Well, Rhonda wasn’t quite the gullible and naive bleeding heart she had hoped for. It was time for economic incentive, and this better work, because if it didn’t, and Rhonda reported this story to the doctor, she knew one man who was going to be furious. She thought of a way to make an offer of cash and diamonds seem like something less than a flat-out bribe. Skye drew a deep breath, “I’ll pay you if you give me your car keys. I have cash and diamonds.”
Rhonda was wide-eyed and silent.
It was time for show and tell. Skye undid her belt. The outside of it was a solid band of leather. The inside of it, the part that pressed against her jeans, was fabric with three zippered compartments. She undid one zipper, and pulled out the contents—a stack of bills and a small, black-velvet pouch. She placed the stack of bills in Rhonda’s hand before opening one of the small pouches and letting the contents spill into her palm. Six high-quality diamonds, of various shapes and sizes, glittered in the well-lit hospital room. Rhonda’s eyes were drawn to the fiery diamonds.
“That’s five thousand dollars. These diamonds are worth over one hundred thousand dollars. They’re all for you, if you walk back in the room with your car keys, then create a distraction. Pull the fire alarm and ask Pete for help in assessing the emergency. It can be as simple as that.”
Rhonda tore her eyes from the diamonds and focused on Skye. “My keys are in my locker.”
Skye returned the diamonds to the pouch and tucked the pouch into the pocket of her jeans. “Keep the cash. Bring your keys to me, agree to create a distraction, and the diamonds are yours.”
Rhonda tucked the cash into the pocket of her dress. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hurry.” Skye slipped the belt onto her jeans and buckled it.
As Rhonda left the room, Pete glanced in. He held Skye’s eyes for a second, before shutting the door. Skye drew a deep breath in relief as her eyes rested on Spring and Candy.
Please let this work. Dear God. It has to work.
As 2:30 became 2:50, she couldn’t sit. Staying still for too long required too much effort. Daytime television didn’t hold her attention. She paced. In the gap between the door and the floor, she could see the dark shadows of Pete’s feet.
Where was Rhonda?
The door to the hospital room finally opened a half hour after Rhonda left. Skye’s heart plummeted as Sebastian opened the door, instead of the nurse. He’d changed into a pair of jeans and crisp white cotton, long-sleeved shirt. His hair was damp. The fresh scent of soap followed him into the room. Maybe he had accomplished tasks other than showering and changing out of his bloodstained clothes, but if he had, none of the tasks had lightened the serious look in his eyes, or softened the hard-as-stone set to his jaw.
He glanced towards the couch, where Spring still slept, wearing her earphones. Candy’s eyes followed Sebastian, but other than a lazy tail wag, she didn’t move from Spring’s side, evidently having decided somewhere during the morning that Sebastian was not anyone to worry about. He shut the door behind him, barely making a sound but infecting the room with his brooding, angry-at-the-world presence.
He walked to where Skye stood. She backed up, until the wall prevented her from going any further. He kept coming at her, invading her personal space as his eyes drowned her with cobalt sparks, stopping only when he was so close that she could feel his heat and sense the power in his large body. He pinned her to the wall with a solid palm press to her chest, with his fingers on the soft flesh of her neck, as she pressed her palms against his chest and tried to push him away.
“I’m sexually abusing your sister and beat the two of you? Really?” With his free hand, the one that wasn’t within an inch of shutting down her windpipe, he reached to her waist and unbuckled her belt. She hammer-fisted at his chest and struggled to break free. It was like pounding on a tree trunk. He didn’t even flinch, and she was punching as hard as she could. All he did was press his fingers into her neck, cutting off her air, while his other hand worked her belt out of her pants loops. His gaze held hers with a hard expression. “The sooner you decide to cooperate, the better off you’ll be.”
Candy started barking and Spring sat up on the couch, awakening just as he released her and stepped away with the belt in his hands.
“Chloe?” Spring said, eyes wide with concern as they bounced from Skye to Sebastian.
There was his smile again, which he only seemed capable of giving to Spring. “Everything’s ok. Your sister and I just need to have a serious conversation.” He glanced back at Skye, pointed to the door of the room, and although he was still smiling, with deep, apostrophe-shaped dimples, the light of his smile didn’t make it to his eyes when he looked at her. “In the hallway. Unless you want to be the one to explain all of this to her, right here, right now.”
Skye drew a deep breath. “I’ll be outside the door; ok, honey?”
Spring nodded, wide-eyed and uncertain.
As they stepped into the hallway, Pete stepped to the side, giving them space. “Your bullshit story just wasted twenty minutes of my time, because I had to explain more things to Doctor Cavanaugh. You see, medical professionals have to take all kinds of crazy people seriously, and that means even you. Look,” he said, as his eyes suddenly weren’t angry or frustrated. He was calm, and his tone was matter of fact. He was within touching distance of her, but his arms were folded.
“If you run from the marshals’ interrogation, all you’re going to do is make them take you seriously, when this morning you weren’t even a blip on their radar. Just tell them what you’ve told me. Tell the marshals that you don’t know where your father is. Tell them you don’t know who those kidnappers were, that you don’t know why anyone would want to kidnap you. That’s your story, right?” He arched an eyebrow and was silent as he waited for her response.
“Yes, and it’s not a story. It’s the truth.”
He studied her face, his lips pressed together in a thin line of disapproval. “You lie worse than you fight. When you lie, you put this flat expression on your face, when normally your thoughts are transparent. In different circumstances, it would be amusing. Problem is, the fact that you’re rotten at both fighting and lying doesn’t keep you from throwing crappy punches and lying as much as you breathe. What the hell has you so afraid?”
“More men like this morning,” she said, not lying at all.
His gaze was both sharp and skeptical. “If you don’t know who they are, or why they were sent, why are you so sure that there are more men like them?”
“My father’s skill set is a highly-coveted commodity,” she said, heart pounding with the force of what she was saying, because it was the truth. “Don’t you get that? Someone has him, and now they want us.”
Sebastian arched an eyebrow and gave her a slow headshake. “Most people, including the authorities, believe that your father’s claims are the product of a deranged mind.”
“That’s what the uninformed believe,” she said, her cheeks burning with the need to defend her father. “But they turn on their computers and use software that he designed, without even thinking about how his brilliant mind made the innovations that they now rely upon for things that we take for granted in every day life. Anti-viral software. Encryption technology. Data storage. It’s easy to forget that someone is a genius, when there are articles in tabloids that were planted by men who tried to discredit him. His claims are dead-on accurate.”
And, she thought, in certain circles, upper-echelon circles that were only entered by those with the highest of clearances, her father had created a firestorm by creating technology that would allow integration of the world’s most sensitive databases and assimilation of the information in those databases at the speed of light. Now that the cataclysm scenario was in play, the end goal for her, if her father gave her the signal, was to go straight to the top.
And straight to the top does not mean spilling her father’s secrets to a private investigator.
“Tell me how, Skye.
Just tell me how something he designed or was working on could be a reason for him to escape from prison. Something real. Not the bullshit he fed the world. He never worked with the government. He claimed to have created Shadow Technology, technology that allows super-assimilation of data collection, but the government says it doesn’t exist. Give me something solid to go on, because in case you haven’t figured this out—no one has a clue as to where your father is.”
His eyes were hard, yet his tone, as it had been whenever he had spoken to her, was low, controlled, and compelling. The man was a master at using his voice to get others to listen to him. “Tell me what is so important that he would escape prison now. Because there’s one certainty that I can give you—he will be found, and his prison term will be extended. Hell, they might just throw away the key.”
She couldn’t. The cataclysm scenario was in play, and if she told Sebastian anything about what that entailed, she’d never be able to break away from him. Everything having to do with cataclysm was top secret. “He didn’t escape. Someone kidnapped him. There are people in the world—countries, even—who value his capabilities-”
“Do you hear how freaking preposterous that sounds? Kidnapped from a federal prison? How and by whom? Escaping is almost impossible, and,” he paused, “based on what? You think the Chinese sent a band of computer experts to kidnap your father? In case you haven’t gotten the memo, he’s been thoroughly discredited. He’s a criminal, who is ranting and raving about things that don’t exist or even make sense.”
Inwardly, she flinched. Skye hated that the world ridiculed her father, and evidently, Sebastian was no different. Outwardly, she didn’t let him see anything other than cool and calm. She could play his game. “You sound like all the other small-minded, ignorant people, who can’t understand the importance of my father’s work. Trust me. Someone kidnapped him, and if they get me and my sister, he’ll do whatever they want him to do. He can change the world, or terrorize it, with carefully orchestrated keystrokes.”
“And he can send me to a rendezvous with a UFO, right?”
Sebastian’s comment cut deep and told her that there’d be no persuading him. “I can’t help you find my father, because I have no idea where he is. Just let us disappear. Please.”
“I can’t do that.” A pulse was visible, pumping at his temple. His eyes traced her cheekbones and hovered on her lips before finding her eyes again.
“Please let us leave,” she said, “Whoever sent those men won’t stop trying, and, if this morning doesn’t make you pause, I’m going to spell it out for you.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You can’t keep us safe.”
He looked at where her finger was pressing into his chest, arched an eyebrow, and chuckled, as he refocused his attention on her eyes.
She had to fight to keep herself from reaching down, slipping off the half boot, and pounding the wooden heel into his thick head. She’d do it, if she thought she could get away with it. There was no way, though. He was too fast. “I don’t care how good of a private investigator you are. You’re not good enough.”
“I’m not sure what your idea of safe is,” he frowned, “but in my world, this morning was pretty damn successful. You weren’t kidnapped, you’re not dead, and the bad guys are.”
“You live in one screwy world-”
“No, I live in the real one. Not the pretend world of pretty coffee shops and cakes with weird-as-shit icing.”
She drew a deep breath. “Are you always this much of a pig-headed jerk?”
“Always. Especially when someone is questioning my capabilities. Pretty soon you’ll be with the marshals. They’re experts at protecting people and they’re damn good at what they do. Under the circumstances, you need to talk to them, you’ll be safe with them, and once I get you to them, you’ll never have to see me again.”
“Dumping us on the marshals sounds like a brilliant move on your part. In the SUV, on the way here, you accused them of having a leak. That doesn’t sound so safe to me,” she paused, realized that she wasn’t above begging, and went for it. “Please. Just let us leave.”
“The marshals know how to close the circle on people with knowledge of a safe house. My job is to find your father. That’s it. Now finding your father includes getting you and your sister safely to the marshals, and I’m not about to screw that up by letting you disappear, no matter how many times you say please.” He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out an old-fashioned flip phone, and handed it to her. It felt like gold in her hands. “If you don’t want to listen to me, listen to your lawyer. She’s called three senators on the Bureau of Prisons Committee, who have in turn leaned on the marshals, who are now insisting that she talk to you.” He touched a button on his watchband. “Ragno. Put Root through now. Give the conversation two minutes, max.”
The phone’s ring sent shivers through her. “Aunt Jen?”
“Skye,” Jen answered. Skye almost sobbed when she heard the familiar voice. “Thank God. Are you and Spring okay?”
Jen had been her mother and father’s best friend and, until she and Spring had changed identities, had been a constant, steadying presence in their world. After her mother’s death, Jen had been like a surrogate mother to both girls. Given her father’s absent-minded preoccupation with work, his typical, convoluted thought processes, and his paranoia, Jen had often been the only well-grounded, steadying force in their chaotic life.
Breaking contact with Jen had been one of the most difficult things that she’d done when she became Chloe Stewart. Her father had insisted it was necessary. Skye had no idea what Jen knew—if anything—regarding the cataclysm scenario.
“Yes,” she said, bringing her up to speed on Spring’s condition. Without pausing for a breath, she said, “What’s happening to Dad?”
“I don’t know. It looks like he just walked out of prison. With six others. There was a glitch in the security system, electricity went out, and they left,” she said. “As far as I can tell, no one has any idea where he is.”
Skye glanced at Sebastian. “Would you please tell this private investigator to let me leave? He has no authority to hold me against my—”
“Private investigator?”
“Yes. He’s acting like he’s got authority to detain—”
“Connelly’s not just a private investigator. His company is elite, with worldwide presence. Fortune 500 companies hire him. Government officials hire Black Raven, and, in this matter, he’s got the authority of the marshals behind him. Connelly is taking you to a safe house. You have to go, and you need to cooperate with the marshals when you get there. Tell them everything you know.”
“Dad never would have escaped. He wanted to serve his time and get out of there.”
“I know and if someone kidnapped him, the marshals and Connelly will figure that out as well. You’re not safe on your own. Do you understand? Cooperate with Connelly and the marshals. Connelly is the best at what he does. You’ll be safe.”
As she broke the connection, Sebastian plucked the phone out of her hand. “When we walk back in the room, ask your sister to take off her belt, and hand it to me.”
She thought about telling him no.
A hard, blue-eyed glance told her he easily read her mind. “I’ll do it myself, if you won’t.”
She couldn’t do that to Spring. They returned to the room, Skye plastered an easy, calm expression onto her face, and persuaded Spring to hand her the belt. When she did, Skye passed it to Sebastian.
“I’m sorry,” Sebastian said. He was a large, powerhouse of a man, with broad shoulders and long, muscular limbs, but he knew how to make his body less intimidating. He bent to one knee so he was eye level with Spring, who now had Candy on the couch and who was holding onto the dog for dear life. He touched her shoulder with his right hand, a touch that looked reassuring and gentle. “I’ll keep this safe for you. We need to make sure that everything you and your sister wear is new, OK?”
That made no damn sense wi
thout more of an explanation, but Spring fell for his easy, good-looking brand of sincerity. She gave him a nod and a half smile, and said, “Can we go home now?”
Skye thought his smile faltered, but, if it did, it was only a passing thing. “Not right away. I need to take you and your sister somewhere else first. There are men who need to ask your sister some questions. You two will be safe there for a couple of nights.” Skye’s heart pounded. No way. No. Not going to happen. “Is that ok with you?”
“You’ll be with us?”
He glanced at Skye. Dear God, the man had the most expressive eyes she’d ever seen, and now he wasn’t being a jerk or a hard-ass or anything but a nice guy, who Spring had managed to capture with her sweetness. Without a word, his eyes said he hated to disappoint Spring and he also wasn’t enjoying lying to her. “I’ll stay as long as I can. Once your sister talks to those men, and once we’re sure that you two will be safe, you and your sister can go home.”
He stood. Nice guy gone, replaced with cool, matter-of-fact efficiency. “Cavanaugh says if all goes well, we’ll be leaving around six. You and Spring will be at the safe house at least until we find your father, debrief him, and figure out who the kidnappers were. At this point, I have no idea how long that could take. Assume you’ll be there at least a few nights and days. Put together a list of things you guys need and hand it to Pete. We’ll make sure the things are there.”
As he opened the door to step out, she said, “You said you were just a private investigator.”
“No. You said that,” he gave her a half smile, “right after you called me a dumb ass. Labels don’t mean much in my world. Results matter more. Besides,” he shrugged, “I am a private investigator.”
When the door was almost shut, she mumbled, “And you’re way, way too cocky.”
He opened the door, leaning into the room. “Yeah,” he said, his eyes serious, “Just cocky enough to keep you alive, Miss Barrows.”
Shadows (Black Raven Book 1) Page 15