The Tin Man (Inner Circle #1) : Enemies to Lovers Dark Romance Thriller

by Kailin Gow

  I hesitated a moment more with my finger poised over the doorbell. “I really am sorry about this, Aunt Sookie.”

  I pressed on the doorbell and heard the musical chimes inside.

  No answer.

  I rang again then looked into the window. I could see clear through the house to the ocean on the other side. Everything was white. White walls, white leather sofa, white curtains, all over white marble floors.

  But there was no movement. Nothing.

  I backed away from the door and looked at the house, trying to catch any movement inside any window. Maybe she was in the shower.

  The neighbor scrambled out of her house with a travel mug in one hand, her car keys in the other and a portfolio under her arm. As she made her way to her classic silver Alfa Romeo, I headed back down to the drive.

  “Hey,” I called out. “Excuse me. Would you happen to know if Sookie is out on location? On a shoot somewhere?”

  “Oh,” the woman said as she opened the car door and set her things inside. “Are you a friend of Sookie’s?”

  “Yes,” I said glancing into the windows again. “She’s not expecting me, so she might still be asleep, but…”

  “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,” the woman said, her face showing the full extent of her sorrow. “I really am sorry, but Sookie passed away a few months ago.”

  “What?” I gasped. “Are you sure?”

  She gave me a funny look. “Yes,” she said. “I’m quite sure. I was here when the ambulance arrived and I saw… well, you probably don’t want to know. But it wasn’t pretty. I really am sorry, kid.”

  Aunt Sookie was dead. It was a devastating blow. For the year that Summer had lived with her, I’d gotten to know her well. I’d liked her, respected her. She liked me with Summer. She even helped me keep tabs on Summer after the accident for the first few weeks. She was someone rare… someone I could trust.

  And now she was gone.

  Shit.

  What else could go wrong?

  Chapter 11

  Dante Black/Parker James

  After the neighbor got into her car and drove off, I sat on the stoop and tried to find other options. It seemed like everywhere I turned, something went wrong. Aunt Sookie… she was like family, especially since she was Summer’s aunt and was someone who knew how Summer and I were close.

  I looked up and down the street. As the morning got brighter, more and more people were going about their day, going off to school or work. But after a while, things got quiet again making the pinging of my phone all the more startling.

  I looked down at my phone. Another message from Ace.

  Not this again.

  Space Race

  I snorted as I saw the code words Ace and I had established long ago. He knew how easy it was to send a message pretending to be someone else. We had given each other code words that only we knew to ensure any message sent was truly coming from us.

  Every so often, we changed them. These new words had been changed on the plane on our way to the States.

  Damn it. It was just more proof of how fucking distracted I was due to Summer’s appearance. There had been no code word on last night’s message and it should have been a dead giveaway. I couldn’t let that happen again. I had to stay focused. I’d almost paid for that mistake with my life.

  I looked at Ace’s message.

  Hey, man. What happened to you? I went back to the hotel and everything’s gone. Except that… well you know. Anyway. Shit is going down. I think we need to relocate. Remember those coordinates you gave me a while back… in case. Well, I’m here… waiting. Come meet me here as soon as you can.

  I entered my code word: Parking Garage

  Hold tight. I’m on my way.

  I sent the message then got into my car and headed to the old Episcopal church at the south end of Los Angeles.

  The parking lot to the gothic style church was empty as I drove through and came out on the other side. Not wanting to arouse suspicion or attention, I drove down past a few houses and parked the car on the street. Then I walked back and headed to the door that led down to the basement.

  Though Ace had used a code word, I was still on guard. I didn’t want to be ambushed a second time. As I opened the heavy old door, I pulled my gun out.

  “Ace?” I said as I went down the stairs and arrived at a large empty space.

  “Over here,” he said loudly.

  I put my gun away and went to him.

  The basement was a safehouse that my father had set up some years earlier. There were a few comfortable cots set up on one side with a big screen TV. In the other corner was a functional kitchen with good sized fridge, a range and double sink. The counter was filled with appliances: toaster, coffee machine, microwave oven. We had everything we needed. On the other side where Ace sat, there was a wall of computers, monitors and other surveillance equipment.

  As I walked up to him, Ace turned to me.

  “Shit,” I let out. “What the fuck happened to you?”

  His face was bruised, his lip swollen and cut open and he couldn’t see through one eye because it was so blue and puffy.

  “Let’s just say the guy got in a few shots before I could break free and run the hell out of there.” He got up and headed to the kitchen. He’d never been the type to make a fuss over things like that. He never whined or complained, no matter what happened.

  Since knowing him there had been a few times when he’d gotten beat up. But he got up, and life went on.

  “I got some pizza left over from last night. You hungry?”

  “No,” I said. Actually, I was famished, but my stomach was in knots and pizza wasn’t what I had in mind for breakfast.

  “It’s good,” he said as he pulled the box out of the refrigerator, flicked the box open and took a slice. “Triple pepperoni.”

  “Maybe later,” I said, looking around. “Do you think you were tailed?”

  “No way,” he said. “I went through a labyrinth to get here. I walked, I took the bus, I took a cab, then I walked some more. I went back to the hotel, went back to the stadium parking lot, wandered around.” He held up the slice of pizza. “Picked this shit up.”

  “Good.”

  “I got here in the middle of the night,” he went on after taking another bite. “There’s no way anyone was on my tail. I even dumped my clothes after that cab last ride… just in case one of those goons dropped a tracker on me.”

  “So what d’you do?” I said with a smirk. “Walk around naked?”

  “Naw,” he said as he chewed. “I found some dude’s old raincoat. I wore it all the way here then threw that in the dumpster just before coming in here. Your dad sure had a nifty idea making this a safe space. Plenty of clothes and food.”

  I went over to the closet, knocked on a wall inside, and pulled out a panel. A wad of cash in all bills from a dollar to a hundred dollars was stuck behind. Dad did think of everything…which was why he was The Condor, and also a founder of the Inner Circle. I took some of the cash from one of the wads and put it in my pocket. No more use of credit cards or anything that could be traced.

  “Here,” I said, handing bills to Ace. “Start using cash only. No electronic transactions from now on.” I smiled. “Dad even got clothes that helped you blend in more than the ugly ass shit you usually wear.”

  He looked down at the jeans and black t-shirt that he was wearing. “Your old man thought of everything.” He looked up at me. “There’s even some tins of food back there… don’t know if any of that is still good… but… You can have a go at it if you don’t want pizza.”

  “Great set up. Who knew Dad would pick a church to be a safe house.”

  “No one should bother us here, and there’s plenty of clothes, food, donations of old equipment, cars… and a cross in case any of the Inner Circle happens to be vampires,” Ace joked.

  I shook my head as I turned to look at the computer he’d been working on.

  “The impor
tant thing is that you’re safe,” I said as I looked at the screen. “Did you find anything out?”

  “About the shit last night?” Ace said as he returned to the computer and sat down. “Check this out.”

  Chapter 12

  Dante Black/Parker James

  “Okay,” I said as Ace turned back to his computer. “What do you have?”

  Ace opened a page on his computer and scrolled down until he found what he wanted. “First, I noticed this message from Campbell Entertainment.”

  I looked at the screen.

  “At first glance, it’s your usual apology,” Ace went on. “Thank you for being patient, bla, bla, bla. We’ve worked tirelessly to get the site up and running again… yeah, yeah. We will do our utmost to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Yeah. Right. Your security is our priority and we thank you for entrusting… yada, yada, yada.”

  “Okay,” I said, as I looked over the message. “So, you’re telling me that they’re already up and running again.”

  “Looks that way,” Ace said.

  “Shit,” I muttered as I thought about the code I’d inserted into the program. “How did he manage that so fast?”

  “That’s what I would like to know.” Ace looked up at me with a grin. “Maybe he found himself a whiz kid, too.”

  I chuckled though I was far from amused.

  “Do you think that Rockerfeller fixed his system, too?”

  Ace nodded and opened another page. “They put out a message and it’s essentially the same song and dance. We apologize, bla, bla, bla. You’re important to us. We’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. And with that, Baumer Estate Development is doing just fine as of today.”

  “Shit.” How could I have so badly underestimated their capabilities?

  “Then I went in to see about Worth,” Ace went on. “Worth Kensington Financials is running smoothly. They give the same apology and whatnot but add that no money was lost. Investors have not lost a dime.”

  “Isn’t that nice of them?” I said.

  “Right.”

  “So, that just leaves Claire Montigue?” I said with finality. “Please tell me that at least one of my targets is still disabled.”

  “Sorry,” Ace quipped. “No can do. Montigue Foods and Agriculture is back in business and it’s as if nothing ever happened. They didn’t even put out a statement or apology. They just got their site back on track and went back to work.”

  “Okay,” I said with resignation. “So, I was able to slow them down for a little while but in the end, it hasn’t really affected them enough.”

  “Not as much as we’d hoped.

  I sat down beside him and stared at the screen. “Okay,” I finally said. “What does all this mean?”

  “It means that someone found the code that you installed in their systems. They found a way to stop it.”

  Shaking my head in disbelief, I quickly backtracked to see what I could have done wrong.

  “There’s more, Parker,” Ace said. He turned to the computer and brought up other messages.

  While the others had all been on well-known platforms, all with similar backgrounds, fonts and visual designs, these messages had a definitively different look to them.

  “What is this?” I said.

  “This one is from Campbell Entertainment. I was able to tap into their private messaging system.”

  “Okay,” I said cautiously.

  “I hate to say this, Parker, but not only did they detect and stop the program you put in, but they were able to trace it.”

  Staring at him, my eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah,” he said with regret. “They traced it all the way back to TechUp. Look at this series of messages. Their tech guy found a glitch, then realized it was an intentionally added code and somehow he was able to link it to TechUp.”

  “Damn it.”

  “Of course, Stanley didn’t waste much time contacting Rockefeller… and well…”

  “So, all of the founders of the Inner Circle now know that TechUp…”

  “Has fucked up,” Ace finished for me.

  “Big time,” I said, nodding heavily. I pulled in a deep breath and tried to go over everything. Then it came to me. “Those press badges you made to get backstage at the show last night.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “What about them?”

  “The name TechUp was on them,” I said. “In nice, big, bold blue font… the name was right there.”

  “Yeah,” he said innocently until the full picture came to him and he slammed the palm of his hand into this forehead. “Shit. That’s why those goons were suddenly all over us. Oh, man.”

  “Right,” I said looking at him. “They recognized the name. They realized that we’re the ones who screwed up their computer systems…”

  “And subsequently lost them billions of dollars.” He looked apologetically at me. “Sorry, man. I didn’t think that they would ever…”

  “Hey,” I said, cutting him off as I patted him on the shoulder. “I’m the one who approved of the press badges you made. I gave the okay. I was fine with having the company name on that. Shit, TechUp is so well known now, I knew it would give us prestige and give us an easy way in.”

  “Still…” he said sheepishly. “I should have at least considered the possibility that they’d figure it out.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So should I, Ace. So should I.”

  “The important thing is that we know why they went after us. Question is… they know I’m Parker James. They even know that Parker James is CEO of TechUp. But do they know that I’m actually Dante Black?”

  “What do you want to do about it now?” Ace said.

  I got up and headed to a small door at the back end of the large room. The four foot high door led to a cooler chamber that was actually beneath the steps leading into the church above. And in that cooler chamber were a few very nice bottles of wine that my father had hidden away.

  “No point having to suffer cheap wine while we’re hiding out,” he’d said in defense of his purchase.

  I pulled out a favorite: A Pinot Noir. I went back to the kitchen to open the bottle and take an invigorating sniff of the cork. Perfect. Grabbing two glasses from the cupboard, I went back to Ace.

  “Wine?” Ace said. “You didn’t want pizza for breakfast, but you’ll have wine?”

  Sitting down, I grinned at him while I poured myself a glass. “You’re free to abstain if you wish.”

  “Yeah,” Ace said with a smirk. “I think I’ll hold off… for like maybe a few hours or so.”

  “Things are so messed up these days,” I said. “It seems like the days turn into night and nights turn into day. Everything is so screwed up and backwards.” I took a sip of the bold wine and sat back to analyze the situation.

  “Well, it certainly is your prerogative.”

  “I’ve been too tense lately,” I said. I don’t know if I was trying to justify my action to him or to myself. “Things aren’t going as planned and… Shit. It’s just all going to shit.”

  “That girl,” Ace said simply.

  I snorted and looked at him. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess it’s all because of that girl. I guess it’s screwing with my thought process a little more than I thought. I really thought I was over her. I had tucked away all the memories of her. And yet… Damn, seeing her again is just driving me nuts.”

  “I think I’m still level-headed about all this, so you can bounce your ideas off me,” he said. “That is, if you have any ideas.”

  I smirked at him. “Actually, at this very moment, no. I have no ideas. I’m all out. What do you have to offer?”

  “Well, for starters, you might want to consider what you want to do about Parker James?” Ace said. “Do you want to keep that identity, or do we kill him off, too?”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Too much to think about?”

  “No. I had thought of that,” I said. “Actually, it was my first thought when y
ou told me they knew all about TechUp. But I don’t really think it’s the right way to go. Not yet, anyway.”

  In a way, I was a victim of my own success. TechUp had taken off like nothing I had expected. Within six months of starting the company, I was already rated among the top five tech start ups and six months after that, TechUp was at the top of the heap.

  All of that success had been accompanied by magazine articles, television interviews and social media spotlight. My name was out there and people knew my face.

  “Right,” Ace finally said. “If Parker James dies, who’ll take over TechUp?” He looked at me with a playful grin. “Me?”

  I chuckled softly. “You couldn’t handle the pressure.”

  “Ha!” he let out with exaggerated enthusiasm. “I would take the company to the moon.”

  I let him have his moment then shrugged. “If it really comes to that, I can do with TechUp what my father did with Black Biotech. He had an eight billion dollar company, and he knew he was going to die. He also knew that I would have to become a ghost of myself. So, he transferred the stock to an anonymous stockholder, a fictional name.”

  Ace nodded. “Funny,” he said. “I remember reading that article about Clay Black. I’d heard about Black Biotech… I mean… who hadn’t? That company was all over the place. But it was all so surreal… the explosion that killed him and his son, the falling apart of the company afterward, the billions of dollars in stock now own by a mysterious entity.” He smiled as he looked at me. “Your father was a genius. You’re a genius. I don’t know if I would have had the guts to start all over again. I mean, to leave behind the life of Dante Black and go forward as Parker James. I can barely lie about something as insignificant as what I had for breakfast, never mind make up a whole new life for myself. New name, new identity… Fuck. That takes balls.”

  I took another sip of wine as his words sank in. “You know what? The thing is that, when life is good, when things are going your way and when you just feel comfortable and laid back, it’s hard to give up everything you have to start your life all over again. It’s all too easy to get complacent, and to just ride it out, breeze through life.”