“I’m fine, but…”
“But what?”
“I’d like to stay with him as much as I can, but… we’ve got the new client interviews starting Tuesday, and we need to prep,” I said worriedly.
“I can handle it,” Anh said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m a partner in the firm. I can handle it.”
“Okay,” I laughed, which gradually transformed into a yawn.
“Maybe you should take a nap before you go back.”
“It did kind of suck, with the nurses coming in and out all night,” I conceded.
“So grab a nap.”
“But – ”
“Lily.”
“Yes, Mom.”
As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.
I slept a good three hours, woke up at noon, and hustled out the door with minimal makeup.
When I got back, Sebastian was in casual clothes and Johnny was wearing a new suit without a tie. Turns out that Sebastian copied me: he went back to the Dubai, showered, and changed. He brought back new clothes for Johnny, who just changed in the hospital room’s bathroom and was back out within 60 seconds.
“You can take a shower in there, you know,” Connor told him.
“Not necessary.”
“I don’t think anybody’s going to rush in and kill me during the three minutes you’re washing your hair.”
“Let’s not find out.”
“You’re going to be able to knock them out with your smell, you know that, right?”
“Good,” Johnny said, and stayed exactly where he was.
21
The cops came by shortly thereafter to question Connor. I watched them suspiciously the entire time, wondering which one might be getting paid off by Miranda.
Connor knew about as much as I did – which is to say, not much more than he’d been shot. He repeated the story several times, but nothing interesting surfaced until one of the cops asked, “Did you recognize the shooter?”
“No. Do you have any information on him?”
The cops looked at each other. “Not yet.”
“‘Not yet’? It’s not like he got away – you’ve got his goddamn corpse.”
“His prints aren’t in the FBI database, the federal prison system, or any of the state prison systems.”
“Of course not, somebody either hacked the system and wiped his record, or he’s from out of the country,” Connor snapped. “Have you tried Interpol yet?”
The cops looked at each other again. “Uh… that’s our next step. All that about somebody hacking the system or him being a foreigner – why did you say that?”
“Because the person behind this isn’t going to take any chances that he might get traced back to her. She probably used six or seven intermediaries just to hire and pay him.”
My heart skipped a beat. I wondered if I should mention my little run-in with Miranda last night – but Johnny gave me a look that convinced me not to.
“‘She’?” the cop asked. “You think a woman hired him to kill you?”
“Yes. My ex-fiancée, Miranda Lockwood.”
“What, as a crime of passion?”
“No, as a crime of business.”
The cops looked at each other. “Do you have any proof of that?”
Connor launched into a diatribe about the blackmail attempt from two months ago. He also talked about their previous relationship, although I didn’t hear anything he hadn’t already told me.
After five minutes, the cops finally interrupted. “But do you have any proof of her involvement in your shooting?”
Connor glared at them. He could see where this was going.
“Not yet,” he said in a sarcastic voice.
“‘Not yet’? What do you mean, ‘not – ’”
And then they realized he was just mimicking what they’d told him earlier.
One of the detectives grimaced. “Do you believe you’re going to get some kind of proof?”
“I’ll let you know when I do. If you don’t mind, I’m kind of tired.”
“Mr. Templeton, we still need you to – ”
Connor yawned theatrically, laid his head on his pillow, and closed his eyes.
When he didn’t answer any more of their questions, the two detectives started getting pissed.
“Come back tomorrow, I need to rest,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Johnny, will you show them out?”
Johnny was as polite but firm as he showed them the door.
22
As soon as the cops were gone, though, Connor’s eyes snapped open. “Where are we on the shooter?” he asked Sebastian.
“We already hit up our sources at Interpol,” Sebastian said. “They have no record of him, so we’re checking the EU criminal system and military databases.”
I stared at them. “You’ve been doing your own investigation?!”
“Of course, we’re not going to rely solely on the LAPD,” Sebastian scoffed.
Knowing what Miranda had said about her ‘little birds,’ that was probably a smart decision.
But I still didn’t understand exactly what was going on. “Who’s helping you?”
“A team of investigators we’ve used before. I called them last night and they got on it immediately,” Sebastian explained.
“They’re better than the cops?”
“They’re among the best in the world,” Sebastian said. “Former FBI, former Interpol, former military investigators – ”
“Plus, they don’t need warrants,” Johnny added.
“And they have a little more incentive than the cops,” Connor said. “Two million dollars if they can prove Miranda was behind it.”
My eyes bugged open wide. “Two million dollars?!”
“That’s just the bonus. They still get paid even if they can’t nail her down… which is probably going to be almost impossible to do, if I know her.”
Again, Sebastian’s words from last night haunted me: If Miranda IS behind it, we’ll never find one shred of evidence implicating her.
Sebastian went back to briefing Connor. “I’ve got forensic accountants searching for any shell corporations we can tie to Miranda, but we won’t be able to do much until we can positively ID the shooter.”
“He’s probably a ghost, hired specifically because he’s not on anybody’s records,” Connor fumed. “But keep trying. What about the inside man?”
“How do you know there was an inside man?” I asked.
“Because there’s no way in hell the shooter just stumbled across us in the hallway,” Connor said. “Either he hacked into the hotel’s security cameras, or – more likely – somebody tipped him off.”
“But he was already walking down the hallway,” I protested. “He couldn’t have known when we were going to be in the hallway unless he knew we were in the elevator.”
“So how did he know we were in the elevator?” Connor tested me.
“He couldn’t have. Not even Johnny knew we were coming out, and you said there were no cameras because…”
I hesitated and glanced at Johnny and Sebastian, who both kept a neutral expression.
“…um, because people like to have sex in there,” I mumbled. “And nobody knew we stopped the elevator – to talk,” I emphasized, for the benefit of Johnny and Sebastian. “Nobody except the… oh my God…”
My hand flew to my mouth.
Connor nodded. “The guy who spoke over the intercom.”
I remembered the voice clear as day:
Is everything alright, sir?… Understood. Call if you need maintenance.
“He’s part of it?!” I asked, astounded.
“I don’t know. Is he?” Connor asked Sebastian.
“Well, if he isn’t, he’s incredibly unlucky. Chad Harris, security systems supervisor last night, got off work at 2AM – two hours later than usual because of the shooting. I sent someone over to his apartment early this morning to talk to him, and they found him with
a bullet through his head.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
This isn’t happening.
Although apparently it was.
“Did they get all his information?” Connor asked Sebastian.
“Everything. Computer, bank registers, bills, every scrap of paper in the apartment. Whoever killed him took it all.”
“Damn it,” Connor muttered. “Cell phone?”
“Gone. We bought his phone records off one of those websites, and the team is combing through them, but if he used a cell to contact the shooter – ”
“It was probably a cheap, prepaid disposable,” Connor said glumly.
“Exactly. And he could have ditched that anywhere between the Dubai and his apartment.”
Connor’s grim visage suddenly brightened “The shooter must have had one, though – and he couldn’t have gotten rid of his.”
“We’re trying to find out, but LAPD won’t tell us what they logged into evidence.”
“I’ll bet Miranda knows,” Connor smirked.
My eyes bugged out.
Crap – Miranda has sources in the police department –
But how does Connor know that?
I looked at Sebastian and Johnny. “Do you tell him about – ”
Sebastian cut me off. “Obviously she knows they had cell phones if she hired them,” he said with a subtly raised eyebrow.
But Connor was smarter than that. “Tell me about what?” he asked as he glanced around at us.
Neither Johnny nor Sebastian looked very happy with me.
“Tell me about what?” Connor repeated.
I winced at Johnny and Sebastian. “Sorry…”
With their grudging permission, I started off with what Mr. Templeton had said in the lounge. I stressed the part where neither he nor Vincent nor Connor’s mother had known anything about the plot – and I tried to repeat his final words as closely as I could remember them.
Connor sat there listening with an expression halfway between thoughtful and cynical. “I’d like to believe that,” he said simply.
Then I told him about Miranda, and we played Sebastian’s voicemail for him.
The more Connor heard, the angrier he got.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” he demanded.
“Hellooooo, stoned out of your mind,” Sebastian said.
“Not for the last three hours, I wasn’t! And you told me everything else – ”
“We didn’t want you to get upset,” I said, trying to soothe him.
“Like you’re getting now,” Sebastian pointed out.
“I’m not upset,” Connor snapped.
“Riiiiight,” Sebastian muttered.
“But this means she’s got people on the inside of the LAPD!”
“Which is another reason why we have our own team,” Sebastian reminded him.
“You should have told me! She could have done something to Lily – ”
“Nothing happened,” I protested.
“But it could have.”
“But it didn’t,” I whispered, and rubbed his hand. “Why are you so freaked out?”
He looked at me, and suddenly his anger turned to helplessness. “I just… I feel like I failed… I couldn’t protect you…”
“From Miranda? Nothing happened.”
“No… in the hallway. When I…”
He trailed off into miserable silence.
I stared at him. “Connor, you saved my life.”
“But you could have been killed – ”
“You stepped between me and the gun!” I said, my voice rising. “You literally took a bullet for me – two of them!”
“I don’t think you can say I took a bullet for you when they were obviously meant for me,” he joked.
“It’s not funny!” I said, my voice cracking. “You saved my life! Stop acting like you didn’t do enough, because I sure as hell couldn’t save you!”
Then I broke down into tears.
His eyes grew wide in surprise. Then he leaned over, sat me down next to him on the bed, cradled my head against his shoulder, and caressed my hair.
“Shh,” he whispered into my ear. “Shh…”
“Stop acting like you didn’t do enough,” I said, wiping away my tears. “You saved my life.”
“And you saved mine,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
I just nestled against him closer and let him hold me.
“Did you hold anything else back from me?” he asked Sebastian.
“No.”
“Sebastian – ”
“NO.”
“Johnny?”
Johnny shook his head. “That was the last of what we know.”
Connor was silent for a moment, though he continued to stroke my hair.
“Double the reward,” he said darkly. “She’s never touching Lily again.”
“Connor – ” I protested, but he put his finger against my lips to quiet me.
“She’s never touching you again,” he whispered as he pulled me closer.
23
Despite the darkness surrounding that one conversation, the next two days passed pleasantly – almost like I was on one long, continuous, low-key date. Yes, we were in a hospital. Yes, Connor was confined to a bed. Yes, there was always a bodyguard ten feet away, and no, there wasn’t much more than a stolen kiss here and there. Connor was in too much pain for more than that, and Johnny was too paranoid to let him out of his sight.
But what we did have were hours upon hours together, trying to fill the time. We played a lot of cards – a lot of cards. Gin Rummy and Go Fish, mostly. After half a game, I forbade him to play Spit. Even though he was in a hospital bed with cracked ribs, he was so ultra-competitive that he wouldn’t stop slapping cards down as fast as he could – and he was too much of a macho idiot to admit he was in pain. I didn’t catch on until he started wincing, but as soon as I realized it, I put the kibosh on any card games relying on speed.
Mostly it was our talks that I remember. I laughed out loud at his stories about crazy shenanigans – like starting a bachelor party for one of his good friends in New York City, then waking up in Rome with only a hazy recollection of how he got there. (I’m sure there were women involved, but he judiciously edited that part out.) I almost cried about some of the things he’d seen on trips to Africa and India on behalf of the charities he helped. And I sat transfixed as he told me more about his childhood, from all the amazing experiences he’d had, to the thoughtless cruelties of his parents (cruelties he still, amazingly, regarded as ‘normal’).
I told him stories about me growing up – stories about my parents and my brother, stories about camping a week every year in the Smokey Mountains (and HATING it), stories about prom and bad boyfriends and all the stupid little things you might tell a man you were dating. Except that, instead of occurring over the course of months, it was all compressed into a couple of days. There was no physical intimacy, but the emotional intimacy between us grew by leaps and bounds. At the end of Sunday night, I felt like I knew him ten times better – and loved him twice as much.
The one thing we never talked about was our breakup two months before. He never mentioned it, and it was so painful – and I was enjoying our time together so much – that I never brought it up, either.
At some point Saturday evening, Sebastian – who was always on the phone – upbraided Connor about maybe doing a little work.
“I got shot,” Connor protested. “Best excuse for a vacation ever.”
“This is your idea of a vacation?” I asked. “You really need to rethink your leisure time.”
“That’s a good idea. Maybe you and I should go down to the Caribbean somewhere… lie on a deserted beach, and just drink lots of mojitos.” Then he added with a devilish grin, “…and have a lot of hot sex.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really.”
“Or go to a little village in Tuscany, way off the beaten path. Drink a lot of wine, eat a lot of amazing food… a
nd have a lot of hot sex.”
“I’m sensing a pattern here.”
“Yeah… alcohol is a common thread in a lot of our interactions,” he nodded somberly, as though it troubled him.
“Which leads to the all the hot sex you keep mentioning, right?”
“Lily, I’ve hesitated to mention it, but… you kind of seem obsessed with sex.”
I looked up from my cards and glared at him.
“Maybe you should get some professional help,” he continued with a straight face. “I’m sure they have an addiction specialist here – ”
I threw my cards at him.
“Don’t you mean an a-dick-tion specialist?” Johnny piped up with a grin.
I blushed and pointed a finger at Johnny. “YOU – do NOT encourage him.”
Connor tried to keep from laughing, but was failing badly. “I’d really like to know that you value me for something more than my body, Lily. I’m not just a piece of meat, you know – ”
At which point I threw the entire deck at him.
“Lily,” he said, barely able to contain his laughter, “sometimes I just need to cuddle – ”
At which point I started smacking him on the arm.
“Ow, ow – injured man here, injured man!” he roared with laughter.
24
After my impromptu round of 52 Pickup, I had to shuffle the cards all over again. As I dealt, he asked, “Remember our date in Santa Monica?”
“And all the hot sex?”
“I’m serious.”
I looked at him askance, and decided he was.
“Of course,” I smiled. “That was one of the best days of my life.”
“Mine, too,” he agreed as he arranged his cards. “What did you enjoy about it the most?”
I settled back in my chair and considered. “I think… that you got such a kick out of it. The fact that you got to be ‘normal.’ It was like seeing a little kid try ice cream or go to the circus for the first time. I loved that.”
A look of peace and contentment filled his face… and then he looked at me quizzically. “Is this what normal people do?”
“What?”
“Play cards and just… talk.”
All That He Loves (Volume 2 The Billionaires Seduction) Page 33
