Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three

by Lawless, Alexi

  Now, despite all of his own professional success over the years, the same intense hostility that came from feeling somehow less than a guy like Brandt with his old money, heritable pedigree, and shampoo-commercial hair still rankled him. Despite the fact that a dozen years had passed, Wes felt the same irrational insecurities as he stepped out into the cool travertine foyer of Brandt Energy Incorporated. A perfectly coiffed blonde, who could have been a beauty queen, smiled serenely as Wes approached the cherry wood desk she occupied.

  “How may I help you, sir?” she greeted with a professional smile, though Wes didn’t miss the flair of appreciation in her blue eyes as he got closer.

  “Hi, there.” Wes favored her with a high-wattage grin that had gotten him his way since he was four years old. “Hey, there, I’m Chris Fields, the reporter with Texas Monthly,” he lied smoothly. “I’m here to interview Mr. Brandt for an article on ‘Houston’s Most Influential Men.’”

  Her eyes immediately widened. “I’ll just get his assistant now. Won’t be a moment if you’d like to have a seat, sir.”

  Wes nodded politely, seating himself in a nearby Barcelona chair as she spoke into the phone. An impeccably dressed redhead came out within a minute to get him. Wes wondered caustically if Travis surrounded himself with gorgeous women to please himself or please his clients. Probably a bit of both.

  “Right this way, sir,” the assistant said with a pleasant smile, her willowy figure more suited to the runway than it was to an office. “I didn’t catch your name?” she asked as she led him down a carpeted hallway toward glass-encased corner offices with sweeping views of the city.

  Wes was just about to answer her when Travis rose from his desk, bewilderment on his face as their eyes clashed across the expanse.

  “Wesley Elliott!” Travis exclaimed, clearly surprised. “To what do I owe the surprise?” he asked with a bemused smile as he rounded his desk and the men shook hands. “I haven’t seen you since…?” he looked up, calculating. “Since 2000 at least.”

  “Longer,” Wes replied as they gripped each other’s hands.

  “You’re looking well,” Travis complimented with typical Texan affability, even as he sussed him out.

  “You look like you’re doing pretty good too,” Wes told him, gesturing around the sleek office.

  “We do alright,” he answered with a shrug. “Please, come sit. Take a load off.”

  Travis had gone prematurely gray, his rich brown hair winged with silver at the temples, though it suited him. He had eyes the color of dry ice with the penetrating gaze to match, like he could see right through you, even as he smiled, his posture relaxed as he took a seat across from Wes.

  “May I get you gentlemen coffee?” Travis’s assistant offered.

  Travis glanced at Wes. “It’s already the afternoon and you’re my last meeting today. You up for something a little stronger?”

  “Sure,” Wes replied easily. “Whatever you got that’s not clear, I’ll take a sip of.”

  “Two Glenlivets neat, then, Mara. Thanks.”

  When his office door shut behind her, Travis turned his gaze back to Wes. “I must admit, I was expecting someone else altogether.”

  “You were expecting Chris Fields, my business partner,” Wes replied with a crooked grin. “Truth is, I wasn’t sure you’d be willing to take a meeting with me, so I figured I’d hedge my bets.”

  “So there is no article,” Travis surmised, sitting back against the leather sofa.

  Wes shrugged. “Sorry.” Not sorry.

  Travis considered him a moment, amusement just at the edges of his mouth. “Why didn’t you think I’d take a meeting with you after all these years?”

  “For one, we never really took to one another,” Wes replied frankly. “And I got the girl.”

  Travis chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Actually, neither of us got the girl in the end, did we?”

  “Remains to be seen,” Wes replied, sounding cocky just to piss him off.

  “Oh? How is Sammy doing these days?” Travis asked, taking the bait. “I haven’t seen her in…,” he looked up, trying to recall. “Four years at least. Maybe longer.”

  “She’s been better,” Wes answered honestly. Houston was a big city with small-town gossip among the affluent circles that Travis and Sammy traveled in. One phone call and Travis would be caught up to speed anyhow. No sense in beating around the bush.

  “So what brings you to my door, Wes?” Travis asked. “I’m assuming it has to do with Samantha, as our mutual affection for that woman is the only thing we’ve ever really had in common.”

  Maybe it was the tone or the way Travis’s icy eyes softened with thinly-veiled tenderness, but Wes caught the gist of something…

  “Mutual affection?” he asked, tamping down on a razor-sharp slice of jealousy.

  Mara interrupted Travis’s answer when she returned with their drinks. Wes said his thanks as he picked up a heavy-bottomed crystal tumbler from the silver tray. He took a sip, making an appreciative noise. He might not have liked Brandt, but he couldn’t fault the man on his good taste. He served some seriously expensive, divine shit… even to old enemies. That was class.

  Travis sipped his whisky, his gaze cool and discerning.

  “This stuff goes down smoother than boomtown silk,” Wes complimented. “You were saying about Sammy?”

  Travis cocked his head. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what exactly?” Wes responded, forcing himself to sound casual, even though he felt tense as a wire.

  “About Sam and me,” Travis responded, though those four simple words were shockingly painful to Wes, like getting stabbed fast by a stiletto. “We got together after Rob and Ry passed,” Travis continued. “Thought you knew.”

  That sonofabitch knew damn well he didn’t. Something intangible yet feral circulated in the air – perhaps anger at himself for letting it happen, at Travis for taking advantage of the opening, and at Sam for falling for it—pushed up inside him too hard and fast, like an explosive chemistry experiment bursting through the too-thin top of an Erlenmeyer flask.

  Control your shit. Calm the fuck down. You’re not here to let this fucker get your goat, Wes reminded himself, struggling not to lose his game face even as he forced his fingers to relax around his glass. You’re here for Sam. You’re here because you love that woman more than your own ego, more than you want to beat this asshole’s face in.

  “I see it didn’t take,” Wes replied with a lazy smile, though the sarcasm in his voice was unmistakable.

  Travis took another measured sip of his whisky. “Some things just aren’t meant to be, but then—you know all about that, don’t you?”

  I’ve had just about enough of this shit.

  “I came here because I need to ask you some hard questions about your time at Wyatt Petroleum,” Wes told him, cutting to the chase. “And I’m hoping your, ah, affection for Sam will make you amenable to helping me get a better understanding of what occurred around the time of Rob Wyatt’s death, since you were close to him.”

  Travis’s brows knit together in a frown. “Why the hell are you digging this shit up? More to the point—why are you doing it behind Samantha’s back?”

  “She knows I’m looking into it,” Wes replied.

  “Then why didn’t she just pick up the phone and call me herself?” Travis replied, eyes narrowed.

  Wes could lie, but it wouldn’t buy him anything. He and Travis might not like each other, but he suspected he’d be willing to shoot straight if he knew the reason why Wes was sniffing around.

  “I recently discovered that the man who took the injection for killing Rob and Ryland was a patsy.”

  Travis’s eyes grew round with shock. “Well, hell.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth, his expression genuinely remorseful. “Shit, that’s awful.” He knocked back what was left of his whisky, raised his arm and caught the attention of his assistant.

  “Bring in the bottle,” he told her u
nceremoniously when she popped back in.

  “I thought you knew,” Wes said with a smirk, using Travis’s earlier words against him.

  Travis shook his head, before blowing out a sigh. “You’re certain?”

  “Yeah. Sam knows. She’s pretty torn up about it, too.”

  “God in heaven,” he muttered. “Must feel like that wound is getting ripped open fresh.” Travis met Wes’s eyes. “How is she?”

  “How do you think?”

  Travis leaned forward, steepling his fingers under his chin as he rested his elbows on his knees. “You know who did it then?”

  “I was hoping it was you,” Wes replied evenly.

  Travis released a cuff of unamused laughter. “Hold up—are you serious? Rob was a grade-A asshole, but the man was good to me. Hell, I wouldn’t have had the capital to start my own venture without him.”

  Mara returned with the Glenlivet. Sensing tension as the men stared each other down, she quickly poured the twenty-five-year-old scotch, left the bottle on the walnut coffee table, and hastily exited, the door clicking shut behind her.

  “I ought to hand you your ass,” Travis told Wes after a moment of loaded silence.

  “Come on now, Trav,” Wes responded with a smirk. “How would you otherwise explain why you took a beat down in your own office?”

  Travis stood up. “I gained absolutely nothing from Rob dying, and everyone knows it, including Sam. He gave me the capital I needed to start my own venture before he died. The agreement was I’d pay him a percentage of any profit from my company for fifteen years. It’s an agreement I honored, too, even though I wasn’t obligated after he died,” he added tightly. “Go ask Hannah Nelson. Every fiscal quarter, the Wyatt Foundation gets a big check from Brandt Energy. Like clockwork.”

  “Why the hell would Rob support you leaving Wyatt Petroleum to start a competing venture? He was the most controlling bastard I knew,” Wes countered.

  “You’re right, and that’s exactly why he supported me. I went into methane back in 2000, before renewable energy became a fad and the word ‘sustainable’ got everyone’s britches moist,” Travis told him bluntly. “Rob saw what I was doing as an experimental offshoot with huge potential for upside, even when my own family laughed it off as some hippie la-la bullshit.”

  “Wyatt Petroleum is in renewable energy now,” Wes pointed out.

  “Yeah, but it was Sam who shifted the company there eight years after I’d already started, back when she took over the board of directors. Besides, we’re not in the same sandbox. They’re focused on harnessing thermal energy and developing hydro-electricity, but their primary business is still oil and gas. It’s not the same. And unlike Rob, Sam’s not inclined to look at business as a zero-sum game. She’s got a wider field of vision.”

  Wes fucking hated to admit it, but Travis’s matter-of-fact statement took the wind right out of his sails. He’d rolled in here thinking he would get some viable dirt on Travis and legitimize his long-held suspicion that the guy really was a bastard. And maybe Travis was, but he wasn’t the bastard that killed Rob and Ryland. That much was clear.

  Wes took a healthy swallow of his whisky, frustration getting to him at having met another dead end.

  “Good grief,” Travis said, shaking his head. “You really wanted it to be me, didn’t you?”

  “What I want and what it is are clearly two different things,” he answered, scrubbing his hand over his face before taking a deep gulp of whisky.

  “Why the hell are you looking into this anyway, if Sam didn’t ask you to do it?” He shot Wes a questioning glance. “I thought you left her. That’s what she told me anyway.”

  “All that matters is that this is tearing her up. Regardless of what happened in the past between us, I don’t want her hurting over her father and Ry’s death anymore. Do you?”

  Travis’s gaze grew thoughtful as he sat back down and took another savoring sip of the scotch. “So besides me, who’s on your short list of suspects?”

  “I was hoping you could give me some insight on that, now that you know it wasn’t some drunk bastard who drove them off the road that night.”

  Travis rested his head on the back of the seat, thinking. He was silent a long time. Wes could tell that he was circling around something, even though he didn’t say it aloud.

  “You’ve got someone in mind, but you don’t like what you’re thinking,” Wes guessed.

  “I don’t,” Travis admitted begrudgingly. “But now it’s sticking like a burr in my side.”

  “Look, no accusations are being made, and just so you know, I partially put this meeting under my partner’s name because I wanted anything you told me to remain off the record. This meeting never happened,” Wes told him. “Now, if you have a suspicion, you have my word that if you tell me what it is, I’ll investigate the hell out of it before it ever gets to Sam. Besides, you’re operating under the pretty big assumption that I’m going to believe anything you say anyway,” he added, slanting him a look.

  “You really do dislike me, don’t you?” Travis replied with a soft chuckle.

  “Wouldn’t you, if you were me?” Wes pointed out.

  “Yeah, I suppose I would.” He ran a fingertip around the rim of his tumbler, and the crystal sang lightly like a tine of a tuning fork. “The only people besides Samantha and the Nelsons who stood to gain from Rob’s death was Mack McDevitt, Rob’s COO at the time.”

  “No, there was a Japanese man too. Toma Sakurai,” Wes corrected. “He’s Sam’s uncle, I believe. By blood.”

  “Never heard of him.” Travis shrugged. “He was never at any board meetings I attended, and Rob never mentioned him to me.”

  “Why’d you go to Mack so fast?”

  “Easy. He’s was Rob’s number two—next in line to the throne.”

  “Mack would cut his own arm off before he’d betray Rob like that, much less kill his son.”

  “That’s why I don’t like thinking it,” Travis admitted. “Those two were thick as thieves. Came up working oil fields together.”

  “Besides, Mack was already a millionaire many times over when it happened,” Wes pointed out.

  “At that level, I’m not sure it’s really about money anymore,” Travis observed sagely. “Power isn’t about morals or loyalty or principles. It’s about interests, and if you’re at all temptable, then you’re definitely corruptible. Wyatt Petroleum is one of the most influential private companies in the country. Hell, the EPA is afraid of them, and that’s saying something. Rob was able to get the President on the phone anytime he wanted. I saw him do it.”

  Wes knew Mack. He’d seen how much he loved Samantha, how he’d backed her plays, especially when she’d gone head-to-head with her father back in the day. But the sad truth was that betrayal—true, gut-wrenching, tear-your-heart-out betrayal—rarely came from one’s enemies. Still, he didn’t even want to think it.

  He reminded himself in that moment how much he disliked Travis. He tried to hold onto that even as Travis said, “Wes, I could be really wrong. Hell, please prove I’m wrong,” Travis told him. “I’m only telling you this because I genuinely care about Sammy. I don’t like the idea any more than you do, but if anyone stood to gain in that scenario, it was Rob’s right-hand. Mack shot up from being Chief of Staff to Commander-in-Chief overnight, and everyone knows Sam never wanted that seat to begin with.”

  Wes sat back, his forearms lax against the armrests as his earlier hostility against Travis drained out of him in the face of this possibility. Shit, even if Travis was right and Mack had done this to her, she’d never accept it. And Wes didn’t think she’d come back from a betrayal this monstrous. That kind of deception was downright Machiavellian. Maybe it would hurt less not knowing.

  “You look like you could do with another,” Travis observed, holding out the bottle of Glenlivet.

  Fuck yeah, could he.

  What a goddamn mess… was all he could think as he sat in the same office with his once-en
emy and yet another man who loved the same girl.

  *

  April—Early Evening

  Wyatt Ranch, Texas

  J A C K

  “So let me make sure I understand this,” Dr. Carmichael started from the video call on Jack’s laptop. “You’ve reinserted yourself back into Samantha’s life, and now you’re withholding crucial information about a terrorist, until your father gives you sensitive and top-secret information on your ex-lover’s family’s death? Does that just about cover it?”

  “We’re not ex-anything—we just spent the night together,” Jack disputed, though he saw his therapist’s expression of incredulous disbelief.

  “We’ll get back to that. Right now, I’m more concerned about the fact that I feel the need to point out that attempting to hold anyone in the CIA hostage is probably a bad idea. No, it’s beyond that. It’s suicidally reckless,” Carmichael told him in his typically straightforward manner.

  “Our last session, you compared the way I feel about Samantha to a drug addiction. I think you’ve already established I’m not averse to risks if I believe in what I’m being reckless for. If I need to hold the CIA’s feet to the fire to get the truth for her, then so be it.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” Carmichael began. “What I suggested during our last session was that you figure out whether you truly loved Samantha, or if you were actually in love with the way your obsession makes you feel. There’s a difference.”

  “I’m not obsessed.”

  His therapist’s brows shot up. “Is the Skype connection not working? I thought I heard you say you’re not obsessed with the woman you just gate-crashed on multiple levels.”

  “Obsession implies I idealize her, which I definitely don’t,” Jack pointed out. “I’m fully aware of who Samantha is and the fact that she’s constantly surrounded by danger—and not the fun, sexy kind. She’s so full of self-loathing, I wonder if it’s even possible for her to forgive herself,” he admitted, giving words to the things he’d thought for so long but hadn’t said aloud. “That said, I’ve never seen anyone cope with so much pain with her level of restraint. It’s heartbreaking. She breaks my fucking heart sometimes because I can’t save her from it. Any of it.”