His to Claim

by Shelly Bell

  “I’m so sorry, Dreama,” Jane said, tears burning her eyes. “I should have never have left you alone.”

  “It’s not your fault, Chickie. How could you have known someone would break in?”

  Her friend’s words dug the knife deeper into Jane’s heart. “Dreama, there’s something you should know.”

  The speed of the monitor’s beeping increased. Within seconds, Dreama’s lips seemed to have taken on a slight bluish tint. She winced.

  Worried, Jane shot out of her chair. “Are you in pain?”

  Fear reflected in Dreama’s eyes. “It’s…hard…to…breathe.”

  Loud chimes joined the beeps as Dreama’s eyes rolled back in her head and she went absolutely still.

  “Dreama!” Jane yelled. “Somebody help!”

  A stream of doctors and nurses stormed into the room, pushing Jane out of the way.

  What was happening?

  A nurse took her by the arm and steered her into the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” Jane asked, her entire body trembling.

  “We need you to go sit in the waiting room,” the nurse said softly.

  How the hell could the nurse be so calm?

  “Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  The nurse glanced back at the room. “Your friend isn’t getting enough oxygen into her lungs and her heart is under distress.” She put a hand on Jane’s shoulder and squeezed. “The doctor will be out as soon as we know.”

  Know?

  Jane’s stomach cramped as she realized what the nurse had meant.

  Her legs folded beneath her and she fell to the cold linoleum floor.

  That might have been the last conversation Jane would ever get with her best friend.

  Dreama was dying.

  And it was all Jane’s fault.

  * * *

  Sitting in the waiting room, Ryder sipped on his coffee, his leg nervously bouncing as he waited for Jane. She hadn’t been gone long before Dreama’s family began to fill all the seats in the room. It wasn’t even seven in the morning and yet a dozen aunts, uncles, and cousins had congregated together to support one another. Isabella and Tristan were the first to arrive, followed by Isabella’s parents and siblings. They’d brought freshly baked donuts and muffins to go along with the terrible free hospital coffee, but no one was eating. Instead, they made strained small talk. It was a vast improvement over yesterday’s tears, but still, everyone waited with bated breath for Jane to return to the room with news about Dreama.

  So when Jane finally did return, only as pale as a ghost with tears streaming down her cheeks, Ryder’s heart sank. Something was wrong.

  After handing off Maddox to Isabella, he strode to Jane and gathered her in his arms. Her body shook from the force of her tears.

  “Everything’s okay,” he whispered, although he had no idea if that was the truth. “I’ve got you.” When a doctor came into the room to speak with the Agostos, Ryder knew something had gone terribly wrong. Jane sniffed and wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “We need to talk out in the hall.”

  He took her hand and led her just outside the waiting room. “What happened in there?”

  “I’m not sure. One minute she was talking and the next minute alarms were going off and the hospital staff threw me out of the room.” She started crying again. “She couldn’t breathe. Dreama is going to die, Ryder. And I never got the chance…I was going to tell her the truth.”

  “What truth, sweetheart?” he said quietly, rubbing her back to try and calm her.

  She let out a shuddered breath. “The attack wasn’t random. She remembered hearing her attacker on the phone saying he didn’t find the SD card. He was there because of me.”

  He cradled her face in his hands. “You listen to me,” he said firmly. “You didn’t cause this and it doesn’t help to dwell on it. Dreama is a fighter. She’s going to make it. I promise you, I’ll find who did this. Dreama will get justice.”

  He couldn’t sit in the waiting room while the person who put Dreama in the hospital walked around scot-free. Not when Jane could be next.

  The safest place for her and Maddox was here in the hospital, surrounded by Dreama’s family. No one would dare to harm her in such a public place. As long as she stayed here, he wouldn’t have to worry about them.

  He needed to see what was so important on the SD card that it was worth killing two people and attacking one more. Even though Jane maintained she’d deleted the possible antivirus program from her computer and it was probably a long shot, he had to try to open it on her work computer. If Evan was as good as a programmer as he appeared to be, it was possible he’d included a second antivirus program to be hidden somewhere else in Jane’s computer files. That’s what Ryder would have done. “Give me the SD card. I’m going to McKay,” he said, drying her eyes with a brush of his fingers. “And I want you to stay here.”

  Her eyes darted from side to side as she considered the options. She was torn. He knew she wanted to go with him, but at the same time, she didn’t want to leave her friend, especially while Dreama’s fate was up in the air.

  He didn’t push her. Instead, he waited quietly until she came to her own decision.

  She placed her hands on his chest. “You won’t be able to just walk in on a weekend and let yourself inside my office. There’s a guard. Locked doors.”

  “It won’t be a problem.”

  Not when he was a McKay. And he had a way inside.

  His brother.

  Unless Finn…

  He shook his head as if in doing so he could knock the thought right out of his brain.

  Finn had nothing to do with the murders or the attack. His brother simply wasn’t the type of man who would exchange his morals for money. Ryder still had no idea why he was working at McKay or why he’d married Ciara, but he refused to believe the man who’d bought Ryder a flashlight out of his own allowance so that Ryder wouldn’t have to sleep in the dark could be part of a plan that involved the murder of innocents.

  When it came down to it, Ryder would have to trust his brother if he was going to get inside Jane’s office. And if he was wrong, if his brother was sleeping with the devil, then Ryder needed to know that too.

  He loved his brother. But he wouldn’t hesitate to give him up to the authorities if he’d done anything to put either Jane or Maddox in harm’s way.

  “What are you going to do once you find out what’s on that card?” Jane asked him.

  He wanted to say he’d take the evidence to the cops, but who’s to say they’d believe him? By the end of the day, there was a chance Ryder would have blood on his hands…Maybe he wasn’t so different than Keane after all.

  The thought didn’t sit well, but he would do anything to protect Jane and Maddox. “Whatever I have to,” he simply said.

  He didn’t fool her. It was there in her sharp intake of breath. In her rigid spine. In her teary eyes. Her hands fisted his shirt. “I hate that you’re going all alone. What if something happens to you?”

  The tears in her eyes undid him. He wouldn’t bring her along, but there was a way to compromise. “I won’t be alone. I’ll take Tristan with me.”

  That way if things went to shit, at least he’d have his best friend watching his back.

  Still holding on to his shirt, Jane rested her head on his chest. “Promise you’ll come back to me. I can’t lose you.”

  “You won’t lose me. I promise.” Not if he had any say in it. He kissed her lips, taking her essence into his mouth, his lungs, his heart, and gave her his in return. “Hopefully by tonight, all of this will be over.”

  The doctor strode past them and quickly disappeared down the hall. Isabella stumbled out next with a fussy Maddox in her arms, immediately followed by Tristan.

  His eyes met his friend’s. Whatever the doctor had told them in there, it hadn’t been good. “How’s Dreama?”

  Tristan pressed his lips together and shook his head. “The doctor thinks she h
as a blood clot that traveled to her lung. That’s why she couldn’t breathe. They took her back into surgery.”

  As the women spoke about Dreama, Ryder pulled Tristan aside. “Hey, I need your help with something.”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  Other than the fact that the people who’d died worked for Keane, Ryder had no evidence to suggest he was behind their deaths. But if he was…

  “Keep me from committing murder.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Catching Tristan up on almost three decades of events surprisingly didn’t take as long as Ryder thought it would, considering he had only twenty minutes between the hospital and McKay’s offices. Obviously, he didn’t have the time to tell him everything, but he managed to hit the highlights and the most recent events. By the time Tristan parked the car, Ryder finally stopped talking and gave his friend the chance to respond.

  Tristan stared at him, slack-jawed. “Shit, you’ve been holding out on me. Here I thought I knew everything about you and you go ahead and pull a couple of dead bodies out of your pocket.”

  Ryder snorted. “You don’t have to sound so impressed.”

  “I’m not impressed.” Tristan undid his seat belt and turned toward him, shaking his fist. “I’m fucking mad as hell. You should have told me everything a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m telling you now,” Ryder said, opening his car door, “so quit whining like a two-year-old and let’s go see what’s on the SD card.”

  Thankfully, Tristan didn’t hold grudges. He shrugged it off and got out of the car, gesturing to the mostly empty lot. “Is Finn here yet?”

  Ryder had called Finn as he and Tristan were leaving the hospital. If his brother was surprised that Ryder wanted to meet him at McKay, he hadn’t expressed it.

  Which in itself raised a few red flags.

  It was almost as if he’d been expecting Ryder’s call.

  Tristan whistled as they stepped inside the marble lobby. “Hard to believe you gave all this up willingly.”

  “Remember, marble might look shiny and pretty, but it’s also cold and hard. I much prefer Novateur’s look, with its open ceilings and wood floors, to this. Unlike McKay, we’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “Not to mention we couldn’t afford an office with marble,” Tristan pointed out.

  Ryder shrugged. “Yeah, there is that.”

  True, the building that housed McKay Industries was impressive. But Ryder had grown up in a mansion just like this building, and he was tired of all the secrets hidden behind its walls. McKay Industries was a house made of straw and Ryder was the Big Bad Wolf about to blow it all down.

  As Ryder and Tristan approached the guard, an elevator chimed and Finn stepped off.

  He strode over to them and shook Tristan’s hand, then gave Ryder his brotherly half-hug, half-back pounding. He turned to the guard. “This is my little brother, Ryder. Make sure to tell security he’s always welcome in the building. I’m taking them both upstairs to Ms. Cooper’s office.”

  Finn waited until the elevator’s doors closed to ask, “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Ryder folded his arms over his chest. “It depends. What can you tell me about McKay’s two most recent employee deaths?”

  His brother’s eyebrows furrowed in what appeared to be true surprise. “This is about Evan and Barbara? What interest could you possibly have in them? How do you even know them? And why the hell are we going to my stepdaughter’s office?”

  Tristan started laughing. “Sorry. I’d forgotten Ryder and Jane are related now.” He turned to Ryder. “Hey, if you married Jane, wouldn’t that make Finn your stepfather?”

  “What am I missing?” Finn asked Ryder. “You and Jane…? But how? You just met.”

  “Actually, we met a year ago at a conference up on Mackinac Island.” He paused, torn as to whether to tell Finn the truth. “Maddox is my son.”

  The elevator door opened. Tristan stepped off, but Ryder and Finn remained frozen.

  Finn swallowed tightly and ran his hand down his face as the elevator doors closed again, leaving him and Ryder alone to talk in private. “You need to get Jane and Maddox to leave the state,” he ordered. “Hell, the country. It’s not safe for them here right now.”

  Ryder grabbed his brother by the collar and got up in his face. “What do you know?”

  If Finn had intentionally left Jane and Maddox in the line of fire, knowing their lives were in danger, Ryder would never forgive him.

  “Officially, I can’t tell you,” Finn said. “But I swear, Ciara and I have done everything we can to protect them.”

  Officially? What the hell did that mean?

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ryder said bitterly. “Ciara has never done a thing for Jane other than abandon and neglect her.”

  His brother didn’t fight him. “You don’t know the first thing about Ciara,” he said quietly.

  Ryder pushed his brother back into the elevator wall. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Fuck it.” Finn blew out a breath, his shoulders dropping in surrender. “She’s going to kill me for telling you, but it’s time for the truth to come out.” Anger and sorrow were etched on his face. “Ian…he molested Ciara. From the time she was twelve. At least that’s the first time she remembers it happening. She actually doesn’t have any memories of him prior to that.”

  Twelve. Jesus Christ.

  “Ciara’s mom died that year,” Finn added. “She suspects that her mother’s death might not have been an accident.”

  Apparently, Ryder and Ciara had more in common than just Jane.

  Ryder thought back to Ian’s assertion at the park that it had been Ciara who’d demanded Jane be sent away. That he had wanted Jane to stay with them. “You said he molested her. Did he…?”

  The veins in Finn’s neck bulged as he unloaded the burden he’d been carrying. “Yes. Almost daily for years. She ran away a few times but he always found her. She reported him to her teachers. To the police. And every time, the investigation came back that Ciara was a disturbed child seeking attention and that there was no proof of any abuse. He even managed to get them to bury the records. It pays to be a billionaire,” he spit out.

  Ryder didn’t have the words to convey how sorry he was. Not only for what she’d gone through, but also because he’d misjudged her. No wonder she was so cold toward Jane. He understood it completely. To bring her into the family fold would be like inviting her into a monster’s lair. Hadn’t Ryder worried about doing the same to Maddox?

  “That’s why she sent Jane away,” Finn said, confirming Ryder’s assumption. “To keep Ian from doing the same thing to her.”

  He couldn’t imagine how he was going to tell Jane.

  A sick thought popped in his head, but he had to ask. “Is Ian Jane’s father?”

  “No.” Finn leaned up against the back of the elevator. “She was a pretty messed-up kid at the time. It could have been any number of guys, but she’s certain Jane isn’t Ian’s.”

  Ryder’s stomach curdled. “How can she stand to even have anything to do with him now? She’s an adult. She’s married to you. Why doesn’t she cut him out of her life for good?”

  Shoving his hands into his pockets, Finn looked away. “She’s got her reasons. Just like I had my reasons for coming back to work at McKay.”

  Unbelievable.

  “So neither of you are able to cut the cord from your fathers,” Ryder said. “I don’t get it.”

  Finn puffed out his chest and pointed a finger at Ryder. “You are in no place to judge us. Ciara and I have both made sacrifices you could never understand. She’s always loved Jane. But as long as Ian was free, Jane would never be safe.”

  They both made sacrifices? What the hell had Finn sacrificed other than his integrity when he chose to work for Keane?

  “Well, now Jane’s caught in the net of another monster,” Ryder said. “Two people in her department have died under mysterious
circumstances. Someone intentionally ran Jane off the road. And yesterday, while Jane, Maddox, and I were down the fucking street at the community center, her roommate, Dreama, was beaten almost to death with a baseball bat inside their apartment.”

  Finn’s eyes widened. “Jesus. And you think they’re all related?”

  “I know they are. That’s the reason I’m here.” He pulled the SD card out of his pocket. It was possible Finn was playing him, but he didn’t think so. Not after telling Ryder about Ciara. But Ryder also got the impression that his brother was still keeping secrets. “There’s a file on this card that can only be read on Jane’s computer.”

  “What’s on it?”

  “I don’t know. But whatever it is already got two people killed and one woman fighting for her life.”

  A ding sounded and the elevator door opened to a waiting Tristan. “Sorry to interrupt, but I figured you two would have time to argue later. Guess I’m a bit impatient when it comes to life and death. Let’s go see what’s on that card.”

  Tristan was right.

  It was time for all the secrets to see the light of day. And they were going to start with the biggest one of all.

  Evan’s file.

  As Finn led them down the hallway to Jane’s office, Ryder looked around. He was impressed. It was too bad he wasn’t seeing where Jane worked under different circumstances. It was also too bad she happened to be employed by his father.

  Once they got to her office, Ryder unlocked the door and went inside. Turning on the lights, he took in the space where she spent most of her days. Despite it being an office, she’d done her best to add touches to make it a bit homier. He inhaled. It even smelled like her.

  But he didn’t have the time to really soak in the whole ambiance before he sat in her chair behind her desk and turned on her computer. Finn and Tristan stayed by the door like two hulking bodyguards. In a different situation, Ryder would have probably made a joke about it.

  Searching for the attachment that Evan had sent Jane, Ryder opened up the file explorer and looked for a download dated the Monday after Finn’s wedding. Because Jane had indicated she had deleted it, he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t find it. Next, he performed a scan of the entire computer for that date, but still came up empty.