She took a bite that tasted like cardboard and tried to smile. When Jeremy only frowned, she knew her smile had come out as a scowl.
“Sorry she’s such a downer,” Jeremy said to Greg Jamison across the table. “She ran into her ex today.”
Shock rippled through Raegan. He was blaming her mood on Alec. Not on the fact that she’d thought she’d found her daughter, only to have that hope crushed at her feet.
Jamison’s eyes widened, drawing Raegan’s attention, and she knew the fifty-year-old anchor was trying to lift his brows, but his forehead didn’t even move thanks to his regular Botox injections. “That’s gotta suck.”
Chloe Hampton, the twentysomething weather girl Jamison was currently dating, tossed back the last of her second wine and set the empty glass down with a click. “Exes are the worst. My last ex burned all my clothes when we broke up. I was pissed. I liked that red cocktail dress more than I ever liked him.”
“That’s because you were sleeping with me.” Jamison chuckled and leaned toward the blonde, his facial muscles barely moving with his expression.
Chloe giggled and rubbed her newly shortened nose against the news anchor’s. “That’s true. Though I still miss that dress. Your wife wasn’t much happier.”
The two laughed. Jeremy smirked.
As conversation at the table turned to the day’s media rankings, Raegan looked over each face, wondering what she was doing here. Jeremy was nice to her, and she enjoyed spending time with him alone—usually—but most of the people he surrounded himself with were as fake as their faces.
Her phone buzzed, and reaching around to where her coat hung on the back of her chair, she pulled it out of her pocket.
8:00 p.m. McClane Anniversary Party
Her heart felt as if it skipped a beat, and her stomach tightened as she stared at the screen.
Alec’s mother had invited her to the party months ago via e-mail. At the time, Raegan had sent a polite thanks-but-no-thanks note, but she’d put it in her calendar anyway. Now, as the reminder flashed, all she could think was . . . why shouldn’t I go? If she went, she could catch Alec before he left. She could show him the research she’d found on that missing kid. She could spend a few more minutes with him. Because God knew the bit of time they’d spent together in that hospital today had not been enough. Ever since she’d left she’d been thinking about him nonstop. About what he was feeling tonight. About how clear his eyes had been. About all the things she’d wanted to say but hadn’t.
Nerves humming, she grasped her coat and pushed back from the table.
Jeremy stopped whatever he’d been saying to Jamison and looked up at her. “Where are you going?”
“Sorry. I forgot an appointment.”
“Now?” He turned toward her. “It’s dark outside.”
“I know.” She snatched up her purse. “And I’m sorry. It’s a family thing.”
“But . . . Raegan, you don’t have any family here. Your mother’s still in Europe and your dad’s in New York.”
He was right. Her parents were divorced and led very different lives on opposite coasts—her dad was a high-profile attorney in New York and her mother happily lived off her divorce settlement in California or wherever she chose to travel next. Raegan didn’t have any family in the area to have an appointment with, but she wasn’t about to tell Jeremy she was leaving him to see Alec’s family.
She leaned in and kissed Jeremy’s cheek halfheartedly, catching more air than skin. “I’ll call you later. Thanks for dinner. And I’m sorry to run.”
“But—”
“Greg, Chloe.” She nodded and stepped away. “Have a good night.”
Jeremy’s sputtered protest echoed at her back as he pushed to his feet, but she ignored it and him and rushed toward the entrance of the posh downtown restaurant.
He wouldn’t follow her. They hadn’t been dating that long, and she knew she didn’t mean more to him than his precious station, which was the purpose of this dinner in the first place. Pulling on her coat, she stepped out into the cool night and drew a lungful of air that felt like the first she’d breathed in days.
Hope swirled inside her like the wine in her glass as she stepped to the curb and waved for a cab. Tonight she wasn’t about to let it go still. Tonight she was determined to show Alec he was wrong, that their daughter was out there somewhere, and that together they could find her.
She just prayed she could get him to listen for five minutes before he turned and walked away.
Twenty minutes.
Alec decided he’d give his parents twenty more minutes before ducking out of the cloistering party and beating feet back to his place where he could breathe.
“Alec.” Ethan’s fiancée, Sam, stepped up at Alec’s side and slipped her arm around his. “There you are. Rusty here was just trying to explain to me why hair color and IQ go hand in hand.” She peered up at Alec with an amused expression. “You’re blond. What do you think?”
Alec cut a look at Rusty on Sam’s other side. Hands tucked into the black slacks that matched his shirt and hair and eyes, Rusty shrugged his wide shoulders and waggled his brows in a watch me get the smart girl going way.
A frown pulled at Alec’s lips. He was not in the mood to get caught up in sibling teasing. But it was better than the alternative—schmoozing with his parents’ friends who knew he was the kid who, even as an adult, still had “issues.”
“He’s right,” Alec said to Sam, flipping Rusty the bird at his side where she couldn’t see. “Ethan’s hair is brown, and we all know he’s full of shit.”
Sam rolled her eyes and smiled. “And what about Rusty?”
“That one’s easy. He doesn’t have an IQ.”
“Why not?”
“Because that black mop of hair on his head was transplanted straight off his ass.”
Sam laughed. Rusty scowled and narrowed his eyes.
“It’s true,” Alec said, feeling marginally better for the first time in hours. “When he joined the family, he was as bald as a newborn baby. Our parents took one look at all the hair on his ass and said, problem solved!”
Sam’s shoulders shook with laughter. At her side, Rusty frowned and said, “Ha-ha, very funny.”
“What can I say?” Alec muttered, glancing toward his parents, who were talking with someone in a tan trench coat on the far side of the room. “It’s my blond IQ. Hey, who are Mom and Dad talking to over th—”
The words died on his lips when his father stepped to the side and his mother leaned in and hugged the mystery woman.
“Shit.” The air left his lungs in a whoosh as he watched Raegan smile and hug his mother back.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Rusty murmured.
“She who?” Sam asked. “Who are you looking at?”
“Alec’s ex-wife.”
Alec didn’t catch the rest of their conversation or what Rusty told Sam about Raegan. All he could hear was the pounding rhythm of his pulse thundering in his ears.
His first reaction was shock that she was here. His second was panic that something had happened. But as he headed toward her, all he could think about was how gorgeous she looked in the low light of the private room, how soft her hair appeared, how much he wanted to grab her and kiss her and never let her go. Just as he’d wanted to grab her and kiss her today at that hospital.
He stopped next to his father and didn’t miss the happiness in his dad’s eyes and the excitement in his mother’s when she let go of Raegan and noticed him.
“What happened?” he said to Raegan, ignoring his parents and their reactions. “Is everything okay?”
“Nothing. I mean, yes, everything’s fine.” Her cheeks were rosy, her face flushed, but more than that, there was a light in her eyes he hadn’t seen earlier in the day. A light that put him on instant alert.
“Then I don’t understand. Why are you here?”
The light dimmed, and her unsure gaze skipped over his features.
; “Alec.” Hannah placed a hand on his arm. “I invited her.”
He looked toward his mother. “You what?”
“She’s family. Of course I invited her.” Shooting Alec a scathing look, Hannah laced her arm with Raegan’s and pulled her away. “Come on. I want you to meet Ethan’s girl. She’s really sweet.”
Raegan flicked a wary look Alec’s way, but Alec was too stunned to react. His mother had invited her? Knowing it would throw him for a loop? Knowing—even without being clued in to what had happened today—that just seeing her could send him spinning toward a bottle?
His father sighed at his side as the two women moved away. “Women. Never can tell what they’re thinking.”
“Or doing,” Alec muttered, watching his mother and Raegan now chatting and laughing with Sam and Ethan. There was no awkwardness on Raegan’s part. No worried smiles or cautious embraces. She still fit with this family like a missing puzzle piece sliding back into place. He was the one who didn’t fit. An outsider on the edge looking in. The same outsider he’d been as a kid, watching families in the park when he’d pause from John Gilbert’s “errands” and fantasize about a different kind of life.
“You okay?” his father asked quietly.
A hollow ache spread through Alec’s chest. One that was wider than it had been earlier in the day at the hospital. He swallowed hard. Tried to tell himself this was no big deal. Failed miserably.
“Yeah,” he managed. But all he wanted to do was run. Away from this party. Away from his family. Away from all the reminders of every way he’d fucked up in life.
Except he couldn’t. Not now that Raegan was here. If he did, his parents would just get suspicious, and the last thing he needed was them hovering like he was an invalid again, just as they’d done three years before.
He glanced around for the waiter. “I need a drink.”
His father’s eyebrows shot up.
“Caffeine,” Alec clarified, seeing the look. “I can still have caffeine, can’t I?”
Michael McClane sighed.
Alec ignored him and went in search of as much caffeine as it would take to get through the rest of the night.
John Gilbert stood in a darkened section of the yard he’d never been to before and tried like hell not to shake. He’d been pulled out of his cell, handcuffed, and marched out here by the guards, then left alone to shiver in the frigid night air without so much as a fucking coat.
If he weren’t ready to shit for fear a guard in one of those towers high above was about to send a slug right through his chest, he’d be spitting mad.
Footsteps sounded somewhere to his right. Heart pounding, he turned in that direction and tried to see through shadows and darkness. “Who’s there?”
“Someone who can make your life heaven or hell, Mr. Gilbert.”
His pulse shot up even higher. He didn’t recognize the voice. It was male, deep, cultured. There was no twang to it. No accent. No bite. Whoever this was didn’t reside at SCI, and he definitely wasn’t one of the guards.
Puffing his chest out as much as he could, Gilbert shoved his hands into his pockets and squinted to see better. All he could make out was a shape. He didn’t know how big the guy was, but he knew he could take him. He could take anyone. “What ya want with me?”
Cigarette smoke drifted his way. Fancy smoke. The kind rich people sucked in. The shape moved in the dark, and he couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if the man snuffed out a cigarette with his boot and ground it into the blacktop. “You placed a call this morning to the FBI. One we found—how can I say this so you’ll understand?—fucking stupid.”
Nerves bounced all around Gilbert’s stomach. He shouldn’t have made the call, but he’d known it’d get to his damn kid. Just as he’d hoped, Alec had shown up here today hot as a chili pepper and ready to take him on—something Gilbert couldn’t wait for so he could finally show the fucker who was really in charge. “I didn’t tell ’em where that girl was. I had nuthin’ to do with that. I mean”—he tried to laugh, but even to him it came off sounding scared and pathetic—“I’m locked up in here. I can’t do nothin’ from behind bars.”
“Nothing except cause trouble we don’t need. The package got away from its handler. Had you stayed out of it, the package would have been picked up, the transaction would have continued smoothly, and the FBI—and the police—would never have been involved. Because of your simpleminded need for revenge, Mr. Gilbert, you managed to fuck up an entire operation.”
“Hold on.” Gilbert’s heart beat hard and fast because he saw where this was going. “I didn’t know nothin’ about the kid being there—I mean, package. That was a coincidence. All I done was give the name of a park to screw with the Feds.”
“The name of a park you yourself have used for similar transactions. And don’t lie to me about not knowing there was a transaction taking place. We know where you got your information.”
A spotlight flicked on from somewhere above, but Gilbert didn’t turn to see where. All he could focus on was the lifeless body lying facedown in the grass, illuminated by the light.
True fear curled through his gut like smoke twists along the ground. Even without seeing the face, he knew it was Rory Mills. A guy he’d worked with a few times and the visitor yesterday who’d told him about the missing girl.
His hands shook as the light went out, dousing the area in darkness once more. Squinting, he searched for the shadow—the man—who had him by the short and curlies.
“As I said before, Mr. Gilbert,”—a match flared in the darkness, illuminating a cigarette and masculine lips before going out and leaving nothing but the red hue of a lit end—“I have the power to make your life heaven or hell. Others in my organization, however, are ready to see you facedown like Mills.”
Gilbert swallowed hard. “I was stupid. I see that now. I’ll do anythin’ you ask. Just give me a second chance.”
The red hue of the cigarette darkened as the man drew in a puff of tobacco. “There is one thing you might be able to do for us, assuming you can make it to your release without fucking anything else up.”
“I will. I mean, I’ll make it to my release. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“Make sure your son doesn’t dig into things that don’t concern him.”
“Alec? He wouldn’t do that. He knows his kid’s dead.”
“His ex-wife doesn’t. I heard from a reliable source that your son was with Devereaux today at the hospital where the Feds took the package.”
“That don’t mean nothin’.”
“No, it doesn’t. But Devereaux almost caught on to the truth three years ago. We don’t want her restarting her search and uncovering something better left alone. If she does, we want you to make sure she’s unable to tell anyone about what she finds.”
A burst of excitement ignited inside Gilbert. They wanted him to watch Raegan. That would not be a hardship. The chick was hot, and keeping her in line would go one step further in sticking it to Alec. Gilbert nodded quickly. “I can do that.”
“Good. Because if you fail this time”—the man pointed the smoldering cigarette toward Mills’s lifeless body—“you’ll be joining your friend down there in the dirt. We have connections in high places, and you can be found anywhere, Gilbert. Remember that.”
CHAPTER FOUR
He’d left.
Raegan glanced around the private dining room and told herself she should have kept an eye on Alec. Sometime between Ethan’s toast to Michael and Hannah’s twenty-five years of marriage and the coffee and desserts being wheeled out, Alec had slipped out of the party and disappeared.
She glanced across the room and spotted Ethan speaking with an older couple. After setting her glass on a nearby table, she wove through the crowd until she reached his side, then waited—not so patiently—as he said good-bye and the couple wandered off.
“Hey, Raegan.” Ethan turned her way. “Having a good time?”
“Sure. Have you seen Alec?”
A worried look passed over Ethan’s features as he glanced past her over the crowd. “Not since before the toast.”
“I was hoping to catch him for a few minutes, but I think he might have left.”
Ethan’s jaw clenched as he pulled his cell from the pocket of his slacks and started punching buttons.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Seeing if he left. As long as he has his location services on, I can see where he is.”
“You track your brother?”
“I haven’t needed to in quite a while. After what happened today, he’s given me reason to be concerned again.”
Raegan realized Alec had told Ethan about the girl at the hospital. She’d known it would throw him for a loop, even though he’d acted as if he were fine.
Ethan frowned. “Yeah, he left. Rat bastard.”
“Where is he?”
“Sunset Highway. Looks like he’s heading home.”
Home . . . She’d known Alec had moved out of the city after their divorce, only she didn’t know where. Something in the back of her head warned that tonight was not the night to talk to him about what she’d found. But something else told her he was hurting tonight, and even though she was the last person he wanted comfort from, she couldn’t turn her back on him.
“Where is that?”
Ethan looked up. “You sure you want to go out there? It’s supposed to snow tonight. And in the mood he’s in—”
“I need to talk to him, Ethan.”
Ethan’s features softened. “I’ll text you the address.”
Relief spread through her, and she hugged him, this man who’d once been her brother-in-law. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he muttered as she released him. “Alec’s not the same guy you remember.”
She knew he wasn’t. He was sober. Even if he railed at her for following him, tonight she wanted to make sure he stayed that way.
Alec looked out the window of his front room at the brake lights illuminating the darkness.
Snow fell in big white flakes that had already blanketed the countryside in a layer of white. Whoever was out there at this hour was obviously having trouble on the slick road.
Gone (Deadly Secrets Book 2) Page 4