by Jolie Day
“Mira,” Connor said carefully. And all she could think about was the fact that his voice was so very soft and soothing. “Calm down. I am right here with you. Nobody is going to hurt you. You are safe.” The balanced and almost relaxed tone in his voice definitely had an effect on her. Mira could breathe a little easier. Connor stretched out his hand without touching her. “I can see that you are paralyzed with fear, but I swear to you, I will not hurt you.” Her gaze fell onto his loosely stretched out fingers. He had calluses on the inside of his hands — where did they come from? He wasn’t exactly a farmer.
It was the absurdity of this small detail that brought her world crashing down. She released a sound that was half a whimper and half a moan. George was dead, her suite had been broken into, Suzanne kept trying to force her to seek revenge and to spy on Connor, Russell was telling her not to worry her pretty little head, and her mother, who hadn’t said a word in seventeen years, was dying. It was all too much for her. She hated it when her head was full of chaos.
She had to regain control over her life.
Suddenly, Connor was in front of her, holding her close, and just in time too because her legs gave way underneath her.
Somehow, it was exactly like that night long ago, but then again, it was absolutely different.
The feeling of being completely safe was the same. Connor, whom she had feared just a second ago, lifted Mira into his arms. She felt his chest moving up and down evenly with each breath. Back then, he had been able to balance her on his hip. Today, his right arm held her legs and his left arm carried her upper body. She suddenly realized how different her weight would be now compared to her as a child and she felt embarrassed, but before she was able to remove her arms from his neck and escape from his tight grip, he pulled her even closer to him. It seemed crazy just how much her heart trusted him, while her mind — or what was left of it — strongly protested against him.
Mira didn’t even recognize how seemingly easily he carried her out of that room. He set her back on her feet in the hallway. “Can you stand up?”
She nodded.
“Then please tell me right now, what has happened and why you were suddenly in such a huge panic.” He spoke very calmly, but as Mira looked into his eyes, she saw that he would definitely not accept any excuses.
“George is dead,” she said. “His wife answered the call. She said that George has died!” She almost screamed those last two words.
“Shh,” he replied. “I can imagine that this must be a huge shock for you, but you do need to calm down. I will only be able to help you if you can manage to keep the panic at bay. I know you can do that, Mira.”
The calm and almost cold tone of his voice revealed more about him than a thousand words could have done. Connor Carmichael could keep his nerves in check, even when the world seemed to be crumbling around him.
“You need to make a decision right now,” he explained. “You can take the official route and inform the police that someone has ransacked your hotel room and stolen something, which would also mean that we would have to disclose why you went to see Lacroix. Unfortunately, this will cost us valuable time, because we will then have to try and prove to the authorities that we had nothing to do with the death of this attorney.” He did not give her any time to think about what exactly his words meant. He frowned as he continued. “The alternative would be that you need to calm down right now — at least within the next ten to fifteen minutes — and tell the manager of this hotel, with my help, that you are okay. I will call an old friend of mine, who will be able to keep us out of the investigation for a while. I am pretty sure that they cannot trace my call, but I will make sure that it doesn’t last long.” He looked at his expensive watch. “This will give us some time to find your father’s murderer.”
“I can hear a very clear ‘but’,” Mira said as she tried to unwind herself from his hands. He gave her a quick smile, which calmed her down more than anything else. She could see the young boy from back then spark up in his features — adventurous, very suspicious about everything and everyone, and yet still ready to give his devotion unconditionally.
“The ‘but’, as you put it, would be my old friend. You would have to talk to him about your experiences that night. And I must warn you, he will smell a lie quicker than a vampire smells blood.”
She didn’t have much time. She had to make a decision there and then. As always, it came down to the age-old question as to whether she could actually trust Connor.
“Okay,” she then simply said. “Okay. Let’s do this. First…” we should close the door to my suite, she meant to say, but Connor was already doing that. He went in and came back out within seconds, with her coat and bag in his hand. He closed the door behind him, walked over to her and placed the coat gently over her shoulders. Mira took her bag and then linked arms with him.
“Ready?”
“Are you ready?” she asked and then wondered when she would start to regret her spontaneous decision. Her heart was racing, and she felt oddly upbeat about finally finding out who had killed her father. If it was necessary to meet Connor’s mysterious friend and to face his questioning, then she would do that. She couldn’t really trust Connor, even though her gut feeling told her otherwise, but if she went by that alone, then she wouldn’t be able to trust anybody. George had kept something from her and this had probably cost him his life. Russell and Suzanne had their own versions of the truth, which weren’t necessarily untrue or even a lie, but Mira couldn’t believe or trust anybody.
Right now, at that very moment, she realized just how much all of the intrigues and secrets and lies that had become such a big part of her life, had actually cost her. If she was ever to find her inner peace, she would have to fight the shadows by herself.
“Where are we going?”
“I haven’t told you? You will stay with me for a few days,” he replied.
Pling. The lift doors opened. Inside, just as Connor had predicted, stood a very worried looking hotel manager and two security guards.
Mira pulled back her shoulders. The game started now.
Chapter 15
For a man who was supposedly so incredibly wealthy, Connor drove a rather boring car. Mira sat in the passenger seat of this Swedish dark blue family wagon and asked herself how Connor had decided on this particular vehicle and if he secretly owned a garage full of motorcycles and luxury cars. The contrast between her image of the Connor back then and the Connor today had never been more different than when she saw his hands on the steering wheel of this stuffy automobile.
“Are women even allowed in your club?”
“We aren’t going to the club,” Connor replied without lifting his eyes from the cars in front of them. He steered the car easily and safely through the Saturday traffic. “By the way, you did well back there. I had no idea that you were such a great actress.”
She didn’t react to his comment, despite the fact that she had flat out lied to the manager of the Hyborn Hotel and as his two security guards, which made her turn a deep shade of red. It hadn’t even taken three minutes and she also hadn’t even had to mention her sister’s name to eliminate all of Mr. Frost and his men’s worries. They hadn’t even looked at the hotel room. “Don’t change the subject,” Mira said firmly. “Tell me right now where you are taking me, or I swear to God, at the next traffic light I will jump out of this car.”
“You do know that these Swedish bombers have a child safety lock, right?” Just to prove his point, he pressed a button and all the doors locked immediately with a loud click. Just a few seconds later, he released the locks again.
“Do you always have to have the last word?”
He frowned with a questioning look on his face. “I didn’t say anything,” he pointed out.
“You know exactly what I am talking about. To lock someone up is one way of having the last word.” He didn’t say anything, but Mira noticed that his hands, which had been wrapped around the steering wheel in a rel
axed way, now gripped the leather slightly tighter than before. “Did I hit a sore point?” she asked snarkily. “Why do you always have to prove that you are the stronger one and that you are the one in control?”
He set the turn signal and turned right. They drove towards Holmby Hills, which was the most elegant and poshest neighborhood in L.A. “To answer your earlier question,” he mentioned in an almost playful undertone, “we will stay at a friend’s house — at least for now.”
“And you just spontaneously decided that. Not just for yourself, but also for me.”
“Yes, I made that decision,” he confirmed and then stopped in front of a large cast-iron gate. “Not because I think of you as a child who cannot make her own decisions, but because I don’t want anything to happen to you.” He took a small remote control from the middle console. The gate opened slowly and revealed a long and curvy driveway in the midst of an immaculately kept park. As they drove through the gate, Mira caught a glimpse of the actual house number and realized where they were going and who this mysterious friend was, who was allowing Connor to stay in his precious home.
“Humphrey Bogart’s house, that’s where we will be staying,” she said and for a short moment she forgot all of her worries. Bogey and Lauren Bacall had lived here, back when they had been huge Hollywood celebrities!
“I knew you would like it here,” Connor said contently. He parked the car in front of the entrance and looked extremely self-satisfied, almost like a little boy who had brought home good grades in a school test.
“You are friends with Colin Slater?”
“Not exactly.” Just like Mira, Connor didn’t make any attempt to get out of the car. Apart from the lamp that lit up the entrance to the house and highlighted his profile in a soft light, it was completely dark around them. “Let’s just say that I made a deal with him. He has been pestering me for years now to make a film of my life’s story and I basically agreed — on the condition that he would have to let us stay in this house for an unlimited amount of time.”
Mira shook her head. “You are crazy.” She laughed quietly. “Who will play you in the film? And who will play the female lead?”
“There won’t be a female lead.”
“There will be, if the screenwriters have anything to do with it,” Mira replied. “They will add a fictitious romance to your story, don’t you worry.” She pursed her lips and made kissing sounds like a thirteen-year-old who had caught her older sister smooching some guy. Connor rolled his eyes and acted as if he wanted to puke. After a very short moment of absolute silence, Mira started to giggle. Then she laughed until tears ran down her face and Connor joined her.
“I… I can’t… My belly hurts,” Mira gasped at some point. The light at the entrance had turned off. They couldn’t see a thing through the now slightly steamed up windows. It was almost as if the two were trapped inside some time warp, where nothing else mattered but the present. She tried to calm down and wiped away the last of her tears.
“Hang on, I have a tissue.” Connor reached across and opened up the glove box in front of Mira. His shoulder brushed against hers. After her laughing fit, this simple touch almost made her lose her balance again. She could feel the warmth of his body and immediately the creepy cold as soon as he leaned back and held the little box out to her.
Now or never, she thought. “We need to talk.”
“Yup,” he agreed with her. In the darkness, she had to guess his movements more than she actually saw what he did. His light-colored hair let her know that he had now turned and leaned towards her. Mira looked right at him. He was so close that she could feel his breath on her lips. Her heart hammered wildly inside her chest. What would she do if Connor kissed her? With this thought, her body shivered suddenly, and it wasn’t just out of fear or disgust. She lifted her chin ever so slightly.
“But first I need to talk to Peter. Let’s go inside,” he said and pulled the car key from the ignition. “I will make the call and then we’ll have a look in the fridge. Or we could order a pizza. And then we can talk.”
The inside of the monumental house was disappointing.
Nothing was left of the former owners, Bogart and Bacall, the two Hollywood icons that had once lived here. Mira didn’t really know what she had expected to see there — at least the atmosphere of a movie from the forties, where the lady of the house would slowly descend down the wide stairs, a cocktail in one hand and a quellazaire in the other?
From what she could see, the house had been completely modernized from the entrance hall all the way into the kitchen, which was slightly depressing. Even the bathrooms and bedrooms were light-colored and transparent. Obviously, this wasn’t so bad in itself, but it didn’t match Mira’s romantic ideas about the place. Connor seemed to have been there before because he immediately led her upstairs and opened a door for her. “This will be your room,” he said. “I will be right next door to you. There is also a door that directly connects both rooms, which you can lock, of course, if that makes you feel safer.” The magic that had sparked between them in the car was gone. Now, he was back to being his cool and distant self and he still hadn’t answered her question, but instead he had suddenly disappeared somewhere to make his phone call. She stared at the door that connected both of their rooms, which he had carefully closed behind him.
Mira walked towards the huge bed, which quite unusually stood directly next to the window. If she left the curtains open, she would wake up tomorrow morning with a view of the garden.
She sat down on the mattress.
She could hear Connor’s muffled voice from the other room. Mira couldn’t understand what he was saying, it was just a constant mumbling. It didn’t take her more than two seconds to decide whether listening in was morally acceptable or not and she walked over to the door and held her ear against it. Nope, she still couldn’t hear what he was saying. But didn’t she have a right to know what was happening here? She turned the door knob slowly and as carefully as was humanly possible, so that she could open the door slightly. Her hand was sweaty, and she hoped that she hadn’t made a noise when she let the door knob slide back into its original position. If Connor noticed that the door was open, she could always turn around and say that he hadn’t closed it properly.
Her pulse was racing as she pulled the door open just a little further. It wasn’t enough to look into his room, but it was enough to realize that Connor hadn’t turned on a light. At least, she could hear him speaking clearly now. “… be? We have just arrived, and she is not ready for it yet.”
What was he talking about? What was she not ready for?
He was quiet for a while. Only the noise of his shoes on the laminate floor told her that Connor was moving around. “Yes and I am very grateful to you for that,” he said. Mira jerked back somewhat, because now his voice seemed so close that she was scared he would be able to hear her breathing. “She does know something, I am sure of that. I just need time to find out what that is. She is almost at the point where she trusts me. If you put her under pressure right now, you could ruin everything I have worked towards these last few days.”
Then silence again. Something creaked.
Mira pressed herself against the wall next to the door. She felt nauseous. Connor was playing with her. And she had actually believed that she could trust him! How could she have been so blind. He was no exception — he was also hiding something from her, something he wanted from her. It had all been lies. “Yes, you can come by and question her,” he then said. “I have already told her that we should expect to see you.” He laughed quietly. “Not tonight. Tomorrow is Sunday. Come at around noon. We will be here.” She realized from the tone of his voice that the conversation had ended. Wherever he had sat down, he now stood up and walked towards the door.
Mira was immediately filled with panic as she looked for a possible escape, but it was already too late. Instead she tried as hard as she could to put on a neutral face looking out into the pitch black garden.
“Nope,” she replied without looking at him. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard.
“Are you coming into the kitchen? You wanted to talk,” he reminded her.
“Yes, sure.”
She watched his reflection in the window as he walked out into the hallway. Connor hadn’t mentioned the opened door at all. She followed him quickly down the stairs. Her curiosity about this mysterious friend almost got the better of her and she desperately wanted to ask who the person actually was, who he had told all those things to. She didn’t dare, though, and she didn’t trust herself enough to keep her fear and anger in check if she were to ask. Connor had shown her more than once that his instincts were literally animalistic and too reliable. Obviously, or he wouldn’t have become such a successful bodyguard, Mira thought. She would have to be very careful not to give anything away by accident.
He was clearly playing on both sides of the fence. She would have to do it to. Offense was always the best defense after all, not so? He had left the door to the kitchen open and stood in front of a huge double-door fridge. This room mirrored everything else she had seen in the house so far and was also extremely modern and spotless. Everything was shiny and polished. A large modern gas stove sat in the middle of the kitchen and copper pots and pans hung above the island across from it, which proved that Colin Slater either had an amazing interior designer (and an even better cleaner) or that he was an avid cook himself. Somehow, Mira could not envision the lanky and slightly depressed looking regisseur at the stove. The idea of the dark-haired man with his characteristic short beard wearing an apron and holding a wooden spoon in his hand, helped Mira a little bit to get her equilibrium back.
