“Yo,” Dex answered.
“I need you to get that call back,” Mitch growled.
“No can do. The call came in from a private number.”
Mitch heard cracking sounds and realized he was crushing the receiver. He loosened his grip. “There’s no way to trace it?”
“I can try, but it’s illegal,” Dex responded.
“Do it anyway.”
Dex sighed. “Can’t. Your brother specifically forbade me to do that or anything like it, and I quote, ‘No matter what either of my brothers say. They may threaten bodily harm, but I cut the checks. You want to get paid, nothing illegal.’”
Mitch was speechless. He was going to kill Logan. It was that simple. He slammed the receiver down on the wall handset. It bounced out, smashed into the wall, and hung from the cord. He picked it up and banged it back in place, sending bits of plastic flying. It immediately rang. He picked it up.
“Line two,” Dex said.
He hit the button. “Callahan,” he barked.
“If you’re going to yell at me, I’m going to hang up on you. Do we have an understanding?” Alex’s voice bounced around his brain as he tried to reign in his anger.
“Yes,” he managed to ground out.
“Okay good. Here’s the deal. We need to talk.”
“Yes, we do. You need to answer some questions. Namely, what the hell were you thinking?” he bellowed.
There was an exaggerated sigh from the other end. “Do I need to hang up again?”
Mitch hit the wall with his hand, making his palm sting. “No. Don’t hang up,” he demanded. And then in a calmer voice he repeated, “Don’t hang up.” He took a deep breath. “Okay then, let’s talk. Are you willing to answer some questions?”
“No. Not on the phone. I want to speak to you in person.”
That threw him. He never expected she would want to see him face-to-face. His gut clenched. “Okay, where?”
“The Ladies Pavilion in Central Park. One hour. No cops.” And then she was gone.
Mitch hung up what was left of the phone, spun on his heel, and jogged over to the showers. Five minutes later, he was down on the second floor, heading toward his office. “Gage, Logan?” he yelled as he stalked down the hallway. Heads popped out of several doorways, but none of them were his brothers. He was about to yell again when Logan appeared from the hallway beside him. “There’s no need to bellow. We have a completely functioning intercom system, not to mention we all have cell phones.”
“Cut the shit. Where’s Gage? Alex called, and she wants to meet.”
Gage walked up from behind him. “What? She called? That’s...unexpected.”
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly,” Mitch agreed. “I don’t know what she’s up to, but she wants to meet in person.”
“Let me call the Police Chief from the Hamptons. I’m sure he’ll want to be here for the sit-down,” Logan said as he turned toward his office.
“No. No cops. She specified.” And he wouldn’t have time anyway. “She wants to meet at the Ladies Pavilion in Central Park, in”—Mitch glanced at his watch—“forty-nine minutes. Where the hell is the Ladies Pavilion?”
Gage shook his head. Zane, who had wandered over from his desk, shrugged. Both Dragan and Dex shook their heads as well.
“Seriously?” Logan asked. “It’s off the 77th street entrance on the west side of the park by the lake.”
“How do you know where it is?” Mitch asked and then immediately waved his hand. “You know what? I don’t care. We need to make a game plan.” He started moving toward the boardroom. The rest of the guys followed him down the hallway.
“How many do you want to take with you?” Gage asked as he sat down at the table. He opened the room’s laptop and started typing away. The screen lit up and, within seconds, there was a satellite image of Central Park with a focus on the Ladies Pavilion. “It’s got the lake on one side but several pathways on the other. I think three should do it. We can grab her and bring her back here. What do you think, Mitch?”
Before Mitch could say anything, Logan spoke up. “There will be no grabbing of anyone. It’s great that she wants to talk, but technically you have no proof of wrongdoing at this moment. She’s a person of interest. The cops would like to speak to her, but no one is arresting her or scooping her up. You’d be guilty of kidnapping.”
Mitch looked at Gage. “Why did he have to be a lawyer? He makes everything so fucking difficult.”
Gage smiled.
Logan shot his brother a look. “I’m trying to keep your ass out of jail. If you grab her and she presses charges, our reputation goes downhill in one hell of a hurry. So, let’s be rational and come up with a legal solution.”
Logan’s reminder about the company’s reputation hit him like a fist to the gut. Him taking this case was the sole reason they were in this mess to begin with. He wanted to yell at his brother, but Logan was right. They had to do this by the book. They were already on thin ice. “Okay, Logan, what do you suggest?”
“You and I will go. I’ll keep you out of legal trouble, and you find out what you need to know. Ten to one she’s bringing a lawyer anyway.”
“Alex? No way. Why would she bring a lawyer to talk with me?” Mitch asked.
Logan snorted. “Whenever anyone says they want to meet to talk and it involves a legal situation, they always bring their lawyer.”
Gage looked at Mitch. “Sounds reasonable to me. She doesn’t pose a threat.” He grinned. “Or at least not one that you can’t handle. The two of you should be fine on your own. In the meantime, I’m going to take a crack at Drake, find out if there’s anything else he knows that he didn’t feel like sharing. Does that work for you two?”
Both Mitch and Logan nodded.
“Dragan,” Mitch said, “I want you to dig deeper on Drake and this Tolliver guy. Find out everything you can. Every detail. I want to know who their first crushes were, got it?”
Dragan unfolded his six-foot-four-inch frame from the chair. “I’ll start with Tolliver,” he said with his usual rumble.
“Dex, do me a favor and get Diana Sterling on the line asap. We need her to answer some more questions. She’s been dodging us. I don’t care how you do it, but get it done.”
Dex nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Mitch turned to Zane. “ I need you to drive. Parking will be a nightmare. I want you to pull up as near as you can to the 77th Street entrance and keep the engine running. Just in case.”
Zane gave him a nod and left the room.
Gage pointedly looked at his watch. “You two need to go if you’re going to make it on time.”
Mitch nodded. “You need to change quick time, Logan?”
“Change? Why would I change?” Logan looked down at his gray Zegna pants and white Eton shirt with red Armani tie.
Mitch sighed loudly. “You think you’re going to blend in wearing that in Central Park on a Sunday? Put on some jeans.” Mitch pointed to his own jeans and black T-shirt.
“I don’t think there’s any need to blend in,” Logan responded.
“Oh, for Christ sake, just lose the tie,” Mitch snarled as he stormed out of the room. He just didn’t understand his brother. Logan was so uptight and by the book, it drove Mitch crazy. Thinking outside the box just didn’t exist in Logan’s world. Logan had been more willing to get into trouble when they were kids, at least with Gage, but not so much with Mitch.
He punched the elevator button with more force than necessary and then stalked on when the doors opened. He pushed the button for the ground floor and caught his reflection in the elevator doors. Once again, he was reminded of how much he was the outsider. His looks, his attitude, none of it was like his brothers’, or at least that’s what they made him believe. Well, the hell with that. It didn’t matter, now. He was going to finish this job if it killed him.
The elevator doors opened, and Logan was standing there waiting for him. It pissed him off all the more. He started to walk by his
brother, but Logan caught his arm. “I don’t know what I did to piss you off this time, but you need to take a breather. You need your head on straight before we meet with this woman.”
He pulled his arm out of Logan’s grasp. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve held it together while being shot at by rocket launchers, so I think it would take a bit more than meeting one woman in Central Park to throw me off my game.” He walked out the front door of the building and climbed in the SUV that was waiting at the curb. As soon as Logan climbed into the front seat, Zane took off and headed uptown.
Zane and Logan started discussing business and the new software that Logan was testing. Mitch tuned them out and tried to get himself under control. Who was he kidding? He was totally wound up. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he saw Alex, hug her or strangle her. He needed to focus.
He tried a couple of breathing exercises, but it was no use. He was pissed. No, he was damn mad. Mad that Alex had put him in this position, mad that he’d let her, but mostly mad he hadn’t been able to stop it all from happening. He was an ex-SEAL, for crying out loud. This should have been child’s play for him. He’d planned more intense missions, deadlier missions, than this, and still he couldn’t manage one man’s security.
Maybe he should get out. Wrap this shit up and quit. Logan and Gage could run Callahan security on their own. They had Dex, Dragan, and Zane to help them, not to mention the guys they had out on jobs. They’d be fine. But would he? He didn’t have an answer, and that scared him.
Zane pulled up at the curb by the 77th Street entrance. “You got two minutes.”
Logan looked over his shoulder at Mitch. “Ready?”
“Yeah. It’s going to be a walk in the park.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Alex asked for the umpteenth time as she paced back and forth inside the pavilion.
“It’s the only choice you have that might get you out of the picture without involving the cops.” Lacy smoothed back her hair in a ponytail. “You’re making me nervous with all your marching,” she said. “Did you know this is actually an old trolley shelter from the turn of the century? It was built to give people a place to wait out the weather after their visit to the park.” Lacy ran her hand over the scrolling wrought iron. “It’s beautiful. Look at the gold leaf. Bus shelters have certainly come down in the world since then.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t have to ride horses to get around, so there’s that,” Alex said as she brushed the long black hair from her face. The heat was making her scalp sweat under the wig. She ran a finger under the dog collar around her neck. Of all days to choose an all-black disguise. She’d debated changing it when she and Lacy were waiting to meet Mitch but decided against it. She was regretting that decision now.
“True.” Lacy sighed. “You know hanging up on him might have been a bit over the top. Poking the bear and all that.”
“Mitch was going to yell at me and not listen to a word I said, so I didn’t give him that option. Giving people limited options always works better for me.”
“Well, let’s hope the bear isn’t too pissed off. If he shows up with the cops, there’s not much we can do.”
Alex frowned. “We can run.” Then she glanced at her friend. Lacy was wearing a gray pencil skirt with a white sleeveless tank and a pair of black spike heels. “I can run,” she amended. “You can smooth things over for me, also known as buy me time so I can escape.”
Lacy snorted in response. “Thanks. Leave me holding the bag.”
“Isn’t that what lawyers do?” Alex asked innocently. Then she stilled.
Mitch and someone else were coming down the path. It had to be one of his brothers. They had a similar walk. Their coloring was different, but the facial structure was the same. Two very good-looking men. She wondered if it was Logan or Gage.
Her stomach twisted into knots. Heat rolled up her neck into her cheeks. Humiliation washed over her in waves. This man had seen her naked. He’d had his fingers inside of her, and if she’d had her way, much more. She’d been such a fool. She swallowed hard and willed the color back out of her cheeks. She was going to get this mess sorted out, and then she was never going to see Mitch Callahan again.
Lacy must have noticed her reaction because she turned around and promptly said, “Son of a bitch.”
“What?” Alex asked quietly, almost without moving her lips. She didn’t want Mitch to hear them speaking. It was a system they’d worked out at boarding school so they could talk during study hall and when they were sneaking out at night so they wouldn’t get caught.
“Logan Callahan.” Lacy’s answer was barely a whisper.
“And?”
“He’s a major pain in the ass, but like I said before, I can handle him.”
“Fabulous.” Alex moaned. The men stopped at the entrance to the trolley shelter.
“Ladies,” Logan said, “mind if we join you?”
Alex just stared at Mitch. He looked exhausted and more than a little pissed off. But he was in one piece, and the tightness in her chest eased just a fraction. She quickly reminded herself this was the man who used her, who wormed his way into her heart only to betray her. She made sure she was close to the exit on the opposite side, so if worse came to worse, she could make a break for it. Mitch came up the stairs and stood a few feet from Alex. Logan followed his brother and stood opposite Lacy.
Logan smiled. “Ms. Carmichael. Always nice to see you.”
“Mr. Callahan. I wish I could say the same.”
“You two know each other?” Mitch asked.
Lacy said, “Your brother and I have met a few times. Always on opposite sides of the negotiation. Looks like today will be no different.”
“Yes, here we are again,” Logan agreed.
“So, here are the rules.” Lacy moved to lean against the pavilion wall as she ticked the points off on her fingers. “You can ask questions, but this is an off-the-record meeting and anything my client says is not admissible in court. She will not answer any questions about her past or her future plans. She will not—”
“Why did you do it?” Mitch asked, his expression guarded.
Alex wanted to throw up. She wanted to run. She wanted to be anywhere but here. She hadn’t realized how much she didn’t want to see Mitch until this very moment. She felt…exposed. “I, uh…” She cleared her throat and started again. “I was hired to steal, that is retrieve, the car and return it to its rightful owner.” She met Mitch’s eyes. She saw something, some emotion, flash in them, but it was gone too fast for her to identify it.
“I meant, why did you take the prototype?”
“What? What prototype? I took the car, and that’s it. I had nothing to do with the bomb or anything else. Just the car.”
Logan tsked. “You expect us to believe it was a coincidence that you happened to be stealing the car on the same day as someone else set off a bomb? And you didn’t know about it?”
Alex met Logan’s stare head on. “I don’t expect you to believe anything. I am merely stating the truth.”
Lacy glared at Logan. “My client had nothing to do with the bomb or whatever this prototype thing is. She was retrieving the car for the owner.”
“So, that’s your client’s story?” Logan scoffed. “What? She’s a repo guy now? You know we could call the cops and have her arrested for breaking and entering and grand theft auto.”
“In your dreams, Callahan,” Lacy shot back. “Your man Drake never owned the car. He was asked for it back, but he refused, so Ms. Sterling had no choice but to hire my client to retrieve it. You can’t get anywhere near grand theft or B and E, and you know it. Nice try.”
“I think I can prove it,” Logan challenged. He went on, but Alex tuned out the next bit because Mitch moved over to stand directly in front of her.
“Where’s the prototype, Alex?” His eyes bored into hers.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” When
he looked at her like that, it was like he could see her soul. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t seem to do it. “I took the car and only the car. I don’t know anything about a prototype.”
Suddenly there was a tinging sound like metal on metal. Alex turned to see what it was, but Mitch hit her square in the chest, knocking her backward out of the pavilion and into the dirt. She landed hard flat on her back, and her head hit with a thunk. She saw stars. Mitch landed on top of her, knocking the breath out of her lungs. She couldn’t speak. She blinked rapidly. The sound happened again and then again. The fog lifted in her brain. Bullets. Someone was shooting at them using a suppressor.
There was a puff of dirt next to her and Mitch rolled them into the bushes behind the pavilion. He kept her covered with his body. She fought to get Mitch off. She needed to sit up to catch her breath. Her arms flailed as she tried to move him.
“Stop moving. They’ll see us,” Mitch hissed in her ear. He was peering through the bushes in what she assumed was the direction the shots came from. She hit him again. The world was turning black. Her vision was tunneling.
“Alex. Alex. Oh, my God, Alex, honey. Breathe. Just breathe.” Mitch shifted his weight, and suddenly her lungs found oxygen. She took in a big gulp of air and then another. It was like heaven.
“I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t get air into my lungs.”
“Shhh,” he hissed at her. “I can’t see where the shooter is. I don’t know if he’s gone.”
The sound of a groan met their ears. “Logan?” Mitch yelled. There was an edge of panic to his voice. So much for being quiet, but she understood. Panic was crushing her chest again.
“Lacy?” she squeaked. It should have come out as a yell, but terror had made her throat close over. If Lacy was hurt or...worse, she wouldn’t ever forgive herself. She tried again. “Lacy?” It was louder this time, but still not the yell she was hoping for.
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