by Stacy Gail
It just couldn’t be, though.
Wesley Newburg couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag, much less be connected to the criminal world. There was no way she could be right about this.
No way.
But…
He knew her full name.
And she’d told Jada where they were going to eat when she’d asked if Chao Chow was any good. She knew Jada had been at work at the time, and Jada loved to gossip. All Wesley would have had to do to get that information from her friend was to simply ask if Jada had heard anything from Sydney.
And Jada, being Jada, would have happily given up her exact location, including longitude and latitude, and maybe even a printout from Google Maps.
Damn it.
In seconds she had her phone open to the text app, head down as she busily typed a message to Styx.
“Need to be picked up ASAP. I think Wesley Newburg is our bad gu—”
“Sydney.” From behind her, Wesley stood in the doorway of his office, his bespectacled eyes trained unblinkingly on her. “Could you come back into the office for a minute? I just have one issue I need to clarify with you in private.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Without another keystroke, Sydney sent the text, all the while keeping her eyes on Wesley.
She couldn’t go back to that office. There was no one else around. To voluntarily step back into the absolute privacy of that room, with Wesley, would be the stupidest thing she could do.
Unless her imagination was getting away with her, her brain all but shouted at her. Maybe she was making a mountain out of a molehill.
No.
It didn’t matter if she was overreacting. If she stayed out of that office, the worst that would happen would be embarrassment for being a paranoid loon, and maybe being fired.
But at worst, if she was right about Wesley, then heaven only knew why he wanted to see her alone.
Look at that text and understand I need you to get the cops in here, she thought to Styx as hard as she could, intensely grateful she’d had just enough time to send the partial message off. Please understand…
“I’ll be right back, Wesley.” She could get out of this, she thought desperately. All she had to do was act like she wasn’t screaming inside. “I’ve got five minutes on the clock, and I want to make sure I’ve done my due diligence before Styx comes to pick me up. Catch you on the way out, I promise.” With that, she turned and headed resolutely past the checkout stands, and refused to look back when he again called her name.
Fuck it, she thought, gripping her phone hard as she forced herself to not run for it. Nothing mattered but getting out of there now. If Wesley was an innocent man and wanted to fire her for insubordination, that was fine and dandy with her. Let him fire her. As of now, she was frigging done with this job. The main thing she had to do now was simply go to the closest exit and walk over to the first cop she saw. Then—
“I don’t like it when people walk away from me, Sydney.” Wesley’s voice sounded in her ear. Even as she jumped, he wrapped a painful arm around her waist. When she looked down, she saw why it was so painful.
The gun he pressed hard into her side was an absolute killer.
“Let’s pick up a cart, shall we? I need the cover. Don’t,” he hissed when she tried to inch away on the pretext of reaching for a cart. “Move slowly and stay with me. I have nothing to lose at this point, so that means I’m the most dangerous man in the world right now. Grab up that cart, nice and slow.”
Before she could move, the phone in her hand vibrated, and she knew without looking that it was Styx.
Get help, Styx. Please get help…
They both glanced at the phone before he dug the gun into her side hard enough to make her whimper. “Drop your phone in the basket, then get both hands on the basket’s handle where I can see them.”
“It’s my boyfriend.” Moving like she was underwater, she did as he instructed, and let him steer her deeper into the store. “He’s here to pick me up. He’ll know something’s wrong if I don’t answer. H-he’ll come looking for me.”
“Then we need to not be here when that happens, don’t we? Unless you want me to shoot him. Move.”
“I don’t understand, Wesley.” Her voice shook, but there was nothing she could do about it. Dear God, there was a gun, an actual, death-dealing gun burrowing into her side, and if he so much as twitched, a bullet would blast through her liver, stomach, maybe hit the spine… But that was preferable to imagining Styx getting shot, so she had to keep it together, for his sake. “Have you lost your mind? Why are you doing this?”
“I’m doing this because you know. You know it was me.”
Yes, she did. “I-I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I screwed up,” he gritted out from between clenched teeth. “I used your full name, and I wasn’t supposed to know it, was I? I could tell by the look on your face. You covered so very well, and I must say I’m impressed with how good you are at playing the game. But then I’m sure you’re very good at covering up a great deal of things, including how you’re connected to the Russian mob. I know the feeling. Like you, my middle name connects me to an asshole criminal. No one as illustrious or as terrifying as a member of the Russian mob, of course, but I still know what it is to always be careful to not let anyone see who I really am.”
Down in the bottom of the shopping basket, her phone finally stopped vibrating. The loss of that connection left her so bereft she nearly burst into tears. “You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You really should have gone back to the office with me, Sydney.” They were headed into the produce section of the store near the front, and she automatically clocked the potential exits. The obvious one was at the front of the store, but there was another one in an Employees’ Only area where deliveries were made. If she could distract him long enough to get away, she could get out of the building via the loading bays. “This would have been so much easier if you had. All I wanted to say was that you need to tell Scorpio you’re no longer a target, and that you’re safe. But you didn’t come back into the office. You were heading for the cops, weren’t you? So here we are. You forced my hand. Time and again, forcing my hand is all you’ve done since you came to this store. Swear to God, hiring you as a secret shopper was the worst decision I’ve ever made.”
“Wesley, please.” Out of the corner of her eye, she searched through the oblivious shoppers around them. Damn. Not one of them a cop. Just like Arthur had said, they were all keeping to the outside, while all hell was breaking loose inside. “Nothing you’re saying is making sense to me. If you could just explain, I’m sure we could work something out.”
“All you need to know is that you have to get me clear of the Russians. The pressure the cops are putting on my operation is backbreaking enough, but the Russians… You don’t seem to understand that they’re all crazy, and they all play for keeps. But that’s how they are, Sydney. They’ve got my associates ready to throw me under the bus, so I have no choice here. I need you with me until I’m clear of the Russians, the cops, and my so-called friends.”
I need you with me.
Oh, no.
He was going to take her with him.
Away from the store. Away from Styx. Away from her life.
If she allowed this man to take her out of the store, she would never be seen or heard from again. She just knew it.
This could be her last day on earth.
Unless she found a way out.
“I can get you clear with a phone call to my friend Polo Scorpeone, if that’s what you really want.” She felt him flinch at the name, and she again looked toward the employees’ only doors leading to the loading bays. If that gun digging into her side went even the tiniest bit slack… “Here’s the thing. I have to actually use my phone to do that.”
The gun jabbed so sharply into her side she couldn’t stop herself from crying out. “No pho
ne.”
The muzzle of the gun was a pinpoint of pain, and the only thing she could focus on. “Then what am I supposed to do, use telepathy? You’re going to shoot me where I stand if I so much as twitch the wrong way.”
“It’s nothing personal, Sydney.” To her amazement, he had the gall to sound defensive. “If we’re going to be frank, the fact is I should hate you, but I don’t. You’re just so…likeable. Like a puppy.”
“Uh, thanks.” She wasn’t sure if that was the right response, but she was too far into panic-mode to care. “Why do you say you should hate me? What did I ever do to you?””
“Do you have any idea what kind of pressure I’ve been under from the time you started working here? When I hired you to be a secret shopper, there was no way I could’ve known you’d actually be good at the job. The dent you’ve put in my operation in terms of merchandise and loss of personnel has made doing business here unsustainable. In two months you’ve done that. Two months.”
Holy crap, he had to be kidding. “You could have just fired me, instead of…” Firing at me. “Instead of this.”
“Are you an imbecile? I don’t think you have any concept of how god-awful my position has been for the past several weeks, so allow me to clue you in. I couldn’t get rid of you because my bosses at corporate headquarters love you so much. That would have been one hell of a suspicious move if I’d gotten rid of the one person who was actually effective at stopping the rampant thievery going on in this store, and I’m much too smart to put myself in that kind of spotlight. Or have you forgotten who you are, Miss Employee of the Month? I needed to find a way to make you want to quit.”
“It was never the Brisket Bandit posse that was after me, like I’d thought.” She’d already figured that out for herself, but she needed to keep his mind occupied while she focused on the pressure of that gun. All she needed was for him to lower his guard for just a moment. “You were clever to launch that I-90 attack on the same day I finally got that guy.”
“That’s where everyone always goes so wrong,” he muttered, edging closer as they were passed by a mother with a trio of whiny kids that had no idea they were inches away from a loaded gun. Her mouth went desert-dry as she stared at the children. If Wesley lost control now, she wouldn’t be the only one in the crosshairs. “Everyone focuses on just one or two pieces of the puzzle, you know? No one ever thinks to look at the whole picture. I’ve always thought my brain operates on a different level than everyone else’s. This clearly proves it.”
Ugh. “Yes, you are brilliant, fooling everyone for as long as you did.” The little family continued out of the produce section, and she breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Why not enlighten me? What is this whole picture you’re talking about?”
“The Brisket Bandit, the army of push-through shopping carts, all the inventory that’s gone missing over the years… They’ve all been me. Me and my associates, anyway.”
She stared at him. “Wait. Are you saying…you’ve been in charge of all the theft rings I’ve been targeting?”
He nodded, and despite the desperate situation he took a moment to drink in her shock. “Not rings, Sydney. Ring. As in, singular. They’re all one big theft ring, and they all answer to me. For the past two years, I’ve been quietly bleeding this store dry. Word was that the higher-ups were on the verge of closing it down because it’s been hemorrhaging money in this so-called crime-infested part of town. That was fine by me. I was ready to move on anyway, but I wanted to get all I could out of this honeypot while still making it look like I was trying to do my job. So I asked if I could add on another secret shopper.”
“And there I was, brand new in the marketing department.”
“You were exactly what I was looking for, at least on the surface—cute, tiny, polite. Easy to push around, or so I thought. I told my supervisors you were perfect for undercover work, and that I’d train you myself. I even asked to set your salary, to make sure you’d jump at the new job. Idiots went for it without even asking a single question.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “But then you started working here. Your first day, you busted up the floral arrangement push-throughs we’d been sneaking out for years. Right out of the gate, you took a chunk out of our bottom-line when you did that. Worse yet, you only got better at your job as you went along. Who knew that someone so small could cause such a headache? You had to go. That’s when I finally realized you had to be scared out of your job.”
“Scared?” She was trying not to hyperventilate as she looked down at her phone as it again began to vibrate. It was lying face down in the basket, but she’d bet anything it was Styx. “You nearly killed me on I-90, you bastard. That wasn’t scaring me.”
“I wasn’t behind the wheel, so I had no control over that,” Wesley said, and dear God, he sounded almost pious. “I waited until you made a high-profile collar before I gave the order for you to be targeted. That way, there would be no doubt in your mind that you were being terrorized because of your job, and naturally you’d conclude that no job was worth your life. It’s important to me that you know I wasn’t physically there in that car when my associates chased you down the freeway.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she muttered, while the remembered terror kindled a slow-burning fury deep in her chest. It burned all the hotter when once again her phone stopped vibrating. I’m sorry, Styx. What you must be going through… “You gave the order.”
“And you pushed me to do it. If you look at it that way, it’s as much your fault as it is mine.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she snarled, then cried out again when flat-out punched her with the gun. Right, she thought, trying not to whimper as she imagined her ribs cracking. Bad idea to talk back to the guy with the gun. Lesson learned.
“Not that any of it mattered in the end,” he went on as if there hadn’t been a violent break in their conversation. “You refused to quit on the grounds that it might have been a random case of road rage, and not job-related. Honestly, how stupid could you be?”
“So…so you needed to make sure I understood I was being specifically targeted.” Grimly she tried not to gasp for breath as the pain radiated along her rib cage bad enough to make her eyes water. “Cue some lackey with a brick. I guess you asked Jada where I was? Or is she in on this with you?”
“Good God, no. Can you imagine trusting that woman with any secret? She’s a moronic chatterbox, but at least she’s been useful when it came to keeping tabs on you. Something I had to do, because you’ve proven yourself to be the most stubbornly willful human being I’ve ever met. What job is worth your life?”
“At least I don’t have all the cops in Chicago and the Russian mob on my back,” she snapped back, turning her head to glare at him. “It’s bad for you now, yes. But if you hurt me, there won’t be a place on earth that you can hide.” The phone buzzed again as they wheeled their way out of produce and into the frozen food section. “That’s the third time my boyfriend’s called.”
Wesley’s upper lip curled. “You say that like I should care.”
“You should. You’re the one who made sure I felt my life was threatened, so we came up with a system,” she lied, trying to sound menacing when all she wanted to do was scream. “If I don’t answer on the third try, Styx will tell his family to flood the place with cops. Things will go sideways fast for you after that, and you should know that if I get hurt in any way, you’ll have to answer not just to the police, but to my man. Decide now which way your life is going to go.”
“You are the most abysmal… Answer it, but if you tip off your boyfriend or his insane cop family that you’re in trouble, I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in you and take my chances on the run. Just act natural and buy me enough time to get us the hell out of here.”
She nodded, not bothering to take the time to explain that this was the wrong play. Wesley wasn’t thinking logically anymore. He knew he was cornered, and like any cornered animal, this was when he w
as at his most dangerous.
Moving nice and slow, she fished the phone out of the grocery basket and put it to her ear. “Hey, baby.”
“Jesus, fuck, Sydney. Where the hell are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m…okay.” She winced when Wesley dug the gun into her side, and for a moment she bit her lips together so she wouldn’t cry out. “Just, uh… just trying to figure out what I’m going to cook for dinner tonight, so I’m running a little late. Sorry.”
There was a beat of silence. “I thought you said fish.”
“I know I should have thought ahead and planned something for tonight, but I guess it just slipped my mind,” she went on as normally as she could, and when they passed the section where she’d first laid eyes on him, inspiration suddenly struck. “Here’s an idea. How about I just grab something simple, like frozen pizza? You know how much I love those.”
“Fuck. She’s in trouble,” she heard him say to someone away from the phone, along with something garbled before his voice came back crystal clear. “Listen to me, baby. There are police at every entrance ready to go. You’re with someone now, right?”
She rolled her lips between her teeth. “Mm-hm.”
“Goddamn it. Is it one person? Two? How many?”
Frantically she searched her brain to come up with an answer that wouldn’t sound suspicious. “Just one pizza should do it.”
“Got it. One guy. Is he armed?”
“Yes.” And the muzzle of the gun now felt permanently embedded into her ribs.
“Where are you?”
“Styx, I’m not fussy. You’re the fussy eater, so just tell me what you want on your pizza, okay? They have, um… let me see what’s available.” She went to glass door, with Wesley glued to her side. “Okay, uh, selection-wise, they have cheese, pepperoni, double-pepperoni…”
“She’s in the freezer section, back northwest corner of the store, two rows in,” she heard him say to someone, and then there was a bunch of crazy rustling and the sound of chaotic movement. “Keep talking, Syd. You just need to stall things a little while longer, yeah? The cops are quietly clearing out the store up front while I’m heading back to where you are, all right? I’m almost there.”
