by Elle Kennedy
“We’ll get her out of there,” Noelle said firmly. “But we have to be smart about it. Okay?”
He swallowed, his gaze dropping to the phone in his hand.
“Jim. Hey. Look at me, babe. You good?”
From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the fascination on Ash’s face, but it was impossible to focus on anything but Noelle. Her blue eyes, shining with intensity. Her voice, ringing with confidence.
He took a shaky breath and managed a nod. “Yeah. I’m good.”
Chapter 31
Cate approached her grandfather’s study on stiff legs, working hard to control the ferocious eddy of hatred rolling around in her stomach.
Was it possible to love someone one day and loathe them the next? Because in less than twenty-four hours, everything she’d ever felt for her grandfather had vanished like a puff of smoke. The love. The respect. It was all gone, replaced by white-hot hostility that continued to wreak havoc on her body.
The events of last night had made it even more imperative that she get out of this house. She couldn’t stay there for one more second, couldn’t share the same space or breathe the same air as the two murderers who’d been lying to her since the day she was born.
But escaping wouldn’t be easy. She’d discovered that the hard way yesterday, and each time she thought about what had happened in the maze...
A wave of nausea swept over her, making her gag. She still remembered the wet warmth of Nik’s mouth. The way his fingers had quivered when he’d touched her breast.
Cate halted in front of the study door, breathing through the nausea. She couldn’t think about Nik right now. And she certainly couldn’t think about Gabriel—that was guaranteed to make her fall apart again, and right now, she needed to stay strong.
She had a plan to carry out, a plan that wouldn’t work unless she managed to keep her cool.
Taking a breath, she rapped her knuckles on the door and waited.
When it opened, she was startled to find Nik in the doorway.
“Cate,” he said softly.
Every muscle in her body coiled tight. “Where’s my grandfather?” she demanded instead of offering a proper greeting.
“He’s attending the quarterly board meeting at company headquarters. He mentioned it at breakfast yesterday. Don’t you remember?”
She blinked in disbelief. “Gee, Nikolaus, I apologize for not remembering. I guess I was too busy thinking about my best friend being dead. You know, the boy you murdered?”
His eyes flickered with regret. “Cate...”
“Don’t worry,” she spat out. “I won’t threaten to call the police again. I heard Maurice loud and clear.”
In fact, her grandfather’s speech had been buzzing around in her head all morning, kindling the fire of anger still burning inside her. Maurice had been waiting for her when Nik escorted her back into the house last night, but the long reprimand she’d expected, the excuses and lies...They hadn’t come. He’d simply spent a total of four minutes spelling things out to her.
Gabriel had been killed for his “interference.”
Calling the police would not help her because Maurice owned the police department.
She was never to see James Morgan again.
And she was never to step foot outside the house without supervision.
Short and sweet, a cold, emphatic speech that left no question in Cate’s mind about her new position in the household. She was a prisoner now, and there wasn’t a solitary thing she could do about it.
But she’d be damned if she meekly rolled over and allowed her grandfather to get away with what he’d done.
“Cate,” Nik said again, gesturing to the doorway. “Come in so we can discuss what happened last night. Please.”
“I don’t want to discuss anything,” she said coldly. “I want to see my mother.”
He looked startled. “You do?”
“Yes.” Determination hardened her jaw. “I can’t stomach another second of being in this house. I want to go to my mother’s.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetheart.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think. She’s my mother and I want to see her. Send a hundred guards to accompany me if you want, but don’t bother arguing with me about it. I’m going.”
Hesitation creased his forehead. She could see him mulling it over, weighing the implications, but then he released a breath.
“Give me a moment to discuss it with your grandfather.”
Nik strode back into the study, but Cate stayed rooted in place. She refused to step foot in that room, breathe in the familiar scent of leather and aftershave, look at all her grandfather’s expensive paintings. Any reminder of Maurice Durand was liable to make her throw up.
She waited in the hall and listened to Nik’s quiet voice as he spoke to her grandfather on the phone, and when he walked out a minute later, she knew she’d won this round.
“Your grandfather has agreed to let you go,” he said woodenly. “Bruno and Christian will take you there shortly. I’ll be joining you as well.”
“No.” She shot him an icy look. “I don’t want you to come.”
The guilt in his eyes was unmistakable. “Cate...I know I scared you last night, but...I wasn’t in my right mind. I thought...”
“You thought I was my mother?” she supplied tersely. “Yeah, Nik, I got that. But forgive me if I don’t want to be around the man who tried to rape me.”
His jaw fell open. “I...I would never...That’s not what happened, Catarina, and you know it.”
“Maybe. But my grandfather doesn’t know that, does he?” She offered a sugary sweet smile. “So here’s the deal, Nik—you’re going to walk back into the study and close the door behind you. I, on the other hand, am going out to the car so Bertrand can take me to my mother’s house. If you try to come with me, I’m going to call Maurice myself and tell him all about what you tried to do to me in the maze last night.”
His eyes flashed. “Are you blackmailing me, Catarina?”
“Call it whatever the hell you want. But I don’t want you anywhere near me ever again.”
They stared at each other. Seconds ticked by in silence, until finally, Nik’s shoulders drooped in defeat.
“You win, Cate.” He sounded sad and ashamed as he turned to the door. “Enjoy your visit with Ariana. Please tell her I said hello.”
Feeling vindicated, Cate marched off before he could change his mind.
• • •
Thirty minutes later, she walked into her mother’s suite flanked by her bulky bodyguards, who refused to give her even an inch of personal space.
When the two men followed her right into Ariana’s bedroom, Cate had finally had enough. Whirling around, she crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at both men.
“Could I please have some privacy?” she snapped. “I want to be alone with Maman.”
Her guards exchanged an uneasy look.
She didn’t bother hiding her aggravation. “I get it, guys. Nik told you not to leave my side. But what exactly do you think is going to happen?”
She gestured to her motionless mother, then swept her hand over the various machines surrounding the bed.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Cate muttered. “I’m going to sit in that chair, the one right over there, take my mother’s hand, and spend the next hour talking to her. Maybe I’ll tell her about Gabriel.” She shot them a pointed a look. “You remember my best friend, Gabriel, don’t you?”
Christian softened his expression first, and it didn’t take long for Bruno, the more stoic of the two, to follow suit.
The sadness on their faces threw Cate for a loop. She’d figured that everyone on her grandfather’s security staff must know that Nikolaus had killed Gabriel, but her guards looked genuinely grief-stricken.
“Gabriel was a good boy,” Christian said quietly.
“Good boy,” Bruno agreed, his tone gentle. “My heart goes out to his family.”
Christian spoke again. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Catarina.”
She fought a rush of suspicion as she listened to their condolences, but whether or not they were being sincere didn’t matter at the moment. She needed to send them away, and by mentioning Gabriel, she’d succeeded in doing just that.
“We’ll wait for you outside the suite,” Christian told her. “Take your time.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Once they were gone, she let out a breath of relief, then checked her watch. It was nine thirty. She’d texted Morgan earlier and arranged for him to come at ten o’clock. That gave her a half hour to figure out how the heck she was going to slip away without alerting her guards or any of the household staff.
But first, she had to say good-bye to her mother.
She was feeling surprisingly emotional as she approached the bed. Ariana’s cheeks revealed a rosy blush, her eyelids held a hint of cream-colored shadow, and her hair was perfectly brushed, which told Cate that the stylist had already paid her mother a visit.
“I wish I got to know you when you were...alive, I guess.” Her voice cracked. “I bet you were even more beautiful.”
Sadness washed over her. God, it wasn’t fair. Ariana hadn’t deserved this fate.
“I’m going to be with my father for a little while,” she whispered. “I hope you’re not upset that I’m leaving you. Actually, I know you aren’t. I know you can’t hear a word I’m saying right now.”
Her grandfather might believe otherwise, but Cate knew better. She’d read about coma patients waking up and claiming to have heard their loved ones talking to them, but her mother wasn’t in a coma. Her mother was brain-dead. She had no sense of cognition. She was simply...there.
“I think he’s a good man. Grandpa says he isn’t, but I don’t believe much of what he says these days. He did something terrible, Mama. Something I can never forgive him for.”
As her throat closed up, she forced herself to banish Gabriel from her mind. She would grieve for him later. Once she was actually free to do it.
“I have to believe that James Morgan is good. You must have seen something good in him, right? The two of you conceived me, after all.”
Cate trailed off, having a tough time picturing her mother with Morgan. Growing up, she’d pored over the family photo albums her grandfather kept in his study, and from what she’d been able to glean, her mother had been a lively, outgoing person. The pictures of her revealed the devilish twinkle in her eyes, the confidence in her posture. She’d seemed like a girl who liked to go out and have fun.
But James Morgan didn’t strike Cate as a fun-loving guy. He was more serious, and incredibly difficult to read.
Ironically, she’d felt more of a connection to him in the twenty minutes they’d spoken than in all her visits with Ariana combined. She was never able to get a clear sense of her mother. Maurice revered her, but who was Ariana Durand, really? Who had she once been?
Cate had no answer for that, and no time to think about it, because her watch revealed she had only fifteen minutes left.
She needed to find a way out.
Squaring her shoulders, Cate left her mother’s room and headed for the door of the suite. When she opened it, she found her guards lurking in the hallway, much to her dismay.
She cleared her throat. “I was just going to run down to the kitchen and grab a cup of tea. It’s kind of cold in there.”
Bruno immediately straightened up. “I can do that. Go back inside and sit with your mother, and I’ll bring it in for you.”
Frustration seized her spine. “Okay. Great. Thanks, Bruno.”
“No problem.” He hurried off, leaving Cate alone with Christian.
She searched her mind, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a way to get rid of him, so she simply wandered back to the suite and returned to her mother’s bedside.
She found herself reaching for Ariana’s hand, something she rarely did, but she was too distracted at the moment to notice the ice-cold flesh beneath her fingers. As anxiety rose inside her, she absently stroked her mother’s knuckles and struggled to come up with a plan.
When Bruno strolled into the room five minutes later, she was no closer to finding a solution.
He handed her a cup of tea on a delicate saucer. “Here you go.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, then waited until he was gone before releasing a frustrated groan.
She checked her watch for a third time. Damn it. Only ten minutes to make her way outside.
But how?
How could she escape without alerting Bruno and Christian? She certainly couldn’t outrun them—they were both former soldiers with endurance to spare. And they carried guns. What if they shot her?
She contemplated going out the window, but it was a two-story jump down to the ground. She was afraid she’d break her leg, which would officially squash any hope of making it to Morgan’s car. Heck, even an ankle sprain would slow her down.
Her head lifted when she heard a female voice out in the hall. Her mother’s nurse. But Mimi didn’t come into the suite. She stayed outside the door, chatting with Cate’s guards.
Cate turned back to her mother, but not before her gaze rested on the power bar in the wall beside the bed. Dozens of cords were plugged into it, belonging to the machines that kept her mother’s various organs working.
That was when something unthinkable occurred to her.
So unthinkable, in fact, that it brought a rush of sickness to her throat.
Cate jumped off the chair, barely making it to the private bathroom before the nausea spilled over. She collapsed in front of the toilet and heaved, emptying the contents of her stomach as horror spiraled through her.
Oh God. How could she have even considered such a thing?
Is it so preposterous?
She promptly threw up again.
And when there was nothing left to throw up, she remained huddled over the porcelain bowl, dry heaving. It took every ounce of strength she had to raise her head and check her watch again.
Nine minutes.
Her legs were shaking as she left the bathroom and returned to her mother. She stood at the foot of the bed, staring at the electrical outlet before focusing her attention on the ventilator, which slowly expanded as it released even bursts of oxygen into her mother’s lungs.
Ariana’s vacant eyes stared back at her. Normally Cate closed her mother’s eyelids when she came to visit. She hated seeing those unresponsive pupils, the unblinking expression. She’d left them open today so she could feel like her mother was actually looking at her when she said good-bye.
But seeing them staring so vacantly made her realize that they’d said good-bye a long time ago. They’d said good-bye when Cate was just a fetus in her mother’s stomach. Ariana had died with her baby inside her, and only the miracle of technology had allowed for Cate to be born.
This wasn’t her mother lying there. It was a slab of meat her grandfather insisted on keeping fresh.
Cate gagged again, unable to control the revulsion gripping her stomach.
“You don’t deserve this,” she whispered to her mother.
The earsplitting drumming of her heart drowned out her thoughts. She walked to the side of the bed. Stood there. Stared at the tubes taped to her mother’s mouth and nose.
She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience. She was watching herself do the unthinkable. Seeing her own hand gently peel the tape off her mother’s face. Seeing her shaky fingers struggle to unhook the plastic pieces.
She felt sick again. Faint.
Breathing hard, she popped the tube out, and recoiled when a loud
wheeze echoed in the air, like a balloon that had just been deflated.
Ariana didn’t move. Her chocolate brown eyes stayed blank.
Cate could barely see through the sheen of tears. Very slowly, she leaned down and kissed her mother’s forehead.
“You can rest now, Mama. I love you.”
Then she looked at the heart monitor.
And waited.
* * *
“Still no sign of her.” Ash’s green eyes were focused on the house, his fingers drumming the steering wheel of the SUV.
They’d been waiting for almost five minutes, parked in the narrow driveway at the side of the house, which Cate had explained was used primarily by the staff. The driveway had its own gate separate from the one at the main entrance; Cate had given them the code for it and said she’d be outside at exactly ten o’clock.
But it was 10:05, and she was nowhere in sight.
Morgan couldn’t control his growing worry. He suspected they were at Ariana’s house, but he hadn’t caught a single glimpse of the woman he’d seduced all those years ago. The only car in the main driveway was the one Cate told them she’d be arriving in, but he supposed Ariana could have a vehicle or two stashed in the three-car garage.
Christ, he hated feeling so powerless. He wanted to run into the house and get Cate, but he forced himself to heed Noelle’s advice.
You have to trust her, she’d said firmly.
At the moment, Noelle was out front with Sean Reilly. They’d reported seeing an armored sedan drive through the gates. Cate had gotten out of the backseat and entered the house sandwiched by two beefy bodyguards, the same ones who’d been at the Eiffel Tower with her.
It concerned him that neither Dietrich nor Bauer had accompanied her today. Dietrich was attending a board meeting in the city, which had been confirmed by Bailey, who was staking out the headquarters of Durand Enterprises.
Sully and Liam had remained at the Durand property, and they’d checked in to report that Bauer had walked Cate out to the car but hadn’t joined her. Liam had managed to snap a photo and send it to Morgan, who’d grimly confirmed the identity of one Nikolaus Bauer.