by LENA DIAZ,
The real reason was a bit more . . . personal. There was no way in hell he’d abandon a woman, knowing someone had tried to kidnap or kill her. He couldn’t bear having another death on his conscience, especially not Melissa’s. He might be a stranger to her, but he’d learned everything he could about her during his surveillance and felt like he’d known her for years. No, he couldn’t leave her defenseless, especially not against a bastard who’d decided a man’s fate with the toss of a coin.
He paused halfway up the stairs and automatically reached for his pistol. Damn. His gun was in his car. He hadn’t wanted to risk blowing his cover as an out-of-work bodyguard there for an interview, just in case security had decided to run a metal-detector wand over him. A decision he sorely regretted now. Did he have time to go back for his gun? Did Melissa have time?
The sound of a door opening somewhere below had him pressing back against the wall. Footsteps rang on the metal stairs, and muted voices echoed against the walls. At least two men had entered the stairwell and were coming up fast. He had no way of knowing if they would stop on another floor or whether they were going all the way up. But he couldn’t risk waiting around to find out. He was out of time. As quietly as possible, he raced up the remaining stairs.
Chapter Five
Cyprian sat ramrod straight in his chair in the half-constructed conference room facing the door, or where a door would be once construction was complete. At the far end of the table, Sebastian silently watched him, as he often did. But Cyprian ignored him as much as possible. Pretending he wasn’t being followed and watched nearly every minute of the day was the only way to survive without going crazy. One way or the other, this torture had to stop. And bringing Adam Marsh here prior to the full Council meeting was the first real step toward making that happen.
The stakes were high: Cyprian’s freedom to lead the clandestine side of EXIT without the Council’s interference, and his daughter’s life. Because he didn’t believe for one second that last night’s attack on Melissa could be unrelated to his role as head of EXIT’s enforcement arm. He was convinced that someone on the Council, or connected to the Council, was responsible for what had happened. No one had ever dared to go after her before. The only thing that had changed was that Marsh and his team were monitoring him. He didn’t buy that it was a coincidence. His daughter had just become a pawn in this deadly game. And that was something he would not tolerate.
The sound of the stairwell door slamming shut echoed from the outer room. A few moments later, two shadows separated from the maze of construction equipment and cubicle walls and headed toward the conference room. As a precaution, Cyprian slid his hand to the pistol concealed inside his suit jacket. But the shadows passed beneath a shaft of light from one of the few working fixtures, revealing them to be Marsh and Cyprian’s other assistant, Tarek. He dropped his hand and stood.
Sebastian didn’t bother to get up out of his chair. Cyprian noticed the slight in manners and arched a brow. Sebastian wisely rose to his feet.
Adam Marsh’s tall, broad-shouldered form paused in the doorway. The man was about Cyprian’s age, but his dark hair was still unmarred by gray, probably because he didn’t work beneath the kind of pressures that Cyprian did. And yet, here Marsh was, judging him. That idea rankled even more now that he was seeing the man in person.
Distaste wrinkled the Council leader’s brow as he surveyed the room, as if he were worried he might catch a disease. “Is there a reason that we couldn’t meet downstairs?”
Forcing Marsh to conduct their meeting in this barely usable space when Cyprian had a luxurious, hidden office downstairs—an office no one on the tour side of EXIT knew about—was petty. He readily admitted it. But he wasn’t about to cater to the Council leader’s comfort when the man routinely treated him like a traitor at worst, an idiot at best. All because of a few mistakes that Cyprian’s men had made last year, mistakes he’d been forced to cover up to salvage the company’s mission. But that cover-up had fallen apart and cost him dearly.
Rogue enforcers, the true traitors, Devlin Buchanan and Mason Hunt, had somehow managed to inform the Council about their suspicions. They’d escaped without retribution, leaving Cyprian to weave an elaborate lie to conceal the worst of what had happened. But he couldn’t hide all of it and hadn’t managed to avoid punishment completely.
“My apologies.” Cyprian shook Marsh’s hand across the table. “There’s a problem with the heat in my office. I believed you’d be more comfortable up here.”
Marsh glanced around again before sitting down. “Comfortable might be a stretch. But at least the temperature’s acceptable.”
Cyprian smiled stiffly and sat across from him, while both of his assistants sat at the far end of the table.
Marsh pinned Cyprian with an openly hostile, dark-eyed gaze. “This is your gig. You demanded that I meet with you privately before the full Council meets. Well, I’m here. What did you want to discuss?”
Privately? He almost laughed at that. The only time he had a moment without Sebastian or Tarek dogging his every step was when he was home, and often not even then. A man could only tolerate so much. And he was well past his limit. He had to figure out a way to remove the roadblocks that were tying his hands, making him second-guess his every decision. It wasn’t just his own sanity at stake, it was the safety of this nation. The Council needed to realize their crushing punishments were hurting far more than just Cyprian.
He carefully studied Marsh, watching his body language as he threw out his first volley. “You look well rested. I assume you flew in yesterday. Did you get a chance to enjoy any of Boulder’s fine restaurants last night? The Flagstaff House is particularly good. I highly recommend the royal Ossetra caviar.”
Marsh frowned. “Why would you care when I got here or where I ate?”
The confusion and impatience on Marsh’s face, and in his tone, was disappointing. Cyprian had hoped to see wariness and suspicion when he mentioned “last night.” That would have added weight to his suspicion that Marsh was behind the attack on Melissa. But now he’d have to look to the other Council members to find the true culprit.
He gave Marsh a bland smile. “Just making small talk.”
“Don’t bother. You and I will never be friends. We can skip the niceties.”
Cyprian held on to his smile, just barely. “You don’t like me very much, do you Marsh?”
“I don’t like you even a little bit, Cardenas. If it were up to me alone, if I didn’t have to act with the full support of the Council, you’d have been stripped of your leadership role in EXIT’s enforcement arm months ago when your shenanigans came to light. I certainly wouldn’t have given you the slap on the wrist that you received.”
Cyprian clasped his hands into fists beneath the table. “A slap on the wrist? Hardly. And that’s precisely what I want to talk to you about.”
A dull noise sounded from the other room. Marsh immediately motioned toward Sebastian and Tarek, who drew their guns and rushed out of the conference room.
Cyprian frowned, annoyed that Marsh was giving his assistants orders. And far more annoyed that they were following them. It would be refreshing if they could pretend a bit more convincingly that they actually worked for him instead of the Council.
“This building is secure,” Cyprian insisted. “That was probably the heating system kicking on.”
“Perhaps. But I’m more thorough than you. I don’t leave things to chance.”
His snide remark had Cyprian bristling inside. But outside, he maintained a calm demeanor. He didn’t take the bait.
Looking mildly disappointed, Marsh settled back in his chair. “Start talking.”
MELISSA DREW A sharp breath and grabbed for the second box, just managing to catch it before it could fall to the floor like the first one had. She carefully set it back down on the small stack of boxes that she’d accidentally brushed against while pressing her ear to the wall of the cubicle. Not that it had done her any good.
She’d completely misjudged the impact that the latest construction changes had made to the acoustics on this floor.
Every noise she made seemed to echo from one side of the building to the other. But the conversation between her father and the man named Marsh was effectively blocked by the thick glass the workers had constructed across the front of the conference room since the last time she’d been up here. Even the absence of a door didn’t seem to matter. If she was going to hear anything worthwhile, she had to get closer.
She stepped to the cubicle opening and peered around the wall toward the conference room. Her father and his guest appeared to be having a heated exchange. Frustration curled inside her. What were they talking about? Maybe she could take the aisle behind this cubicle and edge up to the wall on the left side of the conference room, just out of sight, and hopefully close enough to hear.
Wait. Where were her father’s assistants? They’d been in the conference room earlier. Now . . . their seats were empty. She peered into the gloom. Had they heard her knock over that box? Were they searching for her? She clutched the box in front of her in frustration. She couldn’t let them see her. They’d report back to her father, and he’d be furious that she was eavesdropping on him. She crouched down, breathing out of her mouth to make as little noise as possible.
A thump sounded off to her left. She rushed around the wall and into the next aisle, or what would be an aisle once it was finished, and crouched behind a stack of wall partitions waiting to be installed.
Another thump. There, a shadow moved through the maze of equipment ten feet away. Tarek. He ducked into the cubicle she’d just left.
But not before she saw the gun in his hand.
Her mouth went dry. Why would one of her father’s executive assistants carry a gun around EXIT? The pictures and names on the corkboards at home flashed through her mind, and her pulse started rushing in her ears. She’d never liked Tarek, had never trusted him. Did her father know that he carried a gun? More importantly, if Tarek discovered her, would he use that gun?
The conference room. Somehow she had to make it to the conference room without his seeing her. Her father would make him stand down. It would be humiliating to admit that she was spying. But keeping her secrets wasn’t worth her life.
She tensed to make a run for it when she remembered Sebastian. The way he and Tarek shadowed each other, maybe he had a gun, too. Where was he?
A clear bell dinged in the quiet of the room. She leaned over and saw the elevator doors standing wide open. But from her angle, she couldn’t see who was inside.
Tarek bolted toward the elevator. The doors slid shut seconds before he reached it. He cursed and repeatedly slammed the CALL button. But the elevator started down.
He rushed to the red door twenty feet away and ran into the stairwell. The sound of his footsteps clanging on the metal stairs faded as the door clicked shut behind him.
Melissa let out a shaky breath and debated her next move. Had Sebastian hopped onto the elevator, but Tarek didn’t know it was him and went off in pursuit? Or was Sebastian looking for her with a gun? She couldn’t cower here waiting for him to find her. She had to do something.
She stood. A hand clamped over her mouth, and she was jerked back against a man’s iron-hard body. She twisted violently in his grasp, trying to free herself as he pulled her to the next aisle. He stopped, and held her so tight she could barely breathe.
“It’s Jace,” a whisper sounded in her ear. “Be still.”
She froze at the sound of his deep voice. Jace was here. But why? He had no reason to be here. Unless he was in league with Sebastian and Tarek. Had she invited him to EXIT thinking to protect him, thinking to find out his connection to what was happening to her father, when all along he was one of the bad guys? Her blood rushed in her ears. No, no, no. She bucked against him, trying to break his hold.
“Damn it, Melissa. Stop fighting me,” his harsh whisper sounded again.
He pulled her into the cubicle behind them. She tensed, her gaze flitting from surface to surface, as she looked for something she could use as a weapon. Her lungs burned, the adrenaline pumping through her body increasing her demand for oxygen far more than breathing through her nose would allow. Spots started to swirl in front of her eyes. She grabbed Jace’s hand covering her mouth.
“I’m trying to help you,” he whispered, sounding exasperated. “The first gunman fell for my elevator distraction. But there’s one more in here. You have to trust me, Melissa. We have to be very quiet, so he doesn’t find us.”
Trust him? Was he lying? To get her to give up?
Footsteps echoed on the concrete floor, like death knells getting closer and closer. She stilled in Jace’s arms. At this point, it was all she could do. Be quiet and pray that he wasn’t working with her father’s assistants and that he didn’t announce their presence to whoever was coming toward them.
Please be a good guy, Jace.
He ducked down, pulling her with him behind an impossibly small box. Was it even big enough to conceal them? The footsteps stopped. The spots in front of Melissa’s eyes swirled. The world began to grow dark. She sank against him.
The hand covering her mouth suddenly dropped away, allowing precious oxygen to rush in. Melissa drew a shallow breath, then another. The darkness faded. Good guy then. Right? Jace must have realized she was about to pass out and moved his hand. A bad guy wouldn’t have cared if she passed out.
The muzzle of a gun came into view a few feet away as their pursuer stepped into the cubicle, almost directly beside their hiding place. Another step, and he’d see them.
“Sebastian, Tarek,” a voice called out from the direction of the conference room. “Did you find anything?”
Melissa stared at the gun and the hand holding it. She clutched Jace’s arm around her middle. As if to reassure her, he lightly squeezed her upper arm.
The gun disappeared. Footsteps sounded again as the man, presumably Sebastian, backed out of the cubicle.
“The elevator doors opened,” he called out. Sebastian’s voice. “Tarek went down the stairs to see who was inside.” He continued his explanation as he headed toward whoever was talking to him. The man with her father? Marsh?
It didn’t matter. All that mattered right now was that no one was pointing a gun at her. And that Jace had protected her. Good guy then. Jace was a good guy. Thank God. And thank God for bodyguards. She melted against him in relief.
“Don’t relax just yet,” he whispered. “We have to get out of here before he comes back. Come on.”
He didn’t wait for her to stand. He jumped up, tossed her on his shoulder and jogged down the aisle like a ghost, somehow making almost no noise.
She clutched his suit jacket, too stunned to do more than hold on. Offices, tools, stacks of boxes rushed by in a blur. He ducked down another aisle, maneuvered around several stacks of cubicle walls lying on their sides, jumped over some tools someone had left beside a pile of two-by-fours. A moment later, he stopped and tugged her off his shoulder, holding her around the waist to steady her as he pushed open a door.
She blinked in surprise to see the stairwell in front of them. Jace grabbed her hand and pulled her onto the landing.
CYPRIAN WATCHED DISPASSIONATELY as Marsh returned to the conference room with Sebastian, holding a pistol down by his thigh.
“What’s going on?” Cyprian asked.
Sebastian holstered his gun and tugged his suit jacket over it. “Maybe nothing. Neither of us found anyone. But I haven’t finished searching the entire floor yet.”
“Where’s Tarek?” Cyprian asked.
“We thought maybe someone had gone down in the elevator, so he went down the stairs to check it out.”
Marsh shook his head. “You said this place was secure, Cyprian.”
“It is. No one gets in or out of this building without being logged in unless they’re escorted by me or one of my assistants, as you were, through the back entrance. And the electronic se
curity there is impenetrable.”
“Nothing’s impenetrable. But if you have electronic logs of everyone coming and going, it shouldn’t be hard to see who’s in the building right now, to narrow down who might have been eavesdropping on our conversation.”
“Eavesdropping?” Cyprian shook his head. “No one knew we were meeting up here.”
“You sure about that?”
Bristling beneath Marsh’s condescending attitude, Cyprian motioned to his assistant. “Have security perform a lockdown. Check the logs and verify where everyone is. There can’t be more than three or four dozen employees here at this time of morning. Shouldn’t take long to ensure that everyone is where they should be and not poking around up here.”
“No,” Marsh said, contradicting Cyprian’s order. “Call Tarek. Have him do all of that while you finish searching this floor. Then hurry back so you can escort me out of this hellhole.”
“Yes, sir.” Sebastian pulled out his phone and his gun and headed through the doorway.
Once again, his men were following Marsh’s orders. The day that Cyprian could fire Sebastian and Tarek without worrying about reprisals from the Council could not come soon enough.
He rose and faced Marsh. It took all of his concentration not to allow his contempt for the other man to show. But Marsh didn’t give him the same courtesy.
“Are we done here?” Marsh asked.
“Not quite. We’ve discussed all of the steps that I’ve taken to ensure that what happened last year can’t happen again. But you haven’t told me when my probation will end.”
“I don’t know when it will end. That’s something the entire Council has to agree upon.”