“Right, right,” I said. The passing cars and passersby seemed a blur in my periphery because all I could see was Hanna. I grinned at her smiling face and tugged her along as we walked to my penthouse. “I’m just a means to an end? How much longer do I have with you, then?” We hadn’t talked about the anthropology job at the Smithsonian in ages, and I had assumed she had made the decision not to go.
“Well, they’ve given me at least a year to think about whether or not I want the job.”
“Are you going to take it?” A part of me wanted her to say yes. It would save me the hassle of being the one to break us up. It was a great career opportunity for Hanna, and she would probably like the job once she got into it. It made me feel good that she had no unrealistic plans for a future together. But a part of me wanted her to say she’d stay in New York with me. There came a point in life when it seemed too many people said too many goodbyes. The feeling instantly made me think of Lynn and how she had almost come to New York with me before changing her mind. Banishing the thought, I held Hanna’s hand tighter. She wasn’t Lynn, and she had a right to choose her career. There was no such thing as forever together.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. Can’t we just be happy for now?”
It sounded like a good idea to me. I took her up to my place. The interior looked exactly as it always did. I hadn’t stayed there since moving to the country, but everything was in place. The maid service I used made sure that the sheets stayed fresh and the rooms were airy.
Hanna and I ordered delivery and ate Thai by candlelight before taking a bath together. While the water was still running, I positioned Hanna in the deep-basined tub with her feet up and her thighs spread to let the rushing water splash against her clit.
“This is different,” she said. I sat in the tub behind her to let her recline against my naked body. Arching her back like a sleek cat stretching, she moaned and her thighs parted wider. She clutched my hands as I put them to the side of the tub, chuckling at her response.
“You’ve never done this before?” In response, she cried out in pleasure. I reached down to her sexy pussy lips to tease. Using the pads of my fingertips, I held her open with her clit exposed. The lukewarm water pounded her to climax within five minutes.
“How did you do that?” she asked in surprise.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” I said, smiling. Pleasing women was my specialty.
She turned around and repositioned herself astraddle my hips as the rising water sluiced over our legs, and she pushed me inside of her body. She was wet in a different way there, a silky hotness that reminded me of rain forests or a lush oasis. The faucet sounded like a waterfall, and the bathroom echoed with her song of ecstasy. As she rose and fell against me, I couldn’t help feeling like I was getting addicted to her touch. Each time we had sex, it was better than the last.
I had asked her how long I had left with her, but I knew that the question was really up to me…and if I had a choice, we could do this until we both got tired. By the look in her eyes she wouldn’t anytime soon and, judging by the level of my lust for her, I had a while left in me.
She moaned my name and whimpered, “I love—”
But I put my hand to her lips and shook my head once in warning. As I felt her body melting in sudden release, with my lips pressed to her ear, I said, “Don’t…don’t fuck this up.”
CHAPTER 3
“Remember, I didn’t tell him your name because I didn’t want to mention it just in case he’s hiding something,” said Gervais. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. I hadn’t even considered the private investigator might have something to hide from me, but what my assistant said made sense.
I glanced at the security monitor, seeing the man’s car pull up in front of my house. “Anthony Crowder. We meet again,” I murmured to myself.
He was shown into the house and brought up to my office by Gervais. I sat at my desk waiting to see the expression on his face when he realized I was the person he was coming to meet. That would tell me all I needed to know. As the door swung inward and he walked across the threshold, the loud, laughter-filled conversation he had been having with Gervais in the hall came to an abrupt end. He looked from me to Gervais, and I looked to my assistant as well.
“Thank you, Gervais. He’s exactly the man I was looking to find. Anthony Crowder?” I put my fingers together in a tent on top of my desk.
The man stammered, “D-do I know you? I never forget a face.” He chuckled nervously and cleared his throat. He was an overweight guy with a balding head and a heavily whiskered face. He was dressed in a stained blue shirt and shapeless trousers that ballooned out from his hips unbecomingly. He moved across my office and extended a hand to shake mine, and I could see his fingernails looked dingy. He didn’t quite look as I remembered him. The man I’d met years ago may not have been top of the line, but he certainly hadn’t seemed shabby. I politely shook his hand, and then I surreptitiously reached in my desk for a wipe to disinfect.
“We met a few years ago, actually,” I said. “I was trying to locate my mother. You told me you could help me out, took a nice chunk of change from me. Then you reported you’d run out of leads.”
“Uh-huh,” said the man. He worried with his tongue at a loose tooth on the bottom row, and he looked like he was trying to place the case. “I seem to recall it, yeah. It happens like that sometimes.”
Gervais moved around to stand next to me with his arms crossed and his face firmly set. “We need to know what, if anything, you did come up with. Notes, stuff like that. Do you retain case files?”
“Sir, if I woulda known you was looking for something old, I coulda saved you the expense of me coming all the way up here.” He looked around at my nicely appointed office like he was scoping out the place, and my lips turned down at the corners.
“Just answer the question,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Off the top of my head, I think what happened was the trail just went cold.”
I picked up a letter opener and fiddled with it while I listened to him spin me a tale about how he’d located my mother and her husband someplace down in Florida but lost track of them. Something about the yarn didn’t ring true. It could’ve been that this guy Anthony just wasn’t a great private investigator. To my younger eyes, he had seemed legit, but now that I was older and more experienced with matters of business, it was glaringly obvious that Anthony Crowder was the bottom of the barrel. “Basically, you’re a piece-of-shit investigator,” I drawled lazily. I glanced over at Gervais, who nodded.
Turning my eyes back to Anthony, I caught a flash of anger. “Now, that’s not true, begging your pardon. I’ve been a private investigator for eighteen years. I started out as a cop and went back to school to get training. I got college-level certification. I’ve solved my share of cold cases, even. With all due respect, sir, maybe your folks just don’t want to be found.”
He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. I cocked my head to the side and examined him, still feeling like he was holding something back. “Is that what they told you?”
His shifty eyes dropped to the floor and I nodded to myself.
Gervais leaned over and whispered something in my ear. I picked up my phone and hit a button as I kept my steely gaze trained on Anthony Crowder, who was squirming in his seat and looking around nervously. “Rodger, we’re ready for you.”
“Well, sir? Is that all? ’Cause I got other clients I gotta—”
“Just a while longer, Anthony. I have some business associates joining us.”
The door to my office opened again and in walked my head of security, Rodger. He looked like a pro wrestler, with big, bulky shoulders and rippling muscles that seemed too massive to have come naturally. Anthony’s balding head tried to retract back into his hunched shoulders as he looked up at the burly security guard. Rodger’s brow was furrowed and he scowled down at Anthony.
“You got something I need to take c
are of, boss?” He smashed his fist into the palm of his other hand and cracked his knuckles menacingly. We had rehearsed exactly how this was about to play out.
Two other security guards positioned themselves behind Anthony’s chair. One had a metal baseball bat that he tapped against the leg of the chair. The other had a roll of duct tape dangling from his fingers. Rodger flexed his back in a show of power and turned his eyes to Anthony as I informed him, “This gentleman seems to think I have time to waste, and I don’t. Could you remind him how short life is?”
“My pleasure,” Rodger growled.
He picked up the entire chair with Anthony in it. It was impressive even to me. Anthony started sputtering and wailing, and Gervais’ eyes grew big as saucers as Rodger expertly lifted the man up to about the level of his meaty chest before dumping Anthony out of the chair and onto the floor. The fat man landed with a dull thud and loudly sobbed, begged, and pleaded for us not to hurt him. I tucked my hand against my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
Rodger chuckled gleefully. “If you don’t start talking, you little shit, this is gonna be your back.”
The security guard with the baseball bat whacked the bat as hard as he could against the back of the chair Anthony had been sitting in, and the spindly frame splintered in a shower of wood chips and dust.
Anthony cried out, “Oh, please, please, please! I’ll tell you anything! Anything!”
“I want the truth,” I replied.
“I’ll tell you the truth! Just please don’t let them kill me.”
Rodger grinned. “Don’t worry. We won’t kill you, just paralyze you. You might even still be able to work…from a wheelchair…with one of those little joysticks for your hands.” Rodger held back and looked to me for direction. I wanted to make sure the point was driven home completely. Rodger nodded to the security guard, who gave the chair another hard whomp. Rodger chuckled. “That’ll be your hands. Guess somebody will have to push your ass around.”
Anthony’s sniveling sobs were enough to make me call off my goons. I waved them away, and they took up positions just outside the door so Anthony could see they weren’t far.
“I am so sorry about that,” I said brightly. “Looks like you need a new chair. Gervais, please?”
My assistant pushed over an actual chair I owned and not the prop chair we had purchased specifically to demolish. He helped Anthony up from the floor and pushed him down into the new chair. Anthony’s eyes were red-rimmed, and snot bubbled from his nose. I glanced away in distaste.
“Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Did they tell you they didn’t want to be found?” I asked again.
Anthony started singing like a blue jay. “It was Darien. He found out you were looking for them and contacted me. H-he made me an offer. Look, I didn’t want to do it. I don’t usually double-cross people, but I really needed the money!”
I snorted in disbelief. “What’d he give you?”
“H-he, he promised me a cut on a small deal he was working on if I told you I couldn’t find them. He told me to meet him Florida and-and that you would foot the bill to fly me out, which you did, sir. And I was very grateful for that. I took my ex-girlfriend, and she had a wonderful time.”
“Stick to the subject, you insufferable miscreant,” Gervais ordered. I raised a brow at him. He played the hardass oh so well.
“Continue, Anthony.” I waved him along. I needed to get to the part where he told me where my mother might be.
“We met up in Miami on the beach and I got the impression they were staying nearby, ’cause he walked up to the beach, you know? So, anyway, he tells me I can get a whole lot of easy money just by throwing you off the trail. He made me call you right then and there, so I did. I called you and told you the trail had run cold. He said the money would be wired to my account in three business days, which I knew sounded kinda fishy, but what could I do, you know?”
“You could have done the right thing.”
“True, I was! I figured if he shafted me I’d just come back to you and tell you what I knew. So, three days pass and I get home, and sure enough my money’s in the bank, all ten thousand of it. But, uh, then I get a visit from the cops telling me I’m involved in some kind of money-laundering shit and they got the wire transfers to prove it. I spent two years in jail behind that son of a bitch, Darien Griess! You know, your dad is a real piece of work.”
“Stepdad,” I ground out.
“Yeah, well. That’s all of it. Look, I woulda gotten back in touch with you sooner, but I was in jail, you know? What could I do?”
I nodded tiredly and rubbed my temples to ease the tension headache that was building. It sounded like typical Griess behavior. I dismissed the sniveling PI, and Gervais kicked him off my property. At least we had one bit of news that might help. Darien Griess and most likely my mother had last been in Miami, Florida, approximately three years ago. It was a start.
“What next?” asked Gervais, dusting off his hands as he breezed back into my office. He looked far too happy with himself, and I grinned.
“You like shit like this, don’t you?”
“Admittedly, I find it exciting. Certainly more exciting than spreadsheets and purchase requisitions.”
My assistant took the chair Anthony had vacated, and he crossed his ankle over his knee. His ever-ready tablet was on his lap, and he stared at me in contemplation. I steepled my fingers, leaning across my desk. “I wonder what sort of criminal activity Griess was into that he would threaten a private investigator to keep me away.”
“You’d know better than me. No offense, but this Griess character sounds like a real piece of work. Are you sure your mother is safe with him?”
“Trust me, Sissy can fend for herself. They’re kindred spirits. He’s manipulative and bullish, and she’s submissive and sneaky, but they work together to achieve whatever Griess wants. They were in Miami. At least I know she’s not dead. Now, do you feel like I’ve played the good son and dug deeply enough?” My tone was harsh. I popped my knuckles and glanced away.
Gervais looked taken aback. “Sir, I’m just trying to help.”
“I know. I know you are, Gervais. I just—” I sighed. “I don’t want to worry about my mother right now. That might sound coldhearted, but you don’t understand what it was like…what they did to me. As long as I know she’s well, that’s enough. Let’s move on to other business.”
“Of course, sir. Lamont wants to see you.”
“That’s right. I forgot to call him back. Can you set up a media relations meeting next week?”
“Already done, and I have the Briarwood account files you requested. They’ve been—”
“What if she called because she was in trouble? Where did she call from? It doesn’t make any sense. If she was trying to get money out of me, she would’ve kept trying. Something doesn’t feel right.”
“I could run the number. Give you a handle on where she was calling from.”
I gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Oh, Sissy. True to form, you wait until I’m happy to step in and throw me off balance.” I sighed in frustration and okayed Gervais to contact the phone company. Part of me didn’t want to press any further, but part of me insisted I resolve my fears. If something happened/had happened to my mother, I would never forgive myself for not working hard enough to find her. At the same time, it was honestly the worst point in my life for my mother to reappear.
Business was booming, my love life was near perfect. Things could only go downhill.
CHAPTER 4
New York was bracing, brash, and loud after the Rhinebeck countryside, but it was what I needed, a distraction. Hanna and I had spent the night at my penthouse, and I left her sleeping in my bed. It was six in the morning when I stepped outside. Slushy, muddy snow covered the ground but golden morning sunlight washed over my smiling face. The grimy street smells, pungent food smells—that was the New York I knew.
The blare of horns and drivers swearing at other drivers and the sound o
f construction work as I got deeper into the metropolis sounded like home. The snarled traffic actually elevated my mood, as I moved through the tangled city in my Aston Martin, headed to Excelsis. I made it through the barrage of taxis and vehicles and coasted into the garage at the steel and glass Excelsis building.
I skipped the lobby and made it to my office by way of a circuitous route of back corridors. I shook my cell phone out of my pocket as I briskly walked the hall. “Are they here? Traffic was a bitch.”
“I put them in your conference room,” replied Gervais.
“Good morning, Mr. Foster,” my receptionist at the front desk of my suite said.
“Tell them I’ll be there in five minutes, Gervais. Good morning, Gina.”
I put the phone back into my pocket and stepped through the heavy doors of my office. The wall of windows displayed the city skyline, and I inhaled in pleasure. Working from the estate had its perks, but there was nothing like getting out of the house. I took a minute to sink into CEO mode before strolling to the conference room, where I was about to meet with my media relations team.
Gina or Gervais had left coffee for me on my desk. Sipping the steamy brew, I glanced at the stack of messages for the morning. When I felt like I’d kept Lamont waiting long enough, I straightened my suit and tie and ambled to the conference room annexed to my office.
“Gentlemen,” I greeted, arms wide and a smile on my face. “Thanks to you guys, the public thinks I’m a saint, even though they were ready to crucify me a month or two ago.”
“Mr. Foster, you leave it to us, and they’ll be thinking you’re a god,” boasted Lamont. He vigorously shook my hand, and I took my chair next to Gervais.
“What we got?” I asked. “Interviews? More television time? You know how I feel about television time.”
Lamont chuckled nervously. “That fiasco with that journalist was taken care of. From now on, nobody breaks with the questions submitted to us, and you worked with our coach, right? You know you don’t answer anything like that in the future. Smooth ‘no comment’ answer and keep going.”
Dane - Book 2: A Foster Family Saga Page 3
