by KB Winters
Shit.
My mind flickered back to my meeting with Lance Toffer. He hadn’t seen a problem with telling the investigators what I knew, but I had a hard time seeing how I could give them only part of the story. If I brought up O’Keefe’s threats and the contract, they would start asking questions. Questions that would lead to what leverage O’Keefe had over me. And that was where things would get ugly. Especially since Gary struck me as the kind of guy who was like a dog with a bone when it came to his work. He wouldn’t let me talk my way out of it.
“Mr. Rosen? If you have any leads or information about this, you need to tell me. Now.” He didn’t raise his voice, but his tone was even and commanding.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “The man who did this—or at least, would have a motive to—is Henry O’Keefe.”
Gary’s eyes went wide. “The real estate mogul?”
I nodded. I wasn’t surprised that Gary knew the name. As O’Keefe had been dotting the California coast with his multiple million-dollar projects, his name was circulating through major media outlets in the business world. If Gary primarily worked cases on the West Coast, he’d have heard of him.
“How do you know?” Gary tucked the envelope under his arm.
I glanced around the room. The severity of it all rushed over me again and the walls started to close in. “Can we go to my office?” I asked, turning my attention back to Gary. “Bring in the FBI guy as well. I’ll tell you the full story.”
He considered me for another long moment, seemingly shocked by my sudden cooperative attitude, and then sprang into action. He snapped for the main FBI agent on the case, a man I’d been introduced to earlier in the day, Peter Montgomery.
“Agent Montgomery, Mr. Rosen has some information he wishes to disclose to us,” Gary said once we were inside my office. He waved for me to take my usual place at my desk and he and Agent Montgomery settled onto the couch.
I rolled the chair to close the gap, leaving just a few feet between us. “I don’t have any solid proof, but I think I know who did this. Henry O’Keefe has been blackmailing me into giving him my business. He’s trying to sink my business so that I’m forced to close down and sell him the land in order for him to build a community of million-dollar luxury condos.”
Agent Montgomery leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “That’s quite the accusation, Mr. Rosen. I know of Mr. O’Keefe, by reputation only. While I understand him to be an ambitious, driven man, I find it hard to believe that a man with his high profile would blackmail someone out of their land. At least, not directly.”
I set my jaw. “Here,” I reached into my jacket pocket and tugged out the folded pages of the contract. “This is a contract he’s forcing me to sign. He ambushed me outside my house and told me that if I don’t sign them within three days, he’ll follow through on his threat against me.”
“Which is?” Montgomery asked, taking the pages, his eyebrows raised.
I faltered. “I can’t say…”
“I see…” Gary spoke this time; his tone was skeptical.
I was losing them. I could see their disbelief sinking in. Their expressions were hardening by the second.
“Just read the contract,” I burst out. The frustration that had been boiling all afternoon came surging back up.
The men went quiet as they read through the contract. Agent Montgomery finished first. He brought his gaze level with mine. His mouth set in a firm line. His eyes hollow. “It sounds like a pretty standard business contract. Unless you can tell us what this leverage is that he’s holding over you, I’m not sure we’ll be able to help.”
I sighed. “I can’t tell you. But listen to me, he’s behind this. You need to look into him. I’m sure you’ll find the breadcrumbs back to whoever broke in and tampered with the planes. My planes!”
The two agents studied me and it took every ounce of control to keep from jumping up and screaming at them that I was telling the truth. “We’ll look into it,” Agent Montgomery said, rising from his place on the couch. He handed the contract back to me and the two men filed out of the room without a glance back.
“Argh!” I growled, slamming the pages down onto my desk as soon as they were on the other side of the closed door.
The phone on my desk rang, interrupting my tirade. “What?” I demanded, jerking the receiver to my ear.
“Temper, temper. You know, with that kind of greeting, it’s no wonder business has fallen off.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose to stand on end at the silky, self-satisfied purr that could only belong to one man.
“What the fuck do you want, O’Keefe?”
“You know what I want, Rosen. Don’t play dumb. It’s beneath you.”
My fist clenched around the phone, wishing I could slam it into the side of his skull. “Well, as you probably already know, I’m a little tangled up right now.”
“Yes,” he replied, sounding bored. “I see you have company.”
See? Were his people outside right now? Did he know I’d just finished a meeting with the lead investigator for both the FBI and the FAA?
“Yeah, so your contract is going to have to wait,” I said, regaining a grip on my control. I had to buy myself some time. If I signed those papers, it would take a helluva lot more work to get them nullified than pushing the meeting off a few days to give me enough time to prove to the investigators that I wasn’t delusional.
“Sadly, yes, it will. I’m needed back at my home office, in LA.” I rolled my eyes at the way he sounded put-out by the delay. “I’ll be in touch when I’m able to break away. Maybe I’ll have my private jet fly me back over. It seems as though your airstrip will be vacant for the near future.” He chuckled at his own joke.
Which made me hate him all the more.
“Fuck you, O’Keefe.”
“Now, is that any way to speak to your business partner?”
“We are not business partners,” I retorted through gritted teeth.
“No, I suppose you’re right. Although, you can’t say I didn’t give you a chance. Remember, Rosen, I tried to be a nice guy in all this.”
Hot rage boiled up in my veins, rushing into every extremity until I was hot with fury.
“Come on, admit it. I did you a favor,” he continued, the smile audible in his smarmy tone. “I—albeit unintentionally—took care of Talia for you. I know you didn’t know her very long, but I can assure you, Rosen, she was a very jealous woman. She wouldn’t have liked sharing you with your nurse.”
I broke. “If you ever so much as breathe in her direction, I’ll gut you like the fucking pig that you are.”
O’Keefe’s chuckle cut through the crackle resounding in my ears. “So valiant.”
“I’m not playing a game with you, O’Keefe. You want your deal—you leave her the fuck alone. Don’t so much as speak of her again, and I swear to God, if you have people following her, I’ll hunt you down and even your own mother won’t be able to identify you.”
He continued to laugh. “I’ll call to reschedule the meeting. Be ready.”
I opened my mouth, ready to spill more venom, but the call ended, leaving a hollow echo in my ear.
31
It took a solid ten minutes for my nerves to stop sizzling in the hotbed of anger that was left over from the exchange with O’Keefe. When it passed, it was like a riptide, sucked back to sea, all at once, leaving me empty and devoid of energy. I sank into my chair and forced my breathing back to normal. Once I decided I could carry on a conversation without sounding insane, I picked up my cell phone and dialed Gemma’s number, praying she’d be at a point in her day when she could answer.
The phone rang on, each ring dragging out longer than the last, as the silence between was filled with images of Talia hanging limp in the seat beside me in the cockpit of the plane. Only, instead of Talia’s face, it was Gemma’s. I drummed my fingers on the desk and then slammed my palm down when the phone kicked me to Gemma’s voicemail.
“This is Gemma Henderson, please leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Gemma—I—this is Aaron—shit—” I clicked off the call. What was I supposed to say? Watch out for evil henchmen hiding in black cars? In the bushes? Under your stairs? In your closet? Or, how about, hey Gemma, because you’re with me, you’re now the target of a crazy billionaire who may or may not try to kill you to get to me?
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!” I jerked out of my chair, stuffed my phone back into my jeans pocket, only to rip it back out seconds later. This time, I dialed the hospital, and after working my way—without losing my shit—through the phone tree, I made it to the nurse station in the ER. “Hello, this is Aaron Rosen. I was a patient there a few days ago and was hoping to get in touch with one of my doctors, Gemma Henderson. Is she available?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rosen, Gemma isn’t here this afternoon.”
My heart jumped into my throat. She wasn’t there? But I’d just seen her less than an hour before.
“At all?” I said, cringing at the desperation creeping into my voice. “I mean, uhm, she’s not there at all?”
“Well, she was,” the nurse confessed with a small sigh. “She left a little while ago.”
“Do you know where she was going?”
“No. I’m sorry. Would you like me to get one of the other doctors? I’m sure they will be able to assist you.”
“No, no. That won’t be necessary, thank you.”
Fuck!
I clicked off the call before the nurse could prod for more information. Where was she? She’d left the hospital in the middle of her shift. She wasn’t answering her phone. And the most chilling piece of the puzzle…O’Keefe had just threatened her minutes before.
My heart squeezed into a tight ball even as it raced. A gripping hand made of ice and fear had wrapped around it and refused to let go. As my mind ran wild, the intensity increased, until I thought I was going to collapse.
I gathered myself, shaking off the grisly scenarios running through my mind, at least as best as I could, and forced my focus into making a plan. I had to find her. Maybe she’d gone home sick?
I decided to start at her house. Even if she wasn’t there, it would give me a chance to go and make sure O’Keefe or his henchmen weren’t there watching her.
As I started out of the office, I regretted not asking Talia for more information about the men she’d claimed were following her. If anyone knew what O’Keefe’s men looked like, it would have been her. But no, all I’d seen was a problem that I was eager to get rid of and had barely listened to what she had to say. The warnings she’d tried to give me.
I shook my head at myself, stalking down the hall, out to the side door.
“Mr. Rosen?”
I stopped walking at the snap of Gary’s voice but didn’t turn toward it. Instead, every muscle tensed. It was a familiar sensation, each fiber locking into place like plated armor. I hadn’t felt this way in years, but my body remembered it all too well. It was the height before a battle. The second before walking into a hot zone. Weapon drawn. Senses on high alert. Every inch ready for action.
“Where are you going?” His footsteps hurried to catch up to me.
“Out. Last time I checked, I wasn’t being held prisoner here,” I snarled.
Gary reached my side and I jerked my chin to look down at him. He squared his broad shoulders. “You’re not. But with everything you just told us, it would be good for you to stay close, in case we find more for you to review.”
A hollow laugh escaped my throat. “What for? I just handed you a nice little gift-wrapped package with the name and motive of the fucker behind this, but that wasn’t good enough. You’re still here, looking for evidence. A trail.”
Gary sighed and his eyes drooped, showing me the first hint of a crack in his walls. “I know, Mr. Rosen. I know this is an exhausting process and sometimes it doesn’t make sense. At least, not from the outside, but I assure you that we’re not discounting the intel you provided. But, as Agent Montgomery and I said, without something solid to go on, there’s nothing we can do to pursue the lead. Everything is circumstantial. At best.”
“I bet if you searched his bank records, you’d find it. Or his contacts. Something is gonna point him back to this.” I threw my hand back toward the hangar. “I’m telling you, Gary, this was him.”
Gary held up his hand and nodded. “I hear you. But no judge is gonna give us a warrant. That’s why we need to keep looking.”
“Fine! But I’m not going to sit around here and wait.” I started off again, my steps charged and furious.
Gary didn’t try to stop me, but when I was a handful of paces away, he called out to me, “Be careful, Mr. Rosen.”
Gemma’s house was empty. At least, from the looks of it. The heavily tinted windows on her garage made it hard to confirm, but from what I could see, there wasn’t a car inside. I’d rounded the house, hoping to check every window, and knocked on both the front and back doors repeatedly, but it was radio silent.
Her house was the third house in the quiet cul-de-sac and no one even seemed to notice that I was stalking around her house or banging on her doors. I was relieved to not find a pack of O’Keefe’s cronies outside, or at the end of the block, but it was also disturbing that I could cause such a ruckus and not have even one nosy neighbor butting in.
As I strode back to my Jeep parked along the curb, I decided that Gemma would be staying with me until the nightmare was over.
Whether she liked it or not.
Although, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t take much to convince her. I had my ways.
I leaned against the passenger door, folded my arms, and stared up the drive at her front door as I tried to work out my next move.
“Where the hell are you, Gemma?” I whispered.
As if on cue, my phone buzzed in my back pocket. I pushed off the door and grabbed it. The screen was lit up with Gemma’s name and my entire body sagged with relief. “Gemma! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I was just about to ask you that same question. I got your message. What’s going on?” Her voice was impossible to get a read on. I needed to see her face to figure out what she was thinking—or at least have a shot.
“I’m fine. But I need you to drop whatever you’re doing and get over to your house. We’ll pack your bags and you’re coming to stay with me until this shit show has come to an end. It’s not safe anymore.” I darted a look around as an eerie feeling of being watched sunk into my skin. “Where are you?”
“Slow down, Aaron. What are you talking about?”
I pinched my eyes closed and tipped my head back. “Gemma, just tell me where you are. I know you’re not at the hospital and I know you’re not at home. I’m practically standing in your driveway.”
“What the hell?” The question was sharp and frustrated. “I’m out running some errands. Things were slow at the hospital and since I’m the new girl, I got sent home early for the day and am completing the rest of my shift on call.”
“I think O’Keefe has people watching you.”
She roared, “What?”
“Have you noticed anything?”
“Aaron, this is getting crazy.”
I wanted to laugh. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Let’s just call the police.”
I shook my head. “I already told the FBI and FAA guys what’s going on. They can’t do anything. The local PD isn’t going to be able to do anything either. Just hurry back. I’ll stay here until you get here and help you pack.”
She was quiet and I could almost hear her mind working out a way out of my demands. Why was she fighting this so hard? We’d just spent the night before together at my place, and it had been fine. Better than fine, really. I was usually the one waiting to untangle the sheets and make a getaway. I hadn’t felt that way with Gemma. Had she?
“Gemma, please.”
I hated to beg, but thi
s was too important to let my pride get in the way.
“Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can, but it might be a while. I’m not going to let this O’Keefe asshole disrupt my whole day.” She sighed, her frustration sizzling. “Go home and relax. I’ll come over as soon as I get back.”
My fingers clenched together. “I’m not going anywhere. Take all the time you need.”
“God, you’re so ridiculous! I don’t need a bodyguard.”
This wasn’t up for debate. I ignored her comment. “Keep an eye on the road behind you. Make sure you’re not being followed and call me if you see anything weird.”
She clicked off the line without another word and I glared at the phone in my hand. Damn it if I didn’t go and fall for the most stubborn woman on earth. With a scoff, I pocketed the phone after making sure the volume was as loud as it could go. I didn’t want to miss anything. Seconds after slipping it into my pocket, my ring tone sliced into the silence around me, and I jerked it from my pocket, nearly ripping out the pocket of my jeans.
My heart jolted into my throat. Had something happened? Was someone following her? Was she okay?
The name flashing on the screen told me it wasn’t Gemma. It was Lana. I blew out the panicked gasp and clicked onto the call. “Yes?”
“Uhm, oh, hi, Mr. Rosen. It’s Lana.” She was one of those people who failed to realize that every phone had caller ID and that there was no need to announce her name at the beginning of each call. “Are you coming back to the meeting?”
Fuck. I scrubbed a hand down my face. I’d gotten so caught up in everything with the agents, then O’Keefe, and making sure Gemma was okay, that I’d forgotten that my staff was sitting in the middle of Carly’s for a mandatory meeting. “No, Lana, something came up at the museum. I’m going to be there all day.”
It was only half of a lie.
“Okay. So, should I dismiss everyone? Or can we come back to work now?”
“The investigation is still going on. Did you get their input for a relaunch?”