My stomach rumbled. I swallowed to ease the dryness in my throat. Had food and water played into their planning at all? I had to not think about that and focus on finding out who owned this house. I only had one shot with the box. If the police came for a distress call, Bridget and Alex would know I did something. Where would they put me after this? Did they have a contingency plan to their basement backup plan?
I shoved the thought to the side. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to find out. The second box contained more trophies with no names on them. This entire place was filled with random things the owner simply didn’t feel like throwing away. I opened a plastic tote that had “Christmas Decorations” written on the lid. Maybe Derek made one of those DIY ornaments with his picture on it. I was really reaching here.
At the top of the steps, the deadbolt clicked. With my heart thudding, I replaced the lid on the tote and shelved it before darting to the bottom of the stairs to sit.
Bridget descended the steps with a bottle of water. She tossed me the bottle and took a picture of me with it. “I don’t have time to play the maid with you. I’m losing patience. Pray that Derek comes up with the money in the next thirty-six hours. I’m already tired of seeing your face.”
I ran a hand over my hair. “I’d like to get out of this dress and clean up.”
She glared at me as if I’d asked her for a million dollars. “If you behave. I’ll think about it.”
At least, she hadn’t said no. When she locked the door behind her, I took a long swig from the bottle of water. I drank half of it and saved the rest for later.
I went back to the boxes and continued my search. After clearing two shelves of boxes, I hit the jackpot—a family album that didn’t include Derek or Bridget. We were in a fucking rental. I kicked the box, and a cloud of dust puffed out of it.
That settled it for me. If I sent a distress signal, the call center would automatically dispatch a cop. All I’d have to do when the officer showed up would be to make a big ruckus down here. I picked up a trophy from one of the boxes and banged it on the iron rods covering the small basement windows. That could work.
I stood in front of the cellular system and moved some cables around to see how they were connected. The brown one stood out to me. I had to splice that one with the red. It wasn’t like in the movies, where there was always a green or red cable to cut. I had to be careful not to do that.
On the other side of the small windows, the sun moved across the sky. The lower it fell, the more shadows crept around the basement. I stood in the middle of the room. What would happen if Derek didn’t come up with the money on time? Would Bridget hurt me to make her point? Alex would do that just for fun. That much I knew.
I walked to the tool chest on the opposite end of the wall and scoured through it, looking for something sharp to cut the wax cover off the cables. My choices were a serrated knife or an ice pick. I went with the knife. By the time I returned to the metal box, the basement was dimly lit by the single bulb halfway down the steps.
Dammit. I might have to wait another night.
20
Yeah, I Was Losing My Shit
Derek
“It’s been a whole day. I’ve received two texts from them. If they’re on the network, we can track them down. Find them.” I hit the End button on my phone. An entire IT company, and no one could get a trace on Bridget and Alex.
I plopped myself on the office chair in the library, where I’d spent the better part of the last twenty-four hours, and swiveled around to face the window. Sleep had been impossible, or rather closing my eyes and not seeing them kissing had been impossible. I glanced down on my screen, where a picture of Valentina and Alex taunted me. Alex and Bridget had no idea what they’d done. There would be no second chances for them.
Last night after we confirmed Valentina had left the house to go after Alex, I received two messages. One with just a picture. Bridget had waited a whole hour to send me the next text with her demands. For that entire time, my stomach had been in knots. Several scenarios ran through my head. Valentina would have been pissed at me if she had been able to read my thoughts during those minutes. The mind was a tricky thing. I was past all that. Now I needed answers. I needed a plan to get her back.
“Mr. Cole?” Anabelle’s driver walked into the library. “I was told you wanted to see me.”
The man was as wide as he was tall. Why the hell had he not been able to keep Valentina safe? “Yes. Come in.” I gestured for him to sit on the seat across from my desk. “It’s Will, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can’t fire him. He doesn’t even work for you.” Ana rushed in and shut the door behind her. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she’d run all the way from her house.
The thought had crossed my mind. Someone like Will with his experience should have known better. Letting Valentina go on her own had been a huge mistake on his part.
“It’s okay, Ms. Copenhaver.” Will put up his hand.
“No, it’s not. I asked you to drive Valentina. You shouldn’t have to lose your job for following my orders.” She turned her blue gaze toward me. “If you’d been more forthcoming with Valentina, she would’ve trusted you with this. You can’t put this on Will.”
In all the time I’d known Ana, I’d never seen her raise her voice like this or look at me with fire in her eyes. “I’m not firing Will. Did Valentina tell you about Alex?”
“She said he was Max’s dad.”
“Right. He’s also the reason why Valentina still has nightmares. He’s a sociopath who gets his kicks from hurting women.”
She raised her eyebrows. Obviously, Valentina hadn’t mentioned all the details about Alex. She’d known that if Ana found out the truth about that asshole, she never would have let her driver take Valentina to the meeting place. Ana was right about one thing, though. If I hadn’t kept secrets from Valentina, she would have trusted me with Max’s life. She would have known that he was as important to me as she was. No doubt she’d considered the idea that I’d put her safety over his.
“I didn’t know that.”
I gripped my mobile. The image of Valentina’s pained expression flashed in my head. What would Ana think if I showed her that picture? She didn’t need to see that. I tapped on the screen and deleted the picture. Bridget knew exactly how to push my buttons. This image was just that—a button.
“What’s done is done. Now I need Will to help me identify their getaway car.” I handed Will the iPad with the surveillance videos from the corner where he’d dropped her off. “You mentioned she walked across the street and disappeared from there?”
“Yes, sir. There’s a warehouse beyond the small parking lot on Irwin Street. I would’ve lured her there too.”
I slow-blinked, pushing the image of Alex’s mouth on her neck out of my mind. Where was she now? “That video is from the twenty minutes you were there. Do you remember anything that can help us identify the car?”
The creases across his forehead deepened as he concentrated on the low-quality lead we had. “That intersection was crowded with both pedestrians and cars. This sedan.” He tapped on the screen. “At the time, I thought the driver was just drunk, honking to get people out of the way. He was in a hurry to get past the Stop sign.”
I grabbed the device from him and moved the counter back to see the car again. It’d gone out of the parking lot and hung a left on Irwin toward Lake Avenue. Assuming Valentina was in the car. A dark sedan. That was almost nothing to go on, but it was a step in the right direction.
The governor’s office had been very accommodating in providing access to their traffic cameras to my guys. I picked up the phone and called the team I had working on tracing Alex’s and Bridget’s devices. Alex and Bridget had been careful to go dark after I ran into Alex at the pub. But they were bound to make a mistake sooner or later.
“The feed you sent me. There’s a black car crossing the intersection at eleven sixteen. See where it’s headed.”
“That’s going to take a long time if we don’t know which way it went.”
My frustration level had reached its limit last night when I found out Valentina had gone after Alex on her own and that Ana had helped her. “I know that, but unless you have a better idea, start with Lake Avenue.”
“I’m on it.”
I waited for the team to confirm they had a visual on the video, then dropped the speaker phone on the cradle. This waiting game had my adrenaline pumping hard through my body. How the fuck did we get here? How did Bridget and Alex manage to get a note to Valentina? For Christ’s sake, they’d left it on her vanity dresser.
“Thanks, Will. You can leave. If you think of anything else, let me know.”
“Of course.” He gave Ana a quick nod and left.
“I’m sorry.” Now that Will’s job wasn’t on the chopping block, Ana’s voice had returned to its normal sweet tone.
“You didn’t talk to Bridget last night? Did you?”
“What? No. Do you seriously think I helped her get Valentina out of the house?”
Yes, the thought had crossed my mind. I’d also considered Mom had done it. Someone in this house had helped Bridget. “The head of security said he found one of our guys knocked out near the property line. The guard later confirmed he’d seen Bridget leaving the grounds through your gardens.”
“I didn’t see her. I wasn’t even home. I was here with the other guests.”
“Okay. What about your new friend Rebecca?”
“She helped Valentina get in here to get the money Alex asked for.”
“There was only four thousand dollars in the safe. How did she get the rest of the money?” I stood, looming over her small frame on the chair across from me. Her hands trembled, and I felt like an asshole for pushing her like this, but I needed the truth, the whole story.
“Rebecca gave her the rest of the money.”
I banged my hand on the desk, and Ana’s body jerked in surprise. “And she just happened to have that amount of cash in her purse?”
“She has way more than that.”
Carrying cash would make sense if she was running away from someone. She helped Valentina because Valentina had been kind enough to invite her to the engagement party. What I still didn’t understand was why she couldn’t just show up to the house and ask for Tyler or Matt. Why the charade? Why pretend she was a family friend? Had Bridget put her up to it? To gain Valentina’s trust? That seemed unlikely. Bridget didn’t even know Rebecca existed. I didn’t know of her until last night when Tyler and Matt asked me to let her stay.
“Get her in here. If she wants to stay in this house, she’s going to have to tell me the truth.”
Ana nodded and stood. “I’m worried about Valentina too. But you have to believe she can handle herself. She’s not the defenseless little thing you think she is.”
I dipped my head. “I don’t think she’s defenseless.”
“If she had come to you with Alex’s note, would you have let her go?”
“Of course not. Max was safe at home. She just didn’t have the right number to call to ask that question.” I said that last bit mostly to myself.
“She didn’t know that. She called them and couldn’t get through. She couldn’t take the risk and call his bluff.” Her tone was decisive. “Stop looking for who to blame and give them the money they want.”
“I’m working on that. I don’t have the kind of cash they’re asking for just lying around. I don’t give a shit about the money. I care about her spending another minute with that asshole.” I swallowed my tears when my voice cracked. “I’ll have the ransom in the morning. I want her home now.”
“I’ll go get Rebecca. Maybe Valentina told her something we can use to figure out where she was taken.”
When Ana opened the door, Mom stood behind it with our housekeeper next to her. Iris was in tears, while Mom’s face was red with anger. “For fuck’s sake, stop crying and tell him what you told me.”
“I swear I didn’t know what the note was for. Bridget asked me to leave it where Valentina would find it. I had no idea.” Iris wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“Sit down.” I fisted my hands and tapped my desk. If Iris were a guy, I’d be beating the truth out of him.
With a quick glance at Mom, she entered the room and sat in the chair Ana had just vacated. “A few days ago, I ran into Bridget at the grocery store. She seemed so nice and proper. Um, she mentioned she was a family friend. We got talking, and then she invited me to lunch.”
In all the time I’d known Bridget, not once had she gone to a grocery store. She had people to do that for her. If she ran into Iris, it was because she followed her there. I sat and gestured for Iris to continue. The how or why didn’t matter anymore. I needed a lead that was more meaningful than a black sedan leaving Krog Street Market.
“She mostly asked about Derek.” Her gaze darted from me to Ana, then back to me. “Which, you know, made sense. She told me about the divorce.”
This was a new low for Bridget. Telling sob stories to make friends. Where did all this come from? Why did she hate me this much?
“What did she want to know?” Ana stepped closer to her, as if ready to shield her from my wrath.
I was done being angry. Valentina’s absence had taken a toll on me. I was beyond tired.
“If he was happy.” Iris shrugged. “I told her I didn’t know. I thought maybe she wanted to reconcile.”
Iris didn’t know my story with Bridget. And Bridget knew that. Ours had been a sort of marriage of convenience, where love never really played into the equation. I let Bridget manage my company and by extension my life. She, in return, embezzled money from my company. If I hadn’t sent her to jail before, it was because I felt guilty for how our marriage had turned out.
I left her alone all the time. I did nothing but work. We never had any romantic feelings for each other. But that didn’t stop Bridget from feeling as if she owned everything that came with the marriage deal—the company, the money, and me. Her gambling addiction and the influence of her lover at the time didn’t help matters. More than a jail cell, Bridget needed psychiatric help. None of this would be happening if she’d stayed in the rehab center where she went right after our divorce.
“Bridget was not interested in reconciliation. She wanted more money.”
“I’m so sorry. I thought she wanted to talk to Valentina and explain things to her. Ask her to maybe step aside and let you —”
“Stop talking.” I rose to my feet. I didn’t need to know the rest. Bridget had obviously fed Iris some sob story with a romantic twist she knew would get Iris to help her. “Just tell me if you know where she is, where she might’ve taken Valentina.”
“The day we had lunch, she mentioned she’d driven several hours to see me.” Iris smiled at the ground. There was a tinge of pride in her voice. Bridget’s attention made her feel important. Bridget handpicked her for a reason.
“Did she mention from where? A freeway? South, north?”
“She mentioned I-16 had been a nightmare that day.”
That narrowed our search for a black sedan. I picked up the phone again and called the head of security. “Anything on the route the car might’ve taken?”
“Not yet. We’re casting a really wide net here.”
“What if you assume the car headed toward I-16? There are hundreds of towns along I-16. She could’ve gone anywhere. But it’s something.”
“Okay, that narrows it down some. I’ll check traffic lights around I-75 south. We might get lucky.”
“Thanks.” The call disconnected, and I let out a breath. It’d come down to luck.
“Am I fired?” Iris’s voice quavered.
She had made a huge mistake, but right now I didn’t have the time nor the headspace to deal with her. I met Mom’s gaze.
She nodded. “I will deal with Iris. In a way, she reacted the way she did because of how I acted toward Valentina whe
n you first got here. This is on me.”
“Iris is her own person. You can’t put this on yourself.”
“Let me worry about her.”
“Okay.” I turned my attention to Iris. “You’re staying in the house until we bring Valentina home. If Bridget reaches out to you again, you come to me immediately. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mr. Cole.” She followed Mom out of the study. No matter how sorry she was, the damage had already been done.
“Now we know it wasn’t Rebecca.” Ana walked to the door, wiping her hands on her dress.
Her ashen face told me she felt guilty about what happened. But she’d been right to help her friend. Valentina was a grown woman. Right or wrong, she’d made a decision based on what she believed to be the correct course of action. I had to respect that. I had to also start trusting that Valentina could handle herself. She wasn’t a fragile flower. She was brave and didn’t expect me to come save her, though that was exactly my plan. I didn’t trust Alex and Bridget would do the right thing after they got their money.
“Now we know.” I offered her a smile. “Thank you for being there for Valentina. I can only imagine how scared she must’ve been for Max.”
“She was. I’m sorry, Derek. If I’d known about Alex, I would’ve tried to come up with a plan B.” Her eyes watered. “Do you think they’ll let Valentina go after you pay them off?”
I sat back on my chair and pinched my nose, but that didn’t keep the tears from coming. Ana stalked around the desk and threw her arms around me in an awkward hug. She sniffled and dropped to her knees in front of me. I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand. “I honestly don’t know. That’s why we need to find her before our time is up. Once they have what they want, who knows where they’ll go next.”
Tyler barged into the library and halted halfway when he saw me with Ana. When he spoke, his tone was soothing and slow. “The FBI agent wants to talk about the strategy for the drop-off. Got a minute?”
Unravel You: A Hot Billionaire Romance (Cole Brothers Series Book 1) Page 19