by Anna Collins
I couldn’t leave without my IV drip, but I could take it out and make it look like it was still attached. I learned that little trick from Leslie. She was the one who showed me there was a way to do it to make it look believable. Pulling the wool over my father’s eyes wasn’t easy, but she made it look like child’s play. She had stated she loved being here, but she never did say the same thing about their sex life. The one thing she did say was he was always pushing her into doing things she wasn’t comfortable with. There were times she went along for the ride, and there were others that she became more accustomed to what her body was craving.
I got up and the guards at my door when I opened it didn’t even blink. I wanted to say something to them, but it felt more important to use the full control of my faculties for something more worthwhile than idle chitchat.
Chapter 31
I had made it to the study with my shadow lingering by the door as I closed it in his face. If I were him, I would already be reporting to Leslie about my whereabouts. I didn’t have time to dwell on this, and I went directly to the photo of my mother looking like there was real love between her and Spencer.
I sat at his desk and I felt like the legacy of his family name was mine to bear the burden of. Tristan was a boy named Trevor who had turned into a man by doing inexcusable things and most likely left him with more than his fair share of bad memories.
“I’m a little surprised to see you,” This disembodied voice said before I was fully aware it was the man who had vacated my room several hours ago.
I didn’t see him at first. It was a whisper like my conscience was tapping on my shoulder to get my attention. He suddenly emerged from behind a bookcase which gave the feel of multiple exits in the room. It slid back into place. He put his finger to his lips as he went over to the door and pressed his ear to the wood to see if they were going to come in and interrupt this reunion.
He came over and stood in front of the desk with his two hands planted with more than enough authority. I could see he was worried and something had happened to make him think this place was not exactly the paradise we thought it was.
“I was right about beefing up security. I took a look around, and there are several more guards than I thought there was. These guys carry themselves like they don’t have any other purpose than to follow orders. I didn’t even think about grilling them. I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere. I came here because of his reaction to us being in this room. It’s plain ugly to me he didn’t know about you until seeing your face. We both know we were drawn here for a reason,” Tristan said.
The laptop I had in my possession downstairs in my room was out of reach. I sensed the password I was looking for was right underneath my nose in this room. I was letting each of my fears burn down in my mind until I was ready to proceed.
“Do you think it’s a good idea considering how we act when we let our passions boil over? I think for this one time we can work without doing anything untoward. I know I can keep my excitement to myself, but I don’t know if I can say the same thing for you,” I said looking at him, wondering if he was going to rise to the challenge and not in a way that would become sexual.
“There’s a time for business and pleasure and a mixture of both. We agree to allow our minds to work together instead of jumping at the first opportunity to be with one another. I’ll go over by these books. Your father is a crafty sort, and there’s no telling where he would hide something of importance. I found the passageway that leads to several different rooms. He can watch anyone, and that includes you. He can walk between rooms behind the wall where nobody will be aware of his presence. I think it’s a little creepy, but his fears outweighed his judgment,” Tristan said as I looked towards the bookcase and had the image of Spencer walking the halls in between the rooms all night like he was expecting something to happen.
“I’ve found nothing of interest in his desk and that in itself lends a little bit of weight to my suspicion something is off. He doesn’t seem like he would be the type to leave everything to the chance of modern technology. He’s a man of unique understanding. I wouldn’t put it past him to have the evidence against who was doing this in a more tangible form than ones and zeros,” I said as I moved my fingers delicately underneath the desk for anything which might have been taped to the underside.
Tristan removed each book from the cabinets on either wall. He opened each one and flipped through the pages looking for anything which might jump out at him as a clue. I half expected some key or letter to fall into his hands. It didn’t happen. I couldn’t help but wonder if we were looking in the wrong place. The room was exactly the way we had seen it, but there was something off I just couldn’t wrap my mind around. Something so small; it was like the picture didn’t match up to the one I had seen earlier.
“I’m not having any luck over here. If you have any other ideas, I would greatly like to hear them right about now. By the way, I’m not at all happy you are walking around after going through the procedure, not more than a few hours ago. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to leave this to me? I know what you’re going to say about having two sets of eyes, but I don’t want anything to hamper your recovery,” Tristan said as I got down on my knees, holding my tongue from screaming obscenities from the pain shooting up my arm.
“I…may not be at 100%, but I can still pull my weight with the best of them. I’m stubborn and I know that’s not an attractive trait, but I have to be who I am. I don’t want anybody to think I am a burden,” I said knowing there was no way I would just sit idly by and let others do what I could do.
“I’ve learned enough about you to know you won’t back down without a good reason. I would beg you to reconsider, but it would be useless. I appreciate you want to do the right thing, but sometimes you need to depend on others. It’s not a weakness, and you shouldn’t treat it like that. As you have said, you don’t know your father and how you can be expected to figure out how his mind works is beyond me,” Tristan said as I wasn’t really listening. My eyes were scanning the room, taking a mental photo of anything that seemed out of place.
“I have a very detailed oriented mind, and I’ve always been able to see things others couldn’t. I don’t get a chance to use this side of myself very often, but I don’t see any reason not to. The one thing missing from this room is the computer, but I already have that in my room. There’s something else, and I need some time to figure it out. I’m going to go over everything in quadrants. I’ll start in the corner and work my way out a couple of feet at a time. What I need from you is absolute quiet like you are nothing more than an innocent spectator,” I said as I managed to get up and almost trip over my own two feet with my whole body feeling like I was going to collapse at any moment.
“If you’re not careful, you’re going to fade slowly, and I will have to be there to grab you before you fall. I cannot lie, I’m worried about you. I know you have the will to try just about anything. You have this way of leaving me breathless and unable to fight that stubborn part of you. I’m going to go into the passage and see if anything is there I missed. By the time I come back, I hope you’ll be able to shed some light on this,” Tristan said as he went towards the bookcase. I put my hand on his shoulder to show him I didn’t mean any offense.
“I don’t want you to lose your trust in me. Having you around is like the ultimate tease. I long for your kiss and the feel of your lips making me light up like the 4th of July. I need to remain in the moment and not feel like this is going to get the best of me,” I said as I wrapped my arms around his waist and gave a light flicker with my fingers along the length of him through his pants.
“You make it difficult to remain mad at you for any length of time, Willa. You are frustrating, and I don’t think I would ever want you to change for me. The one thing I know about you is you are an honorable woman, and if you need some time, then I see no reason why not to give it to you. All I ask of you is to be careful and don’t do anything that is goi
ng to get you into trouble. You are resilient, strong and tough beyond words and that scares me,” Tristan said as he disappeared behind the bookcase, just as the guard came in to check on me.
“I wanted to make sure you didn’t need anything. I’ll be right out here. There is nothing to worry about, and nobody’s going to get to you unless they go through me. I can give you some peace of mind telling you my experience is much classified. My mission reports are redacted, and they show very little of what I’m capable of. When they want something done, they usually call my team and me. I like to think I took what I have learned and brought it successfully into the private sector,” he said as he looked at me and gave a brief nod before leaving the same way he had come.
I knew the reason why he had stopped in. There was no doubt in my mind he had called Leslie, and she wanted him to snoop around to see if I had found anything of use. I didn’t have a whole lot of time. She would be coming through that door at any moment claiming she wanted to help but still be close enough so that I wouldn’t be able to hide anything from her. This woman had layers. Just when I thought I knew her, there was something lurking underneath I was unaware of.
I felt like I was back in that game of clue where we had to figure out who did it, in what room, and using what weapon. That was my first taste of investigative work, and I was quite taken with mysteries which had no reasonable solution. There were times I had uncovered certain things my neighborhood didn’t want everybody to know about. There was an actual secret sex club in the basement of one of my neighbors. They looked innocence and pure on the outside. The photos I had taken and shown to my parents gave them a moment of stunned silence. They spoke candidly with my neighbor, and it wasn’t long after that they vacated the area. I think they were ashamed, but they had no reason to be. Whatever they did was their business, and my nose shouldn’t have been butting in where it didn’t belong.
I started my search, closing my eyes and then opened them to envision what might have been out of place or missing. I went through the room, and I still couldn’t find what was nagging at my conscience. I did a second time from a different perspective starting at the other end of the room, working my way over to the corner where I began my first search.
I saw what I was missing. The Persian rug with the colorful design was an artifact that cost millions of dollars. It was slightly askew, but not in a way that would be noticed by most. It came to my attention the cabinet with the mirror on the wall was the culprit.
It had been recently moved, but there were no scratch marks in the wood grain of the floor to indicate it had been pulled with force. I took hold of it, and I moved it with the gentle grace of a Siberian tiger. It was on wheels, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at it. There was nothing but the flat of the wall. I wound my fingers down along the surface looking for anything that would trip some kind of trap or open some sort of door.
I smiled as I heard the click and a piece of the wall folded in. There was only a square of maybe a foot in diameter in each way. I didn’t have a flashlight, so I had to go by feel alone. I reached in, and I moved my hand around in the small space until I grabbed onto something that was small, like a pair of car keys. I brought it out into the open, and I knew immediately it was some kind of encryption key. It was exactly what was needed to unlock his computer. I wasn’t sure if I should tell anybody about this, but the one person I could trust was Tristan. Everybody else was suspect, and even Leslie gave me a certain amount of apprehension to give her any information at all.
I pressed on that same spot on the wall, and it closed becoming seamless as if it wasn’t even there to begin with. I pushed the cabinet back into place, and I understood why it was so easy to move. There was some kind of lever someplace in this office he had used to make the wheels pop up. Without it; this thing weighed a ton. He must have been distracted long enough to not notice he didn’t put it back into the same place.
I had to put my weight behind it, but it finally clicked and the wheels disengaged, so the whole weight of that thing was keeping the very secret out of the wrong hands. He might have been paranoid, but maybe having people coming after him like this gave him a reason to. It was evident he didn’t trust anybody and that included Leslie for some reason.
“I was informed you were in here. I didn’t think there were any secrets between us. I told you everything I know, and I expect the same courtesy in return. It doesn’t make sense we would be working at cross purposes,” Leslie said as she stared through the door with the guard skulking in behind her.
“I’ve been over this place twice, and I still don’t know what I’m looking for. I just felt that if he was going to leave something, it would be in here where it is considered to be his private sanctuary. He got very cross with both Tristan for being in here and me. I’m not sure, but I think the bullet coming through the window was an anomaly. I don’t believe he had anything to do with it, but he wasn’t about to admit somebody had played him for a fool,” I said as I palmed the encryption key, keeping it away from her eyes and not feeling like it was a good idea to mention it.
“This is the one place he has never allowed anybody. It’s no wonder he got a little upset by your interference into his private business. I could give you a hand, but I have no idea what I would be looking for. It could be as simple as knowing it when I see it. I just got word the authorities are coming here. We need to be prepared to leave,” Leslie said as I walked out with her, but I made one last look towards the bookcase where I had last seen Tristan.
“I’m not sure how we are ever going to get into that computer. It might be just easier to put in the two incorrect passwords and then allow the evidence to be destroyed,” I said as I got this idea that maybe Spencer had arranged for the evidence to fall into the right hands.
“That is discouraging news, but not unexpected. You know he hasn’t been in his right mind. If we are to put in those two codes and fail, then we have no idea what will happen. Everything has an equal and opposite reaction. I don’t know what he was up to, but I can’t take the chance he was not thinking clearly. There’s no telling where his mind was when he found the evidence against the person who was doing this,” Leslie said as I realized she was thinking the same way I was.
“I don’t know what to tell you. My father was crafty, manipulative, and he really did know how to cover his tracks. I want nothing more than to live up to his high standards. He would have a real good laugh at our expense for running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Chasing our tail is getting us nowhere,” I said hoping she wasn’t going to see I was less than truthful.
“I’m going to put you in front of that computer. It won’t be any more than a few hours before we have to leave,” Leslie said trying her best to feed me some nonsense about doing the right thing.
“I don’t think I’m in any shape to do any more work. I will soldier on for my father,” I said with her and the guard standing close by like he was waiting for the order to snap my neck.
“I know in my heart you are close to the answer. I want you to know your efforts are appreciated. Even if we don’t find what we’re looking for, then we will leave here and never look back. I can’t abandon everything he has built without a damn good reason. As his only living heir, you have a responsibility to make this dream into something more than he made it. I will personally understand if you don’t want anything to do with it and your father. He’s never given you a reason to think he ever had room for you in his life,” Leslie said doing everything she could to make me look at my father like he was nothing more than a one night stand for my mother.
“You are expecting way too much from me. I don’t know what gave you the idea I was some master at the computer. I can barely pay my bills and use it to surf, let alone go hacking for evidence which may or may not exist. I wish I had better news, but it would appear we both wasted our time,” I said looking at her, trying my best not to crack under the pressure of her unnerving steel-like eyes.
&n
bsp; “I won’t believe that. I won’t give up, and I will exhaust every method before we are given no choice but to leave this place. I should have known better than to put you into this position. It wasn’t fair, and I was asking you to think like somebody you didn’t even know existed until you came here. It was wrong, and I see I have been making your life miserable. I honestly thought you would be able to see through him,” Leslie said as she led me back to the room which made me feel like I was going to be a prisoner for centuries of lonely nights.
The one thing missing was the perfect man with a smile who could melt a million hearts. I wanted him to love me the right way. He left me with a lasting impression which had me starving for more.
My heart was damaged, but I felt the healing hands of Tristan bringing it back to what it once was. We had wasted too much time. Secrets had a funny way of ruining relationships. He just disappeared after high school, and I still didn’t know if I would ever forgive him for that.
“I will have somebody retrieve you for evacuation. In the meantime, stay in here and don’t come out for any reason. They will come to collect you. We will have to move your father in his delicate condition. I don’t want to have to do that. It could be detrimental to his health. It’s not all bad news. His fortune is still intact, and I have his undying wish I use a part of it. $1,000,000 might sound like a lot of money, but it’s nothing but a drop in the bucket to this man. He’s not dead, but he can’t act on his own which gives me control of his will and final testament. I’ve made concessions to give you a sizable income for your assistance in getting the evidence that will bring the person responsible to justice,” Leslie said as if money meant anything to me.
