by Selena Kitt
Annalesa felt sick at the idea of sleeping where they’d died, but Ric’s grip on her strengthened as they followed Goddard out.
Annalesa tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Every time she had her eyes closed more than a minute, the image of her mother’s dead, naked arm branded itself behind her eyes. An arm that would never hug her again, joined to a hand which would never again waggle while the other toyed with a wine glass.
She gave up after a couple of hours, hit the shower, dressed and went to find Ric. At the door, something drew her back into her room and towards the locked safe that was still sitting in the bottom of her armoire.
She opened the doors and then the box, drawing out her Lady Sif handgun and belt. She checked it was loaded and that the safety was engaged before putting the belt on, pushing the holster to her left hip.
Typical of Brad, the belt had been made exactly the right size for her waist, but now she had to cinch it in to the tightest notch. She pulled a leather jacket from a hanger and slipped it on. It had been form-fitting a few months back, but now hung loosely, covering the handgun. The belt, with its clear rhinestone flecks and turquoise gems, just looked like an accessory.
She felt just a little safer, wearing it.
When she got downstairs to the den, Ric broke off the discussion he’d been having with Goddard, and a female agent, and got up to go to the bar. He poured two generous tumblers of Akavit and handed one to Annalesa.
“Get any sleep?”
“No. You?”
“I didn’t try.” Ric sat down next to her on the couch, his face dark with barely-controlled anger. “Agents Goddard and Manning keep asking the same damn questions while I’m trying to figure out what the hell’s been going on.”
Goddard paced while Manning kneeled by the coffee table with photos spread out over the surface. Even in Annalesa’s scattered state of mind, she couldn’t help noticing how unnaturally gorgeous the agent was. She was slender and had long, silky black hair with dark red tones tied back in a low ponytail, and a warm, olive complexion.
Manning looked up as Annalesa took her seat and gathered the photos, turning them face down.
“I won’t break,” Annalesa muttered, feeling a little stronger as Ric’s arm stretched across the couch behind her.
“You’re braver than me.” Manning quirked her a half-smile.
“Brave? Not really.” She practically sucked down half her glass of Akavit. “At the moment, I’m numb. Tell me about the photos.”
Goddard picked up the stack of photos, rifling through. He handed her a head shot of a dead man who looked a lot like one of the guys she’d seen leaving Ric’s room at Hotel de l’Europe.
“This is the man Mr. Arensen shot when he came to the house to find a disturbance. You asked me earlier why the Feds were here. Well, it seems that one of the attackers was on the Interpol watch list, and we’re trying to establish how, and when, he got through Homeland Security.”
“For God’s sake, I told you,” Ric snapped. “They were probably already here days or weeks before the attack. My father had a meeting with a group of people who wanted us to supply arms to them. He saw them in person and said ‘no’. I’m guessing they took this badly. Mr. Arensen will tell you exactly the same. In fact, the whole board will tell you exactly what they thought of these people’s operating methods.”
“Yes, he’s been very helpful, and he’s still in shock. I think he blames himself for not being there to protect them.” Goddard stroked his chin. “But their response strikes me as being...”
“Extreme,” Manning offered. “If we take a cold approach to this, and sorry—we have to—it makes no strategic or logical sense. Killing the CEO of an arms manufacturer for refusing to supply is not going to open their supply options with other arms groups. Was your father tight with his competing CEOs or was there any hostility?”
“None,” Ric muttered. “He believed in networking, and it’s a small world. Nothing good comes from pissing off the competition.”
“It’s getting late.” Goddard sighed and shot Manning a meaningful look. “We’ll leave you to it. Just one last question. We’ve been wanting to speak with the bodyguard you flew over here with but haven’t seen him in a few hours.”
“Henrik Gulbrandsen.” Ric sipped his drink. “What about him? He came over with us, so you know he wasn’t involved.”
“We’d still like to talk to him. For a bodyguard, he doesn’t seem to be sticking very close to you.”
Ric went still. “You can talk to him as soon as you get a Norwegian translator.”
“He doesn’t speak English?”
“Not well enough to give you an authentic emotional response during an interrogation.”
“I didn’t mention an interrogation, Mr. Ryker.” Goddard blinked. “We’ll be back in the morning.”
Annalesa got up to pour herself another drink as Ric saw them to the door. The clock on the kitchen microwave said it was only seven in the evening, which seemed impossible. Even given the time-zone change, the day seemed to have gone on forever. She raised the glass to her lips but the smell of the drink brought on her gag reflex and she put the glass right back down again. Ric joined her in the kitchen, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“You doing as horrible as I am?”
“Yes.” She stroked his forearm, glad he’d just gotten right to the point. “Why do you think they want to talk to Henrik?”
“He’s a twitchy guy. His resting expression is suspicious. They probably took one look at him as he got out the car with us and thought he was hiding something.” Ric sighed. “I’ve got to talk to Anders. I know he’s had it rough today, but there are too many questions spinning in my head.”
Annalesa took a deep breath and prepared to say something dangerous. She needed Ric right now and the last thing she wanted to do was infuriate him by going back to the anti-Arensen agenda.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that he’s nowhere to be seen right now?”
“No, I don’t think it’s strange,” he told her. “Because if he’s doing his job, he’ll be arranging an emergency board meeting for the morning. But I’m gonna call him. Hey, could you call Alan Bremmen?”
She frowned, still a little too foggy-headed to put a meaning to the name.
“From our family law firm. If Anders really has been trying to keep the company running, Alan’s the first person he would’ve called. I just...”
“Want to know what tone to take with Anders when you talk to him?”
“Exactly.” Ric fished out his iPhone.
“Wait... give me a chance to call Alan first.”
“I’ll spend a while talking through this morning with Anders first. See what you can get from Alan.”
Glad for something to do, Annalesa went to the study to find one of the folders with their legal correspondence for Alan’s mobile number. She found an envelope with the law firm company logo on it, grabbed a letter opener and took them both back to the den, slitting it open as she went.
Ric was just leaving a voicemail message for Anders as she dialed Alan’s number. He picked up after a couple of rings and she switched the phone to speaker.
“A-Alan Bremmen s-speaking?”
Annalesa shot Ric a sharp look. She didn’t know how Alan usually sounded or whether he was a particularly nervous guy, but right then, he sounded very frightened.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
“Sorry, I only just got connected. Alan, it’s Annalesa LaFevre—”
“Oh!” Alan sounded fractionally relieved. “I’m so s-sorry for your loss. How are you and Ric holding up?”
“We’re still stunned.” Annalesa looked over to Ric, who was scrawling something on the back of the envelope: Ask how Anders is doing. Make out like I’m in bad shape.
She nodded, putting an edge in her voice as she went back to the call. “Well, I’m still stunned. Ric’s... Ric’s not handling things well. He’s... he’s... never mind. How’s Anders holdin
g up? Have you heard from him?”
“Sure! Well, he’s upset, of course.” There was a long pause. “He asked me to arrange a meeting for the morning to uh... to... to protect company assets.”
Ric scribbled furiously. He’s working under duress. Where is Alan right now?
“That’s really diligent of you, Alan, but you’ve known my parents a long time. I’m not sure you should be working.”
“Oh! Oh, it’s okay. I need to stay busy. It’s just a few papers Anders drew up that need signing. You know, standard stuff, giving the chairman control. I’d... uh... I’d feel better knowing it was done and I can uh... you know... go home, relax.”
Annalesa met Ric’s eyes for a split second before he raced across the den to the study. She didn’t need instructions from him to carry on the call and tried to put as much force in her voice as she could while still sounding fragile.
“Okay Alan, I need you to listen to me. Are you at the Ryker offices? Because it’s not safe right now, after what happened this morning. I think you need to tell Anders that you’ve done your job and that you’re going home to your wife. Okay? Got that?”
“Yeah, sure, I—” There was the faint sound of a stifled shout at his end of the line, then a drawn-out groan.
Alan’s voice trembled. “I wanna go home.”
“Take care, Alan.”
She hung up as Ric marched back from the office, his Brann Jotun in its holster at his hip. He put a spare magazine into his jacket pocket. Annalesa shoved the lawyer’s letter and opener into her leather jacket pocket, following him to the door.
“Ric, what the hell are you going to do?”
He stopped, then turned back to look at her, his expression unnaturally calm.
“I’m going to rip my old friend into a hundred fucking pieces, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Chapter 22
Ric stalked out into the night towards Brad’s Jeep.
“Ric, wait!” Annalesa rammed her bare feet into her shoes, snatched her keys off the hall table and pulled the door shut, sprinting after him. “What the hell do you think you can do?”
Ric didn’t answer her. He just ripped the door open on the driver’s side and got in, slamming it behind him.
“Bollocks!” She darted round to the passenger side at the rear, staying low, knowing he’d try to lock the shotgun seat if he saw her coming. As he gunned the engine, she yanked the door open and leapt inside, holding the headrest of the seat in front as she leaned out to pull the door shut.
“Holy fucking hell, Leese! You trying to get yourself killed?”
“I could ask you the same thing!”
Ric slapped the steering wheel with the flat of his hand and stopped the car so she could climb through to the front seat. He glared knives at her as she buckled up.
“What do you think you’re doing, coming with me?”
“Stopping you, I hope.”
“No hope.” He stepped on the gas and the Jeep lunged forward into the darkness, almost hitting the auto-open gates, he approached them so fast. “You heard Alan—he was scared shitless.”
“I know—” She winced as the insane rocking of the car made her bang against the center console, bashing her gun against her hip. She leaned forward to slide the holster around to the small of her back.
“Did you hear that yell in the background? Now we know where Henrik probably is too.”
“I know! Look, would you listen to me? It’ll take five minutes for the Feds to work out Anders is behind all this. Please, turn around. Leave it to them to bring Arensen down.”
“I drove out of our property doing seventy and they’re supposed to be guarding it. Do you see any Feds behind us right now? No! I’m not leaving this to them. If the Feds demand to know what I was doing going after Anders—I look after my own.”
“At least slow down—you’ve been drinking!”
“Yep.”
“You’re scaring me!”
“Well I didn’t ask you to play stowaway,” he snapped. “Why do you have to be so frickin’ stubborn?”
Annalesa gritted her teeth and suppressed the urge to snap her hand out sideways and slap him. A half mile turned over on the odometer before she’d calmed down enough to keep her voice level.
“I need you to think about this. If you go after him and he gets killed, you’re going to be facing a self-defense case. If you go to prison, we spend years looking at each other through a sheet of glass. If the Feds go after Arensen, he’ll get twenty-five-to-life—and we get our lives back.”
“That’s not good enough!” Ric’s hands twisted the leather on the steering wheel until it creaked. “He had our parents killed, Leesa. He might have given himself an alibi, but he had those guys kill Brad and Elsa! I’m sure of it!”
“I know—”
“Stop saying that—you don’t know! You cannot know how fucking furious I am that I spent even five seconds worrying about being disloyal to him! I spent a year nearly worshipping that asshole and defending him to everyone who mattered to me, and I nearly let him fuck up the most important thing in my life.”
Ric slowed as they approached the Ryker Arms compound and switched the headlights off, using the dim moon to navigate his way around the back of the kill house. Annalesa felt her heart beating overtime as the wheels crackled and crunched over gravel and squeezed her eyes shut, like this would somehow reduce the giveaway noise of their arrival.
Behind her lids, she saw a vision of Ric stepping out of the car and then lurching back against the frame with a grunt, holding his bloody chest and sliding to the ground.
She slammed her fingers over his hand as he yanked up the parking brake, letting her rising sobs escape, not caring how needy she looked.
“Please, please don’t. I can’t lose you too. I just can’t.”
“Leesa—”
“Listen, if you go out there right now and confront him, you will be letting him fuck up the most important thing in your life.”
“Is that an ultimatum? Right now? Seriously?”
“No!” She roared, punching his arm—it as like hitting sheet rock—infuriated. “It’s not an ultimatum, it’s a fact! There will be no ‘us’ if someone kills you!”
“Hey!” Ric glared at her, then shot an anxious glance out the window in every direction, groaning as a light flicked on in the main building behind the kill house.
“You had to yell at me?” He gave a heavy sigh. “Punch me all you want. That doesn’t make any damned noise.”
“Fuck,” she whispered, mortified, looking at the light that had switched on. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She’d pretty much just committed Ric to going out there now.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice came out nearly silent. Pathetic.
“You’re scared. I get it.” Ric reached over and stroked the back of her neck.
That was the understatement of the millennium.
“I’ll get him into Dad’s office somehow. There’s CCTV in there. I have to find Henrik, all right? If he’s even alive, he’s gonna be in bad shape. And I promise...” He punched the inside of the car door with his other fist, making her jump. “I promise I won’t set out to kill Arensen. If it happens, it happens. But I will hit him hard enough he pisses blood for a month.”
Another light came on and Ric fumbled in the glovebox for something. He produced a pair of binoculars Annalesa could only assume had night-vision. He scanned the perimeter and the roof of the kill house.
“Fuck. Okay, we need to get indoors—but right now, stay still.”
She did a world-class statue impression as he pushed around between the front seats and lifted a central panel under the middle seat behind him. He twisted back, holding an assault rifle and a full-size Brann Jotun, which he pressed into her hand.
She shook her head. “No, I’ve—”
Suddenly, there was a high-pitched whine combined with the smash and shattering of glass. She felt Ric’s weight as he hurled himself sideways over her for prote
ction. A second shot ripped another hole in the roof of the car, this one taking out the rear passenger window. Ric lurched back into his seat, cupping the back of her neck so she was looking at him.
“Fine, be a nutjob. Refuse the gun—but you’re sure as hell not staying in the car. I’m going to get out my side—backwards, where there’s more shelter. You climb over my seat to get out and stay inside my outline, do you hear me? On three, we’re going to sprint through the alley to the side of the kill house where we’re harder to reach. The door code’s my birthday, MMDDYY. If I get hit, you take my weapon and you fucking use it. You leave me—”
“No!”
“You leave me, get inside, find shelter in a locked room and call every law enforcement agency you can think of. Got it?”
Even in the darkness, there was no mistaking the intensity in his eyes. They were narrow and uncompromising—and hell, she’d gotten them into this situation by yelling at him and alerting all of Anders’ men to their presence. She had to make good on her stupidity now. She felt weirdly calm as hot blood flooded through her.
“Got it.”
“Good girl. I’m getting out.”
She pulled herself over the middle console as he got his door open. She shifted into his seat, sliding herself out as quietly as possible. He stepped back a pace as she hopped down to the ground between his feet and then there was another shot and an explosion of movement as Ric slammed her down to the grit, his body over hers. The combination of Ric’s full weight from above, and the pressure of her handgun into the side of her spine, made her see stars. She registered another couple of shots ringing out and then silence.
“Leesa?” he whispered.
She tried dragging a breath in but he’d knocked it clean out of her.
“Leesa!” Ric pushed up onto his forearms, one hand digging between the back of her head and the gravel, the other cradling her jaw, turning her head from side to side, his thumb stroking her lower lip. His voice hissed low into her ear.
“Say something, swear at me, anything!”