Kept

by Jami Alden

  “I’m fine,” Alyssa said, rubbing the base of her skull in an attempt to ease the dull ache that had settled there. Ignoring Andy’s questioning look, Alyssa went to her bedroom to find out once and for all what “secrets” Martin Fish so badly wanted to share.

  She plopped down on her bed, computer in front of her, but before she could log on, Andy appeared in the doorway with a plate of food and a glass of sparkling water.

  “You haven’t eaten anything all day,” Andy said, holding out a dish piled high with raw vegetables, pita, and hummus.

  One of Alyssa’s favorite snacks, but she knew there was no way she could fit any food on top of the knot in her belly. “Thanks. You can put it right there,” she said, indicating the empty spot beside her.

  “You really need to eat something,” Andy said.

  Annoyance tightened her shoulders as Alyssa realized Andy wasn’t going anywhere until she ate something. She stifled the urge to tell Andy to back off, that she didn’t need a keeper. Andy was just trying to look out for her and make sure she didn’t starve herself on top of everything else that was going on.

  She scooped up a blob of hummus with a pita triangle and took a bite, washing it down with several gulps of the sparkling water. “Thanks, Andy,” she said around another mouthful of bread. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  She kept a smile pasted on her face and gave Andy a little wave as she backed out of the room. Thirsty from her long walk home, she finished the water, opened up her browser, and clicked on FishBait.org. She leaned up and dug around in her pocket for the scrap of paper.

  Nothing.

  She came up on her knees and dug more frantically. Unbelievable. In desperation, she stripped off her jeans and turned every pocket inside out and scoured her floor for a balled-up wad of paper.

  She must have dropped it when she went to shove it in her pocket. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember the log-in and password. She remembered the log-in was some form of Mfish and some numbers, but with random capitalizations and digits she couldn’t for the life of her conjure up. Still, she spent almost half an hour trying various permutations, on the off chance her brain would cough up the right information, until her vision blurred and her head renewed its throbbing.

  She needed an Advil. She stood up from the bed, startled when her legs didn’t seem to work and she slid to the floor.

  What was wrong with her? A steady gray fog overtook her brain, thick and soupy like the mist rolling into the Northern California coast. Her eyelids were lead weights, and she leaned her head back against her bed.

  She was vaguely aware of her door opening, voices that sounded like they were talking to her underwater. She forced her eyes to focus, startled to see Richard Blaylock standing in her room, Andy beside him, arms folded as she stood next to him. Alyssa held up a hand that felt like it had an anvil attached to it. Neither made a move to help her.

  “How much did you give her?” Richard’s voice was deep and muffled.

  “Enough to keep her out for several hours, just like you said,” Andy replied.

  It took several seconds for Alyssa’s brain to process. When it finally did, the truth exploded in her brain, a white-hot, blinding flash of clarity.

  “You bitch!” Her voice sounded echoey and distant. Her limbs were heavy, but she mustered every last bit of strength and launched herself at Andy. Taken by surprise, Andy tumbled over and backward, shrieking in pain when her cheek hit the corner of the bedside table. “Why?” was all Alyssa could push past her lips as her vision tunneled. The last thing she saw was Andy’s look of utter contempt.

  CHAPTER 14

  MARTIN UNLOCKED THE door of his motel room, taking one last, frantic look behind him before he stepped inside. No one there. Just as there’d been no one as he’d taken a circuitous walking route back from Zed’s.

  He couldn’t shake that dogged feeling, the prickly sense of being watched.

  You’re totally safe. No one saw her. And even if they did, no one knows what you were talking about. This wasn’t the jungle hell of the Congo, where he had to worry about getting iced with a Kalashnikov if he looked at someone sideways.

  He extracted his bottle of whiskey from a paper bag and opened it. He took a long swallow and reclined on the bed, not bothering to turn the lights on. Streetlight filtered through the blinds, striping the cheap nylon bedspread with yellow light.

  He raised the bottle to his lips, trying to chase back the chill that had settled into his bones the second he’d arrived in San Francisco. His body couldn’t stay warm in the damp cold, not after weeks in crushing heat and humidity.

  He stared at the phone, willing it to ring. Alyssa had to be home by now, had plenty of time to look at his site and see the truth she wanted to deny. A sour feeling twisted in his gut as he thought of what she would see. She had to face the truth. They all did. She was the key. She would save them all.

  Call. He’d told her to contact him. How could she not call after seeing the photos, the videos? A curl of unease unfurled in his belly.

  He closed his eyes, gave into booze-fueled dreams of Alyssa, laughing, beckoning, her skin glittering with diamonds. She was joined by Marie Laure, diamond shackles around her legs and arms, crying tears of blood as she covered her swollen belly. He reached for them, knowing he had to warn them about something, but he couldn’t run, couldn’t catch them, couldn’t tell them what to be afraid of. Alyssa’s tears turned to screams as wounds opened all over her skin until her entire body was awash in thick, red blood. Marie Laure screamed at him, begging for help. Gunfire exploded once, twice. Marie Laure clutched her stomach and fell, her clawing hands bringing Alyssa down with her.

  Martin jerked awake, assaulted by the stink of spilled whiskey and his own acrid sweat.

  It wasn’t gunshots, it was someone knocking at his door. She was here. His dream lingered, and he wasn’t exactly sure where he was, he just knew Alyssa was waiting outside. He shoved up from the bed, wobbling a little as he stood and walked to the door.

  He fumbled with the chain and turned the knob. The door exploded inward. Cartilage crunched, and his eyes filled with tears as he staggered back. Strong hands threw him facedown on the ground. His jaw hit the floor; his teeth bit nearly through his tongue. The metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth.

  The dream fog disappeared, and he was acutely aware of everything. His heart pounding against his ribs. The stink of the man’s sweat as he held Martin immobile with a knee in his spine. The sound of another man rummaging through his things, knocking over a chair, pulling the mattress from the bed.

  Martin tried to struggle and got a sharp blow to the back of the head for his trouble. The knee in his back increased its pressure, and his attacker grabbed him by the hair, lifting Martin, arching his back until he thought his spine would snap.

  His last thought was of Marie Laure as the cold bite of steel sliced into the skin of his throat.

  “Looks like your girl is in trouble again.”

  Derek’s eyes narrowed on Danny’s face as he looked up from his paper and coffee. Danny sat down across from him, hard gray eyes glittering as he nodded over Derek’s shoulder at the waitress serving the thin crowd of the small diner. Derek, Danny, Ethan, and their father had spent most of the afternoon and early evening the day before going over the crime scene where the woman’s body had been found.

  Ethan had gone home to Toni for the night and insisted their father, who had taken to long stretches of silence while staring off into space, accompany him.

  Derek and Danny had elected to stay in the tiny mountain community’s only lodgings, a small room over the diner where Derek was currently enjoying his fourth cup of tar-black coffee. The sun had broken over the mountains, spilling bright light across the damp parking lot, streaking across the diner’s floor.

  “Don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Derek replied curtly. Over the past twenty-four hours the tension between them had grown until th
ey were circling each other, snarling and snapping like a couple of junkyard dogs. They’d put it aside to deal with this latest bombshell involving their mother’s unsolved case. “But I think it’s about time we had this out.” Derek knew his brother was itching to tear him a new one. And as much as Derek knew he deserved it, facing the truth—that he’d let his dick do the thinking and lost them a major client—really sucked the big one. “You have something to say about the way I handled Alyssa Miles. Why don’t you go ahead and say it.”

  The waitress came by and set a cup of coffee next to Danny, scurrying away when he gave her a smile that was closer to a snarl. “You lost us business—major business—over a piece of ass. And a messed-up piece of ass on top of it. Seriously, man, of all people, I’d think you would be able to avoid being sucked into that mess. You date PhDs for fuck’s sake, not stupid, drugged-out sluts—”

  Derek reached across the table and fisted his hand in his brother’s collar. “Shut the fuck up right now. You don’t say shit about her. You don’t even know her—”

  “Oh, and you do? While you’re busy defending her, she’s being hauled off to rehab, she’s such a mess.”

  Derek’s fingers uncurled from the neck of Danny’s black T-shirt. A fist gripped his insides as a terrible sense of foreboding sent cold sweat trickling down his spine.

  Danny’s eyes were glittering slits as he used his massive forearm to knock aside Derek’s hand. “It’s all over the news. Didn’t you catch CNN this morning? Hey, I think that’s her right now.” He gestured his chin over Derek’s head. Derek turned to look at the small television mounted above the diner’s counter.

  He rushed across the small space, staring up at the screen. It showed Alyssa, her small frame nearly swallowed by the same bulky sweater she’d worn up at the beach house. Her legs were buckled under her as she was half supported, half carried by Richard Blaylock on one side and Andy on the other. Flashbulbs popped in her face, and her head fell back, her long, light brown hair obscuring half her pale face. “Can you turn it up?” he asked the waitress. She shot him and Danny a nervous look but grabbed the remote.

  A female reporter’s voice filled the room as the footage continued to roll “…series of incidents, Alyssa Miles is off to a private rehab facility. Representatives for Miles refuse to disclose where she is going but want to assure her fans and supporters she will receive the treatment she needs. This will be the second stint in rehab for Miles, who attended the first time when she was just twenty-one.”

  Derek continued to stare, watching as Alyssa was loaded into the backseat of an SUV, his stomach churning as every instinct in his body screamed that this was not right.

  Her enormous green eyes flooded his vision, pleading with him to believe her as she claimed she knew nothing about the drugs in her system. He hadn’t wanted to believe her, afraid he was once again letting his emotions get in the way of his job.

  Now that feeling that he’d thrown her to the lions was back with double the force.

  Ignoring Danny, he stalked from the diner and flipped open his phone, determined to get to the truth of this. Outside the air was crisp and smelled like wood smoke and pine. He dialed Alyssa’s number, cursing when his phone beeped alerting him there was no cell signal. Fucking boon-docks had satellite TV but no cell coverage. He hadn’t even noticed until now, he’d been so wrapped up in studying the crime scene.

  Needles from the surrounding redwoods crunched under his soles as he circled the parking lot. Finally he got one faint bar and dialed again, but the connection dropped before he could get through. Before he could redial, his phone beeped, alerting him to a new voice mail. His blood ran cold when he heard Alyssa’s voice, garbled, her words mostly unintelligible.

  Anything weird happens you call me, he’d said.

  “Dude, what’s your problem?” Danny called as he jogged across the parking lot.

  “Something’s wrong,” Derek said, hurrying in the direction of the hotel to retrieve his bag. “I have to go.”

  Danny stared at him in disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re not seriously so far gone after this girl—”

  “This isn’t right—they’re going to do something to her, I can feel it.”

  Danny followed him up the outside stairs that led to their rooms. “You feel it? Are you shitting me? You don’t feel anything. No one’s going to do anything to her. They probably shipped her off to some spa for a couple weeks so she can get a couple massages and talk about her feelings. All another ploy for publicity.”

  Derek ignored him as he threw everything into his black duffel and zipped it up. He dug his fingers into his hair, pressing his palms into the sides of his skull as if that would contain the swirling mass of confusion. Danny was right. He didn’t feel. He thought. He analyzed. But right now he couldn’t focus, couldn’t logic his way around any of this. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had to get to her, see for himself she was safe.

  And if she was safe and snug in some four-star resort masquerading as a rehab facility, Derek would be the first one to have DICK FOR BRAINS tattooed across his forehead.

  It took him ten minutes of driving down the twisty mountain road before he could get a clear signal and hear Alyssa’s message in its entirety.

  “Hey, it’s me. Ummm, Alyssa, that is—no reason you should recognize my voice right off the bat.” Derek’s lips tightened in a grim smile. She had no idea that every detail about her, from her voice, to her scent, to the peachy sweet taste of her, was permanently seared into his memory. “So, remember how you told me to call you if anything weird happened? Well, my anonymous caller called again. This time I answered, and he said he had information about my father’s death. So I’m going to meet him at Zed’s in the Mission. Alone. Which I know is stupid, but he insisted, and I’m actually not supposed to be telling anyone, but I thought I should tell someone, in case anything, you know, happened. Which is really stupid, and I probably shouldn’t be bothering you with everything you have going on, so feel free to ignore this message. And, ummm, I hope you’re doing okay. My uncle told me he fired you. I know that’s my fault, and I’m really sorry about that. But ummm, maybe you could call me sometime, just to let me know you’re okay and everything.” Her voice hitched, and the uncertainty in her tone curled up in his throat and settled there in a big lump. “I know you don’t want to be, like, friends or anything, but it would be nice to hear from you sometime. Okay, bye.”

  He kept his eyes glued to the road as he hung up the phone and carefully placed it in the cup holder, focusing for the moment on not driving off the side of the road and pitching headlong into a ravine. His knuckles showed stark white as he gripped the steering wheel and tried to pull himself back from the brink.

  The noise in his head was deafening as questions, fears, and guilt ricocheted off each other. Derek rolled his shoulders, admonished himself to calm down as he strove for the quiet calm he had always been able to summon at will. It was what had made him an elite sniper, able to wait in complete stillness as mosquitoes chewed his face in the jungles of Central America or the cold threatened to freeze his nuts off in the high mountains of Afghanistan. He had an uncommon, some would even say fucked up, ability to disengage, shut down all emotions, and deal with a situation with an analytic approach that would put Mr. Spock to shame.

  But as hard as he tried, he couldn’t get the gut-twisting, conscience-searing images of Alyssa out of his mind. Her big, sad eyes, her soft, warm hand as she offered him comfort. Her small body moving under his, taking everything from him even when he smacked her down for trying to get too close.

  Under it all, rage was simmering, building until it filled his brain with a red haze. Someone was trying to hurt her, and for the first time in his life he really wanted to kill somebody. When he was in the military, taking out the enemy was a job, and he treated it as such. He took pride in his work, but he never—okay, rarely—let emotions come into play.

  From the first time he’
d met Alyssa, she’d brought out unwanted, unfamiliar protective instincts. It wasn’t just her small stature—her soft, pampered, never-seen-a-hard-day’s-work complexion. It was that damn openheartedness he’d tried to ignore, her willingness, after being screwed over so many times by so many people, to try again. To open herself up and offer love and affection, hoping it would be returned. It clawed at him, pulled at him, even as he’d tried to convince himself a needy, vulnerable woman was the last thing he needed.

  He remembered the way her cold fingers had locked around his hand, her eyes wild in her drugged stupor. “Help me”—like he was her savior, her knight in shining armor. He didn’t have it in him to be Alyssa’s or any other woman’s savior. A cold-blooded bastard like him would trample a hothouse flower like Alyssa under his big-booted heel.

  But as his car ate up the miles between La Honda and Alyssa’s house in the Marina, his blood was anything but cold. Like it or not, she’d crawled under his skin the first time he’d laid eyes on her. And the second he’d touched her, tasted her, he was gone. Over the cliff for a funny, frivolous, beautiful girl who didn’t know how to do laundry but made his heart crack open a little more every time she smiled at him.

  Realizing it didn’t make it any better, and he still wasn’t sure what the fuck he was going to do about it.

  Right now he was sure of only one thing: someone was trying to hurt her, and he would kill or die himself before he let anything happen to her.

  Alyssa woke up in an unfamiliar room with a pounding headache and a mouth that tasted like she’d been chewing dirty socks. Her eyes were puffy and scratchy with grit. She blinked a few times, hoping when she opened her eyes she’d see the walls of her room instead of the cream wallpaper with its faded green and maroon grapevine design.

  Where the hell am I?

  Fear sprouted in her gut as she kick-started her brain and tried to put together the last several hours. She struggled to sit up in bed, wincing at an aching sting in her arm. Her eyes froze on the IV stuck in the inner crook of her elbow.