‘Can you blame us? We’re busting our asses to do whatever is needed to get Ryder home safe and you’re swanning around in hotels and going to the opera. It’s like you couldn’t care less. He could be dead out there!’
‘He’s not dead,’ Lacie said, shaking her head so fast that she shook her tears loose. ‘He’s not dead.’
‘It seems like you wouldn’t care if he was.’
‘I do! I do care! Keeping him alive is all that matters to me!’
‘You have to face it Lacie, face the truth that he could be dead. I need you to face it.’
‘He’s not,’ Lacie shouted, wrenching her arms away from Sorcha. ‘He is not dead!’
‘You can’t possibly know that, none of us can.’
‘I can!’ The quiver in her voice came before her desperate gasp. ‘I do know! He’s not dead! He’s not!’
‘How can you—‘
‘Because I spoke to him,’ Lacie said and immediately drew her lips into her mouth. Her face was numb, her tears skidded in haphazard waterfalls down each of her cheeks and dripped onto her dress. But with wide eyes she fixated on Sorcha and when she couldn’t take it anymore and had to breathe, she gasped in the oxygen and let her knees release her weight and so she crumpled onto the floor.
Her sobbing brought Sorcha down with her. Lacie was gathered up against her friend who let her cry without any questions for a couple of minutes. Sorcha stroked a hand down her hair and then eased her back.
‘When did you speak to him?’ Sorcha asked.
Sorcha was so calm and Lacie was grateful of that strength now. It was possible that Sorcha believed her insane or that she had dreamed a conversation. Now that she’d said the words though, Lacie couldn’t take them back. Trusting Sorcha was easy. With a new baby and a love triangle to deal with, Sorcha probably had little time left to be duplicitous.
‘Five days ago,’ Lacie said, having felt every minute of their separation since then. ‘It was five days ago. I had dinner with Elijah the following night and I’ve been here ever since.’
‘You mean you spoke to him after he disappeared,’ Sorcha asked, now registering the weight of what they were dealing with. Lacie nodded and wiped her tears with her hands. ‘Why didn’t you—‘
‘He told me not to. He swore me to secrecy.’
‘Ryder swore you to—‘
‘Not him,’ Lacie said. Revealing the truth was the only way to get Sorcha to keep quiet. Having a cohort may ease her burden, but Lacie was lumping a burden onto Sorcha by asking her to perpetuate the secret. ‘The kidnapper.’
‘Oh my god,’ Sorcha said, falling off her perch on her own heels to bump down onto the carpet. ‘You’ve spoken to the…?’
‘Yes,’ Lacie said with a nod. ‘He called me the first night after Shep took me to my room and told me to get some sleep.’
‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘I couldn’t,’ Lacie said, hoping her friend could understand her dilemma. ‘He told me not to. He swore me to secrecy. He said that he was watching and listening. He told me that he had a mole and that I couldn’t trust anyone.’
‘But you’re telling me now,’ Sorcha said, Lacie hadn’t noticed her blink, Sorcha’s eyes seemed to be getting wider and wider.
‘I haven’t heard from him in the three days I’ve been here. The last time he called me was the day I spoke to Ryder. After he took the phone from Ryder, he told me to call Elijah, to have dinner with him and ask him for a place to stay.’
‘So you did?’ Lacie nodded and swiped away her new tears. ‘God, this must have been hell for you.’ Sorcha crawled over to hug Lacie again and having someone to lean on who didn’t judge her almost made her cry tears for a different reason.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t… I didn’t know what to do and when he told me not to trust anyone…’
‘It’s ok,’ Sorcha said, taking her hands when she sat back. ‘We just have to figure out what to do now.’
‘You can’t tell anyone,’ Lacie said, clutching at her friend. ‘Please, Sorch, I don’t know who to trust.’
‘You can trust me.’
‘I know that,’ Lacie said, pursing a smile. ‘I just didn’t want to burden you with this when you have Lulu and Bruce—‘
‘I kicked Bruce out,’ Sorcha said. ‘I saw Shep after I spoke to you and he showed me everything, then he came with me to confront Bruce.’
‘He came with you?’
Sorcha shrugged. ‘I think he wanted to look after me,’ she snorted. ‘Like I need looking after.’
Before Lulu, Lacie would have laughed at that assertion because it sounded ludicrous. After Lulu, Lacie actually believed that Sorcha was capable of anything and was beginning to see that herself.
‘So who has Lulu in the car? Elijah would—‘
‘Shep,’ Sorcha said and when she turned her smile to the carpet Lacie’s jaw loosened. Sorch was blushing like she was actually playing coy. ‘He’s been… helping out.’
‘Has he?’ Lacie asked. Sorch deserved happiness and Lulu deserved a stable male figure in her life and that man was never going to be Bruce. Sure, he might have visitation, he was Lulu’s father. But Shep had done a lot of growing up since Lacie had met him and she wondered how he’d take to the role of father.
‘Lulu and Shep are fine,’ Sorcha said. ‘We have to focus on how to help Ryder.’
‘No one can know that I told you, Sorch. I mean it, no one.’ Sorcha wasn’t known for her ability to keep a secret.
Her friend was nonplussed by the constant reminder for the need of secrecy. ‘Who do you think is behind this?’ Sorcha asked, folding her knees to one side.
‘If I knew that then I would call the police... or Gabe.’
‘You miss him, don’t you?’ Sorcha leaned over to curl her fingers around Lacie’s.
‘I miss them all,’ Lacie said, regretting that she ever complained about Ryder being vigilant when it came to security. ‘I miss being in Ryder’s bed and having them all there to look out for me... I promise that once we get Ryder back I will never complain about another of his rules. But I’m going to make him follow them too. From now on I’ll expend as much energy keeping him safe as he does on me.’
Sorcha smiled, then the moment was over and she became more serious. ‘So what's your plan?’
‘My plan was to do as I was told and to get Ryder back,’ Lacie said, pushing up off the floor to stride to the bed. It wasn’t much, but she had to feel like she was doing something. ‘Now that he’s stopped issuing instructions’—she whirled around and sagged to display her exhaustion—‘I have no plan.’
‘We’ll come up with one together,’ Sorcha said. ‘We always work well as a team.’
In the past, Lacie had been the one cleaning up Sorcha’s messes and now it appeared that Sorcha was ready to pay her back for every one of those times with her allegiance now.
‘I have to go to dinner with Elijah,’ Lacie said, picking up the edge of her dress. ‘He keeps asking me to go places and I don’t feel right saying no. How can I beg a place to stay one day and then shun him the next? That’s how I ended up going to the opera with him. I think that he thinks…’
‘He finally has you,’ Sorcha said. If there was one thing Sorcha knew, it was men. ‘We’ll just have to remedy that. Shep is outside with Lulu, why don’t we join you for dinner tonight?’
That suggestion perked Lacie up, eating in a group would lessen her need to follow along with conversation. With her thoughts constantly sliding back to Ryder, sometimes it was difficult to keep track of what Elijah was talking about.
‘Would you?’ Lacie said, so grateful that she actually lunged at Sorcha to pull her into a hug. ‘I would appreciate that. I would… just to have others there…’
‘Shep was supposed to be going over to S.I.S., but I figure we can make excuses.’
‘The guys might be suspicious if he doesn’t turn up when he’s supposed to. Especially if they hear that he was with me. I don’t
want them to think I’m poisoning their effort to find Ryder.’
‘All this guy told you was that you shouldn’t tell anyone, right?’ Sorcha asked. ‘So if they find out on their own then that’s not your fault, is it?’
‘Sorcha,’ Lacie said, meeting her eye. ‘You cannot tell them.’
‘I won’t! I promise. Anyway, it’s Shep, how reliable is he?’
Sorcha made a valid point. People expected Shep to be lazy and fickle, so skipping out on work to have dinner with three females was completely his style. ‘What if Elijah says no?’
‘Pah,’ Sorcha said, waving a hand to dismiss Lacie’s concern. ‘Men don’t say no to me… You stay in here and keep getting ready.’ Lacie was ready, but Sorcha was giving her cover to avoid the conversation with Elijah. ‘I’ll tell Elijah there’s been a change of plans and then tell Shep. We will all fit in one car, so we can travel together.’
‘I can handle that,’ Lacie said. ‘Sorch, I’m so happy that you know.’
‘You should’ve come to me right away,’ Sorcha said. ‘We deal with everything together, highs and lows, we’re a team.’
Hugging Sorcha gave Lacie the first comfort she’d experienced in days. The kidnapper still hadn’t been in touch and she was no closer to an answer as to why that was. But now that she had Sorcha on her side, Lacie felt like she was a step closer to victory.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ryder had been stuck in this room for days. The chains on his arms didn’t give him much freedom. Not that it mattered because there wasn’t a window in the place and the door looked to be steel reinforced. It didn’t help that they’d kept him drugged for most of his time here. He hadn’t gotten a good look at his captors either. The only one to come inside was male, but the lights were kept off so that Ryder couldn’t look at him and they didn’t talk to him either.
He knew that there was more than one person involved because he’d heard muffled conversation from the other side of the door. At first, he’d tried to call out, but no one had come and he had given up within a couple of days. His wrists were already raw from his struggle against his restraints and he began to worry about infection and how it would weaken him if he was here for a considerable amount of time.
Noise from beyond the room made him stand up, he had the ability to do that at least. But no matter how hard he craned his neck to try and listen closer, he heard nothing specific. The last thing he’d heard clearly was her voice. Lacie. The male captor had come in and demanded that he speak to Lacie once he dialled the phone, but he was not to give her any indication of where he was or the conditions. That was fine by him.
Ryder didn’t want Lacie coming anywhere near this place, not that he knew where it was. And the conditions he existed in were irrelevant in the face of her suffering. He would not pity himself or have her feel sorry for him. These people would let him know eventually what they wanted and if that cost was his life, well, rather his than Lacie’s was his thinking. He didn’t want his girl or his men walking into anything that might be a trap.
The noise outside was closer now and it was split into two separate voices. One was deep, and the other was higher pitched, so he would suspect they were a male and a female, and they were right outside the door. From the hurried intonation and the way the voices overlapped, he assumed they were arguing. Conflict was good for him. He tucked that piece of information away because it could save his life. This couple was at odds about something. Whether they were family or romantically involved, it didn’t matter.
The conflict was a crack in unity and that was one of the first things he told his men never to reveal in front of enemies. If an enemy got the chance to turn them against each other he would take it and that was what Ryder would do at his first chance. Getting a wedge in between this pair and prying it as far open as he could might be his ticket out. Invariably, there was one person with more invested in a kidnap job like this and if Ryder could befriend the other one it might get him out.
From everything Lacie had told him about her time in captivity, Jamie Wallace had been the only one to come near her or talk to her. Ryder had trained Jamie, so it didn’t surprise him to hear that. Jamie probably had a lot of strain in his lower ranks. That and most of the guys were idiots. If Ryder was only dealing with two people then his odds of getting out of here relied solely on him getting out of these chains. Once he was out, he could take out both of them.
The overhead light flashed on and Ryder blinked his eyes to try and adjust them to the illumination as quickly as he could. Any chance he got to get loose and get back to his girl, he would take it. No one had come in and there were no switches on the walls, so the light had to be controlled from outside, which meant it could have been turned on by accident.
The concrete walls and floor were bare and grey, perfect for keeping a person in lock-up, and there wasn’t a stick of furniture in sight, so he had nothing to use as a weapon if things got physical. Focused on the door, he willed it to open, and sure enough after another few tense seconds, he heard the click of a lock. Although the door was sturdy, the lock didn’t sound it, if he could get out of these chains and strike when no one was around, he might just make it out of here under his own steam.
The door began to open and he braced to see who was responsible for keeping him here. But when his captor came around the door from the blackened hallway, Ryder was surprised. He’d expected a big guy, built with muscle and with a mean look on his face. This man had too fine a bone structure to be considered mean, but from the scowl on his face Ryder believed he thought himself dangerous. There wasn’t a scar on his face, not a sign of having ever been in a fight and as soon as he put a finger on the guy’s identity, he understood the slacks and opened cuffed shirt.
‘You’re Elijah Graden’s younger brother,’ Ryder said and his linked hands came up to his forehead as his head went back and he laughed. Any fear he’d had dissipated, because this guy had to be a flunky. In Ryder’s time investigating the elder Graden brother, the younger one, Evan, came across as so plain, it would be an insult to call him vanilla. ‘This is about getting Lacie into bed.’
‘My god,’ Evan Graden said, coming in and pulling the door over at his back. ‘Do I have to say it to you as well? Not everything is about Lacie Hart.’
‘If you’re not working with your brother then who are you working with?’ Ryder asked, lowering his hands and taking the time to listen to his captor hoping to discover clues of how to ingratiate himself. He kept one eye on the still open door too. The door was only open a couple of inches, but if he could get the chains off, that would be all he needed.
‘What makes you think I’m working with anyone?’ Evan asked. He was tall, about Ryder’s height, but Ryder would be surprised if he could press fifty pounds.
‘Ok then, Mastermind,’ Ryder said, leaning on the wall and picking up a boot to prop it on the wall too. ‘What can I do for you, huh? You’ve had me in here about a week. Isn’t it time for the big reveal? Or was your entrance supposed to make me quiver in my boots?’
Evan said nothing for a few seconds and then his face contorted into the oddest smile that was pleased and smug, yet it didn’t reach vicious. ‘Do you think much about Lacie?’
‘Is that what you want to talk about? My girl. You could’ve just called me on the phone. I would’ve told you to go to hell then and there without you having to go to this trouble. Was it you who drugged her in the gallery? You who attacked her in your brother’s cabin? What am I thinking? He’s working with you, right?’
‘Elijah is far too busy to deal with you,’ Evan said. ‘He’s at dinner with Lacie and Sorcha and baby Lulu. They make quite the picture… She’s living with him now, you know.’
Grinding his teeth, Ryder tried not to give Evan the satisfaction of riling him. ‘She’s a beautiful woman. Sorcha too,’ Ryder said.
‘You never did get along with Sorcha, did you? You just pushed and pushed. It’s nice to see Lacie’s best friend get along so
well with the new man in her life.’
‘Try as hard as you like to convince me that Lacie’s being unfaithful… it’s not going to make a difference to me.’
‘You’re not as invincible as you believe yourself to be,’ Evan said. ‘I would think that this experience would prove that. You’re not as smart as you think. Lacie’s kidnapping, that incident at the gallery, it was all theatre. Sleight of hand, if you will. I wanted you to look at the left hand so that the right hand could take the prize from under your noses.’
‘And I was the prize,’ Ryder said, losing eye contact and tilting his head to convey how unthreatened he was. ‘Well done, touché, is that it? Was that the whole point of it? Because we both know you don’t have it in you to hurt anyone.’
‘Don’t be too sure about that,’ Evan said. ‘Maybe I don’t have your strength and if we were to go man-to-man, maybe you could take me out.’
‘Maybe?’ Ryder asked, letting his own amused smile grow. ‘Why don’t you undo the chains and we’ll see? I’ll let you throw the first punch… hell, I’ll give you the first two. That’s sporting, right?’
‘Who needs sport?’ Reaching behind himself, Evan pulled something from a rear pocket and he held it up to show Ryder what it was, a capped syringe filled with a clear liquid. ‘Drugs are cheap and they come in all sizes and flavours. I’ll bet a man like you knows a thing or two about pain… all it takes is the right cocktail.’
As far as Ryder was concerned, sticking a guy with a needle then running away was the epitome of cowardice. If someone was going to go to all of the effort to kidnap a person, they should at least have the balls to see the experience through to the end.
‘I can use this to control you,’ Evan said. ‘It’s what you were stuck with in the alley and you were down in a second. And I can use you to control Lacie… You see’—he began to saunter closer—‘she is my puppet. She is dancing to my tune. All I have to do is issue a command and she complies, which is why I know that when I tell her to visit my brother in his bed, she will do exactly that. As long as we have you, she will do whatever she’s told.’
Sleight Mistake (Stone Investigations Book 2) Page 24
