If Only for Tonight

by Sherelle Green

  Cyd stared into her eyes to see if she could see any signs of empathy, but saw nothing in her eyes but amusement. She was enjoying this. Oh, I knew I got a weird vibe from this woman! The woman yanked her hair a little more before pointing to the window.

  Shawn, where are you? Cyd thought as she was forced to stand on the sink and climb through one bathroom window while the woman climbed out of the other at the same time. Should I just scream and call her bluff? It seemed like a good idea, but Cyd was certain that she would be shot if she didn’t follow directions.

  “Walk,” the woman said in a mighty voice as she waved her hand toward the alley. At one point, Cyd thought about tackling the woman to the ground, since she was taller than she was by at least a few inches. But the woman had her by at least forty pounds. Come on, Shawn, where are you? She had no idea how to get herself out this situation and before she had a chance to formulate any more thoughts, she was knocked out cold.

  * * *

  “Nobody move!” a woman yelled at the top of her lungs as she hopped on a table in the lobby wearing a wedding veil, white party dress and no heels. “If you do, I’m liable to hurt anyone who crosses my path.” People in the lobby and bar gasped in surprise at the crazy woman on top of the table. A quick observation of her hands proved she didn’t have a weapon. Suddenly, she did a little happy dance while singing “Happy Birthday.”

  “Hahahaha, just kidding,” the woman said as she tried to get off the table and was instantly surrounded by girls wearing T-shirts with the word bridesmaid written on it. Man, I hate that stuff, Shawn thought as he reflected on a previous time where he’d been on high alert just to find out that the sneaky-looking women were actually participating in bachelorette party antics.

  Shawn looked at Micah and nodded for him to check out the scene, anyway. Cydney, he thought when he realized she hadn’t come out of the bathroom. He knocked before peeking his head in.

  “Cydney,” he called, but received no answer. He walked completely into the bathroom and instantly noticed the open windows.

  “Crap,” he said as he hopped on the sink and peered out the window down both ways of the alley. Nothing. Not a single person. Before running out of the bathroom, he pushed open each door just to make sure she wasn’t in there and didn’t find anyone. But he did find a scarf.

  “Micah,” Shawn yelled as he ran up to his partner who was now surrounded by the bride and bridesmaids.

  “Shawn, what’s wrong?” Micah asked in concern.

  “Someone got to her,” Shawn whispered in his ear. “We have to move ASAP!”

  “Oh, crap,” Micah said as he quickly discarded his tie and handed it to one of the women.

  “Why are you giving her that?”

  “The bride has a list of things she has to accomplish before midnight and her time is almost up.”

  Shawn shook his head and made his way toward the hotel desk to inform security. As Shawn and Micah ran out the front entrance, Shawn heard someone from the bridal group state that she was so glad she’d gotten the list from a strange woman. Something clicked.

  “Who did you get this list from?” Shawn asked the group as he backtracked a couple feet.

  “Some lady,” one of the bridesmaids said. Shawn took the lipstick-written list from the bride’s hand and noticed that the list had specific times and places to do everything, including getting a piece of clothing from the first man who helped her off the table.

  “How long ago did you get this?”

  “I got it, actually,” said another bridesmaid who was standing off to the side. “I’m the maid of honor and I just got it when I went in the bathroom. I was hanging up the phone with my sister and expressing how I needed to spice up the bachelorette party. This woman jotted something down for me real quick and I showed the ladies the list.” Shawn studied the bridesmaid’s face and remembered her walking out of the bathroom just as Cydney had entered.

  “Do you remember how she looked?” he asked the bridesmaid.

  “Not really,” the bridesmaid said, obviously a little taken off guard by all the questions. “She was wearing that scarf you have in your hand and all her body parts were covered.”

  Shawn wanted to ask them more questions but everyone in the group had obviously been drinking so he was lucky he’d been told anything at all.

  “Let’s head to the alley,” Shawn yelled to Micah. “Call the team and tell them to talk with the security guards at the hotel. They don’t have cameras inside the bathroom, but I noticed a camera that was pointed in the direction of the bathroom, so we should be able to see who went in and never came out.”

  As Micah made the call to the team, Shawn called Malik.

  “They took her again,” Shawn said into the phone as he and Micah arrived at the empty alley. “And since they captured her in the women’s bathroom, a witness confirmed there was another woman in there with Cydney. Anything on the other employees?”

  “I’m only through searching everyone with a last name that begins with L. As far as the woman in the company who interacted with Cydney, Brittany Higgins is clean. So is Kim Lathers.”

  “Damn,” Shawn said as he massaged his forehead. “What am I missing?”

  “You’re too personally involved,” Micah said as he entered the conversation. “Take a step back and think.”

  Shawn did as Micah suggested and passed his phone over to Micah, who began talking with Malik. He walked over to the side wall of the building and began thinking.

  Okay, it’s definitely a woman. More than likely, a Peter Vallant employee who interacted with her. Suddenly, his mind went to his time earlier with Cydney when they were in the hotel room. “Bad timing,” he said quietly to himself as he thought about his hands roaming up and down her body, landing on her butt and caressing her breasts.

  Focus, Miles, he said quietly to himself, but his mind was still remembering the intimate moment between them in the hotel room. He leaned his head back on the wall and closed his eyes. He let his mind wander back to their time in the hotel room, since his gut had never steered him wrong. In his memory, he was on the outside observing the scene as their foreplay unfolded before him. He witnessed Cydney as she lifted her leg and he saw himself grab her leg to keep her steady. He watched himself stick his finger inside her as she dropped her head back in satisfaction. He could hear the moans escape her mouth as the passion overtook her body. He witnessed her release her orgasm in an explosion of desire before coming back down to earth, and he could see himself arch his back to plunge even deeper as her juices flowed over his hand.

  As his eyes remained closed he watched Cydney give him a seductive smile as she unlatched her arms from around his neck. And that was when he saw it. That was when he noticed the one detail he’d wished he’d recognized hours sooner. There, as clear as ever, he noticed that both of her wrists were bare...clear of all accessories.

  “How did I miss that?” Shawn said aloud and he ran back over to Micah and grabbed the phone out his hand. “Malik, I know who it is, I know who took Cydney.”

  “Who?” Malik asked on the line at the same time Micah asked in person.

  “Verona Neely,” Shawn said to them both. “Malik, I need you to find everything you can on Verona Neely immediately!”

  “Right away,” Malik said, hanging up the phone.

  “How do you know?” Micah asked in confusion as to how Shawn had just come up with Verona as the person of interest seemingly out of the blue. Shawn placed his hand on his forehead again. He’d just thought of another detail.

  “Earlier today, Verona gave Cydney a bracelet that she claimed Cydney left in the bathroom. But I finally remember from earlier that Cydney wasn’t wearing a bracelet tonight. Matter of fact, Cydney was looking at the bracelet funny, but she was too distracted by Brittany Higgins to question anything. We both were. And now I
remember seeing something that was black and leather sticking out of Verona’s purse when she took out the bracelet. I’d bet any amount of money that those gloves are biker gloves.”

  “You think she’s the owner of those motorcycle tracks we found back in Springfield?” Micah asked, finally catching on.

  “Definitely,” Shawn said as he took out his phone to call Agent Wolfe. Although Malik was on the case, he needed to call the FBI in case Cydney’s disappearance was related to anything else currently going on in the city.

  “I understand, sir,” Shawn said in response to Agent Wolfe’s orders to stand down until he could send the team out there. “But with all due respect, tonight I’m not an FBI agent.” He glanced over at Micah, who was listening intently. “Tonight I’m just a man trying to save the woman he loves.”

  Chapter 20

  Shawn paced the entire length of the security room as he awaited a call from Malik and the return of Micah and another agent who’d gone to Verona’s apartment. He’d called Daman, who had brought Cydney’s parents and sister back to the hotel after they’d heard the news. Agent Wolfe was also present in the room and Shawn’s security team, along with two FBI agents and friends, were discreetly patrolling inside and outside the hotel for clues. Although Agent Wolfe often went by the book, he’d dropped protocol when Shawn had expressed his love for Cydney.

  Cydney had been missing for two hours and Shawn couldn’t believe he had let someone get to her again. I knew I should have followed her into the bathroom, he thought for the hundredth time since the incident.

  Shawn stopped pacing and sat in the chair to try to calm his nerves. No such luck. Mrs. Rayne gave him a look of sympathy, but he saw the pain in her eyes from holding back remaining tears and frustration from unanswered questions. Shawn had spent the first hour she’d gone missing walking up and down the streets and alley trying to find any clues that would help them figure out where she was. He’d even thoroughly checked an abandoned building several times before he was forced to stop to explain the situation to Cydney’s family when they’d arrived.

  Shawn nodded his head toward Daman to indicate that they should continue the search when his phone rang.

  “Hey, Malik, you’re on speaker. What did you find out?”

  “For starters, Verona Neely’s real name is Victoria Noland, the daughter of Bob Noland, that fast-food-chain CEO who tried to kidnap Cydney in the first place.”

  “I never read anything about him having a daughter in the papers or online.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Malik added. “Looks like Victoria, or Verona, was kept out of the public’s eye since Bob’s family forbade him to have an illegitimate daughter with Verona’s mother, an African-American woman. But I guess...like father, like daughter.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” Shawn said, understanding a few more pieces of the puzzle.

  “And guess who she’s dating? Jim Pearson, of all people. His record is still pretty clean, so he probably got suckered into doing what the father-daughter duo wanted him to do when he joined the Peter Vallant Company.”

  “What about Mr. Vallant?” Shawn asked, glancing over at Agent Wolfe, who appeared to be holding his breath as he awaited news on his dear friend.

  “No, he’s clean,” Malik confirmed.

  “I’ll call and inform the FBI on the other news,” Agent Wolfe said as he went to the corner of the room to inform the FBI of the new developments in Jim Pearson’s and Bob Noland’s cases.

  “That’s all I was able to find in a couple hours, but I’m still researching and reaching out to a lot of contacts to piece together other red flags I’ve found. Once I learned that Verona Neely was really Victoria Noland, I uncovered a lot more. Looks like Bob somehow convinced her to put a lot of things in her name. I also called Micah since I knew he was at Verona’s home and I needed him to check out something for me.” Malik continued on the phone. Shawn was just about to request that Malik elaborate on what info he was researching about the Nolands when the door opened.

  “I think I found what you’re looking for, Malik,” Micah said as he and the other agent entered the room.

  “What did you find?” Shawn asked.

  “Way more than we suspected,” Micah replied as he opened his bag. “Besides the fact that Verona, or should I say Victoria, definitely led a double life, it looks like dear daddy leads a secret life, as well.”

  Micah opened his bag and took out a large file. “All the information in my bag was locked in a safe, but I cracked the code.” He tossed the largest file toward Shawn.

  “Lead Assassins Combat? What company is this?”

  “Well, LAC, as it’s stated on numerous files, is owned by Bob Noland, but most of the filed paperwork is in Victoria Noland’s name.”

  Shawn flipped through the papers and looked questionably at Micah when he didn’t respond right away.

  “Malik, your suspicions were correct,” Micah said to his brother on his phone. Malik let out an expletive.

  “What?” Shawn asked Micah.

  “Well, LAC is apparently a company you go to when you want to hire a hit man. Bob Noland’s been in the business for almost thirty years and five months ago, his daughter joined him, although he’d been falsifying documents in her name for the past decade.”

  Shawn closed the file as the hair on the back of his neck stood on edge. No way, he thought as Malik handed him another file. Shawn skimmed through the file and page after page was filled with detailed accounts of the people who had contracted the LAC and their targets, starting with the most recent. His fingers began moving in slow motion as he got toward the end of the file. When he reached the last page, there were only five names listed as targets for that year. Even worse, that entire page listed Leon Roberts as the person who hired LAC. Really! A drug dealer who hired a professional hit man? Shawn’s anger skyrocketed the more he studied the page.

  “Why did they take Cydney?” Shawn all but yelled to Micah, who walked over to him and placed his hand on his shoulder.

  “Why?” Shawn repeated as he closed the file and slammed it on a nearby table.

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Rayne asked in aggravation since most of the individuals in the room were in the dark about the situation.

  “Sir, ma’am,” Shawn said as he looked over to Cydney’s parents. “According to the file, my parents were killed by someone at LAC twenty-nine years ago who was hired by Leon Roberts, a drug dealer I helped lock up three years ago. Since recently I helped bring down the entire operation, including the fall of Bob Noland, my guess is that his daughter wanted revenge and since she couldn’t get to me...she decided to take Cydney.”

  Cydney’s family gasped in shock and devastation at the news Shawn had disclosed.

  “Shawn, that’s not a proved fact,” Malik said on the phone.

  “I know,” Shawn responded quickly although he felt partially to blame. Deep down, he knew he shouldn’t blame himself. He’d always known that Leon was behind his parents’ deaths and he was actually happy that he finally knew the truth. But he had no time to wallow in self-pity, although he did allow himself a quick second to relish in the relief that his parents’ deaths were solved. He guessed that a deeper look into LAC would probably prove that TJ was a target, as well.

  “Malik, can you pull up a list of all the properties Bob Noland owns?”

  “Already done,” Malik said over the phone. “I’m sending it to both your and Micah’s phones now.”

  “Great,” Shawn said as he opened the message on his Android. “Micah, take two security-team members and check the last two locations on the list. Agent Wolfe, you take an agent and check the middle one. And Daman,” Shawn said as he made his way to the other side of the room, “we will take the first two.”

  “I’ll stay here with my wife and daughter,” Mr. Rayne said. �
��Oh, and Shawn,” he continued as he walked over and gripped him on his shoulder. “I need you to bring my baby girl home safely.”

  “Sir,” Shawn answered, momentarily glancing at Agent Wolfe. “You have my word that I will bring her back safely. I promise.” He hugged Mrs. Rayne and whispered the same words into her ear, hoping they provided her with a little comfort.

  Shawn looked at Agent Wolfe again as he nodded his head in approval. He knew he was breaking all kinds of protocols, but at the moment, all rules ceased to exist in his mind. There was no way he was losing another person in his life—absolutely no way.

  * * *

  Cyd lifted her head and opened her eyes, unaware of how long she’d been unconscious. The few sporadic lamps offered some visibility but no one appeared to be in the room with her. Is this a warehouse? she wondered, since the space she was in looked a little empty and almost like a large garage. She had no idea where she was or how Verona had managed to get her there, and the loud heavy-metal music that bounced off the walls sounded worse than nails on a chalkboard. The back of her head was still pounding in the spot that Verona had hit her, but she refused to close her eyes again. She had to be alert, and there was no doubt in her mind that Shawn was on his way to save her. She was confident of that.

  Cyd tried to crack her back as she adjusted herself in the hard chair. She couldn’t tell how her hands were tied, but she knew they were confined by plastic. She twisted her arm to try to squeeze her hands free.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Verona said as she walked out from a dark corner.

  “Why are you doing this?” Cyd said, trying not to act as startled as she felt.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Verona asked with a laugh. “You stuck your nose in where it didn’t belong, just like your little boyfriend did a few years ago.”