by Julia Derek
I went cold; why was he asking me if I knew anything about that? What made him think I might know about it? Damn, had we underestimated his intelligence level? This was the last thing I needed to deal with at the moment.
I didn’t have time to ponder the reasons why he seemed to think I’d know something about this weird, blond chick; it was clear from his scowling expression that he wanted an answer immediately. I decided that my best bet was to play stupid.
“Um, no,” I began. “Why would I?”
“Because I’ve seen you talk to Nicki a few times. I know it was her. You’re pretty friendly with her, aren’t you?”
Now I really had no idea what the hell he was talking about. What made him think it was Nicki? She was one of the new trainers, a leggy blonde with all-American good looks, twenty-five years old tops. I very much suspected she was one of the super humans, she was so incredibly perfect-looking.
“Um, not that friendly,” I replied. “What makes you think she went to your house?”
His pretty blue eyes narrowed and he looked away, clenching his teeth and muttering, “This time she’s gone too far… Way too far.”
“Jonah, what are you talking about?” I asked, sincerely confused. I put a hand on his shoulder to make him face me.
His gaze found me again. “I’ve had enough of this chick stalking my buddy. She’s been after him for months, but she’s never had the nerve to come to our house and pretend to be his friend before. My doorman told me she spoke with this really fake Southern accent and wore ugly red glasses.”
Fake accent? I couldn’t help but think. Maybe I had laid it on a bit thick then…
“And then she wormed herself into our place,” Jonah continued, “pretending to be worried that he was too sick to answer when they called up for him. She’s effing crazy.”
“What makes you so sure Nicki was the person who came for Burt?” I asked at the same time as I was thinking that the only crazy person here was Jonah. Crazy and furious like I’d never seen him before. I could almost see the fumes coming out of his ears as he stood there.
“Because someone saw her leave the gym around four and head toward our apartment building,” he said. “She was obviously going to see why Burt wasn’t at the club yesterday. It had to have been her.”
“He wasn’t here yesterday?” I asked innocently. “Where was he? He’s like always here.”
“He’s sick,” Jonah said curtly. “But he’ll be back soon.”
I put on a worried face. “Sick? Really? What’s wrong with him?”
Jonah waved his hand dismissively. “It’s nothing serious. He’ll be all right.” I could tell that he didn’t want to talk about it, but I did. So I pressed on.
“Is he at the hospital?”
“Stop asking so many questions, Jamie. I told you he’ll be all right. Isn’t that enough?”
He glared at me with a red face. Yeah, this guy had an anger management problem. A bad one.
As if he’d been able to see into my mind, the anger displayed on his face vanished and was replaced with a more neutral expression. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply a few times, then looked at me, appearing almost serene now. He pulled me into his arms.
“I’m so sorry, Jamie,” he whispered into my ear. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. I shouldn’t have done that. Burt will be fine. He’s just a little out of it right now and needs to be set straight. That’s all.”
“Oh,” I replied, forcing myself to return Jonah’s embrace and thinking that he must be referring to Janine having found out that Burt was dating Nadja, whom he shouldn’t be.
“But I’m really getting tired of Nicki’s behavior,” he continued, running his fingers through my damp hair. “She needs to be set straight, too. Made an example of, if you ask me.”
I frowned, glad that Jonah couldn’t see me right then or he might have guessed what I was thinking: What the hell is that supposed to mean?
“Right,” was all I said, needing to get going or I’d be really late for my client. “Hey, I’d love to stay here with you, but I have a client now and I have to change still,” I added.
He kissed my head and then let go of me. “I totally understand. See you for lunch? I have a break at twelve thirty.”
“Yeah, I think I’m free then, too,” I lied, unable to remember my schedule off the top of my head.
He said goodbye, then turned around and left me alone to change. Checking the time, I saw that it was five minutes past eight already. As fast I could, I removed my rain-soaked shorts and top and threw on my trainer uniform, all the while wondering what the hell Jonah had been talking about when he’d said that Nicki needed to not only be set straight, but to be made an example of, too. I had not liked the tone of his voice, either. It had sounded casual enough, yet it had managed to chill me all the way into the bone.
Well, I don’t have time to ponder that right now, I thought. I needed to get out to my client, who was probably wondering where I was.
A couple of hours later, I received a text from my ten-thirty client, informing me that she needed to cancel. Great, I thought. It would give me some time to talk to Nicki—as long as I could find her on the workout floors, not training a client. I had spotted her on the gym floors already, so I knew she was at the club today. I would love to hear her take on all the nonsense Jonah had talked about earlier.
I kept an eye on my disposable while walking around the club looking for Nicki, hoping that I would finally hear from Ian. So far, that phone remained dead. It wasn’t until eleven fifteen and it was almost time for me to train my next client that I finally saw Nicki—in the wide passage that led to the women’s locker room. I tapped her arm lightly, which caused her to stop.
“Hey, I need to talk to you about something,” I said, looking into her doll-pretty face.
“What is it?” she replied with an impatient expression. “I have a client in five minutes and I need to use the bathroom, so make it fast.”
I leaned closer to her so that I wouldn’t have to talk loudly. “Jonah claims that you have a thing for Burt and that you’ve been stalking him. Is that true?”
She looked at me, her cheeks going a couple of shades pinker. “Well, I… yes, I do like Burt. But I haven’t stalked him. I’ve tried to talk to him a few times on the floor, but I don’t think anyone can consider that stalking.” There was a tentative look on her face. “Does Jonah think that’s me stalking Burt?”
“I’m not sure exactly what he means by you stalking Burt. All I know is that he thinks you went to their house yesterday, pretending to be Burt’s friend, worried he was at home sick. And that really pissed him off.” I shrugged. “You know how he can be.”
Her big, violet eyes had gone wide with shock. “What? He thinks I went to their house? Why would he think that? I didn’t do anything like that!”
“He says that a weird blonde with a Southern accent came to their apartment building yesterday afternoon and convinced his doorman to open their apartment to check on Burt.”
“Okay. But why would he think I did something like that? Just because I have a… a crush on Burt”—she looked embarrassed but made herself continue to talk—“and have tried to connect with him a few times? That makes no sense.”
“I agree,” I said. “He claims the fact that you left the club around that time and headed in the direction of their house was enough proof that you did it.”
Her delicately drawn lips dropped open. “All I did was head to the park for a jog! I never went to their house.” She shook her head in disbelief.
“I believe you. Unfortunately, Jonah seems convinced you were the one there. And he said something about that you needed to be set straight and made an example of. I didn’t like the sound of that, so I just wanted you to know what he said.” I grabbed her hand. “Please don’t tell him that I told you, though. I don’t want him to think that I go around telling his secrets.”
I wasn’t worried about Nicki revealing this conversat
ion to Jonah—he already thought that we were friendly anyway. If she did, I’d just explain it away by saying we were doing girl talk, me wanting to know what she’d been up to with Burt. Then one thing led to another. It was more important that I acted worried that Jonah would find out now that I was his girlfriend. Most girlfriends would not want to go behind their boyfriends’ backs openly.
“Nicki?” I asked when she didn’t say anything, just looked at me with flat eyes, like she was somewhere else in her mind. “Are you okay?”
She made herself smile. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Thanks for telling me, Jamie. I’ve gotta go now. See ya.”
She moved past me and hurried into the women’s locker room. Shrugging, I walked toward the stairs that would take me up to the fourth floor where I’d meet my next client. I was halfway up the first staircase when I heard a familiar voice behind me.
“Hey.”
I swiveled around and saw Ian standing behind me, looking all disheveled. At the one hand I was beyond myself with happiness to find that he was alive, but on the other, I was annoyed that he was talking to me so openly at the gym. Had he already forgotten that Jonah had forbidden me to interact with him? Any second, my “boyfriend” could appear and see us talking in the stairs. Or someone else could see us and tell him; Jonah had lots of friends who seemed to look out for him.
“Meet me up on the sundeck,” I whispered and then continued up the stairs. The chance that a trainer would be on the sundeck at this hour was slim to none considering that it was still raining outside, so we should be able to talk undisturbed up there. As I reached the third floor, I went over to the bank of elevators as riding up in one would go quicker than me walking all the way to the top.
I reached it quickly and went out onto the rainy rooftop, hurrying over to a corner that was somewhat covered by a half open umbrella. The magazine I used to shield myself against the rain only partly protected me. Ian soon appeared on the deck and hurried over to where I stood, using a towel to shield himself, a much smarter choice than mine.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked the moment he was before me, allowing the anger and worry to show finally. “I thought you were dead, for Christ’s sake!”
“I got rain on my disposable and the damn thing broke,” he explained, looking genuinely apologetic. “I’m so sorry if I worried you. Truly.”
“It’s okay,” I said, not having time to be mad; besides, I should have figured the heavy rain might have played a part in his going MIA. “So everything’s okay with Burt and Nadja then?” I smiled as I imagined her face when she first saw him. “She must’ve been so happy that you brought him.”
Ian did not look happy, though, which instantly deflated the smile on my lips. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
“What happened?” I asked, that dread from earlier in the day back with renewed force.
“Nadja’s gone.”
“She’s gone? How can she be gone?”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t know. Burt doesn’t know. Our fear is that someone from Adler has taken her. Someone who tagged me either the first or the second time I drove there.” He flung out his palms in despair. “Hell, for all I know, they tagged me both times.”
“Are you sure she’s gone?” A tiny part of me was waiting to hear that this was Ian’s attempt at a very, very poor joke, but it didn’t last long—Ian simply wasn’t that crude he’d ever joke about something like that. Besides, it was too elaborate. He was telling me the truth. “Maybe she just went out for a walk and got lost in the city?”
Not even I believed that. Why would she do such a thing in the middle of the night?
“Hardly,” Ian said, confirming my assumption. “The house is miles away from Philly. Also, there were clear signs of a struggle having taken place there. The lampshade in the bedroom where she was supposed to be sleeping was crashed on the floor, and there was blood on the rug.”
My hands flew up to cover my mouth. “Damn. So you really think they came for her then? And that she tried to resist them?”
“That’s what it looks like.” Ian shook his head slowly, as if in despair, sighing. “Fuck, how could they’ve found her? I was so sure no one tagged us. I took every imaginable precaution.”
He seemed so upset I had to grab his shoulders, calm him down. “You did what you could, Ian. It’s not your fault. You can’t think of everything. For all we know they’ve been following us always.” I wanted to tell him that maybe The Adler Group was just playing us the way I was playing Jonah, but I bit my tongue at the last second. Saying such a thing out loud would only serve to upset Ian further; surely such thoughts had already entered his mind and I didn’t need to stoke them. However, I thought it timely to bring up my suspicions regarding Burt. “Do you think Burt might have alerted them somehow?”
Ian gazed at me with those chameleon eyes of his. Then, “No. I know what you’re getting at, but I really don’t think so.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He shrugged. “No one’s that good an actor. He was very, very upset when we concluded that she was gone, really gone. Not out for a walk, but taken somewhere.”
“Where is he now?”
“Still in the house I would think.”
“What? Why? If they came for her, wouldn’t they come back for him, too?”
Ian inhaled, looking pensive. “That’s just it. Burt is not as convinced as I am that people from Adler came to take her. He thinks someone else did.”
“Really? But who would that be? And why would they do such a thing?”
Ian shrugged again. “Beats me. But that’s what Burt thinks. And that’s why he’s still out there. He’s determined to figure out who it could be. He wants to catch them in the act.”
“That doesn’t seem like a smart approach. Does he even have something to defend himself with?”
“Yes, I gave him one of my guns. I have a couple in the trunk of my car. He’ll be contacting me with updates as soon as he gets his own burner. In the meantime, you need to work on Jonah, see what he has to say about everything. Burt is his roommate, so he’s got to know something’s up with Burt if the bloke’s no longer at home.”
“I already spoke to him some this morning when I got to work. He does know that Burt’s been taken somewhere to ‘be straightened out.’” I made quotation marks with my fingers. “His words, not mine.”
“Really?” Ian brightened somewhat. “Interesting. So he knows more than I’d have thought then… Burt told me Jonah was often kept in the dark about stuff going on with Adler because of his temper.”
“Yeah, he does have a big mouth, that’s for sure.” I thought of what he’d said about Nicki being after Burt then. I told Ian about how he was certain she’d been the one visiting their place, not me.
He rolled his eyes. “Wow… That bloke sure is a nutcase. No wonder they keep him in the dark about stuff.” He gave a wry little smile. “That’s really all the evidence he needed to draw the conclusion Nicki’s the one who got into his house?”
I snorted. “Apparently. I warned her about what he’d said about making an example out of her. I really didn’t like the sound of those words.”
“That’s good. Hopefully she’ll stay out of his way. But you need to stay in his way, try to find out if it looks like Adler has anything to do with Nadja’s disappearance. Especially now that it seems they tell him more than we thought. It might clear up the situation.”
I blew out a breath and nodded. Yes, I definitely needed to stay on Jonah, try to find out what had happened to Nadja. But I couldn’t say that I was looking forward to it.
Ian must have sensed what I was feeling because he suddenly took me in his arms and pulled me close.
“I know that it won’t be easy for you, but you’ve got to still do it,” he said, gazing down at me in a way he hadn’t done since before the time I told him I was going to “date” Jonah. Tingles of pleasure rushed up my spine and I wrapped my own arms around his waist.
&n
bsp; “I know,” I said, not wanting him to let me go, stop looking at me like that. “It’s going to be very tough, but I’ll still do it.”
He smiled down at me, his eyes glittering darkly. “I know you will, Gabi. You’re a soldier like me, and you’ll never give up. Together, we’ll beat them one way or another.”
“Yes, we will,” I said, tilting my head backward as I waited for him to lower his face to mine, kiss me like he’d never kissed me before. The moment called for it. Screamed for it. I didn’t even care if Jonah would suddenly burst out onto the rooftop and spot us. Which he wouldn’t anyway, so we could afford to steal a kiss or two. I desperately craved one.
But instead of crashing his lips to mine, he landed a feather-light kiss to my forehead and then let go of me like the moment had only existed in my mind.
“I’ll call you later,” he said, then turned around and left.
Chapter 2
I was lucky enough not to have to spend lunch together with Jonah because Rolf wanted to discuss a member complaint with me then; apparently, the member thought I had been inconsiderate while stretching out a client, taking up too much space on the mats. By the time I was done explaining my side of the situation to our fitness manager and he agreed it was a non-issue, Jonah needed to train a client.
As heavily as he pursued me, there would be plenty of time for me to pick his brain regarding Nadja later. Like tonight. When I returned to the cafeteria table where he still sat after my impromptu meeting with Rolf, he suggested we should get together for dinner instead. I had smiled and accepted, telling him I could hardly wait to see him again.
By the time I was done at work and on my way home, I received a text from Jonah.
Something came up, so can’t see you tonight after all. So sorry, baby. See you tomorrow?
I was both relieved and annoyed when I finished reading it. By now, I had prepared myself for an evening with him. I was mentally ready to endure his company. I would do my best to avoid getting too close to him at the same time as I’d try to squeeze information out of him regarding Adler and Nadja, not to mention his dad. As big a mouth as he had, it should be fairly easy to get him to talk about both issues.
