Pimpernel

by Sheralyn Pratt

  Jack stepped into the room, not using the British accent when he spoke. “Did you sleep well?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I feel good.” And happy you’re here. But it was probably best to not say that out loud.

  He nodded solemnly. “Okay. That’s good because we’re tying a bow on all this today.”

  She froze, transitioning from twitterpated to full-on scared in a heartbeat. “Today?”

  He nodded. “This means that today we’re going to let your mother’s men take you to her.”

  “What?” she panicked. “Why?”

  “So you can make your choice,” he stepped toward her, looking like he wanted to reach out and grab her hands before thinking better of it. “You need answers, Claire. And your mom is the one who has those answers. If you don’t go to her today, you will have questions hanging over your head for the rest of your life—questions I can’t answer for you. But if you let your mother bring you in and explain herself while she thinks she has the upper hand, then you’ll have your answers. You can make a real choice.”

  His words made sense, but that didn’t keep her heart from racing. “No, Jack…I don’t trust her.”

  “And you shouldn’t. But know we have your back. If you refuse her, we’ll get you out of there.”

  His words felt like a bit of a slap. “What do you mean, if I refuse her?”

  He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “I mean that your life is your own, and we never know what choices we’ll truly make until we’re in the moment of decision.”

  She looked at him, stunned. “I would never betray you, Jack.”

  “I hope not,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes before gesturing to the door. “Shall we get you to your car?”

  Her feet wouldn’t move. “Wait. You’re not going to coach me? Tell me what to say? What to expect?”

  Jack’s now-green eyes looked her over as a small smile played at the corner of his lips. “No. You don’t need it. No one reads people like you do, Claire. Remember that. There is no one better suited to succeed in this moment than you.”

  She appreciated the praise, but still felt like the moment was missing something.

  He gestured to the door. “Your driver will drop you off somewhere your mother’s men will find you. Once they get their hands on you, they’ll take you to the airport. That’s where your mom is.”

  She wanted to ask how he knew that, but he kept on talking.

  “Your mom will not harm you, Claire. Her intent is to talk you into joining her and kidnapping you if she can’t talk sense into you right away. So whatever happens, know you are physically safe, okay? We won’t let any harm come to you, and neither will your mother. She needs you, and she wants you awake in case you can help her immediately. Do you understand?”

  Claire nodded mutely just as the blond bodyguard from the day before came in.

  “Your car is ready, Ms. Ramsey.”

  Jack leaned forward and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Good luck, Claire. I hope to see you later.”

  The paternal kiss paired with the half-goodbye had Claire scowling at Jack as he pulled away. Did he really have so little faith in her?

  Not knowing what to say in response to that, Claire turned to the bodyguard. “Lead the way, sir.”

  She left without a goodbye or a glance back, which she regretted the moment Jack was out of sight. She should have said something, but…a peck on the cheek? Really?

  When the blond bodyguard opened the rear door of a town car for her, Claire flopped into the seat with a pout, her mind replaying the kisses from the night before and slowly realizing that Jack had never been the one to kiss her. She’d kissed him until the tight space of the locker was the only thing keeping her standing. What had started out as a curiosity and distraction had ended up transforming into something that felt essential.

  She’d been so certain he had to feel the same way. Yet when she’d asked what was happening, he’d responded that they were killing time until Margot gave them the signal. That had been a bucket of ice water.

  But still…could something as intense as the feelings she was feeling be one-sided? Or was it always like this, and Claire just didn’t know yet since she’d only kissed one guy? Was that why it was no big deal to Jack? Because it wasn’t special?

  It wasn’t until the town car pulled up in front of her mother’s hotel that Claire realized she’d spent the entire ride obsessing about Jack—not mentally preparing to meet her mother. But when the bodyguard looked her way, she knew it was time to get out.

  To her surprise, the bodyguard actually spoke as she reached for the handle.

  “They’ll grab you quickly,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. Remember, your mother is already at the airport, and that’s where you’re headed. It will appear you are alone once you get there, but you are not. Remember that. I cannot tell you where your reinforcements lie, otherwise, you may subconsciously give them away. But they’re there. Know that, and make whatever choice you will.”

  “Thank you,” Claire said, feeling calmer at the un-named guard’s words. “I hope we meet again.”

  He gave a quick nod, saying nothing, then faced forward again. That was her cue.

  Claire reached for the handle of the car, opening it and stepping out. The moment she shut the door behind her, the car started away. She could tell by the way the valets eyed each other that something was off, so she wasn’t surprised when she heard footsteps running her way before she was even halfway to the lobby entrance. An SUV pulled out of nowhere, racing up the loop.

  Well, the bodyguard was right, she thought. It all happened very fast.

  Chapter 43

  Something twisted in Jack’s gut as he watched Claire get pushed into the SUV on Margot’s wall screen.

  “I made the wrong call,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have let this happen.”

  Margot sent him a sidelong look. “As the emotionally detached person in this situation, I can tell you that you definitely made the right choice.”

  He shook his head. “It feels wrong.”

  “It might right now,” Margot agreed. “But if you just kept her locked up in that safe room while her mom incriminated herself and had forced her watch everything remotely, she’d always wonder if it could have ended differently if she’d just been able to speak to her mother. In the end, she would have blamed you.”

  Jack shrugged. “Would it matter?”

  Margot studied him. “You tell me, boss. Do you really think you’d be okay in a world where Claire Ramsey resents you for illegitimate reasons?”

  “It would be for the best,” he said, his eyes watching as the traffic cams followed the SUV’s progress through the city.

  “Why?”

  “Because…” He didn’t know how to finish that.

  “Because it would make it easier to walk away?” Margot offered. “Because I know you pretty well, Jack, and I’ve never seen you look at someone the way you look at Claire—although I still haven’t figured out why. She’s an odd one…a shy one. But hey, if that’s your flavor, who am I to judge? All I know is that half of me wants to buy her a one-way ticket to nowhere to keep you safe, and the other half wants to wrap her up with a bow and give her to you for Christmas so I can see you happy.”

  He opened his mouth to deny that Claire would make him happy and Margot shushed him.

  “Please,” she said, looking back at the screen. “Don’t insult my intelligence by telling me she’s not special to you. I know you far too well.”

  She did, although Jack wasn’t too happy about that at the moment. “I have to let her go and move on.”

  “Do you?” She didn’t elaborate on the question or offer solutions. She just put it out there.

  “It’s not fair to do anything else.”

  “Says who? Says Claire?”

  Jack shook his head. “Don’t play with my head on this, Margot. Not this time.”

  Margot’s face was unreadable as she looked at him.
“If you care to think back across the years, you’ll realize this is the only time I’ve ever encouraged you to consider your options. But not now,” she said, pointing at the clock. “It’s time for you to start making your way to your own rendezvous. You don’t want to be late to your date with Eastman and Armati. They pulled a lot of strings on their part to get an audience with you,”

  She grinned at the memory of whatever hoops she’d put them through in the past twenty-four hours. Whatever she’d done, it was her version of fun. Jack had needed the interview with them, but Margot had been the one to put the men through the hoops that made them think the meeting was their idea.

  “They won’t like it if you’re late,” she added, looking a little gleeful.

  “Mr. Blake is never late,” Jack said in mock offense as he started to the elevator. “He has an uncanny ability to arrive just as the second hand strikes on perfect punctuality.”

  “Well, get to it then,” she said, moving to her desk chair. “Andrew will be your driver. I’ve briefed him.”

  Jack took a beat to appreciate the sheer competence of Margot. He worked around the world with a lot of people, but Margot was the one and only person who anticipated his needs so perfectly. To anyone else, he would have said thank you, but words didn’t have much meaning in Margot’s world. Actions did.

  The way you thanked Margot was by rewarding her trust and delivering as promised, and in that respect Jack was about to rain thanks down onto Margot at the same time he was about to rain chaos down on Claire. It didn’t seem fair.

  He looked at the screen again, noting that the SUV was halfway to the airport.

  “I’ll keep my eye on her,” Margot said when he hesitated just a moment too long. “No PhD candidates will be harmed in the upcoming showdown. You’ve made sure of that already. Now forget all this and go do what you’ve got to do.”

  Jack nodded, taking a moment to shake thoughts of what would happen at the airport out of his head. He’d done his part, and now he needed to trust his team to do theirs while he did his. Clearing his thoughts of the airport, Jack switched to focus on the warehouse waiting for him.

  It was game time. “Wish us luck,” he said with his practiced Mr. Blake smile.

  “Never,” came the reply that always made him smile. “Just be you. The rest will take care of itself.”

  Chapter 44

  Claire had never been more terrified in her life.

  “You’re meeting with your mother,” she coached herself in the back of the SUV, also reminding herself that the men in the front of the SUV worked for her mother. They were two of the men she’d seen in the interrogation rooms on Margot’s wall the morning before, who now seemed eager to redeem themselves by delivering her as promised.

  Claire might be in the equivalent of a kennel in the back of an SUV, but she had to keep reminding herself it was all part of the plan.

  I’m safe, she repeated in her mind. They can intimidate me, but they won’t hurt me.

  Part of her mind believed that, part of it didn’t. When the doubting part of her mind took hold, she threw her new favorite thought at it.

  If a satellite fell out of orbit and came plummeting down in a ball of fire to hit this SUV right now, what would I hope to be doing when I die?

  The scenario of a fireball descending from the sky and smashing the SUV looped like a movie in her mind, leading Claire to decide that fretting of any kind was off the table. She didn’t want to die scared. She wanted to go bold. Unfortunately, her go-to kissing option wasn’t currently a possibility.

  She wondered if she had time to scratch Natasha Ramsey is a criminal into the top of her kennel before they reached the airport. Probably not, but she could try. It was a more dignified way to pass the time than fretting.

  In the end, she barely got the first leg of the N scratched in using a quarter in her pocket before the SUV pulled into a private airport hangar. She was out of time, dangit.

  The men wasted no time yanking her out of the back of the SUV, one man training his gun on her the entire time and eyeing her like he wanted her to give him any excuse at all to pull the trigger. Then the second guy came over, pulling out his gun as he gave the first a little nod. “I’ve got her. Double-check her and make the call.”

  The first gun barrel dropped and went nose-first into a holster as a second gun leveled out just a few feet from her face. Claire expected to be terrified. Part of her mind told her she should be panicking even as the rest of her mind did the opposite. Oddly enough, something about staring down the barrel of the gun put Claire’s world in perfect focus. The constant anxiety that chattered in her head hushed, creating a mental quiet that reminded her of winters in upstate New York, walking through the snow-covered meadow adjacent to her property while snow continued to silently fall around her.

  Peace. A gun was being aimed right at her face, and she felt peace. Her mind searched for a rational reason for the response before honing in on the man’s forehead.

  No tension in the forehead, her mind whispered.

  Surprised at the unconscious observation, Claire looked past the gun and into the guard’s eyes and saw they were indeed relaxed. When he glanced to the left, toward his ear, Claire realized the man was getting directions via an earpiece.

  He’s here to scare you, not kill you. He has no intention of pulling that trigger. He works for your mom. Remember that.

  “Don’t move,” the man said as the first guy came up behind Claire and frisked her with the thoroughness of a TSA agent.

  “She’s clean,” the man said before stepping away.

  Except for the necklace around my neck that is broadcasting everything to Margot. More often than not, Claire had forgotten about the camera, but it gave her an odd confidence to know that she wasn’t the only one seeing what she was seeing as she held her hands up in surrender.

  Man #1 got off his phone. “They’re headed over now. ETA two minutes.”

  The guard aiming the gun at her nodded, his focus unwavering as they all waited in silence. They had nothing to say to her, and it seemed the best tactic not to poke at them. So they all waited, stuck with each other until a black limousine pulled up.

  When Finn stepped out, Claire’s heart sank a bit. Finn? The guard who had always been nicest to her was in on all this? He had let her be abducted like this?

  Of course, he’s in on it. He never leaves mother’s side. He knows everything and has from the beginning.

  It was a betrayal she hadn’t been counting on, but at least Finn looked repentant as he walked her way. His face pinched with guilt as he covered the thirty feet or so between them. The one time they made eye contact he looked down and away before glancing around the hangar as an excuse to delay looking at her again.

  He felt bad. Good. They’d seen each other 64 times since Claire’s mother had moved to Vegas. That was plenty of time to pull her aside and fill her in. Yet he never had. Finn’s loyalty to Claire’s mother was that strong, which meant her mom had sent him out here to soften her…to sway her. And that hurt—both that her mother would ask it and that Finn would agree. Claire could count on one hand the number of people she trusted, and up until five seconds ago Finn had been one of those people.

  She clearly couldn’t trust him anymore.

  When he was close enough to shake her hand, Finn stopped and gestured to the men around them. “I’m sorry about this, Claire. We just couldn’t have you disappearing before we got here. You’ve been pretty hard to track down as of late.”

  Claire didn’t let the thoughtful tone in his voice sway her. She stuck to addressing the words. “Yeah. Imagine my surprise to learn that it’s my own mother who’s hunting me down.”

  “You put her in a bad position, Claire. She needs you to fix it.”

  Claire’s mouth fell open in disbelief as she fought the urge to laugh outright in the face of the man she’d always considered an honorary uncle. “I put her in a bad position? Are you kidding me?”

 
; He shook his head. “Claire, that money wasn’t yours to give away.”

  “It wasn’t my mom’s either!” Claire shot back.

  Finn gestured to a small private jet just coming into view, taxiing toward the hangar from the runway. Claire caught a glimpse of the tail number and recognized it. It was her father’s.

  Was he involved in all this, too? Heaven help them all!

  “We can discuss all this once we’re in the air,” Finn said. “But for now I’m going to need to require you to get on board. Your mom made promises with that money, so we’re going to need to find a way to get it back in a location where we’re safe.”

  His voice was kind but firm, and Claire sensed that if he had to force her onto the plane, he would. He’d prefer not to, but he would.

  “Here I thought you were a good guy,” she said, letting her hurt show. “All these years you’ve been so nice to me when everyone else was so cold. I thought that made you different, but it didn’t. Did it?”

  Finn looked at her for a moment, eyebrows pinching together and lips pressing together so hard they disappeared. “I do care about you, Claire.”

  It wasn’t the words, but the way he said them…the way his eyes broke contact to drop down and away…the self-soothing gesture of the pad of his thumb stroking up against his forefinger. Somehow it all came together in a moment of clarity that sent shocks of realization all through Claire’s body.

  “You,” she breathed, stepping away. “You?”

  Finn looked up, his eyes panicking. “What do you mean?”

  You’re my dad. All this time you’ve been around, it’s because you’re my father. Her brain could barely wrap around the realization, especially when she did the quick math to what Finn’s age would have been at the time of her conception. Fifteen? Could that be right? It couldn’t. Not possible.

  Yet math was math…even if it made you feel a little sick. Or a lot sick.