by Peak, Renna
“Australia? I should have known.” I could hear Krystal chuckling behind me.
I ignored her. “I’ll go to D.C. I’ll deal with the fallout. I’ll figure it out and we can meet somewhere. I’ll get a new phone…”
Something that almost looked like amusement flashed across his face. “I’m sorry about your phone.”
I smiled at his absurd comment, shaking my head. His having tossed my phone out the window on the way to the airport was about the last thing I was concerned about. “I’ll go. I’ll force a smile to my face and I’ll stand there. Daniel can have his resurrection and we’ll be done. Everyone will understand why I can’t be with him when I leave. No one will even question my leaving a man who is supposed to have been dead for a year-and-a-half. But if you and I run away, there’s no undoing it. It was stupid of me to even think…”
He reached up and cupped my cheek with his hand. “It was stupid of me. It was my idea, remember? I should have just driven you to my cabin…”
Krystal was now standing next to us and interrupted. “Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you just haul your ass up to Wyoming or wherever the hell that cabin of yours is? You could have taken her last night…”
His eyes darted to hers. “Too many eyeballs last night, Krystal. You, of all people, should understand that.”
She nodded and pulled her phone out again, typing something into it. She didn’t even look up before she spoke. “Cade is on his way to get us, Jenna. He has your car. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
I nodded. I’d had a feeling Cade was the person she had been texting tonight, and it came as no surprise that he would have driven my car back from that party. Away from what I could only imagine was the mayhem of someone having found Amanda’s body by now. I looked back up at Brandon. “You should go. You should get on that plane…”
As if someone had heard my words, the boarding announcement for our flight came over the loudspeaker.
He shook his head slowly, and I could have sworn I almost saw tears in his eyes. “Jen…”
My eyes were definitely beginning to swim, but I fought hard to keep the tears at bay. “You should. If I’m not there, no one will care.”
“I’ll make sure they know she’s with me, Brandon. You should go.” I could hear the concern in Krystal’s voice. She may have thought her brother was an idiot for some of the choices he had made, but it was clear that she cared about him. Loved him.
He pressed his lips against mine, tentatively at first, then almost desperately, his kiss almost claiming me. Marking me. I closed my eyes, allowing him to take what he needed and trying not to let him know how desperate I was feeling myself. His hands skimmed under my jacket, sliding it off my shoulders.
Krystal cleared her throat and I turned my head toward her, breaking our kiss.
His lips touched my temple and he pulled the jacket from my arms. He reached into my pocket and handed me my wallet and keys.
I looked down and took the items from his hand. “I don’t understand, Brandon…” I looked back up into his eyes.
He let out a shaky breath. “I need something. Something of yours … something that smells like you.” He looked back into my eyes. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
I pulled his hand into mine, giving it a squeeze. “You can. We both can.”
He nodded and pulled away from me, folding my jacket over his arm. He backed away, taking several steps toward the walkway. “This isn’t goodbye, Jen. I won’t let it be the end.”
I could only nod as I felt a tear slide down my cheek. I didn’t want it to be goodbye, either, but at that moment, it certainly felt that way.
His phone chimed and he ignored it once again, his gaze still locked with mine. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
I nodded again and felt Krystal’s hand touch my arm. I looked down at her hand for only a moment before turning my gaze back to where he had been standing.
Brandon was gone.
* * *
I made my way to the gate, waiting near the line of people already boarding the plane to Sydney. Something inside of me told me I needed to be on that flight. I knew the only way to keep my ass out of trouble was to get the hell out of the country—just like Daniel had done eighteen months earlier. Just like I had helped him to do. I rubbed at my cheek—it was beginning to swell from the hit Jen had delivered earlier, but the ache was almost nice. At least it reminded me of her.
Krystal may have been right about the cabin—Montana might have been a better option than going overseas. I just couldn’t take the chance. It was too risky—too many people saw us last night. Too many people were already watching her every move. And I didn’t need any more eyes on me. But I also knew I couldn’t actually leave her. Getting out of the country seemed like such a good plan … when Jen was in the equation. I knew there was no way I would ever leave without her, though. She could believe I was leaving to protect myself—to protect her. She might need to believe those things to get through the next few days. But I had plans of my own, and they didn’t include leaving the country without her.
My phone chimed in my pocket again. I pulled it out—the damned thing hadn’t stopped beeping since we’d arrived at the airport. I had a feeling I knew who it was before I even looked at it—the timing was just too good. I glanced at the screen and could only roll my eyes when I saw who the messages were from. I pushed the button to call him back.
He picked up after the first ring. “Busy night, Brandon? Too busy to answer your phone?” He chuckled. “I’ll admit it. It pisses me off knowing you’re with her right now. But knowing I’ll have her in my bed again in just a few short hours makes it sting a hell of a lot less…”
I felt my jaw tighten. “What do you want?”
“Same as you. Peace in the Middle East. Peace at home. And you know…” He paused for a beat too long. “Jenna.”
My hand clenched into a fist at the sound of her name on his lips. If there was one man who did not deserve any mercy from me, it was Daniel.
“I have a proposition for you, Brandon.”
“Not interested.” I had no need for any more of his games—any more of his “propositions.” I knew I had fucked everything up, but I hadn’t sunk that low. I wasn’t so far gone that I had any need to work with Daniel again for anything. Not even for Jen.
“I think you might be interested in this one. It’s a win for both of us…”
“Make it fast.” The second boarding call came overhead and I knew that Daniel would have been able to hear it. I thought it might not be a bad thing if he thought I was actually going to be on this flight. It might take the pressure off—for a little while, at least. I knew I would never work with him—but he might not know that. He was dumb enough that he might actually believe I was a willing party to his bullshit. Even listening to this plan of his might buy me a little more time—a little more time to figure out how to get Jen out of this.
“Going somewhere?” He cleared his throat, and it was clear that the thought of my running off with the woman he still saw as the love of his life had pushed his buttons. “I heard that, Brandon. If you’re even thinking of taking her…”
I interrupted. “No, I wouldn’t dream of getting in the way of true love, Daniel. What’s the big plan? I have a flight to catch…”
3
“I really wish you had slept, Jenna. You should try one of those pills. Get at least a little rest before we get there.” Krystal looked over at me with a look of concern. “It’s going to be a long few days. Your dinner tonight will be brutal enough without going into it sleep-deprived.”
My fingernails dug into the leather armrests of my seat. I had been on many airplanes in my life, but takeoffs and landings still almost sent me over the edge with fear. Krystal was right—sleeping at all last night would have been nice. I doubt that I would have been able to sleep, even if I had taken one of the new pills. Even if I had taken several—it still seemed like I was so wired that I might never sl
eep again. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had happened. The past two days seemed almost surreal—everything just kept playing over and over in my mind.
Krystal had changed our flight to a later departure. She had also somehow replaced my phone—who knew that you could replace a phone that early on a Sunday morning? I guess I hadn’t ever really thought about it, but she was clearly talented at the things she did. Making things happen. I thought maybe it ran in the family—then having a thought about Brandon at all threatened to send tears streaming down my face again.
It wasn’t as though I had been crying buckets or anything. Just thinking of little things like that—I had to try to stop. There were just so many other things to think about right now, I didn’t have time for it or room for it in my head. I had to stay focused on the present—I couldn’t wish for a future that was never going to happen. I couldn’t try to remember a past that, when I was honest with myself about it, hadn’t been all that great. There had been great moments—wonderful memories that I would probably tell my grandchildren about—but it wasn’t like everything had been fantastic, either.
But he hadn’t called. He hadn’t texted. I knew his flight to Sydney hadn’t landed yet, and I told myself that that was the only reason why. It was a fourteen-hour flight from San Francisco—it hadn’t even been ten hours since he would have left on his flight. And now I was on a flight, headed in the opposite direction, even farther away from him than I would have been before. And headed right back into Daniel’s arms.
I had to believe that Krystal would watch out for me. That Cade would, too. They had almost become my surrogate parents—the people who made sure that nothing bad was going to happen. Well, except for Cade. If what Brandon had said was true … if Cade really had taken a bribe from Ryan to look the other way … I knew I was going to have to confront him. I knew I was going to have to corner him sometime on this flight. That I would have to be direct—ask him if it was true. I didn’t want to believe it, but I had no reason to believe that Brandon would lie about it. And nothing else about that night—the night Daniel kidnapped me—made any sense.
I closed my eyes and waited until the ascent was over—until the plane righted itself and it just felt like we were hovering in space before I turned to Krystal. “I need to know some things.”
She had already taken out her laptop and was typing on the keyboard when she looked over at me with a small smile. “I’ll answer if I can.”
I nodded. I hated that that was always the answer—I could know what was going on as long as no one deemed it “dangerous.” As long as no one thought I would need a bottle of pills to get past it—then I could know things. If people really knew what had happened that night—if they really knew why I had taken those pills…
It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was getting some answers to the questions that I knew no one but Krystal would ever answer for me. “How does Brandon know Ryan Agostino?”
I heard her suck in a breath. She finally blew it out a moment later. “He told you that he does? He said that? He said he knows him?”
I turned to face her. “Yes. He told me does.”
She nodded and turned her gaze toward the window. She was silent for a long moment. “I’ll tell you what I know, Jenna. I don’t think it will answer your questions—the questions you have about Amanda. But I’ll tell you what I know.”
“That’s all I want.” I would have rather heard it from Brandon—heard the truth from him, but I knew it would never happen. I knew there was no way he would ever admit to how or why he knew him.
She sighed. “Okay. It’s a long story.”
I nodded. “It’s a long flight.”
A tiny smile came to her lips as she met my gaze before turning back to gaze out the window. “Okay. Brandon came to Virginia to work with me about eight years ago.” She turned back to face me. “He was dabbling in political stuff before that … doing odd jobs, this and that. Nothing with any direction. I think he thought he knew what he wanted to do, who he wanted to work with, but he was an unfocused mess when he was young.”
I could only nod at her words. Brandon and I had never talked about what he was like when he was younger, and I had trouble imagining it.
“It almost seemed like a spur-of-the-moment thing—that day he arrived in Virginia. It was so out of the blue…” She paused. “I don’t know what happened to him, but he showed up and was ready to work. So that’s what I did—I put him to work. I was running several campaigns at the time, and you know campaigns…” She lifted a brow. “Something always comes up.”
I hadn’t been involved in too many campaigns myself, other than the little bit I had seen when I was helping my father in Iowa a few months earlier. I suspected she meant the types of things that I had seen in the other campaign that was going on there—the lying, cheating and scandalous types of things.
“And he was good at it. Handling that stuff, I mean. It’s really a gift, Jenna. Not everyone can deal with that kind of stuff. Not everyone has that ability—the ability to make things go away. He’s very talented…”
I had to look away from her. I felt guilty that I didn’t know these things about Brandon. I felt terrible that I wanted him to leave a job he was so clearly good at—leave it for me, because I couldn’t deal with politics anymore. It seemed selfish to tear him away from something he probably enjoyed doing.
“But then the Edwards scandal happened. He had been seeing one of the Edwards girls—he thought it was the older one and she turned out to be the younger one. I don’t think he ever cared very much about her, he was just so focused on it. He thought Edwards was somehow responsible for the accident—the one that killed our mother and his father. I think he still thinks that…”
“He does.” That was something I knew for sure. That was something that I had at least a little certainty about.
She nodded. “And then the suicide happened and he just fell apart. I think he has never been able to get past taking a parent away from their child … you know, because of the accident with our parents.”
That made sense. It made sense why he would feel guilty about Polly being away from her children, too. It didn’t make sense, though, that he could somehow reconcile taking Amanda away from Mason…
“And then he left. He just packed his apartment up one day and left. He told me he was never going to be involved in politics again—never going to get involved with a politician’s daughter, either…” Her brow furrowed a bit. “Sorry.”
I shook my head. “No. He didn’t know. If he had, he wouldn’t have gotten involved with me…”
“He knew, Jenna. Don’t kid yourself.” She closed the laptop that had been sitting on her lap and set it down inside her bag on the floor. “I know that isn’t what you want to talk about right now…”
“I need to know how he knows Ryan. I need to know if Ryan was just using Melissa…”
Her shoulders dropped and she looked out the window again, almost like the clouds would give her the answers that I would find satisfactory. “I don’t know what Ryan was doing with Melissa. I only know that when Brandon left D.C., he went to California. Ryan Agostino is part of a very…” She let out a sigh. “I don’t even know how to say this, Jenna. He’s part of a group. A family, really, that does things that Brandon is really good at. They take care of things. They…”
I felt my stomach lurch. I didn’t want to believe the words that formed in my head. “The mob. Organized crime…”
She shook her head. “No, no. Not exactly. They aren’t criminals—not the Agostino family. The Agostinos are mostly underground, anyway, but definitely not criminals.” She paused again, taking a deep breath. “It’s more like an organization of people like Brandon. People who are good at making things happen. People who can make anything happen for the right price…”
I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make me feel better or not. What she was saying certainly sounded like criminal activity. If they could make an
ything happen…
“Not like that.” She seemed to be reading my mind. “Not like Amanda. The group that Brandon and Ryan ran, they’re part of a larger organization. Much larger.”
None of this was sounding particularly good. None of this was making Brandon sound like he actually was one of the good guys, even though Cade had insisted to me that he was…
“Brandon made it clear he wanted nothing to do with my jobs in D.C. again. He was willing to do things that weren’t in D.C., though, and I definitely asked him to. When Daniel…”
I held my palm up to stop her. I didn’t need to hear this story again. I’d already heard it—already lived it one too many times. “I already know what you did with him. With Daniel.”
She frowned, nodding again. “I’m so sorry about that, Jenna. I feel like I can’t tell you that enough.”
I shook my head. “I don’t need to hear it again. It wasn’t your fault…”
“I’m not even sure of the depths of what Daniel did to earn his banishment. I hope you believe that. If I knew, I’d tell you.” She looked down at me again with concern in her eyes. “You shouldn’t have had to live with that lie.”
I couldn’t even imagine how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t lived that lie. If I hadn’t taken those bottles of pills and spent a month “recovering” from my suicide attempt. If I had done what I had planned all along—left Daniel, moved to San Francisco and pursued my dreams. His death—his fake death—had robbed me of that opportunity. Even if he had really died, I had still lost the opportunity to follow my own passions, my own dreams. And I really had no one to blame but myself. My mother may have suggested that I take those pills, but I was the one who swallowed them. I was the one who made that choice. It seemed like the best option at the time. It seemed like the only option at the time. I didn’t feel like I deserved to be alive, and I certainly didn’t feel like I would ever be able to let myself fall in love again.
