“I do. His and Smith’s.”
“Right. Good. I better go.” I kiss her again, and this time, my lips linger on hers. “I don’t like leaving you alone.”
“You can’t live here with me if you’re afraid to leave me alone. And as I told Savage, Brody isn’t suddenly going to like me.”
“You’re right,” I conclude. “We need to just get a house away from here.”
“I love both the castle and the beach house, and I haven’t even met the woman in red yet. I vote we stay here.”
“If that means you’re going to move in with me, we’ll talk tonight.”
“About a lot of things,” she says, “but, right now, go. Work your North magic on your clients. Go. Get it over with. Goodbye.”
“For now,” I say, and I have no idea why I add those words. I just know that she’s hard as hell to leave behind. Perhaps it’s all the talk of Hunter’s death, but I can’t shake the feeling that leaving her behind is a mistake.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jax
The wind gusts across the private airfield, forcing Grayson Bennett’s private jet to remain on the runway. While inconvenient for him, it allows me the opportunity to join him and Eric in the luxury plane to talk about the Knight empire. Eric gets right to the crux of the matter. “You’re in love with her,” he says, sipping North Whiskey from a fine crystal glass, across from me in a booth. “Which makes sense since you lobbied for her interest.”
I don’t ask who “her” is. The man witnessed the force of will that is Emma Knight. We both know who he’s talking about. Grayson, who sits between us, arches a brow, waiting for my answer. And I give it to him. “Yes,” I say, no hesitation in me with good reason. She came into my life. She owned me that easily. And there was never any chance I’d look back. “It wasn’t exactly my plan considering who she is,” I add, “but I’m beyond resistance. In fact, I’m all in which means—”
“Your agenda has changed,” Grayson says, clinking the ice in his glass. “The quality of your whiskey has not. Your father would be pleased. It’s damn good. He was a damn good man, an honorable man. That’s the kind of man I like to do business with. I believe you are one of those men.”
“I assure you I am, though I will admit to a hunger for revenge against the Knight family, and sins I believe they committed against my brother. But Emma brought me back to me.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he says. “That’s a trek to make but one that we’ve all had to resist at some point in life.”
“We talked about getting a look at Chance Knight’s true colors,” Eric interjects. “Which were on board with considering our potential business partnership.”
I know what he’s made of but I don’t say that. I promised Emma a fair shot for Chance. I told her, in not so many words, that I wanted Chance to prove me wrong. I owe it to her to give him that chance.
“I’ve got just the shady deal that we’re walking away from to get the job done,” Eric continues. “We can offer it to Chance. If he runs with it, he’s just like his father.”
“And his father was not your father,” Grayson says. “That man was brutally cold-hearted.”
I think of that note he’d written to my mother and left inside the bottom of the hourglass, not to mention the way he cut Emma out of the family fortune. I didn’t have to have known the man well to know that’s true. “Emma is nothing like her father,” I say. “We all need to know which side of the line, Chance falls on—hers or her father’s.”
“Agreed,” Eric says.
“And if he proves he’s dirty,” Grayson adds, “we’ll force the merger with Emma in the driver’s seat as we promised back at the castle before I had to cut us short.”
Indeed, it had been a short meeting, just long enough for me to state the importance to me of Emma’s interest. I made that point, obviously, but I drive home her value. “Emma negotiated a potential truce and partnership with the Sawyer brand. A merger would make it unnecessary but my point in this is that she did what me and her brother could not. She found a path to peace.”
“Partnerships not war,” Grayson says. “That’s what I want. That’s the kind of people I want aligned with us. And that’s not an easy task she achieved. Not with that man.”
“Which leads me back to war,” I say. “The ones you want to avoid and the ones I might not be able to avoid. You need to know that through his right-hand man, Randall, Chance is threatening to come after me if Emma doesn’t return to San Francisco in the next few days. Before you ask, how he plans to come at me, it would have to be with lies. The only dirt there is out there on me is the dirty boxing in the boxing ring, I used to fight, but that was a long time ago.”
“Do you have a plan to protect yourself?” Eric asks.
“Not one that doesn’t burn Emma, and that’s not acceptable. I’m open to suggestions.”
“Don’t get dirty because he gets dirty,” Grayson suggests. “He wants to be a part of the consortium. I’ll let him know his membership is going to vote and the decision must be unanimous. That means he needs your vote. I’ll let him know you’re willing to give it to him. You’re officially invited to join us, by the way, thus my assumption of your vote,” he adds. “I’ve looked through your portfolio. You’re a savvy investor, well-packaged beyond whiskey. You understand diversity equals success and security.”
I down the contents of my glass, thinking of the mother who taught me to never count on anything lasting. A philosophy that’s worked in my investment strategies. “I’m honored to join the consortium. As for that plan working with Chance, that might have the opposite planned effect. It might just motivate him to burn me before I can burn him.”
“Does he not give a shit about his sister?” Eric asks.
“Not that I’ve seen thus far,” I say. “Maybe she has a different father too because she really doesn’t fit that family at all.”
“Too?” Eric asks.
“Hunter wasn’t my father’s son. He was her father’s son.”
That bomb earns me dropped jaws and a refilled glass. “Holy hell,” Eric says.
“Holy hell is right,” Grayson agrees.
Eric downs his whiskey. “And I thought my family was a soap opera.”
And I thought my family was perfect, I think, even after my mother left, right up until I found out it wasn’t. Obviously, I wasn’t looking hard enough at the truth. I wasn’t present enough inside my own life and family. It’s not a mistake I plan to make with Emma. I left her behind today when I felt like I shouldn’t have left her behind. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have a beautiful woman waiting on me, back at the castle. I need to be there now.”
***
A few minutes, later I’m in the back of a Walker-driven SUV when I dial Emma, and her cell goes straight to voicemail. I try again. And again. A bad feeling claws at me and I dial Savage. “Check on Emma now.”
“We have eyes and cameras—”
“No, Savage,” I snap. “Physically go see her now and call me back. Now.”
He doesn’t argue this time. He hangs up. I dial Emma again. Voicemail again. I text her: Call me. I’m worried. I need you to call me, baby.
No reply.
I wait five minutes and repeat with the same results. I then try Savage and end up with his voicemail. “Try Savage,” I call out to the driver, a guy named Nathan, who works for Savage.
He tries. He ends up with voicemail as well, giving me a grim shake of his head, after a few more tries.
The next fifteen minutes, in the back of that SUV, prove to be the most brutal ride of my life. By the time I’m at the castle, I’m coming undone, when I find my front door open. I walk into the foyer by the elevator and start shouting. “Emma! Emma!”
Savage is waiting for me at the top of the stairs. “She’s gone. Her purse. Her suitcase. Everything.”
A million knives stab me in the heart. “No. No, she wouldn’t leave. And how the hell would you not know she lef
t?”
“We’re trying to figure that out.”
I take a step in his direction, ready to punch him but I stop myself. “Try harder,” I say, still charging toward him but he backs up and gives me room to get by. I walk through the kitchen, where Emma’s coffee mug still sits, her cup newly filled. She was drinking coffee about to go watch Hallmark movies. She didn’t just up and leave.
Picking up the cup, I hold it the way she was holding it, replaying our earlier conversation this very night. “I’m not letting you go,” I’d said. “That’s not happening.”
“Remember that,” she’d whispered. “Whatever happens. Remember that.”
I’m not sure if she was trying to tell me she was being blackmailed or if that statement was simply about the war our two families were enduring, but it doesn’t matter. I said that I’m not letting her go and I’m not. I walk into the bedroom, pack a duffle bag and head back to the kitchen.
Savage meets me there again. “Where are we going?” he asks.
“We are not going anywhere. I’m going to San Francisco. Stay here. Find out how she left and you didn’t know it.” I walk around him and head for the door. I’ve barely stepped outside when Savage is beside me. “My men can figure out the puzzle here. I’m going with you.”
I don’t fight him. Because if anything happens to Emma, someone is going to need to keep me from committing murder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jax
“Thank you, Grayson,” I say, as Savage and I buckle up inside his private jet that he’d thankfully held for me. A decision he’d made after I’d told him and Eric the summarized version of what I’m up against. “I wasn’t going to get out of here for hours without your help.”
“You still might not,” he says, from his seat across from me in lounge-style area. “The pilot just called back. Thanks to high winds and storms, it’s going to be hours before we can get out of here.”
I curse under my breath and lean forward, pressing my elbows to my knees, tunneling my fingers through my hair.
“She can’t leave if we can’t leave,” Eric offers, claiming the seat next to Grayson and across from Savage.
“Unless she’s in a car,” Savage reminds us. “But I still think she’s at the castle.”
“She’s not in the damn castle, Savage,” I snap in a way I would normally not snap. “Because,” add, “if I thought she was at the damn castle, I wouldn’t be in this plane. Have your people found Brody?”
His lips thin. “We can’t find Brody either.”
“Of course, you can’t. You lost him, but not before you lost her. You lost her after I told you that I trust you. And I don’t trust easily.” I unbuckle my belt and stand up, walking down the aisle to the back of the plane, where I stand in the small galley area and press my hands to the wall, my chin to my chest. I lost her. I left when my gut said not to leave.
Ice clinks in a glass and Eric shoves it between me and the wall. “Drink. You make stuff. Use it for its therapeutic purpose.”
“Thanks, man,” I say, pushing off the wall and accepting the glass.
He motions to the lounge area behind him. I nod, and we sit down, face-to-face. I down half the whiskey. “You’d think I was a big drinker,” I say, finishing it off. “I’m not. My father used to say—when you overindulge, you underperform. God, I miss him sometimes.”
“As I do my mother,” Eric says. “But you know that. We’ve talked about this. I lost my mother as a teen to cancer.”
“And I lost mine to her being a bitch. Emma’s mother and father were friends with my mother and father. I can’t imagine how that felt to my father.”
“My father and her father would have been good friends. Good thing they never met. They’d have been Napoleon and Hitler as best friends.” He shifts the conversation. “Look, man. I get it. I lost my mom. I’m the bastard of a billionaire who hates my guts as much as my brother does. I left the whole corporate American savant bullshit behind and became a Navy SEAL to have a family, only to watch friends die. And then I got out and I met my wife, and I didn’t want to want her. I didn’t want to love her because I was afraid I’d lose her, and I almost did. But she’s worth every moment I lay awake and fear losing her, and that’s far more often than she knows. We’ll get Emma back. I’ll put all my resources behind helping. So will Grayson.”
I press the glass to my forehead. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t, how I’ll keep breathing.”
“You won’t have to find out.”
Savage sits down next to me. “The elevator was never broken. It was being controlled by an underground panel in a secret tunnel. Did you know that existed?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“That’s how we believe Brody has been avoiding our surveillance.” His expression tightens. “I let this happen. I will do anything to get her back.”
My lashes lower, and I nod. “I know.” I look at him, meet his stare, let him see I mean what I say next. “You didn’t do this. I was out of line blaming you like that. I just need her back.”
He gives me a ten second deadpan stare. “There’s more, man.”
Dread fills me. “What?”
“We found these things in the tunnel right by the elevator.” He hands me his phone which displays a photo of a Michael Myers mask and a syringe. I scrub my hand through my hair. “Holy fuck.”
Savage shows it to Eric. “Holy fuck,” he murmurs. “Did you test the syringe?”
“A fast-acting sedative,” Savage says. “She probably has no idea where she’s at right now.”
I feel like a hand reaches into my chest and pulls out my heart. “I don’t know if I need to leave or stay.”
“I think it’s pretty clear that she’s with Brody,” Savage says. “And there’s no way he’s flown out of the city, not in this wind. Stay here. At least until morning.”
I glance at my watch. “It’s six o’clock,” I say, for no good reason, other than I know a night without Emma will be absolute torture. “I’m calling Brody.” I dial his number, and he actually answers.
“You finally made time for me?”
I glance at Eric and then Savage. “Where are you?”
“At the cigar club at Pier 79 with Terri Martin from Buckeye Cruises. He’s staying at a hotel down here. Want to join?”
“Meet me at the beach house in half an hour.”
“That would be rude and—”
“Listen to me, Brody,” I bite out, “I will come there and drag you out of that bar and beat your ass if you don’t meet me in half an hour.” I disconnect. “He says he’s at the cigar club at Pier 79.”
Savage pulls out his phone and makes a call, directing men that direction. Once that’s handled he focuses on me. “You know you’re going to have to drag him out of that bar and beat his ass. Let’s skip the beach house.”
“Agreed,” I say.
“We’ll hold the plane,” Grayson says, sitting down next to Eric. “We’re not going to make our meeting anyway and this is more important.”
“I owe you about ten times over,” I say.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Grayson says.
“Just find her,” Eric adds.
Savage stands up and I follow. A couple minutes later, we’re in the back of an SUV driven by one of his men, the wind gusting around us. “I don’t know if I should feel relieved right now or scared shitless,” I say, once we’re on the road. “If my brother doesn’t have her—”
“It means nothing,” Savage says. “He could have hired someone to grab her, just as her brother or Randall could have as well. And considering we have eyes on Randall and Chance, and they’re presently at a dinner function in San Francisco, that’s the direction I’m leaning. As for any way Emma might get out of the city. We’ve checked airlines, buses, trains, car rental locations. Nothing useful has shown up at this point.”
I eye Savage. “I need Chance’s number,” I say.
“Texting it to you,”
he says, already keying it into his phone.
It buzzes to my messages and I hit the number, calling Chance. He answers on the first ring. “Chance Knight.”
“Where is she?”
He laughs. “Emma? I take it that she finally left your ass.”
“By way of a person in a mask who shot her up with sedatives, and I swear to God if I find out it was you—”
“Holy hell, it wasn’t me. Have you called the police?”
“I’m sending someone to talk to you from Walker Security. And to that piece of work, Randall, as well. He threatened her. You know that, right?”
“I heard. He’s here with me. I’ll talk to him, but he wouldn’t—”
“Don’t tell me he wouldn’t.” My voice is cold, hard, that need for revenge fire in my blood once again. “Because I could really shove those words down your throat right now and enjoy it.”
“She’s my sister, North. And you might not believe it, but I love the hell out of her. Send your man, now. I’m at—”
“I know where you’re at.”
I disconnect and eye Savage. “You know what to do.”
“Beat his ass or talk to him?”
“I can’t make that decision right now because in my present state of mind it won’t be the right one.” I lean back in my seat and hope like hell Brody has Emma and that she’s safe and well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jax
In the half hour it takes us to get to the bar, Brody has apparently, per the bartender, guzzled half a bottle of whiskey, and he’s now barely able to stand up. I lose my shit, when I never lose my shit. I yank him up from the table he’s laying his head on and shove him against the wall. “Where’s Emma?”
“You can’t keep up with your woman?” he slurs. “Me either. Jill still hates me. She told me I was never as good as Hunter.” He starts crying.
“Jesus,” I murmur, grabbing his face. He’s losing his fucking mind but so am I right now. “Where is Emma?”
He starts heaving. I let go of him, and he buckles at the waist and falls to his knees. I glance at the bartender, pull a wad of cash from my pocket and slap it down. “For your trouble and his bill.”
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