by Beverly Long
JC turned to say goodbye to Wayne but he held up a finger in her direction as he finished his conversation with the last audience member. When the young woman walked away, Wayne turned to her. “Do you have a minute, JC? I’d like to talk to you about some feedback I’ve gotten from our folks on the ground in Africa.”
“Of course.”
“Good. Let me gather up my papers and then can we walk and talk? I’ve got to catch a cab to an off-site meeting.”
“Of course. Ready for the big awards ceremony?” Wayne was this year’s emcee. She suspected that he might have had something to do with her invitation to deliver the keynote speech, but when she’d accused him of that, he’d declined to take responsibility.
“For sure. I am glad that they’re doing a practice run-through in the morning. Did you get the email about that?”
She had. She would have to share that detail with Royce since it hadn’t been on the original schedule. “I know. I’m always petrified that the audio or visual won’t be working right and I’ll have to fill time. I can’t sing and I’ve never been that great at telling jokes.”
“I can do puppet shows with socks,” he said, picking up his briefcase.
That accent and a sock could probably fill fifteen minutes. “Great. Give me just a quick second,” she said. She stepped off the stage and walked toward Royce. “I’m going to walk Wayne to the cabstand. He needs to talk to me.”
“Did you bring a phone book?”
She smiled. “Funny. Admit it—aren’t you half enamored with him after just listening to this presentation?”
“Absolutely,” he said with a straight face. “I’ll try to control myself, though. Let’s go.”
She led the way back to Wayne. “This is Royce Morgan, an old friend. He’s going to tag along with us.”
“No problem,” Wayne said easily, but it seemed as if his look in Royce’s direction lasted just a second too long. She searched her memory for any possibility that she might have mentioned Royce to her old boss all those years ago. But came up empty. He had not been at that ill-fated awards dinner, but perhaps he’d heard something about it afterward.
They exited the room and walked down the corridor. It wasn’t jammed but there were still a number of people juggling phones and coffee cups, hurrying toward their next session. She walked with Wayne on one side, Royce on the other. Occasionally they had to veer to dodge other people and she and Wayne would separate and merge back together. Royce, however, stuck to her like glue.
They went through a set of double doors and had just stepped into the large lobby of the conference center when she heard a man shout, from the level above them, “Hey, what are you doing?”
Chapter 13
Royce grabbed Jules’s arm and pulled her close.
A second later, a glass bottle landed at her feet, and glass shattered all around them. People started screaming.
If he had not pulled Jules up short, the bottle likely would have hit her in the head. From that distance, it would have had a hell of a bite to it.
When he’d heard the shout, he’d turned, looked up and scanned the upper level, looking for the threat. And he’d caught a glimpse of the man right before he’d tossed the bottle. Dark hair, dark jacket. Medium build.
He turned to Jules, gave her one more look to make sure she was okay. He wanted to grab her and hold her tight but all he said was, “Stay here.”
He was going to have to trust Wayne Isman. He turned his attention to the man. “Don’t leave her. Do not leave this spot.”
He waited just long enough for the man to nod before starting to run toward the stairs. He took the steps two at a time, pushing his way around startled people. When he got to the second floor, he stopped and looked both directions.
“If you’re looking for the guy throwing stuff, he went through there.” A young man, still near the railing, pointed toward an exit sign.
It matched the voice that had called out the initial warning. Royce nodded his thanks and took off. The doors led to a second-story breezeway that crossed between the convention center and the hotel. He’d studied the schematics very carefully last night. He knew exactly where it led.
The corridor was empty. He ran down the length of it, tore open the door into the hotel and looked down another heavily carpeted corridor.
No sign of the man. Damn it. He wanted to tear the hotel apart room by room, but knew that was a stupid idea. He needed to get back to Jules, get her safely to her room.
He ran back into the conference center and then down the stairs. He saw Wayne first and realized that the two of them had moved to one of the wooden benches that lined the walls. Wayne was standing and Jules was sitting. She was composed but he could see the stiff set to her shoulders, knew that trauma was cumulative and that her shell was probably wearing thin.
“Did you catch him?” Jules asked as he approached.
He shook his head. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I told Wayne just a bit of what’s been happening,” she said.
“Those letters sound damn scary,” Wayne said. “I’m glad that JC has hired security. You need to catch these bastards.”
Royce nodded. “Let’s get back to the room. Then I’ll contact management here. There are multiple cameras in all the corridors. I’m confident they’ll have picked up something helpful.”
“Be safe,” Wayne said, reaching for Jules’s hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Absolutely. Sorry for the dramatics,” Jules added.
“Of course.” Wayne waved her comment aside. “But I have to admit, it does seem like a rather inefficient way to hurt somebody.”
The man was right. And Royce could see that Jules had already been thinking the same thing. If it was the same person as before, why not use the gun again? A shot to the back of the head would have been much more efficient.
The idea made him want to vomit, but it had to be examined. Throwing a bottle was...well, the only word he could come up with was juvenile. And based on his quick look at the attacker and how fast he’d escaped, he thought he was probably in his twenties or thirties but certainly not a kid.
“Nobody ever said the bad guy had to be smart,” Royce said, dismissing the comment. He’d had to trust Wayne to stay with Jules when there was a chance of catching the attacker. But now, he certainly wasn’t going to share his thoughts about the case. He’d save that for a discussion with his partners.
As Wayne got into a cab, Royce hurried Jules across the lobby, constantly checking their six. Nobody was following them. As they passed one of the people handing out water and dark chocolate, he held out his hand and quickly accepted two pieces of the candy.
When they were in the elevator headed toward the fourteenth floor, he stood in front of Jules. But the elevator made no other stops and soon they were standing in front of their door.
He did a quick sweep on the suite once they were inside but it seemed fine. Charity was not there.
“Did you see Charity at the session?” Jules asked, as if she’d read his mind.
“Yes.” It had surprised the hell out of him. And he didn’t like to be surprised. He didn’t yet know what her game was, but he was determined to figure it out. If she was any kind of threat to Jules, then he didn’t care how good of friends their mothers had been.
“She slipped out the back at the very end.”
He’d seen that.
“I wonder where she is now,” Jules added, looking around the quiet suite.
He didn’t know or care. He handed her both pieces of dark chocolate.
“Don’t you want one?” she asked.
She was too pale still. “Nope. Enjoy. Look, I’ve got to make some phone calls.” He intended to contact Detective Mannis and bring him up to date. The man could request security v
ideos.
“Will you keep me apprised?” Jules asked.
“Of course.”
“Do you think this was an attack directed at me?”
“I don’t know. Your old boss was right. Throwing a bottle at someone seems like a crime of opportunity versus a planned attack.”
“Is it possible that my remarks might have upset someone?”
He’d already considered that. One of the reasons he wanted facility security video was that he needed to see if the bottle thrower wore a conference badge. And whether they could place him inside the session. “Your remarks weren’t controversial. Hard to argue that the drug companies have a role in preventing physicians from overprescribing antibiotics.”
She nodded. “Lots of crazies out there, though,” she said, her tone thoughtful.
She was right about that. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got one more event here, right? We’ll beef up the security for it. For large jobs, we’ve got a relationship with another agency in Vegas. I’m going to contact them and get more resources. I’d rather have my partners there, but this will work.”
“Tell me about your partners,” she said.
He was confident that she’d likely read the public bios on the website. The very discreet sanitized version of the group’s skill sets.
“We met in basic training.”
“So all four of you were in the air force?”
“Yes.”
“And you became friends and ultimately business partners?”
“It could have gone another direction. I liked Trey Riker immediately, couldn’t figure Rico Metez out and thought Seth Pike was a jerk.”
She smiled. “And now?”
“I’d trust them with my life. Have done that on numerous occasions and I’m still here to talk about it. Trey is supersmart and mechanically inclined, so we joke that we can give him an empty tin can, a ball of string and a box of matches and he can come back with a version of a 727 that flies.”
“I doubt that,” she said.
“Okay. I’m exaggerating a little but he’s amazing.”
“And Rico, why couldn’t you figure him out?”
“He was really secretive about his background. It took years for me to find out that Rico grew up in the mountains—his parents were fruit growers in Colorado. Not a lot of money in peaches. But Rico made his first million before he was twenty-two in the stock market. He actually reads all those prospectus statements that everyone else immediately throws away. Not sure when he achieved his second or third million because he’s never going to say. He’s got a ton of money but still fights for the underdog. Most of the pro bono work that our firm does comes through him.”
“But you didn’t like your fourth partner?”
“Like I said, I thought Seth Pike was a jerk. He seemed to be looking for a fight, and in the early days of boot camp, we mixed it up a few times. But he’s dog-loyal on steroids. Once he decides that he likes you, you’ve got a friend for life and he’ll take a bite out of anyone’s hind end to help you.”
“It will be nice to meet them,” she said.
He stared at her. “When I took this job, I didn’t tell Trey that I knew you, that we’d...dated.”
She didn’t blink. “Why not?”
“Because I was afraid that he’d tell me to turn down the job, that I shouldn’t take it if I couldn’t be objective.”
“Can you be objective?” she asked, her voice a mere whisper.
Hell no. “I can do what needs to be done,” he said. His heart was thudding in his chest.
She didn’t say anything for a long minute. Finally she stood. “Of course. I have work to do.” She walked out of the room.
Royce wanted to put his fist through something. He wanted to tell her the truth. That five minutes after seeing her again his objectivity had gone out the window. He could not bear it if she was hurt.
I can do what needs to be done.
She better hope that was true. The shooting had been poorly executed and the bottle-toss poorly planned. But the next time, the person could get lucky and Jules could be harmed.
And then what the hell would he do?
* * *
She wasn’t sure what to do.
About the threats. About Charity. About Royce.
For a woman who made rapid-fire decisions, she was becoming amazingly indecisive. It didn’t feel good.
The letters were the most tangible threats. They had come to her, with her name and address on the envelope. But the almost hit-and-run the other night, the bullet that may or may not have been aimed at her and now a bottle tossed from above were harder to get her arms around. Was someone trying to hurt her? Scare her? Drive her crazy?
Well, they were winning on the third option. For sure.
And then there was Charity. Her coming to the session had been surprising and a little disconcerting. And the fact that she’d seemed to be interested had been sort of cool. It would be neat to share her professional life with her sister.
Sister.
Her secret. She hadn’t told Charity or Royce and definitely not her father. But that was going to have to change soon. Charity deserved to know the truth. Of course, there was the possibility that her mother had been wrong. Lara Cambridge believed that Joel Cambridge had slept around and fathered another child. According to her diary, she’d had good reason to. But perhaps it was all a lie, for some crazy unknown reason, and Charity was no more sister than the woman at the front desk of the hotel.
But JC didn’t think so. There was something very familiar about Charity, something that told her that her mother had been right.
Was it even possible that Eileen Wood knew something about her father’s affair with Linette White? Knew something about Charity? What else would have caused the woman to stare at Charity with such unmasked venom in her eyes? And was it a coincidence that Charity and Eileen had both departed rather quickly from the session? Was it as simple as Charity had gotten bored and Eileen hadn’t felt well? Or was it something much more complicated?
There were too many unknowns here. She ran a company where science was the bedrock of what they did. When all else failed, she knew to trust the science.
A DNA test would confirm the suspicions. Ultimately, that would have to occur.
Then Pandora’s box would be opened and the lid would likely never fit tightly again. That knowledge was causing her to have stomach pains and interrupted sleep. Her inability to leave it alone, to simply ignore what had been in her mother’s diary, was the equivalent of letting the horses out of the barn.
She wasn’t getting them back in again.
Her father, if her mother had been right, was going to be furious with her. Could she make him understand why she’d done this? Why it had been so important? Or would he simply be terribly angry that she’d gone behind his back rather than coming to him?
And what would Charity do with her newfound knowledge? Would she be grateful to finally know the truth or would she be so angry that her existence and birthright had been denied that she wouldn’t want anything to do with JC?
And Royce? Had fate brought them together again for a reason? He was different but yet she sensed that he was still very much the man she’d fallen in love with.
She heard the suite door open and Charity greet Royce. Soon, she needed to find the right time to tell Charity the truth. And they would simply have to deal with the fallout.
She opened her door just as Charity flopped down on the couch. “Hi,” said JC. “I heard the door.”
“Have you had lunch?” Charity asked. She reached down to pick up Hogi, who had raced from wherever he was hiding to greet her.
“Uh...no. We haven’t.”
“I thought maybe we could have lunch together,” Charity said. “Just
the two of us.”
Royce was never going to go for that. But maybe there was another way. “We can do that,” she said. “But I’d like to eat here.”
She turned to Royce. “You slept on the couch last night. That couldn’t have been all that comfortable. Maybe you could take a nap in my room and Charity and I could have this area.”
He stared at her. “That would probably work.”
“Great. Thanks.” She doubted Royce had any intention of napping, but she appreciated that he clearly understood that she was trying to find a compromise they could all live with. Charity wanted lunch. She wanted information. And Royce wanted to keep them all safe, behind locked doors.
She picked up the room service menu and handed it to Royce. “What would you like?”
“I’m not that hungry,” he said. “Go ahead and order. I’ll get the door when they knock.” He left the two women in the living area.
JC pivoted to face Charity. She handed her the menu. “How about you?”
The young woman stared at her. “I want what you had...” she said, then paused. “Yesterday,” she added.
The hair on JC’s arms rose. Had Charity’s word choice been intentional? Did she know more than she’d been letting on? Did she mean, I want what you had and what should have been mine? “The crab cakes?” JC asked, her voice too high.
Charity nodded. “Yeah, what did you think I meant?”
“Nothing,” JC said.
Charity sat on the couch and belched loudly. “Sorry,” she said, looking embarrassed. “Guinness always makes me burp the next day.” She started scrolling through her phone.
“Is that your drink of choice?”
Charity didn’t look up. “Not really, but you know, in Rome, you do what the Romans do. You want me to order or are you going to do it?”
“I got it.” JC picked up the phone and quickly gave the lunch order. Then she smiled at Charity. “I heard you come back in last night. It was late.”
“I met a friend. Lou.”
“I see,” JC said. “Someone that you and Bobby knew?”
