come-hither look.
He stared at my mouth. “Okay, if you’re gonna keep up that thing with your lip, I really have to have you.” He began walking toward me. “You might be able to escape from those thugs, but you won’t be able to escape from me, honey…”
I giggled and took off farther into his apartment where I thought his bedroom was. I could hear him run after me. The door I had suspected to be his bedroom turned out to be a home office with huge windows from which you could see other high-rises, unlike the windows in the living room that faced Central Park.
There was no way I could get out of the office without Chase
catching me, so I ran up to the black desk in front of the windows and crouched down behind it, next to the chair, still giggling. I had just managed to disappear when Chase came into the room. I pressed my lips together so that he wouldn’t immediately realize where I was. Not that it could be hard to figure out given that the space wasn’t particularly big and there weren’t any other places to hide really.
As I peeked under the table top, I could see Chase come farther into the room, stopping a few feet away from the desk.
“Hmm, where could she be?” he asked in a playful voice.
I couldn’t stop myself from giggling out loud then. I was being so silly! But it was so much fun… I buried my face in my hands as I kept laughing, hearing Chase walking toward me. Since there was nowhere else for me to go, I stayed until he reached me.
“Well, look what we have here…” he said in that slow, sexy voice he had used when we were having phone sex. I gazed up at him from where I was still crouched down and let him pull me to my feet. I had suddenly remembered that he was after all recuperating from his injury, so I shouldn’t push this game too far.
Not saying a word but keeping my gaze locked with his all the while, he lifted me up and put me down on the desktop. He positioned himself between my jeans-clad legs. Instead of crushing his lips to mine like I had expected him to do after having him chase me and then catch me, he just looked at me and there it was again, that strong emotion in his eyes that I had seen when we’d first made love in our prison. What was it? It couldn’t be love. Not yet. We barely knew each other after all.
He raised a hand and ran a knuckle along my uninjured cheek.
It was as though he wanted to tell me something. But before I got a chance to ask what it was, he grabbed the nape of my neck and then his lips were on mine finally, forcing my mouth open and finding my tongue with his. As our tongues swirled around each other in a most enticing manner, his hands went down to the edge of the tailored sweater I wore and pulled it upward. I raised my arms to the ceiling to help him get it off me, loathe to let go of his soft, hungry lips. When it was off me, he threw it on the floor and moved on to my bra—a lacy, see-through number.
