by Virna DePaul
Branden stared dully at the dangling wires coming from the elevator control panel. Something was clipped to them. A flash drive. He reached for it just as the elevator descended, picking up speed until he fell down again.
The thumb-size drive dangled, flashing red.
What had it been programmed to do?
He made another grab at it, then nearly passed out when the elevator jerked hard and whooshed upward again.
Branden gasped for breath as he dragged himself up. His head throbbed with fierce pain. He put a hand to his face, staring at his bloody palm. He could barely think. There was something—he could survive—if—why couldn’t he think?
He banged his head against the paneling.
It came back to him.
The manual override. Secretly installed after he’d bought the penthouse. His idea. Hidden behind the official notice of inspection in the small metal frame above the control panel that no one ever noticed.
He braced his arms and legs, fighting the rocket ride, waiting for the jolt.
When it came, he was ready. The frame opened at the pressure point when he jabbed it. He waited again for the ride up, staring at the override lever. Would it work? He had never used it.
The car rose, gaining speed but not fast enough for him. Less momentum going up. The slowness was excruciating. He felt a sickening drop that lasted too long and squeezed his swollen eyes shut. Then came a full stop.
He wasn’t aware that the doors had opened until he blinked. The car had gone all the way up to the top of the building. He staggered forward before the doors could close again, his sleeve button catching on the extracted wires, yanking off the flash drive. He didn’t know why it was there, didn’t hear it tumble through the thin gap between the car and the shaft. The doors slammed against him, pinning him hard, slamming and slamming. Branden fought free. The doors shut behind him. The free-falling car screamed down the cables.
Branden didn’t wait to hear the crash of the elevator hitting ground. He ran toward the penthouse door, cursing when he saw Howe, face bloody and lying prone on the ground. A quick check confirmed he was unconscious but still alive.
Oh, God. Oh fuck.
Cara.
As soon as he ran into the penthouse he heard them. He ran into the living room. The thick form of Mike Gaunt was bent over Cara’s arched body as he tried to catch her hand. She was fighting him furiously, punching him with one hand, not screaming, saving her breath, trying to save her life.
Branden reached them in a split second. Powered by uncontrollable rage, he ripped Mike away from her and threw him against the wall. He grabbed him by the shirt and smashed his face into the coffee table, shattering the glass. Blood gushed from the other man’s bristled scalp as he crawled free, a long strand of telephone cord wrapped around his hand that tangled his legs.
Cara’s soft cry made him turn. She held up her other hand and Branden saw the cruel cord that bound one wrist and the blue skin and hugely swollen fingers. He kicked the crawling man in the belly and Mike’s eyes rolled back in his head as he collapsed onto the ground.
Branden turned to Cara and picked the hard knot loose and rubbed her wrist.
“Did he hurt you?” he ground out.
“I’m okay,” she murmured, her eyes on his. Suddenly her gaze flickered. “Branden—look!”
Gaunt dragged himself up and got to his feet somehow, then made it to the open door. And out.
“Stay here,” Branden commanded Cara, then ran after him. As Gaunt staggered into the hallway, Branden caught up with him. He grabbed the man by the shoulder and whipped him around.
The elevator doors opened, a black gaping maw where the elevator car should be. Branden shoved Gaunt to the side, not wanting to get anywhere near the shaft.
“Why?” he yelled. “Why go after Cara?”
Gaunt stumbled, then swung a clenched fist at Branden’s head, landing a glancing blow. Coupled with the blow Branden had taken earlier, the punch had enough force to send Branden reeling. He stumbled to his knees, losing his grip on Gaunt. Dizziness overtook him, and he shook his head, trying to clear it. Trying to stay conscious.
“I’m going to kill you.” Gaunt’s voice held an empty hardness. “And then I’ll kill Cara.” He stepped forward, but the telephone cord still tangled around his wrist caught between his legs. He staggered to the side.
“Gaunt!” Branden yelled.
But it was too late. Gaunt’s body went sideways toward the elevator shaft. He screamed as his arms windmilled and he tried to regain his balance but failed.
His body fell out of view.
A feral howl of despair echoed. Grew fainter. Then, from far below…a thud.
Branden slowly walked toward the elevator shaft and peered down, jumping when he felt a touch on his shoulder.
It was Cara, her face drained of color. “Back up. Please back up.”
He did, dragging her with him and pulling her into his arms. She buried her face in his neck.
“Thank God,” he breathed. “Thank God you’re okay.”
She nodded. Looked up at him almost dazed. “You saved me, Branden.” She looked over his shoulder. “Please. Can we go inside?”
Branden remembered Howe. “We need to call an ambulance.”
Cara clutched his hand. “Yes! Your head is bleeding. You may need to go to the ER.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
Chapter 27
“They found something interesting in Mike Gaunt’s office,” Deena said to Branden a week after Gaunt’s death. “Come and look. It’s all set out on his desk.”
Branden glanced at the clock and cursed. It was past four o’clock and all he wanted was to head home to Cara. The only reason he’d even come into work today was because Cara had insisted, saying she needed their lives to get back to normal.
Only things weren’t normal.
She hadn’t been herself since Gaunt’s attack. In the past week, she’d only spoken briefly to Iris or her mother or Glenn. With Branden, she accepted his care. His affection. She didn’t reject him. But she wasn’t fully present either.
Thankfully, last night, something seemed to have shifted inside her, and she’d asked him to drive her to Windorne Home to see Glenn, then to Brooklyn to see her mom.
But she’d still come home that night and had curled up in bed, not reaching for him or welcoming him in. It was only in sleep that she stretched and relaxed in his embrace, giving sleepy little moans that took him back to their hottest encounters instantly.
Tough, he’d told himself. Tough fucking luck. You, Branden Duke, will live through this night and the next night and the next. However long it takes. Until she’s ready for that again. Ready for you.
And she would be. Together, they’d work through the shadow Mike Gaunt had cast. And in order to do that, to help her do that, he needed to know everything there was to know.
He sighed and nodded at Deena. “His desk, huh? He kept his office neat as a pin. I heard he emptied out his own wastebasket.”
“Really?”
Branden shrugged. “So what was there to find?”
“You’ll see.”
Branden had no trouble keeping up with Deena’s long-legged strides and they stopped at the open door to the small office.
A slender woman in her forties with brown bobbed hair was thumbing through two books set side by side, turning the pages of each at exactly the same moment, like an automaton. Her bifocals had slipped down her ski-jump nose but she didn’t stop to push them back up.
Deena knocked softly to get her attention.
She looked up and smiled in a very real way. “Come in,” she said. “I’m Louise Callahan, a forensic psychiatrist and investigator. You must be Branden Duke. Deena said she would bring you by.”
“Well, here I am. What’s going on?”
Louise got to the point. “We found Mike Gaunt’s journals in his black bag, which had a false bottom.
These were concealed beneath it.” She nodded toward the bag, which now sat on a chair. It seemed to be completely empty. Branden was more interested in the thick journals, which weren’t printed but handwritten. Each held what seemed to be hundreds of pages between hard black covers, spiral bound.
“As you can see, these are actually artists’ sketchbooks, with high-quality paper suitable for watercolor paints and ink, no bleed-through.”
Each page was covered in tiny cursive script, on both sides. He could make out a few dates—the microscopic numerals were easier to read than the dense handwriting.
“He started these in the late 1990s. Yes, they go back that far,” she said to Branden’s surprised expression. “Each entry is quite short. He created a meticulous record of his descent into insanity, perhaps as an attempt to control it. Mike Gaunt was a deeply troubled man.”
Branden and Deena exchanged a look.
“What I find most fascinating is the parallel structures of the text,” she said. “One book mostly about men. One book for women. Notes for each gender appear in each on the same day. His observations are much less organized and it’s not perfectly consistent, of course. Whatever came into his mind was written down. Some of the names he mentions are familiar. I suspect some cold cases may be reopened soon. He’s nursed grudges for years—it’s all in there, with names that will interest the relevant authorities. There is no statute of limitations on murder, as you no doubt know.”
“What did he write?” Branden hated thinking about what he might learn. He had seen what Gaunt did with tape and film. The books couldn’t be as devastating. Ink and paper didn’t have the power of moving images. “Don’t go back too far. I want to know what he wrote about Cara.”
Louise nodded and flipped pages of both books backward with the same simultaneous motion. “His hatred for you started years ago, when you started working with him and Deena in prior SEC investigations. Apparently he was jealous, and had an unhealthy fixation on you. Once you came to D&M, however, he never wrote about Cara without writing about you. It was as if you two were inextricably linked in his mind. But even on paper, he prevented you from touching.”
Deena stayed where she was but Brendan moved closer, standing where he could read over Louise Callahan’s shoulder. She pointed to several passages in the books and Branden scanned them, catching lines here and there:
Brendan Duke acts like a fucking king. I hate him…
His youth—he takes it for granted. His success—he doesn’t deserve any of it…
Cara has fallen for his charms, just like the others…
To her I’m nobody. Just a middle-aged man in a clean white shirt who follows the rules. But I have more to offer her than Duke…
She needs to learn to obey. I will have to touch her to teach her. Teach her I’m better than Duke. She might fight me. But I’ll win.
Branden fought back a rising fury but reminded himself that Mike Gaunt’s words no longer had the power to hurt others. His fantasies, his brooding rants, were effectively as dead as he was.
Louise turned more pages.
…I bought the HotnSaucey tape of him…now I have Branden Duke in the flesh. I cut off everything he had below the waist. Him with his hands on those tight jeans…
I followed Cara and Branden into that dirty club…she danced like a whore… I was angry. She needed to know someone was watching her. So I sent her the tape.
He has everything. I have nothing. He has her. But I can take her away. Today. Today.
“Sick fuck.” Branden looked at Louise. “Sorry. Had to say it.”
“There’s no need to apologize. The psychiatric term is really too long.” It didn’t seem possible to ruffle Louise Callahan. “Do you want to read more?”
“No. The bastard has wasted too much of our time already. I have someone far more important waiting for me.”
Thank God Gaunt hadn’t succeeded in his plan to take Cara away from him, Branden thought. And what a complicated, well-thought-out plan it had been.
He’d rented an apartment in Branden’s building. Gained access to the new skyscraper’s computerized heart, including the key code to Branden’s door and to his private elevators. He’d even planted malware that only he could activate to run them in different ways. All he’d needed was the opportunity to get Branden on those elevators and to Cara.
So far, there was no evidence that he’d recorded the trap Cara and Branden had set for him. He hoped it was because he hadn’t.
Even after spending the last week with her, with all known threats to them eliminated, Branden was still paranoid. He’d assigned several men to guard her while she was in the penthouse and when she was out of it. While some part of him wanted to keep her protectively locked indoors, he refused to give Gaunt that type of power over them. Cara wasn’t meant to be caged. She was a beautiful woman who loved life, and he was going to spend the rest of his spoiling her and showing her all the wonders and luxuries that were hers for the taking. That included making sure her mother and brother were well taken care of as always, with the major difference that Cara no longer felt she carried that responsibility alone.
Tomorrow they were leaving for the beach vacation he promised her. He hoped the time away from New York would finally enable them to move beyond the nightmare they’d experienced and they’d become intimate—physically and emotionally—again.
During the visit with her mother last night, Cara had shown him her father’s paperwork she’d found in the attic. She held hope that the paperwork or the other documents in her mother’s attic would hold the key to exonerating her father once and for all. Branden wanted to give that to her, but from what he’d seen so far, he wasn’t sure he could—Davies normally covered his tracks pretty darn well. However, he was currently in custody for trying to move those stolen bonds, so who knew? Maybe Branden was giving him too much credit. He’d make sure to look over every piece of paper himself once he and Cara returned.
As for Gills and Sampson, Deena would handle the investigation while Branden was gone. It wouldn’t be difficult given how cooperative Gills was being now that he’d heard Sampson was talking and spinning things in his favor. Gills told Deena that his life had been wasted “chasing numbers” and that he’d gotten talked into “doing illegal things” by Sampson, who might or might not be Davies’s son—Sampson was denying the connection, and the glass Iris had pilfered hadn’t provided usable traces of DNA.
According to Gills, conspiring with Sampson had initially given him a thrill, an adrenaline rush. But then he had heard about the death of one of his longtime acquaintances, a man who’d been arrested for insider trading. The man had dropped dead of a heart attack while in jail awaiting his trial. Larry told Deena that he tried to stop after that, but Sampson had too much on him and blackmailed him into continuing. He was old and tired and had decided he couldn’t go on the way he had any longer.
Based on what Deena had uncovered so far, Sampson could be charged with violating at least four sections of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and as far as sentencing, if found guilty, he would be forced to repay the money he’d stolen, plus prejudgment interest, preventing him from serving as an officer or director of a public company, and permanently enjoining him from future violations of those provisions of the federal securities laws. Gills probably wouldn’t fare too much better.
But that wasn’t Branden’s concern. And it certainly wouldn’t be Cara’s. He didn’t plan on sharing what he’d learned today, especially the snippets from Gaunt’s journals. Maybe someday he’d tell her, but right now he wanted her completely at ease, the memory of Gaunt’s attack wiped away as much as possible.
To that end, he left D&M and headed home.
To Cara.
Chapter 28
After arriving at the Andros Island Airport, Branden and Cara caught a private ferry to Kamalame Cay, a Caribbean barefoot-chic retreat with nineteen luxurious seaside suites set in charming bougainvillea-draped cottages, peak-roofed B
alinese beach houses, and classic plantation-style villas. Each cottage had access to a mile of its own private beach.
They were greeted at the Great House, which was furnished with a grand collection of South Asian and Bahamian decor, art books, antiques, and collectibles. The concierge led them through a garden terrace along a white sand path, passing an outdoor tiki bar with an open grill and a heated freshwater pool edged in breathtaking, towering silver palms.
The Great House was mind-boggling enough, but when Cara saw their villa…
“It’s gorgeous,” she said, then laughed at how she’d been gushing.
“You like?”
“I love! It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, straight out of a magazine…or a dream.”
“I aim to make your fantasies a reality, Cara.”
She’d been so distant with Branden ever since Mike Gaunt had tried to…what…kill her? Sure felt that way. But Gaunt had taken her somewhere she’d never been before—that no one ever should be. Bouncing back from a crazed man’s attack wasn’t the same as bouncing back from a fractured wrist or a tumble on the sidewalk.
But she was almost there. Almost back to who she was before the attack. She had to hope Branden would keep waiting…and had to hope she’d heal, and soon.
And that when she did, Branden would still be there.
Because she still hadn’t said those words that meant so much to her. She still hadn’t told Branden Duke she loved him.
She scanned the villa. It was at least twelve hundred square feet with a peaked roof and a wood frame. The open windows in the front room left it bright and airy and splashed with sun. The ceilings stretched upward as tall as the sweeping palms they’d passed on their way in. Outside, there was a covered spacious veranda that looked out onto their mile-long private stretch of white sandy beach that led to a clear, aquamarine ocean.
The bathroom had a sunken marble tub with built-in jets and a walk-in shower with two heads. The bedroom was huge, with an oversized king bed and privacy curtains draped around the hand-carved four posters that held it up. The glass doors opened directly onto the beach.
