If Only for Tonight

by Sherelle Green

  Cyd looked down at her iPhone when she heard it ding, indicating that she had a text message. The cultural event in Indianapolis and the formal ball in Chicago were the two large events she had planned that required her to have contact information for the entire executive staff in case someone who was scheduled to give a speech couldn’t attend. Unfortunately, that meant that she had to give them her contact information as well, which included Jim Pearson. Though up until now, he hadn’t texted her.

  In case you are looking for me, I had to step out for a minute. I’ll be back in time for my speech to the attendees.

  “Of course he had to step out,” Cyd said aloud to herself. She just texted him a simple “okay” and got back to working the event. She wasn’t going to concern herself with Jim anymore. It was too stressful and there was no doubt that Shawn would be watching her every move now. He’d been watching her from the minute she arrived in the hallway connecting all the conference rooms, his eyes glossing over her attire, fixating on the curve of her hips that graciously filled the beautiful black-and-teal African-themed dress she’d chosen to wear.

  After seeing Shawn with Brittany, Cyd had given herself a pep talk before she’d left her hotel room. She was worth more than a man who only wanted her on his time and treated her as if she was a child instead of a grown woman. She’d expected them to have a respectful conversation, but all she’d gotten was an unpleasant lecture. Maybe I needed him to act that way so that I could work him out of my system? She realized when she’d decided to seduce him that he wasn’t her Mr. Right, so in all honesty, she shouldn’t even be angry at his behavior toward her.

  But he seems so different than that man I met in Anguilla. She couldn’t get over the fact that he seemed so infatuated with her one minute, yet the next, he could flirt with another woman right in her face.

  “Ms. Rayne, everyone is gathering in conference room A for the kick-off speech for tonight’s events.”

  “Thank you, Verona,” Cyd replied. When she arrived at the conference room, Jim was nowhere in sight. Mr. Vallant was giving the kick-off speech, which meant Jim was the next executive member to speak.

  “Kim,” Cyd said as she approached the CMO. “Can you say a few words before Jim?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Thanks so much,” Cyd responded as she made her way through the crowd to find Jim. Shawn’s right-hand man was standing near Mr. Vallant. She briefly looked around for Shawn so she could tell him she was going to search for Jim, but decided against it when she noticed Brittany twirling in front of him in a dress so tight, Cyd could see the imprint of her thong.

  “Forget this,” Cyd said to herself as she also dismissed the idea of telling another member of Shawn’s team. She made her way to the elevator and pressed the floor number that she’d seen Jim press when they were in the elevator together. She didn’t even know what room he was in, but she hoped she would run into him in the hallway, unless he’d left the building.

  She stepped off the elevator and looked down both ways of the hallway. After she didn’t see anyone, she briefly placed her ear to each door she passed, hoping that he would be on a phone call so she could hear his voice. When she neared a room at the end of the hall, she placed her ear on the door and it pushed open. She looked at the cracked door and contemplated her next move.

  “Jim, are you in here?” she asked as she clicked on the light and pushed the door open a little more. No answer. She stepped into the entryway. “Jim?” she called again, in case he was in the bathroom. Still nothing. The room looked spotless...even cleaner than it would be after housekeeping. Cyd dragged a nearby potted plant to the door to keep it propped open before she walked completely into the room. It was the same size as her suite, only everything was on the opposite side. She checked in the bathroom and closet with no sign of Jim. As she got closer to the coffee table, she turned on a lamp to see if there was any sign that this was Jim’s room. She noticed a thermos with the initials J.P. etched on the side sitting on the table. Jim usually carried the thermos to all the hotel breakfast buffets every morning and filled it with coffee, so she was confident this was indeed his room.

  Right next to the thermos was a small heap of documents. The contents spread out on the table stopped her in her tracks. She picked up a few pictures and notes that were paper clipped together. Removing the paper clip, she shuffled through the documents.

  “Oh, no,” she said when she noticed they were the pictures and notes that she had taken of Jim. Racking her brain, she remembered when she’d bumped into Jim on the elevator. At the time, she hadn’t thought she’d dropped anything. Then she remembered that he had stepped out of the elevator when he hadn’t needed to and stepped back in before it closed. Had he pushed the pictures into hiding when I ran into him? She suddenly dropped the pictures on the table when she noticed a picture of herself clipped to a file folder. The picture was taken the day she’d arrived at the Peter Vallant Company.

  Her fingers were trembling as she flipped open the folder and spotted several more pictures of herself and a timeline of her daily schedule since the start of the appreciation tour in Springfield, Illinois. When she left for her morning jog and the time she had lunch every day. But then she noticed more pictures in the back of the file that included her life before the appreciation tour. Jim had pictures of her leaving a clothing store and walking out of Union Station in Chicago. Cyd brought one hand to her mouth to cover her gasp as she noticed more personal pictures of her walking down the street to work and others of her leaving her condo. And another when she entered her condo’s parking garage to get to her car. She looked at her outfits she wore in the pictures and realized they were all taken after her first meeting at the Peter Vallant Company months prior.

  “Oh...my...God,” she said, dropping all the contents in her hand as they landed on the table and partially on the floor. How could I not notice I was being followed, she thought. She became instantly overwhelmed by the information she’d just uncovered, and Shawn’s cautionary words that she had put herself in danger popped into her mind.

  She lifted her head as her heartbeat quickened. He was there...with her in the room. He had to be. It felt like a setup and she was pretty sure she’d fallen right into his trap. She lifted her head and noticed a shoe sticking out from under the curtain in her peripheral vision.

  The best thing you can do is pretend you didn’t see his shoe and make a run for it, she thought to herself as she tried to slow down her heartbeat. Within seconds, she leaped over the table and ran toward the door. One more leap over a plant and her right arm and leg were already out the door. But he was quick on her tail and caught her left arm and placed his leg in front of her left one.

  “It’s about time you found out my secret,” Jim said to her as he pulled her into his chest and kicked the plant that was propping the door open out of the way.

  Cyd screamed, but Jim placed his hand over her mouth as his arms pressed into her abdomen. She chose not to say anything else for fear that her mouth over the past few weeks had already gotten her in enough trouble. He brushed her hair out of her face and pulled a handful to his nose.

  “I always loved how your hair smelled,” he said to her as he pulled her unwillingly to the balcony. He opened the door and dropped two rope ladders over the railing. “It’s time for us to take a little trip,” he said before he told her to remove her heels and climb down the ladder.

  “In case you think about pulling any funny business, this should help diminish those ideas.” Cyd felt the cold handgun pressed against her side and she nodded in understanding. Oh, no.... What have I gotten myself into?

  Chapter 10

  Something isn’t right, Shawn thought as he dodged around Brittany, who had been flaunting her outfit in front of him since she’d arrived. He glanced at Kim Lathers as she was concluding her speech before he opened the agenda and noticed that
Jim Pearson had actually been supposed to speak before her. He could barely hear himself think over the flirtatious words Brittany was throwing his way.

  “Brittany, my apologies, but I’m definitely not interested. Why don’t you find another man to intrigue,” Shawn said as he gently pushed her away from him. She muffled an expletive under her breath before flipping her hair over her shoulder and sauntering away from him.

  “Any visual on Cydney Rayne or Jim Pearson?” Shawn said silently into the two-way radio microphone. The voices on the other end of his earpiece all voiced no. Micah got offstage and headed over toward Shawn. “Paul Jensen is toward the front of the audience, but no sign of Jim.”

  “Or Cydney,” Shawn said, moving across the crowd. He gave his men orders to be on alert while he and Micah left the room.

  “I’ll check Jim’s room and you check the security cameras,” Shawn said to Micah.

  “Right away,” Micah replied before running down the hall to the security room. Shawn took the stairs in hopes that he would find Jim or Cydney in the stairwell. No such luck. When he reached Jim’s floor, he pulled out his pistol before opening the door to the floor.

  The level was quiet and as Shawn made his way to Jim’s door, he hoped that his suspicions weren’t true. When he reached the door, he opened his wallet and took out a credit card. He entered his room key card into the slot, knowing it wouldn’t unlock the door, but needing it to at least prompt the process of recognizing if the key was correct so he could slide his credit card into the side of the door at the same time. After three tries, it worked and the door popped open. Shawn did a quick, yet thorough, scan of the suite and concluded that neither Jim nor Cydney were in the room.

  “Shawn,” Micah called into his earpiece. “The cameras show Cydney entering the room that had been left open and not exiting. It’s hard to say, but I think she tried to get out because five minutes later, there appears to be an arm that reached out of the door before the door closed.”

  “Crap,” Shawn voiced into his two-way mike as Micah confirmed his suspicions in the same moment that he noticed pictures of Cydney spread out across a coffee table. Shawn saw the window curtains sway as a soft breeze floated into the room.

  “Micah, he’s got her and apparently he’s been following her since before the tour,” Shawn said as he ran to the balcony, immediately noticing rope ladders hanging over the edge. “Check the outside security cameras. Men, one of you is to stay alert in conference room A while the other two check the lobby and inside the hotel.”

  Shawn placed both arms over the balcony and scanned the grounds below, trying to find anything in the darkness. He noticed a couple walking in the distance and knew from the way the woman walked that it was Cydney and Jim. Since she wasn’t screaming, Jim had to have a gun.

  “Men, they’re outside in the south wing.” Without giving it a second thought, Shawn leaped over the balcony and began climbing down one of the ladders.

  “The speeches have concluded in conference room A,” voiced one of his men. “But I noticed a few extra men that hadn’t been present the entire night.”

  Shawn’s hands tensed on the rope as he listened to one of his men request that the other two stay alert in the hallway. Now that the kick-off meeting had concluded, it was harder to keep eyes on everyone. Shawn waited until he was on ground level before speaking into his microphone again. “I need someone here to assist me in the south wing. Pearson is in sight.”

  “I’ll be right there,” replied one of his men.

  If Shawn knew anything, he knew that he didn’t have time to wait for help to arrive. There was no way he was letting anything happen to Cydney. Shawn reached them in record time and hid behind a bush to see why Jim had stopped walking. Then he noticed the parked van covered by tree branches. It looked just like the Peter Vallant Company brown vans but a glance at the number on the side of the van proved that it wasn’t one of the originals. He duplicated the van, Shawn thought as a few other pieces of the case began melding together. There was no telling how many had been duplicated.

  Shawn got a little closer to them when he saw Jim place his gun on the top of the van and dig in his pocket to answer his phone. From Shawn’s angle, he saw Cydney glance around the area as if contemplating what her next move would be. She probably knew the call was coming, Shawn thought as he remembered the personal investigation Cydney had conducted. Jim yelled into the phone, distracted by the caller and in obvious disagreement with the plan the caller must have stated. Jim’s distraction gave Shawn his opening to rescue Cydney.

  He quietly approached Jim and Cydney, only pressing his pistol to Jim’s back when he heard him end his phone call.

  “I suggest you don’t make any sudden movements,” Shawn said as he used his other hand to knock Jim’s gun off to the other side of the van. “Now release your hold on Cydney.”

  Jim did as he was told, and as soon as he did so, Shawn pushed Jim against the car before turning him around and securing his arm under Jim’s neck.

  “Shawny boy, you’re way out of your league with this,” Jim said in a strained voice when his eyes landed on Shawn.

  “We’ll see about that,” Shawn said as he pushed his arm farther into Jim’s neck and took out his handcuffs.

  “You’re right,” Jim said with a vindictive laugh. “We will see. We’ll see how macho you are when they get a hold of your stuck-up princess over there,” Jim yelled as Shawn pushed his head farther into the van, after the handcuffs were secure. “You’d better watch your back, Ms. Rayne,” he added with a malicious laugh. Shawn roughly took him off the van and prepared to walk him toward the hotel, but Jim lunged toward Cydney as if to scare her more than he already had.

  Thinking out of anger and pure irritation, Shawn bashed Jim’s head against the door of the van and knocked him unconscious. He picked up his lifeless body and turned him on his back. Shawn looked up at Cydney, barely able to see her in the darkness.

  “Cydney,” Shawn called aloud. “I know you’re angry and scared, but I need you to help me.” She got closer to him and only then did he notice the unshed tears in her eyes. She looked down at Jim before squatting to help Shawn. Together, they pulled Jim’s body a few feet as one of Shawn’s men appeared.

  “Micah, what’s your location?” Shawn said into his mike after one of his men assisted in locking Jim away in a secure location just outside of the hotel.

  “The west wing. Shawn, you need to see this.”

  Without waiting another second, Shawn gripped Cydney tighter and told his security officer to watch Jim. When he arrived outside the west wing, Shawn spotted Micah crouched down near a group of bushes. Micah turned at the sound of fallen leaves crunching under their feet.

  “Take a look at this,” Micah said, pointing in the distance as he handed Shawn his binoculars. “See any familiar faces?”

  Shawn took the binoculars from Micah to observe the situation. About two hundred yards away stood a group of men barely visible by the lights in the parking lot. “Who are they?” Shawn asked Micah as he continued to view the men.

  Micah glanced over at Cydney and then back at Shawn. “Check them out one by one,” he suggested discreetly.

  Shawn pushed a couple bush branches out of his way to clear his line of vision as he took a look at each of the men individually. “No, come on,” Shawn said as realization hit him as to who the men were. In the parking lot in what appeared to be a business deal stood a couple of the Midwest’s most influential businessmen, including men he’d seen on several occasions in the Detroit and Chicago P.D. offices.

  “This is worse than I thought,” Shawn said, for Micah’s ears only. He peeked over at Cydney, who was now sitting on the grass with her head on her knees, no doubt still trying to comprehend what had almost happened to her. As if she’d heard him, she lifted her head and looked directly at Shawn, her big m
ahogany eyes full of questions that Shawn wasn’t sure he could answer right now.

  “Even worse,” Micah said quietly to Shawn so that Cydney couldn’t hear. “The hotel manager sensed something was wrong and called Indianapolis P.D. before I could stop her. She thought she was helping. Don’t you find it odd that these men would feel comfortable enough to do business right in the open when you can hear the sirens in the distance headed this way?” Micah asked quietly so that Cydney couldn’t hear.

  “I guess there’s no reason to leave when you have partners on the inside,” Shawn said, passing the binoculars back to Micah and removing his phone to send Agent Wolfe a text message with a code they used in case one of them needed to discuss an urgent matter.

  As he was typing the message, he noticed he was receiving a call from Agent Wolfe.

  “Miles,” Shawn said as he answered the phone, purposely leaving out the word agent before he stated his name.

  “Agent Miles, this is Agent Wolfe. Something has just come to my attention that may affect your case.”

  “I was just about to message you about another matter,” Shawn said, firmly knowing Agent Wolfe would understand exactly what type of message he was referring to.

  “I definitely need to hear what is going on there, but unfortunately I was going to call you, anyway, once I received notification from our inside drug source in Detroit. It appears that a few new pictures are circulating of people who are assumed to be a new threat to their operation. I’ll give you fair warning that your picture surfaced as one of them and so did one of Paul Jensen.”

  “What? That’s impossible,” Shawn said lowly into the phone as he took a few steps away from Cydney and Micah. “With me being CISO for the Peter Vallant Company, I understand why I’m a threat, but Jensen is one of our secondary suspects.” It wasn’t his first time being targeted and probably wouldn’t be his last.