GABE (Silicon Valley Billionaires Book 2)

by Leigh James

  I’d promised my dad I’d do something big with my life—and that promise was a choice that I had made. “I think having you guys out here and the fact that this case is so personal—it’s just bringing this stuff up.” I shrugged. “I’m over it.”

  Ash smiled at our cute, auburn-haired waitress as she brought the check and then focused on me. “Good. Because you’ve got a pretty good thing going. Levi and I have been talking about relocating the business out here… I think there’s a serious need for high-end security in your industry. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re absolutely right—your business would grow exponentially if you made the move. But what about Mom?” My mother and her fiancé, Alexander Viejo, were firmly rooted in Boston. He was a professor at MIT, and all their friends lived in the area. She would have an absolute fit if all three of her sons were living on the West Coast.

  “I don’t know. Alexander’s pretty old, though. He’s gotta be about to retire. Then they wouldn’t have to stay in Boston.”

  “Are you saying that Mom might move out here too?” I’d been in Northern California by myself for a long time. I loved my family, but I also loved them not breathing down my neck.

  Ash smiled and shrugged; I couldn’t tell if he was just fucking with me. “She’s really pissed that she hasn’t met Lauren yet. You need to do something about that.”

  “I’m bringing her to the wedding. We are sort of in the middle of a crisis out here, you know?”

  “I know, and Mom knows, but that doesn’t mean her feelings aren’t hurt…”

  I groaned. My mother and her feelings were sometimes labor-intensive. “I’ll call her.”

  “You better. Otherwise, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

  I drove home while Ash checked his email. “Hey—I got something from the police. A list of all the vehicles stolen in the past week.”

  “Are there a lot?”

  “No,” he said, scrolling through the email. “But there’s enough that we can split up the team and track each lead down. There’s no guarantee that these guys stole another vehicle from the area, but it’s something—and that’s all I need.”

  I crawled into bed, wrapping my arms around Lauren’s warm body, and immediately fell asleep. An hour later, Lauren’s phone buzzed with a text message, waking us. She sat up and read it immediately, her eyes wide, and then handed me the phone without a word.

  Meet my men at the office park near Oakland Airport. Building 900, Langham Landing. Wednesday at 3 p.m. They will have Hannah.

  Lauren, you will need your passport, your remote access codes, clothes, etc. No cell phone. No security. You drive yourself to Oakland, and your sister can drive your car home.

  No exceptions.

  If you are followed to the exchange site, or if anyone else is notified of or involved in this transaction, the trade is off. As are all promises.

  Wednesday was four days from now.

  “No.” I threw the phone on the bed. “No fucking way.”

  Lauren stiffened, but she didn’t look at me. She stared at the pattern on the comforter, her jaw set. “I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear…but the instructions are pretty clear.”

  I wanted to argue, but I needed to go about this the right way, before things—me—got out of hand. “Get dressed. We need to show this to my brothers.”

  Levi was mulling his coffee when I jammed the phone into his perfectly pressed dress shirt, unable to form a coherent introductory sentence.

  “It’s a text from Li Na,” Lauren explained.

  He read the message, his face impassive. Then he put the phone down and stared out the window.

  Ash came in, and Lauren handed him the phone. He read the text, his brow furrowed.

  “So?” I asked, when neither of them said anything.

  Levi turned to me. “So. This is pretty clear. We’ll follow these directions to the letter—except for the fact that my team will be there. We’ll get Hannah out.”

  But he’d missed the most important point. “What about Lauren?”

  He squared his shoulders. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

  Tension snaked through my body as I stepped toward him. “That’s not good enough.” My face was inches from his. “I need to be there. To protect her. I’m not letting her go alone.”

  “She won’t be alone.” Levi’s eyes flashed at me. “But you read the text. You can’t be there, and we’ve already talked about this—”

  “Easy. Easy, guys,” Ash said, inserting himself between us as we glared at each other. “We have a limited amount of time to make a plan. Let’s not fuck it up because we’re in-fighting.”

  “Fine,” Levi said.

  “Fine,” I said, though I was anything but.

  Ash held up the phone. “If she’s meeting us in Oakland, there’s a good chance that Hannah’s still in the area. I think we should make our priority trying to find her before Wednesday. If we have to take her from that parking lot, we can, but it would be cleaner to try to get her before.” He looked at Levi. “Any ideas?”

  “You already went out on surveillance—you know what we’re up against. She could be anywhere. A hotel. An office that Zhao owns. A condo she’s rented. There’s so much real estate being sold around here to cash buyers these days, she could be anywhere.”

  Ash nodded. “I’m going to start looking into the latest batch of stolen vehicles.”

  Levi nodded. “Definitely—get going now.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  “We’re going to get ready for this. I’ll put my best field team together. We’ll go over to the address today and start blocking things out,” Levi said.

  I grimaced. “I don’t want Lauren going to the exchange alone. It’s not safe. What if they grab her?” Or worse?

  “I’m going to protect her.” Levi looked like he was trying to marshal what remained of his patience. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?”

  Lauren said nothing. She just stared out the window, her mind clearly racing. I went and put my arms around her, trying to calm myself and comfort her. I wished I could hold her right in this spot forever, so she wouldn’t try something dangerous.

  “I’m not going to fight with you.” Her voice was quiet.

  “Good.”

  She turned and looked at me. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to do whatever you say.”

  “I know.”

  She arched an eyebrow and then went back to staring out the window, showcasing her intelligence: she wasn’t going to argue. Not now.

  I held her close, wishing I could keep her with me like this forever. And that somehow, we could still manage to bring her sister home.

  Four days isn’t a lot of time. Will it be enough?

  Chapter 12

  Gabe

  “I’ll get in touch with the FBI,” Levi said. “I need to let them know that Zhao’s made contact again. They haven’t been good for much, but they’re good enough to back us up.”

  I clenched my fists. “But they can’t be there—not if they’re going to try to take over at the site. We can’t do anything to compromise this.”

  “Except for you showing up, right?” Levi shot me a look.

  Ash looked up from his laptop. “It’s the FBI. I’m pretty sure they can handle themselves.”

  “How does that work?” Lauren asked. “Your company and the FBI? The police?”

  “We don’t break the law, and they stay out of our way,” Levi explained. “If we have knowledge of illegal activity, we share that information with them. If we come across a person of interest, we turn them in. I’ll call Agent Marks and let him know what’s happening.”

  “It’s a symbiotic relationship,” Ash said. “Sometimes they’re actually our client.”

  “Okay. Good to know.” Based on Lauren’s expression, the information was cold comfort. She started pacing. “I guess there’s nothing else we can do right now…”

  “I’m
going out there to look for her,” Ash said, closing his screen. “Some of the guys are already tracking down those plates. I’ll check in with them, and I’ll check the residential areas near the airport. If we could find her before the meeting…that could change everything.”

  “Do you want company?” I asked, anxious to be useful.

  Ash shook his head. “Not this time. Take care of your own business for right now—I have a feeling the rest of this week is going to be busy.”

  “I’m going to meet with Agent Marks, my other contact, and also check in with my friend from the NSA,” Levi said. “I need everything they’ve got on Li Na’s operations. I’ll check in with you later—keep security with you, and stay safe.” He and Ash headed out.

  I turned to Lauren. “What do you want to do? Are you going to head to the office?”

  Lauren’s face was pale, with two hectic spots of color dotting her cheeks. “I should. I need to tell my people about what’s going on…about the status of the sale.”

  “Have you thought some more about my offer? Because it still stands.”

  She reached out and took my hand. “If you’d be willing to give my people a home at Dynamica, that would mean everything to me.”

  “What about you?” I smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “I’d love to have you in the office next to mine for…reasons.”

  “Ha.” But she knew I meant it. “I’m thinking about it, and I want you to know how much it means to me. But I can’t make a professional commitment right now. I don’t feel capable.”

  I pulled her into my arms, feeling anxiety rolling off her in waves. She was wound taut, close to fraying. “Take your time. When you’re ready, make plans for the future—for our future.”

  She buried her face in my chest. “I will. Just let me get through the end of this week, okay? I have to deal with this one step at a time.”

  I kissed the top of her head. “Of course.”

  Since there was nothing left to do at home but wait, we both decided it would be better to be busy at work. I went to Dynamica, and Lauren went to Paragon—with Timmy and three other security guards, at my insistence—and she promised to check in later. I called Olivia, my disgruntled London partner, when I got to the office. “Our conversation’s been on my mind. I know you don’t want to reveal your source, but I need to know who gave you the information about Paragon. It’s important.”

  “You’re putting me in a bad spot,” she said.

  “I’m still asking.”

  “I’m really not at liberty to say, which I know is going to bother you. But I will tell you that you need to watch your back, and so does Lauren.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” We were already busy watching our backs—and trying to pull Li Na’s preexisting daggers out.

  “I can’t tell you, because I can’t have this coming back to me.” Olivia sounded firm. “I might need more information from this person, so I’m not burning the bridge.”

  “Even if it means you’re burning a bridge with me? I know business is more important than friendship, but we have been friends for a long time, Olivia.”

  “I know. So trust me when I say that you really don’t want to know who told me.”

  “Call me when you come to your senses.” I hung up before I started yelling.

  I spent the rest of the morning drinking coffee, feeling distracted, annoyed, and wary. Someone had compromised our confidentiality—someone who was looking to undermine the sale of Paragon to Jiàn Innovations. But the circle who knew about the impending transaction was small, and it was tight.

  I swallowed a bitter taste in my mouth. I knew the person who’d done this was close to us. I’d get to the bottom of it. Whoever I met down there had a lot of explaining to do.

  I pushed the issue to the side—I would have to deal with it later. If I was offering Lauren’s people positions, I needed to make sure everything at Dynamica was in order. I spent the rest of the day going through compliance reports, meeting with my department heads, and checking in with the rest of my international distributors. There was no sign that information about the sale had been leaked elsewhere, but what was happening in London hadn’t taken place in a vacuum. I had to isolate the problem and deal with it quickly.

  And when I said deal with it, I meant exterminate it—before Li Na learned that people wanted out of the sandbox before her grubby paws got into it.

  I sent Lauren a text as the late afternoon turned into evening. Meet me at the Stanford hotel? I think we could both use a break tonight. She’d been so tense at the house. I wanted to do anything I could to cheer her or distract her. She’d mentioned The Stanford before—it was one of Hannah’s favorite places in the city, but we’d never taken the time to check it out.

  She called a minute later. “What’s up?”

  “I just thought we could use the night away for just us, before we deal with…everything else this week. Does that sound okay?”

  “That sounds perfect.”

  “I’ll meet you there. I can’t wait.”

  Before I left, I remembered what Ash had said about my mom. I needed to speak with her anyway, so I hit her number quickly as I headed to my car. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Well, the prodigal son finally remembers he has a mother! How are you, honey?”

  “I’m fine. Mostly. It’s been sort of…hectic out here.”

  “That’s what Ash told me—it’s terrible about Lauren’s sister. I would love to call her, but as I haven’t actually had the privilege of meeting her yet, I thought I should wait. Can I send her a card?”

  “A card?” Did people still do that? “Sure.”

  “It doesn’t seem too formal to you? I feel like since I haven’t met her, it’s the only appropriate way to reach out, without overwhelming the poor girl…” She sniffed.

  I groaned and hoped she didn’t hear me. “I’m bringing her to the wedding.” That is, if she doesn’t defect to China as Li Na Zhao’s prisoner.

  “You’d better,” she said.

  Time to switch gears. “How’s everything going? How’s Alexander?”

  “He’s great!” Distracted, she chatted happily for a few minutes about her fiancé, Alexander Viejo, and his latest semester at MIT. “He said that Lauren was one of the best students he ever had,” she continued.

  My mind was somewhere else. “Uh-huh.”

  “Gabe, are you even listening to me? Why did you call anyway? You never call.”

  “I need to ask you for something.”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the line. She probably couldn’t fathom what I wanted—I was a self-made billionaire who never asked for anything.

  “Are you okay, honey?” My mother’s first instinct was always to panic.

  I groaned. “I’m fine. I just need something.”

  She went quiet for a minute. “What?”

  We’d only talked about this once, years ago, but I knew she’d figure it out. “You know…that thing we talked about in the kitchen at Christmas a few years back…”

  “Oh my God!” she yelped after a moment, realization finally dawning. “Are you serious?”

  I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. “I’ve never been more serious in my life.”

  “You don’t want something…different? I know you could afford it.”

  “Wouldn’t be the same.”

  “Aw, honey,” she said, and I could tell she was crying. “You always knew how to make your mother proud.”

  Chapter 13

  Lauren

  It was so sweet of Gabe to remember that Hannah loved The Stanford. She’d been to the hotel bar with a date, the guy she’d gone out with before Wesley, and had raved about it. “It is the hot place,” she’d told me a year ago.

  I’d rolled my eyes at the time. “Thank you for sharing that information, because it’s so pertinent to my exciting lifestyle.” That was back before I’d met Gabe, when Hannah used to force me to vicariously live through her Silicon Valley
exploits. My gut twisted as I thought of her. I wondered what’d happened since we’d talked—had she kept her mouth shut and behaved? Had her captors hurt her further, despite Li Na’s orders? Or had Li Na fooled me again, pretending to call off her guards, when it was just a ploy to get me to cooperate?

  The questions swirled through my mind as Timmy and my driver took me downtown. It was dark now and the buildings were lit up, beautiful in their own urban, man-made way. But my heart was too heavy to enjoy the scenery. I kept running over Li Na’s instructions in my mind. If she discovered Levi’s team and the FBI were planning on coming to the exchange, Hannah would suffer for it.

  My gut instincts were to follow Li Na’s instructions to the letter. I’d dealt with her long enough to know that she didn’t care for improvisation. But Gabe would never allow that, and neither would his brothers. They believed they could save Hannah and get us both out of the exchange alive.

  But what if they were wrong?

  I wouldn’t even think twice about giving my life for Hannah’s. She was young, innocent, and full of life. She had everything to live for, and Wesley needed her. None of this was her fault—the blame lay squarely at my feet. Paragon was my company, the patch was my invention, and Li Na wanted what I had. Hannah was an ancillary victim of my actions. She never would’ve been kidnapped if I hadn’t defied Li Na in the first place by successfully launching the patch behind her back.

  Li Na was making me pay an unbearable price for my victory.

  I knew where I stood. Hannah had to be rescued; I couldn’t excuse any act of selfishness on my part. I would follow whatever plan Gabe and his brothers constructed, but if it came down to it, I would sacrifice myself for her. I would find a way.

  I knew Gabe would never forgive me…and I understood. But my love for him, the ache that filled me every time I thought about leaving him—I couldn’t let myself dwell on it. Hannah was my sister, and she was in mortal danger because of me. That was the cold, hard truth I had to face.