Kept

by Jami Alden

  Derek’s fingers clenched and released against the flesh of her hip. “I’m not talking about working as your hired bodyguard, and you know it,” he said, his voice harsh.

  “What are you talking about then?” She held her breath, grateful for the dark as everything in her world seem to ride on his answer.

  “I…” he began, only to break off. “You…” he began again, only to stop again. “Fuck,” he said finally. His fingers threaded in her hair. “I suck at this relationship. I’m not good about talking about how I feel.” He paused. “I went a long time without feeling much of anything. I never let my feelings about anyone or anything get in the way of what I had to do. Except once. I made an emotional decision, didn’t do the job I was supposed to do, and a lot of good people ended up dead.”

  Alyssa didn’t press him for details, afraid if she interrupted he would cut himself off.

  “After that I closed myself off even more. Ruthlessly killed any emotional response or impulse, shoved it back in the box so my brain could deal with life without interference or interruption. Then I met you.” She could hear the rueful smile in his voice. “It was like getting hit with an EMP.”

  “Huh?”

  He huffed a little laugh. “Electromagnetic pulse. It’s a burst of energy that fries any electronic equipment within range so nothing works right anymore.”

  “That doesn’t sound any better than getting ripped apart,” she said, remembering his words from the day before.

  “Guess I need to work on my metaphors. Point is, from the first second I saw you, you made me feel things I’ve never felt before. Things I convinced myself I never wanted to feel. I don’t know what to call it yet, but all I know is I can’t get enough of you.”

  “You know it’s going to be bad, right? I mean, I’ll do my best to keep a low profile from now on, but once all this gets out, the press are going to be everywhere. You, your brothers—everyone is going to be front-page news. Are you sure you want to deal with that?” Her hand fisted against his chest.

  “I don’t care how bad it gets. I want to be here for you, beside you, while we deal with this whole fucked-up mess. I’ll never leave you alone.”

  She pushed herself up his body and found his mouth in the dark, drinking in his urgency, his intensity, letting it fill her, strengthen her, knowing she’d need everything she could get for the coming days. “That’s the most romantic thing any man has ever said to me,” she said between kisses.

  He rolled her underneath him and slid deep inside. He barely moved, just held himself inside her as he kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids as his hands ran over every inch of skin he could reach. “You’re mine,” he whispered over and over. “Mine.”

  Alyssa wrapped herself around him, opening herself up, taking everything he had to give and giving it right back. She savored this last night of safety in their sanctuary. Tomorrow they would have to deal with the outside world and people who would kill to keep her from revealing their secrets.

  But tonight it was just the two of them in the dark, and there was no question she belonged to him.

  CHAPTER 20

  “YOU’RE BEING RIDICULOUS,” Alyssa said for the dozenth time as she and Derek drove from the secret cottage to San Francisco. “I need to call her and let her know I’m okay.”

  “No dice,” Derek said and gunned his car down the steep, curving road that led to the freeway.

  They had an appointment with Detective Reyes of the homicide department, the man who had been assigned to investigate Andy’s murder. Reyes had left three messages on Alyssa’s cell-phone voice mail before the mailbox got too full and started bouncing messages. When Alyssa had checked them earlier that morning, there had been over fifty new messages over the last few days. Her publicist had called several times with offers from magazines and TV shows that wanted an exclusive on her first postrehab interview.

  Her mother had called half a dozen times, first to inquire about who would see that she received her monthly allowance from Alyssa. Then, after the news of Andy’s murder hit the news, she left a tearful, almost incoherent plea for her to call and tell them what was going on.

  “You cannot call her back, not until we talk to the police,” Derek had said when Alyssa had started to dial her mother. “You know anything you tell her will be front-page news as soon as she hangs up. Right now no one knows where you are or exactly what you know, and I want to keep it that way.”

  She’d reluctantly caved on not calling her mother, but Alyssa still wanted to call Kimberly, who had left several messages, each more frantic than the last.

  The first was from two days before, right after Derek had found Alyssa and taken her from the Tahoe house.

  “I called the treatment center, and they said you’ve never even been a patient there. Now Richard isn’t answering his phone, and Andy isn’t either.”

  Later that day: “Alyssa, if you get this message, please call me back. I have no idea where you are, and Richard seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth. If you’re in trouble, I’ll help you, just please call me.”

  The last one was from earlier this morning. “Oh, my God, Alyssa, please call me. The police want to talk to you about Andy. I told them you couldn’t have had anything to do with it, but I’m killing myself with worry that something has happened to you as well. Please call me so I know you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere. I won’t even tell the police you’ve called if that’s what you want, but please. I love you, and I’m worried, so please call.”

  Alyssa had played the messages for Derek, but he wouldn’t budge.

  “What harm could come from calling her?” she asked again as the rolling hills along highway 280 flew by in a grass-covered blur. “It’s not like she’s going to tell the press—”

  “But she could tell your uncle, or Richard if he calls her back.”

  “Not if I tell her not to,” Alyssa said. “Besides, I think she deserves a little warning that the shit is about to hit the fan.”

  And how. Alyssa and Derek were headed to the police station armed with CD copies of all Martin Fish’s files, along with copies of e-mails and additional files Derek and Toni had recovered from the Van Weldt network and the copied hard drives.

  They’d discovered several files and e-mail exchanges documenting the deal Harold Van Weldt had made with Louis Abbassi. In exchange for an infusion of capital from Abbassi, Abbassi received a stake in the company and a guaranteed distribution channel for his stones. When the deal was inked, Harold was the decision maker, while Richard had dealt with logistics and paperwork.

  But that wasn’t enough to link Harold to Oscar’s murder. The key to that had come from an e-mail exchange between Oscar and Richard that Toni had uncovered from the corporate network. “Dumbasses don’t know that it doesn’t matter if you delete it from your computer, it’s still on the server,” Toni had said with a shake of her head at their ignorance.

  Oscar revealed to Richard that he’d conducted an investigation of Louis Abbassi and had discovered disturbing information not revealed when Harold had done his initial due diligence. Later, they had been discussing a termination agreement, in circumspect terms, never naming names as though worried the subject would find out about it. But it had involved a family member, as indicated by an e-mail from Richard: In a situation like this, where family is involved, there are inheritance issues to consider.

  To which Oscar had replied: Monetary compensation for remaining shares will provide adequate legacy. Point is moot, as there is no issue to consider.

  Uncle Harold had no children.

  The day Oscar and Grace had been killed, Oscar wrote to Richard: We will alert the party tomorrow and execute the agreement this weekend. With luck, discretion will prevail, and any public scandal can be avoided. Will repay LA in full. He should not contest, as he will not want to damage his reputation further.

  Disappointment had settled in Alyssa’s belly as she read the exchange. Her father hadn’t planned
to alert the authorities to Louis’s smuggling. He’d wanted to quietly fire Harold, sever the partnership with Louis, and sweep the entire matter under the rug.

  But the Van Weldt Jeweler empire was Harold’s life, and Alyssa wasn’t surprised he hadn’t been willing to go quietly off into so-called retirement. So when Richard had tipped him and Louis off about what was about to happen, they’d decided to kill Oscar to protect their secrets.

  But it was another exchange, this one between Harold and Richard, dated two days after Oscar’s death, that made Alyssa feel like an icy hand had run down her spine.

  Oscar mentioned he was considering changing the will but had no idea he had executed changes to divide company shares between Kimberly and Alyssa. Small compensation—according to the terms of the trust, should anything happen to Alyssa, shares revert back to family and are not passed on to NOK.

  Harold had made no secret of his horror that his brother’s death had made Alyssa a major stockholder in the business.

  “So killing you solves two problems,” Derek had said tightly, a muscle throbbing in his jaw as his eyes scanned the screen. “You can’t tell anybody about what you might have seen the night your father was killed, and he gets the shares back from the niece he hates.”

  They pulled up in front of the police station, and Derek parked his Audi. Before he got out of the car he reached over and covered Alyssa’s hand.

  “They’re going to ask you some tough questions. Whatever you do, keep your cool, tell the truth, and try not to let them rattle you.”

  She nodded, her brow furrowing at the sudden note of gloom and doom in his voice. “I’ll be fine. All we have to do is tell them the truth, give them the evidence, and this whole thing will be over with, right?”

  “It might not be that easy. Are you sure you don’t want to call an attorney? Anyone would kill to represent you. You could get the best.”

  He’d been badgering her about it all day. “I don’t understand why you think I need an attorney when I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ll be fine, Derek. I’ve handled reporters who will make Detective Reyes look like a pussycat.”

  Derek watched Alyssa disappear into the private interrogation room with Detective Reyes, his gut clenching as she gave him a small smile over her shoulders.

  A lamb marching into the lion’s den.

  He should have warned her, been more clear about what to expect. She thought she would just tell the detective the whole convoluted story, and that would be it. They would go arrest Harold Van Weldt, track down Richard Blaylock and Louis Abbassi, wherever they were hiding, and justice would be served.

  But Derek hadn’t had the heart to tell her that life wasn’t like an episode of Law & Order. Criminals weren’t arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to life without parole in the space of an hour.

  And a celebrity heiress with a reputation for drug use and heavy partying—no matter how undeserved—didn’t make the best witness against one of San Francisco’s richest, most powerful citizens.

  Still, they couldn’t hold the cops off any longer, not without starting to look like they had something to hide. And if they moved quickly enough the cops might be able to find evidence of Alyssa’s captivity in the Tahoe house to back up their statements. Not that Derek was holding his breath on that count, as he was pretty sure Louis would have been in there with an extermination and cleanup crew after he discovered Alyssa was missing two days ago.

  But Louis wasn’t the one he was worried about right now. He was more afraid of what Harold Van Weldt was going to do to Alyssa when he found out they were going after him.

  It was going to be a long, ugly battle, and Derek knew Harold would do everything he could to kill Alyssa’s credibility. Her name would be dragged through the mud. Every mistake, every mishap in her past would be rehashed in the media, headline news on every station.

  If Derek was going to stand by her through all this, he needed to prepare himself to be yanked squarely into that spotlight.

  The notion stuck in his craw. Derek was by nature a private person. He’d built his career on staying to the shadows and going unnoticed. He didn’t enjoy being the center of attention or answering a lot of questions about himself. He still vividly remembered the minor media circus that had happened when his mother had first gone missing. Reporters had camped out in front of their house. Waiting for him and his brothers to get out of school or finish football practice.

  All the vultures circling, circling under the guise of concern. Waiting to pounce on anything negative he or his brothers might have to say about their mother, taking words out of context to use it as gasoline for the media fire.

  Was he really ready to deal with that again?

  He looked again at the Reyes’s closed door. Even just thinking of Alyssa in there made his heart clutch.

  For her, Derek might be able to stand another fifteen minutes of fame.

  And he’d promised to stand by her. A promise he intended to keep, even if his heart hadn’t been involved.

  He actually sighed in relief when Detective Harris, Reyes’s partner, escorted him back to his desk to take his statement. Derek knew he was about to sizzle on the coals, but the questions served as a great distraction from where his mind had been wandering.

  Alyssa sat across the table from Detective Reyes, feeling like she’d gone several rounds in a kickboxing ring. Not that she’d ever gotten any closer to a kickboxing ring than in a work-out in her private gym with her trainer, but she imagined this must be what it felt like to get pummeled, over and over, with no end in sight.

  “Let me go over this one more time,” Reyes said, scratching the five-o’clock shadow that darkened his jawline. “You’re convinced your uncle had your father killed to cover up the fact that he was knowingly selling conflict diamonds. Then he worked with Louis Abbassi, the diamond broker—”

  “Diamond smuggler,” Alyssa broke in, “and arms dealer, as you’ll see on the CD I gave you.”

  “Right. Working with your uncle, they had you kidnapped, drugged, and were going to kill you by faking an overdose. Do I have all that straight?” He looked at her, eyebrows raised in a deceptively friendly manner. He would have been good-looking, with his thick, dark hair and thickly lashed, almost almond-shaped dark eyes. But he dressed like he’d pulled his clothes from the bottom of the Goodwill pile. That, combined with the condescending look on his face that said he doubted she had more than two brain cells to rub together, erased any good looks he might have otherwise possessed.

  Alyssa blew out a frustrated breath and felt tension coil like a spring in the back of her neck. She wished Derek was with her but knew they wouldn’t be interviewed together. “You’re leaving out the part where Louis killed Martin Fish and my assistant, Andy,” she said, her voice cracking on Andy’s name. “I’m sure my uncle knew about that, too.”

  Reyes nodded. “We’re looking into that. Unfortunately we’ve been unable to find Mr. Blaylock, but we have confirmation that Mr. Abbassi arrived in Namibia yesterday. We have reason to believe Blaylock was with him.”

  “Well, get them back,” Alyssa protested.

  Reyes shook his head regretfully. “Namibia has no extradition treaty with the US. And we’ll do what we can to locate and apprehend Mr. Blaylock, but I can’t promise the authorities will be cooperative. Not if Abbassi has as much influence as we believe.”

  Alyssa shook her head, feeling like she’d been punched again. “That’s it? Three-people are dead, and you’re giving up?”

  “Like I said, we’ll do everything we can to apprehend Blaylock. And if Abbassi reenters the United States, we’ll get him. But because of extradition laws, our hands are tied.”

  “What about everything else? The illegal diamond mines? Selling guns to warlords in the Congo? Can’t you get him for that?”

  Reyes nodded. “After we review the evidence you provided, we’ll turn a copy of it over to the FBI and Interpol. I wish we could be more helpful, but there’s not a whole
lot we can do.”

  Alyssa bit back a snotty retort as she recognized the sincere regret in the detective’s eyes.

  He stood from his chair and stretched. “I think that’s it for now, Miss Miles.”

  She looked up, startled at the abrupt end to his interview. “I can go?”

  “Yes. But I’m going to request that neither you nor Mr. Taggart leave town any time soon.”

  Alyssa stood up, feeling a muscle in her left butt cheek protest after spending so long on the hard surface of the folding chair. “What about my uncle? Are you going to arrest him?”

  His lips pulled into a patronizing smile. “We can’t arrest him for your father’s murder, because it didn’t happen in our jurisdiction. But if the Hillsborough police decide there’s enough evidence to support it, they’ll reopen the investigation. I have to tell you though, it doesn’t look good.”

  “But he and Richard made the deal with Abbassi, and we have proof my father was going to have Harold fired. And he wanted to have me killed!” She tried but couldn’t control the hysterical note that vibrated through her voice.

  Reyes shook his head. “Even if your allegations are true and Blaylock and Louis conspired to kidnap and murder you, there’s nothing to tie your uncle to their activities. As for your father’s death, that isn’t my case, but a few illegally obtained e-mails that never mentioned your uncle by name…” His look, though not unkind, wasn’t encouraging. “I’m afraid you don’t have much.”

  She dropped her gaze, her face heating with a mixture of anger and regret. Why hadn’t she pushed harder, had more faith in what she saw or thought she saw moving through the shadows that night?

  Now, unless they could find evidence Harold was involved in either her father’s murder or the plot to kill her, he would continue his life as a free man.

  He would get away with murder.

  Alyssa strode from Reyes’s office to the waiting area. Derek stood when he saw her.