A Collateral Attraction

by Liz Madrid

  I’m silent for a few minutes, for I can taste bile rising behind my throat, the gravity of the situation hitting me hard like a punch to the gut. Framing Blythe and Ethan with embezzlement had been just the tip of the iceberg. They were after everyone.

  “What about their sister, Jessica? And their mother? If they targeted Heath-”

  “From what I’ve gathered, Jessica’s safe and is staying with her husband, Daniel, and their kids in the Manhattan penthouse,” Fred replies, his voice softening as he continues. “As for their mother, Rosalie, she’s always been well-guarded and I just had security doubled around the property till I get back there.”

  I don’t speak for a few moments, for I’m fighting the urge to vomit, the seriousness of the situation hitting me. Heath was right when he said that we were all just pieces on someone’s else’s game board, though tonight, I was no more expendable than he was. But if Brad and Richard were just obeying orders, then who was calling the shots? Who is behind all this?

  Tyler? After all, she had been the one who assigned the additional security in Santa Barbara. What about Harris? But then, would he want even his godson dragged into the whole mess, too? There are so many possibilities running through my head that it’s giving me a headache. I rub my temples, wondering how Fred fits into all this. Where did his security detail fail?

  “Are you alright?” Fred asks. “Did you hurt yourself back there? Maybe you suffered a concussion?”

  “If you’re in charge of this whole security detail, your firm did a terrible job, by the way, if all those men were able to infiltrate your team. No wonder Heath fired you-”

  “Now don’t get cocky, Billie, or I will turn around and drive you back there,” Fred says, annoyed. “And for your information, Heath didn’t fire me, and like I said earlier, Brad isn’t one of mine. He’s part of Kheiron Industries’ security detail, not Ettinger’s. Kheiron security secure all top executives, including Mister Colman and Miss Crow — and they were added after my team came in. And mind you, this is after Heath traveled all the way to Saint Lucia with you alone — without a single member of his security detail with him!”

  Fred exhales, his diatribe over.

  “And he’s never done anything as stupid as that before. Not since he got out of college and thought he could live like a normal person!”

  But then, maybe not.

  “You mean Heath doesn’t normally use Kheiron Industries’ security?” I ask. It’s not like Fred hasn’t just told me this, but maybe all the adrenaline is fading and I’m trying hard to get the fog inside my brain clear up.

  “Why should he, when he’s always had his own security ever since he started Ettinger Holdings. He only officially became president of the company this year, when his mother begged him to take over and save it from a hostile takeover bid. My firm has only been guarding their family for years, Billie, and I’ve watched Heath grow up from the sidelines, so he knows who to trust without having to worry about anything else,” Fred says. “All of Heath’s people — from his security to his home office — are through Ettinger Holdings, not Kheiron Industries.”

  “But I thought you worked for Edgar, his father.”

  “That was before Heath struck out on his own and started working for a brokerage firm in Manhattan,” Fred says, his eyes on the road. “He had no security detail on him then whatsoever. He took the subways, the buses, which was scary for his mother, because it wasn’t like no one knew who he was. So when Rosalie — I mean, his mother — requested that I split my security team to keep an eye on Heath, I did just that. By then, Edgar had let go of most of my team anyway to allow a new firm to come in, and so the moment Heath started Ettinger Holdings, I was right there.”

  “Upon whose suggestion? The new firm, I mean?” I ask. “If your company watched them for years, why the change?”

  “Because that’s what the Board of Directors voted on,” he says, matter-of-factly. “We’re old-school, Billie, and they wanted new blood, new…new whatever. People who knew all about social media and tweets and whatnot. Did you know you can track your kid’s whereabouts with a tweet or some gram whatever?”

  “Instagram,” I say, remembering Pam and the picture she had posted of Heath and I in Saint Lucia.

  “And maybe they’re right about replacing us with new blood,” he continues. “The world is changing too fast for us old guys in the security business anyway. But as long as my firm is up to date with technology and everyone else is, I still do things the old-fashioned way. Sometimes it just works better.”

  “Like spying on me, you mean?” I ask, frowning. “Is that why you were already up here, because you were spying on me the old-fashioned way?”

  “If you mean getting you vetted as Heath’s girlfriend, then yes,” Fred replies. We’ve now reached the main part of Grass Valley, which is the county just before the turn-off to Nevada City, and we’re on the 80 again. I don’t even ask him why we’re headed away from Nevada City, but at the same time, I’ve resigned myself to trusting him.

  So far, Fred’s giving me all the right answers, and he hasn’t made a move to kill me yet. There’s also something about him that makes me feel comfortable being around him. He also just called me Heath’s girlfriend, which is making me downright giddy.

  “You checked out anyway,” he says, grinning. “There’s no one in town who doesn’t know you, unless they’re tourists. Your employees though, Mick and Norah… they’re too much into their woo-woo shit — something about chakras and kundalini, whatever that is. Something about tantric yoga.”

  “They moonlight as yoga instructors,” I say, stifling a giggle, wondering if I should tell him what tantric yoga represented, though I doubt he’d appreciate learning about using sexual energy to attain higher levels of consciousness at this moment — not that I know much about it either.

  “And your neighbor, Kathryn Logan, told me all about you and Blythe playing tricks on her, pretending to be the other twin,” he continues, a faint smile on his lips. “Nothing goes past that woman, I tell you. Oh, and she even invited me to her birthday party in two weeks, but I need to go back to Rosalie after I get you all cleared for any concussion or broken bones. That’s where I should have been all along anyway.”

  “Heath’s mother, you mean?” I say. “Mrs. Kheiron?”

  “Mrs. Ettinger,” Fred corrects me. “She never took his name, not even with a hyphen.”

  I stare at him, and for the first time, I look at his profile closely. Deep set eyes and a Roman nose, slightly broader now that he’s older, but surely when he was much younger, he was one hell of a handsome guy, because he still is — if I’m into older men, that is, but I’m not.

  Lean and muscled, with long fingers that wrap around the steering wheel, he turns the SUV into the brightly-lit carport of the Emergency Room. And as the lights of the lobby illuminate the inside of the SUV, I see his eyes — and I gasp.

  They’re deep blue, like the Atlantic Ocean — with specks of gray.

  Fred turns to look at me, perplexed. “Are you alright? You sure you didn’t hit your head back there?”

  “The letters…his mother’s letters,” I stammer, as the realization hits me. It’s a long shot, but the look on his face when the letters dropped from my hand that day returns to me. Always-calm and often snarky Fred had turned pale when he saw the letters that day. “They were from you.”

  “Why don’t we have you looked at, Miss Delphine?” Fred says abruptly, ignoring my protests as he releases his seat belt before unclipping mine. “With all the stuff you just went through tonight, you just might have suffered a concussion after all.”

  32

  Play Dead

  The ER doctor must have given me something to relax for when I open my eyes again, it’s morning, and someone is holding my hand. Actually someone is wiping flecks of mud from the back of my hand with a soaked cotton ball. It’s Heath and for the next few minutes, he isn’t aware that I’m awake — and I don’t want him to —
for right now, all I want to do is watch him do whatever it is he’s doing.

  It’s such a simple act, wiping traces of mud from someone’s skin, but there’s something about the simplicity of it that makes the act so powerful — so private and yet revealing a part of him that’s so vulnerable. I can’t help but remember the first time I met him, so cold and angry, demanding to know where Ethan was and threatening to take away everything that his brother loved. Even I have to admit now that for such a corny line, it’s endearing, for all Heath really wanted was to protect his mother at all costs, corny lines be damned.

  He’s wearing jeans and a white henley long-sleeved shirt that does nothing to hide the lean and muscled torso it covers. I can see the indentations marking the bandages along his side and I feel my belly lurch at the memory of the frantic voices I’d heard on the phone, where just minutes earlier we’d been saying sweet nothings. The shouts, the screams, and that heart-wrenching groan of pain.

  But what is he doing here when he’s been hurt? But as he goes about wiping traces of mud from my skin, I don’t move, not when I can see that he’s all right.

  Somehow he’s managed to persuade someone to give him a canister of cotton balls along with the brown bottle marked ALCOHOL, on which he’s busy pressing the cotton balls against its slotted tip, soaking it before rubbing it gently across my skin. Just like with everything Heath puts his mind into — he goes all in.

  “That’s a freckle, you know And as far as I know, not even alcohol can take that off,” I croak and Heath looks up, startled.

  Before I can say anything else, he gets up from his chair, the chair legs sliding noisily against the floor and wraps me in his arms. I can feel him trembling as he buries his face in my hair that still clumped in places with mud.

  “Fred told me what happened — about Brad and Richard,” he whispers hoarsely.

  “I’m fine. It’s you that I’m worried about,” I stammer as push him away, inspecting the four scratches on his face and resting my hand over his shirt where I noticed the bandage earlier. He winces but covers my hand with his. “You’re hurt!”

  “It’s nothing serious, just a shallow cut along the side. One of the men was sitting in front of me and he managed to deflect majority of the blow,” he says, smiling sheepishly. “The bandage just makes it look worse.”

  I eye him suspiciously and he traces an X over his chest. “Cross my heart, Billie, or I wouldn’t be here. Everyone else is just in shock, but unhurt. After the attack happened, my crew immediately turned the plane around-”

  “What about Blythe? And Ethan? I know Fred told me they were safe but-“

  “They are,” Heath says, taking his phone from his pocket and dialing a number. “I know we’re on radio silence but she’s asked me to call her as soon as you wake up. If I don’t, she’s threatened to sneak out.”

  The moment I hear Blythe’s voice on the phone, the tears start falling, though there are no hysterics, at least on my end. With Heath holding my hand, I manage to remain calm even as Blythe is screaming on the other end of the line, telling me how she’d almost snuck out of the hotel again. She’d make her way to Nevada City on foot if she had to.

  “I’m fine, Blythe,” I say. “Just a few scratches, that’s all.”

  “They said Richard went after you, and one of the security people…Brad, something-”

  “Well, they didn’t get me. That’s what matters. I’ll leave the rest to my therapist.”

  “Bee,” she whimpers, “What a fucking mess I got you in. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m fine, and Heath is with me.”

  Heath squeezes my hand, a reminder that I need to hang up soon.

  “When all this is over, Bee, I’m not leaving you alone anymore, you hear me?” Blythe says. “I don’t care if you have to move to New York but maybe it’s for the best, until after all this craziness is over. I’ll never look at another Gucci again.”

  I chuckle. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Blythe. Besides, I really am okay. How’s Ethan?”

  “He’s freaking out,” she says. “He’s mad as hell that his whole office betrayed him. I mean, they would have killed him if they had the chance, and they had so many chances! It’s scary, Bee. I mean, Richard was his friend, and Jackson-” she pauses, sighing. “I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore.”

  “Hang tight, and do as you’re told, okay? And no sneaking out like that last time,” I reassure her. “I’ll see you in a few days. I promise.”

  It takes a few more minutes of calming Blythe down before I finally hang up and return the phone back to Heath. The fear in her voice was real, and so was the way my voice shook while I spoke to her. I can’t keep denying to myself what had just happened — that I’d almost been killed last night, but I also have to focus my energies on the fact that we’re all okay.

  Then I remember that one of us isn’t okay.

  “I’m so sorry about Wally.”

  “He managed to call Fred…” Heath’s voice fades before he clears his throat. “He called Fred just before he was killed. The way Fred sees it, Wally led Brad away from the car so you could get away.”

  I nod. “He did. He told me to run.”

  Heath pulls me to his chest and holds me tightly. I can feel his heart beating against my cheek, and I allow myself a moment to just let him hold me before the memory of Brad and Richard return.

  “And what about Brad…and Richard?” I ask, pulling away. “I hope to God they’ve been caught-“

  “They’re in custody. Richard already wants a deal for full immunity. He says he’ll tell us who is behind the whole thing — from the attempt to frame Blythe and Ethan for fraud all the way to the events last night. He says he documented everything, from the moment it all began a year ago, right after I took over the board,” Heath says, exhaling. “He said if I hadn’t changed my mind about staying in Nevada City, and then changed it again to head straight to New York after all, it would have been a done deal.”

  “Brad said something like, if Richard wasn’t a Kheiron, he’d have killed him already,” I say softly as Heath stares at me. “Do you know anything about that?”

  Heath shakes his head. “Brad said that? That Richard’s a Kheiron?”

  I nod, hugging my arms around me as I try to remember Brad’s exact words. “It’s what he said.”

  “Brad is one of the men in charge of security for the executives,” Heath says. “Tyler, Harris, and the rest of the board members — and myself”

  “Fred told me that you have your own men watching you now,” I say, “His own company.”

  “Fredricksen Security,” Heath says, nodding. “He was my first choice to handle security when I started Ettinger Holdings.”

  “He said Brad wasn’t his.”

  “He’s right. Just as Jeff isn’t one of his as well, the one who attacked me on the plane, and is in custody,” Heath adds. “But as of last night, none of Kheiron Industries’ security is watching any of us anymore. We have no idea how far the plan went, or who’s involved.”

  “And are you sure that everyone in your security team now is trustworthy?”

  “They’ve all been vetted by Fred himself,” Heath says. “He called in the old guard, the ones he worked with when he first started. They’re old school, but they’re reliable.”

  “Was it all an act to fire him so he could come up here and spy on me?”

  “I never said I fired him, Billie. You did,” Heath says. “You kept insisting on it, and so I let you believe what you wanted to believe. All he wanted was to vet you personally by coming here, especially after you pulled that stunt by pretending to be Blythe and breaking into their suite. He didn’t take to that stunt too kindly.”

  “Does he do that with all your women?”

  Heath shakes his head. “Only girlfriends I take along with me to Saint Lucia without any security escort. And the ones who manage to sneak out from under his watch pretending to be someone else.�
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  “He’s quite fond of you, isn’t he?”

  “He was assigned to watch my mother whenever my father was out of town, so yes, he’s quite familiar with me.”

  “Where is he now?” I ask, trying to remember when I last saw Fred, which had been just before I had the CT scan to rule out a concussion, even though I kept telling him that I didn’t need one. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been the only thing I was telling him, I remember now, my face coloring.

  I must have been delirious, believing he was Heath’s real father, rattling off my big mouth about how he should tell Heath who he was, even though it was none of my business. But Fred had remained patiently silent, and sure enough, tired of talking, I had shut up, closed my eyes and promptly fell asleep.

  “He left for New York as soon as I got in two hours ago.”

  “Why? Is it to watch over your mother?”

  “Not exactly. There are things he needs to take care of before the meeting starts.”

  “So the meeting’s still going on? Even after everything that’s happened?” I ask angrily as I bring my legs to the side of the hospital bed, ignoring the soreness that has now settled in all my joints.

  “In order to gain control of a five billion dollar company? Yes, and probably even more so if unconfirmed news reports are to be believed,” Heath replies. “And you and I will help them by playing along.”

  “How?”

  “By playing dead.”

  * * *

  By the time I finish my shower in the hospital bathroom, I’m ready to find out how Heath and I are supposed to play this game. It’s the same reason why Ethan and Blythe remain hidden from the public, having disappeared halfway through a fundraising party at the country club the night before with only a statement released the next morning saying that due to personal circumstances, Ethan would be unable to play in the polo match that afternoon.