by Selena Kitt
“You all right? Sorry I wussed-out there for a minute.”
“Such a wimp,” she teased, nudging him.
David snorted. “If I were your brother’s size and shape, I probably wouldn’t worry so much about a mysterious man following me around.”
“He’s not that mysterious. He works for a man called Anders Arensen, who runs the military liaison unit of Ryker Arms.”
“Your family is so intimidating. Your mother’s always scared me, but Ric... bloody hell.” David gave an exaggerated shudder. “Still, I suppose there must be perks to being the little sister of an arms dealer who also happens to be a man-mountain?”
“Some,” she agreed faintly.
“He could probably fold that vast blond out there in half like wet cardboard.”
“Or just fire him.”
“That would work, too.”
David jabbered on cheerily for the next ten minutes, not seeming to mind that she was too tense to give more than two-word answers to anything he said or asked. He was just distracting her, and she was grateful for it.
Her whole body felt like a high-tension spring as she stared at her phone, willing Ric to call back. Even if he didn’t have anything good to report, she needed her man-mountain’s voice in her ear. It just seemed like the only thing that would calm her down.
Her phone vibrated and she snatched it up, almost smacking herself in the side of the face with it. “Ric?”
“Chill, it was Dad.”
“Oh, thank God!” She almost sagged sideways against David as all her muscles uncoiled at once.
“We got cut off halfway through the call, but from what I could make out, he had a little word with Henrik before they went to Maine and asked him to keep an eye on you.”
The relief dissipated enough to leave a little room for annoyance. “So what about his great big speech the other night about people consulting him about their good intentions?”
“Oh trust me, I brought that up. He said that as the owner, founder and CEO of Ryker Arms, he reserves the right to be as much of a hypocrite as he wants.”
“Got it. If you call Brad back, tell him he could’ve chosen someone subtler. Henrik’s six-five, blond and can’t hide behind anything. He’s terribly unsuited for stalking.”
Ric gave a soft chuckle at the other end of the line. “I’ll pass that on.”
She looked over at David, whose brows rose in expectation of an explanation. She gave him a thumbs up and told him, “My stalker turns out to be an unsolicited bodyguard.”
“Splendid. I’ll be off, then. I’ve got builders to pay.”
She pecked his cheek and waved him out, returning to her call the moment the door had clicked shut behind him.
“You never told me how it went with the video-conference yesterday?”
“It was good. Good enough for me to go right to bed afterwards and sleep for nearly fourteen hours straight. Dad told this little group of wannabe insurgents they could take a hike—and he did it with the full blessing of the whole board.”
“You showed them the exposé footage?” She sank down until she was lying on the couch, draping her legs over the far arm, feeling giddy at the loss of tension. It was a wonderful feeling.
“How did you...?” Ric sighed. “Elsa told you, didn’t she?”
“I pushed her. I don’t like being left in the dark, Ric. I trust you, but I just... I feel better knowing what’s going on.”
“That’s fair.” There was a long pause at the other end of the line. “I’m sorry you were scared, but I know why dad ‘sicced’ Henrik on you. Those were some nasty people we refused to do business with. Some of that footage... well, let’s just say a couple of the guys in the Norwegian office were glad we had trash cans in the room.”
She shuddered. “What do I do about Henrik?”
“Give him a friendly wave. Let him know you know he’s there.”
“I might as well invite him up to have dinner.” Annalesa laughed.
“No, don’t do that.”
“It feels weird having the poor man lurking out in the streets at all hours of the day! It’s not very warm out there and he can only nurse a coffee at that café for so long.”
“No, I mean... I’m coming over and I don’t want him there.”
“Ah. Yes, I can see how he might get in the way.” Annalesa closed her eyes, wanting him with her already so they could share a shower and then go to bed early. She was tempted to grab a nap before he arrived so she’d have plenty of energy to not-sleep later on.
“Call me when you get to Paris Le-Bourget so I’m all tidied up when you get here.”
“I don’t want you tidy.” Ric dropped his voice low. “I want you naked. See you in a few hours.”
She hung up, tingling already at the thought of getting him entirely to herself in a few hours.
Her buzzing phone nudged into her consciousness, slowly pulling her out of sleep more aggressively as it got louder and louder.
She sat up on the edge of the couch, patting her hand across the coffee table to find it through bleary, half-shut eyes.
“Hello?”
“Leesa, I’m at Paris Le-Bourget—”
“Oh wow.” She squinted at the clock, now able to discern that it’d been barely three hours since she’d spoken to him last. “That was fast!”
“There’s been a change of plan.” There was nothing playful in the way he spoke.”
“Okay.” She woke up fast at the strain in his voice, getting to her feet. “Ric, what’s up?”
“I need you to pack a bag for a couple nights, grab Henrik, and meet me at the airport. I got a call from the Feds. They wouldn’t give me any details but we’re needed in Maine. There’s been an incident.”
Chapter 21
A hard rumble jolted Annalesa out of sleep. She sat bolt upright, flattening her face to the little round window in time to see Maine’s landscape whiz past her at ground level. Her head pounded and felt unusually heavy.
She massaged her temples with her fingertips, wondering if Ric had slipped something into her apple juice after they’d taken off. She wouldn’t put it past him. She didn’t know where he’d get something that would work that quick and didn’t want to know.
A warm hand landed on her thigh and she saw his anxious eyes lock onto hers. His hair was down, face pale. Clearly he hadn’t given himself the luxury of sleeping the long, tense hours across the Atlantic. The plane’s clock was set to local time, which completely screwed her head up, because it was barely an hour after the time they’d actually taken off.
The satellite phone buzzed as the jet came to a halt and Ric lifted the handset, his knuckles white around the plastic.
“Yeah? Yeah... I hear you. Agent who? Fine. Wait...” He signaled at her urgently for a pen and the moment she handed it over, he took details from the phone, writing on the back of his hand. It looked like a cell number and a serial number.
“Fine, we’ll meet Goddard at the perimeter, but you can warn your agent that I’m done with this business of being told jack-shit.”
Normally, she’d have flinched as he hung the phone up with a slam, but after the jolt of waking with a start, that creeping feeling of formless dread was snaking through her again.
“They’re still not telling us why?”
“No.”
“I think we know.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d had the chance to feel them, much less form them.
“Leesa, let’s not go there just yet, all right?”
“I’ll try not to.”
He squeezed her thigh and didn’t let go until the jet came to a stop. She, Ric and Henrik grabbed their bags in silence and filed down the stairs, making their way to the Homeland Security desk.
No questions were asked of Ric, but both Leesa and Henrik ran the gamut of ‘why-are-you-here’ questions, as neither of them had a US passport. What the hell was she supposed to say?
‘I’m here because I’m wanted by the FBI?
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It was just an interview—but still. They wouldn’t say why.
It was driving her to distraction, and no one had answered her calls.
Ric stepped forward and had quiet words with the nervous young guy from Homeland Security, giving him the details scrawled on the back of his hand. The kid made a quick call and waved all three of them through the desk.
There was a car waiting—unmarked, Annalesa noted—and she focused only on the road whizzing past the tinted windows until they reached the Ryker estates. As the car banked right towards the house, instead of left towards the compound, she felt Ric straighten sharply next to her.
“Why are they meeting us at the house?” She found his hand with her fingers.
“Conference center. Makes sense.”
“Oh. Right.”
No, it doesn’t make sense at all.
An icy numbness spread through her legs, both up and down, from the backs of her knees. She couldn’t feel the balls of her feet as she hopped out of the car inside the gates of her huge home, and her whole body moved on autopilot as she and Ric followed Henrik around the side of the house to the door that connected to the conference center.
Then she saw police tape.
A lot of it.
Three state vehicles were parked haphazardly in the driveway, and a constant trail of officers in uniform khaki with black lapels streamed in and out of the building, looking grim. Her slow, deep breath in defiance of the cold east coast air turned into a choke at the sight of a coroner’s van parked alongside the gym. The same sight stilled Ric in his tracks and he turned, putting heavy hands on her shoulders.
“Leesa, stay put a sec.”
“But there are bodi—”
“Please, Leesa.”
She gaped, shivery and alone as he took off towards the conference center at a jog, brushing aside an official-looking person in a suit who tried intercepting him.
The suit pursued more vigorously, running to get in front of Ric and turn to show a flipped-open wallet card. FBI identification. Annalesa could work that much out even from a distance.
Ric stopped long enough to let the guy speak, then while the Fed explained, he stared at a point out of Annalesa’s line of sight, his shoulders jerking with sharp, uneven breaths.
“No!” The hoarse disbelief in his voice carried right across the compound. He stumbled backwards, his hands dragging through his hair, then dropped to his knees, propping himself up with his hands spread on his thighs while he fought for breath.
Annalesa dropped her bag, sprinting over. As she got within a few feet, he stood, herding her back, blocking each attempt to duck round him and get into the house.
“Leesa, you don’t want to see.”
“What happened to my Mum?”
“Seriously, you need to stay back.”
“Ric! What is it? What’s happened to my Mum? Ric!”
She knew she was screaming and didn’t care.
A moment’s disorientation on Ric’s part gave her a gap under his right arm and she darted past, sprinting a few steps forward before she brought herself up dead and cold at the chalk outlines on the ground and the blood spatter all the way up the wall by the outer door of the gym.
The knowledge of their parents’ death rose up in her as an icy gush of black water and she turned back towards Ric, sobs not just rising but exploding from her.
He opened his arms, folding her against him as she staggered in to him. The agent gave them a couple of moments together before appearing at their sides and laying a light hand on her shoulder as a gentle hint that they needed to speak.
She pried herself away from Ric but couldn’t bring herself to let go of his hand as she looked up at the agent, who was a dark-haired, sober-looking guy in his early thirties.
“I’m Agent Cyrus Goddard, and my partner’s around the back of the site, talking to your chief of security. I’m very sorry for your loss, ma’am.”
“Wh-why are the Feds here?”
“Anders is here?” Ric’s bark cut across the agent’s answer, but Goddard didn’t need to reply. The agent’s partner emerged from the doors of the conference suite, guiding Anders Arensen, who looked like a trembling husk of a man, his gaze darting everywhere. He looked an earthquake victim trying to figure out where his home had gone.
“He called it in,” Goddard explained quietly. “He wasn’t here at the time of the attack, but cut down a prowler who was a couple of hours late to the party. He found the bod—” Goddard bought himself up short, staring down at his shoes. “I’ll give you a moment to talk to him. Then, I’m sorry—I have to ask you to make a formal identification of the deceased.”
The bland request hit Annalesa like a fist in the gut. She could barely get her legs straight enough to hold her weight up when Ric drifted over to Anders as if in a dream, his confident stride a lost entity.
She watched them talk, Anders twitchy and distressed, Ric nearly silent and apparently numb, and accepted Goddard’s arm at her elbow as he led her back to the unmarked vehicle.
“Why were we asked to meet you here?”
“I didn’t ask you to meet me here.” Goddard looked like he was stifling annoyance. “I’m very sorry. The field office clearly hadn’t taken into consideration what would be waiting for you at the other end of your flight.”
There was something wrong with this picture, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Unable to process the thought of seeing her mother dead on a slab, she focused on practicalities to keep her mind busy.
“How long have you been questioning Anders Arensen?”
“He’s not under questioning.” Goddard frowned. “He’s been helping with the investigation.”
“Okay—how long has he been ‘helping’?”
“A couple hours. He slept under sedation for a few hours after alerting the State Police. Why?”
“How do you know he wasn’t involved?”
“Traffic cams put him behind the wheel at the coroner’s established time of death.” Goddard gave her a long, steady look. “Miss LaFevre, is there something I should know?”
“No... no.” She shook her head clear, ashamed.
The sedation at least explained why he was still walking around the site talking with the Feds nearly nine hours after the attack. She glanced at her watch again, trying to remember what time it had been in France when Ric had asked her to meet him at the airport. A long time ago, one way or the other.
Her brain didn’t seem to be working too well. She picked her bag up off the ground and got back into the car, scooting to the far side so Ric could climb in next to her.
Goddard climbed in the front seat and a moment later, Ric was strapping himself in, his face wet but composed.
For expedience, the viewing took place at the mortuary attached to the Sheriff’s office. The ground was like marshmallow beneath her feet as Ric led her by the hand into a cool, unfurnished room, painted duck-egg blue and with too much of a breeze from the air conditioning system. There was a curtain across half of the rear wall, behind a viewing glass. Goddard followed them in and shut the door behind them.
“We don’t both need to do this.” Ric turned blazing eyes on him.
“Sir, at the point we made contact with you, we were aware that your parents were a divorced couple. We were seeking next of kin identification for both Mrs. Elsa Ryker-LaFevre and Bradley Ryker. We were just fortunate that you managed to contact your stepsister and bring her with you.”
“Elsa’s been, for all intents and purposes, my mom since I was thirteen-years-old. I can make the damn identifications myself, okay? There’s no need to put Leesa through this!”
“Ric.” Leesa tugged on his fingers. “I don’t want you to do it alone either.”
As he glanced down, his rigid glare melted, then his face crumpled. “So we’ll both have nightmares for years. Not sure that’s a good idea. Do me a favor? Turn away while they show me Dad?”
She nodded, stepping back as he wal
ked up to the window and knocked. The curtains on the other side opened to reveal a gleaming, sterile room, the only humanity shrouded under a white sheet.
Ric positioned himself so his body was blocking her view of his father’s head, and as the sheet was drawn back by an orderly, Ric gave a gasp and a sharp nod. The curtains were quickly shut again on the other side of the window and Ric spread his hands on the sill, breathing deeply, head bowed.
There was this awful sound of trundling on the other side of the viewing glass, and then Goddard guided her gently over to the window.
“In your own time,” he murmured.
She took a few deep breaths. “Now, please.”
He knocked and the curtains opened again, but this time, as the attendant reached for the sheet, it seemed that his hands weren’t travelling towards Elsa’s head. They settled on a section at the shoulder.
Annalesa’s numbness gave way to a wobble and she looked up at Ric. “H-he’s not showing her face. Why won’t he show me her face?”
Ric clamped his hand on her shoulder, tears running fast down his cheeks.
She looked back to see a bare, impossibly white arm revealed, and then the attendant retreated to reveal a very recognizable birthmark.
She’d seen that birthmark so many times—shaped almost perfectly like an apostrophe—each time her mother had been wearing one of her nighties and bent over to tuck her into bed. And the last time she’d said goodbye to her mother, it had been impatiently, willing her to go away.
Annalesa whipped around to face Ric, gripping his shirt in her fists. The sobs burst out of her in choking waves.
“Ma’am?” Goddard’s voice was soft but didn’t soothe her even a little. “Is that a positive identification of Elsa Ryker-LaFevre?”
“Yeah, that’s a positive fucking identification.” Ric’s front went rigid against Annalesa’s cheek. “Can we get the hell out of here?”
“Of course.” Agent Goddard opened the viewing room door for them. “You should get some rest. Ordinarily, we’d advise a hotel, but the main house on the compound has been forensically cleared. And it’ll be a lot easier for us to guard you on your own premises.”