Lewis Security

by Glenna Sinclair

  When I came to my senses, I looked down to find him looking up at me with a sexy grin.

  And then his phone rang.

  “No,” I groaned, holding him between my thighs. “Ignore it. We’re not finished.”

  He climbed over me and I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Please. Make love to me.” I wanted him to feel the way he’d made me feel. It wasn’t fair.

  “Just a sec,” he whispered, reaching over to grab the phone. “It might be important.” Yes, and the twitching, hot cock pressed against my thigh was important, too.

  But when his body went tense and he rolled away from me, I could tell something was happening. I sat up and watched as he started getting dressed, still on the phone. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He didn’t look at me when he hung up, but went to the bathroom instead. I heard him brushing his teeth and washing up.

  “What’s happening?” I asked. I was almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “That’s not an answer to my question,” I called out.

  He came back into the room and shrugged into a t-shirt. “I know. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We were two seconds away from screwing each other senseless and I’m not supposed to worry about it.”

  He chuckled. “We’ll pick up where we left off when I get back. I promise.” He grimaced. “Believe me, this is a sacrifice.”

  I snickered, looking down at the bulge that was still visible in his jeans. “I’ll hold you to that.” He kissed me goodbye, just a quick little kiss, before hurrying out the front door.

  Even though I didn’t have to go into work, I had to get out of bed sometime. I wondered what was so important that Spencer would leave me alone. Did Ricardo know something? My brain wouldn’t settle down enough to let me sleep, so I got up and got in the shower. I took my time shaving and moisturizing, the way girls do when they’re sleeping with somebody new. I wanted to be especially fresh for him when he got back.

  What was happening between us? No matter how hard I tried to push him away, he found a way to get even closer to me. I wondered if I shouldn’t just give up—it was pointless to fight him. I had never met anybody who didn’t run away as soon as I gave them the chance.

  Out of habit, the first thing I did after I dressed was check my email. My accountant had gotten back to me after the email I sent over the weekend asking about the state of my portfolio. I needed to know I was secure before making any big decisions—one thing growing up without money had taught me was to always be careful. He said he’d get my most recent transactions, including withdrawals, together and send it over to me.

  Withdrawals? I hadn’t made any withdrawals that I was aware of. I didn’t touch that money. I shot him off a quick reply and told him so. There shouldn’t be any recent withdrawals on those accounts, since I didn’t authorize any. Give me a call when you get this. It wasn’t anywhere near working hours, so I didn’t expect to hear from him for another hour or two. It might give me time to calm down. What the hell was going on that I wasn’t aware of? And how much more careful did I need to be from then on?

  The front door opened and closed. “Spencer?” I called out. That was fast. Good thing—I needed to vent my frustration. Did somebody get into my accounts? Were they attacking me from the inside and the outside, too? Would it ever end?

  “No. It’s Brian.”

  My heart sank. Sometimes I forgot he had a key. “I’m in the bedroom.”

  He walked in, and I noticed right away that he looked like a truck had run him over. He had circles under his eyes. His hair looked like he’d run his hands through it all throughout the ride to the apartment. It sure wasn’t a comb he’d used. “What’s up with you? Are you just on your way home from somewhere?” I smirked.

  He shook his head. “I had to come right away.”

  “You had to come? What are you talking about?”

  “I thought I should be the one to tell you this,” he murmured. He looked stricken, stunned.

  “What is it?” I sat on the bed, suddenly worried. How could I help it when he looked that way?

  “Janine texted me a little while ago.”

  “Janine? At this time of the morning?” It was barely seven o’clock. “What did she want? Is she okay?” My heart raced when I thought of somebody hurting her in an attempt to get to me. I wouldn’t put anything past the person trying to ruin my life just then.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think she is, but it’s too soon to tell.”

  “I have to go to her.” I got up, scanning the room for shoes.

  “We can’t go to her just now,” he explained. “Just calm down and I’ll explain.”

  “Okay. Explain.” He was being just a little too cryptic for my taste. “Stop dragging it out, for God’s sake.”

  He sighed, shoulders slumping. “The cops picked her up this morning.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Maybe you’d better sit back down.” He sat and patted the mattress. “Come on. Sit.”

  I sat, knees shaky. “I’m sitting. Now what?”

  “Now I tell you they mentioned something about an order of that powdered alcohol stuff.”

  “What did she have to do with it?”

  “She ordered it. Or that’s what they’re saying.”

  “What?” It came out as a shriek. “No! No way!”

  He shrugged. “That’s what I thought, too. But I guess they have some sort of proof if they took her in for it. They can’t just make things like that up.”

  “But Janine? Not Janine. I can’t believe it.” I wrung my hands.

  “Think about it,” he said. His hand covered mine. “She had access to the water in your trailer, didn’t she? She could’ve slipped the powder into your water.”

  “What about the attack? I mean, is she strong enough to do that to me?” I couldn’t imagine it. Not her. She wasn’t violent. She had never even raised her voice to me in all the time we’d been together—and I could admit I had given her more than enough reason to talk back, or worse.

  “You know what they say. When a person is angry enough, they can do just about anything. Something about adrenaline.” His hand was warm over mine, and his tone was intimate.

  “I guess so. I just never thought she could hate me like that.”

  “She’s probably a little unbalanced,” he mused.

  “I guess that’s why Ricardo called Spencer this morning.”

  “What?”

  I nodded. “That’s where he is. He went down to the station. Now it all makes sense—Spencer refused when I asked to come with him.”

  “So you’re alone? I didn’t think he was allowed to leave you alone.”

  “There are cameras everywhere. I’m not worried.” I took a deep, shaky breath. “But I wish I wasn’t alone.”

  He let go of my hands and slid his arm around my shoulders, instead. “I’m here with you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Only he’s good enough for you,” he murmured.

  It took a second for his words to sink in. “What’s that?”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “You’re right. You shouldn’t have.” I shook his arm away. “That’s none of your business. Now’s not the time. I don’t feel like dealing with your bitchiness.”

  He stood up and just about stomped his feet as he paced back and forth. “Sorry for caring too much.”

  That wasn’t caring. Caring and pawing me weren’t the same thing. He never knew where to draw the line. What else was new?

  “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t, but the last thing I felt like dealing with was his attitude. If he couldn’t take rejection, he needed to stop throwing himself at me. When would he get the hint? “Can we please go back to talking about this mess? I mean, you just told me my assistant was the person trying to kill me.”

  “I don’t think she was trying to kill y
ou. If she wanted to, she had plenty of opportunities.”

  “Oh, thanks so much.” I leaned forward, elbows on my thighs, face in my hands. “I wish somebody would call and tell me what was happening. I need to know. This is tearing me up inside.”

  “I’m just glad they caught her before she could do any real, lasting damage,” he said, still pacing.

  “That’s true. I guess there’s a bright side, even though it’s not very bright.”

  “It’s just a shame she got into your money, too. I mean, who knows how much she took over the years?” He clicked his tongue in sympathy. “I wonder if you’d be able to get that back now.”

  My money. Yes, that was a mess, too. I would have to get an exact number from the accountant once he got my transaction history in order.

  Except…

  I never told Brian about that.

  I opened my eyes, hands still over my face. My heart raced with a sickening thud and my blood turned to ice. He didn’t know about my portfolio. I had only told him I was looking at it, not that I thought anything was missing.

  “How did you know?” I whispered. I hoped he would tell me something like he’d talked to the accountant, or maybe that he’d noticed Janine wearing nicer clothes lately. Something to ease the pit of certainty in my stomach.

  “Know what?”

  “That my portfolio is a mess. That it looks like there were withdrawals on my account that I never authorized.” I lifted my head to look at him. He had frozen in place, staring at me. Like a deer in headlights. Oh, Jesus, no. Not him.

  “You told me already. Remember? The other day, when you were in the office and I came to see you.”

  “No, I didn’t tell you that. I only told you I was looking at the numbers because I wanted to know how I was doing. I told you I was thinking about giving up my career.” My hands dropped to my lap.

  My phone began to ring, over on the bedside table. I picked it up out of instinct.

  “I wouldn’t answer that,” Brian warned.

  Chapter Nineteen – Spencer

  “He was there?” I looked up from the photos Ricardo had gotten from the on-set photographers, who’d been taking publicity shots that day. “Brian was onset the day of the attack?”

  Ricardo nodded. “Looks that way. We were going back over them to confirm the time Andrea Christian was on the set—when we first looked them over, I didn’t think to look for him.”

  “He’s been saying all along that he was out of town when it happened. He made a big show of flying in from LA.”

  “I don’t know why it took so long to click in my head—maybe exhaustion. If it hadn’t been for you pulling Andrea into the trailer the other day, I might not have gone back over these to confirm she was there before the attack. And then I saw those sunglasses of his and it all came together.”

  “I would know him anywhere.” I started at his face in the pictures spread out before me, across Ricardo’s desk. My blood started pumping hard, filling my ears with sound. I clenched my fists and wished he were somewhere right in front of me. He had lied. What else had he lied about?

  I looked up again, remembering why I was there. “Didn’t you say something about a surprise? Was this it?”

  Ricardo shook his head. “Come with me. I think you’ll like this—or maybe you won’t, depending on the mood you’re in.” He led Pax and me down the hall, to one of the interrogation rooms. I looked through the window of the room we stopped at and couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “What’s she doing here?” Head bent, dark hair falling around the sides of her face. She pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose.

  “We found out who bought the Palcohol.” Ricardo’s voice was grim.

  It took a second for me to understand what he was trying to say. “Her?” Not Janine. My head spun. What reason did she have? “This has to be a mistake.”

  He frowned. “Are you telling me our evidence is bogus? We have record of her buying the Palcohol and having it shipped to a PO Box in her name. I mean, what else do we need?”

  “But Janine? Come on.”

  Pax cleared his throat. “I think we need to let Ricardo and his guys do their job.” His voice had that edge to it that told me to keep my mouth shut. I felt his presence looming next to me. He was right. I had let myself like her too much. She seemed like a nice girl—too nice to be working for Charlotte, too nice to be working in that sort of job for anybody. She was quiet and timid and easily broken. Maybe Charlotte had broken her. She wasn’t always a very nice person, was she?

  “Do you wanna know why she did it?” Ricardo asked.

  “You bet.” He told me to wait there and listen—I couldn’t come in, or I might ruin the integrity of the questioning. Pax waited with me while Ricardo and two of his guys went into the room.

  Her head snapped up when she heard the door open, and I caught sight of her bloodshot eyes. Was she sorry for what she did? Did it mean she had attacked Charlotte, too? She took another tissue from a box on the table and dabbed under her glasses.

  “You need water?” Ricardo asked.

  “No, thank you. I just want to know what this is all about. I have work to do.” She looked around at the men in the room.

  “I’m sure your boss won’t mind when she finds out you were here with us.” He had that tone in his voice again, the one I always heard when he questioned somebody he already had dirt on. That patronizing tone. “We only wanted to know about an order you placed for a certain product.”

  “Okay. Which product? I order lots of things for Charlotte.”

  He nodded. Yeah, she had ordered it for Charlotte, all right. “It’s called Palcohol. Powdered alcohol.”

  She blinked once, twice. “I didn’t know such a thing existed,” she murmured.

  “Come on now. Think about it. The substance was ordered with your credit card, sent to the PO box you use.”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know.”

  He sighed. “You’re not under arrest at the moment, and I haven’t read you your rights because this is only questioning. However, I have to urge you to consider your words very carefully.”

  She bit her lip and looked down at the table. I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. Should she admit what she did? Shouldn’t she? My hands were clenched so tight, they ached.

  “I ask you again. Did you order that Palcohol and, if so, what was the intention?”

  “I didn’t know he was going to use my credit card,” she murmured, almost half to herself.

  “What was that?” Ricardo leaned forward just as Pax and I leaned closer to the window separating us from the interrogation room.

  “I didn’t know that bastard was going to use my credit card. He set me up.” Her head snapped up, and the way her eyes burned into Ricardo made me think she was like a different person. It couldn’t be sweet Janine sitting there. The girl who wouldn’t say boo to a ghost, much less speak up for herself. How much of that was an act and how much was really her—and really too much for her to take anymore?

  “Who set you up?”

  “Brian. That son of a bitch.” She laughed harshly, but there was an edge of heartbreak to it.

  “What are you telling me? In plain English.”

  “Plain English? Okay. Here goes.” She leaned closer. “I mean, you already have me, right? Thanks to him. I’m not letting myself go down without bringing him with me. I’m tired of being used by people.” Her chin quivered.

  “Just take your time,” Ricardo said. “Tell us what he did.”

  She sniffled, taking another tissue. “It started six months ago, back in LA. He started pointing out how mean she was to me, how nasty she could be. Yeah, I knew she was, but I told myself I needed the job—which I do. I could put up with it. But once he started telling me how wrong it was that she talked to me like she did, and how I deserved better… I started to believe him.”

  She shook her head, wrapping her arms around her body like she was trying to prote
ct herself. Too little, too late, I thought as fury started to simmer under my skin.

  “And then he started coming on to me. I thought he liked me. I mean, I thought we were in this together. He told me we could get away from everything and start a new life without her or anything else.”

  Ricardo nodded. “I understand. It must have been difficult.”

  “It was more than difficult. It was impossible. She was impossible.” She shook her head, rocking back and forth. “And he made everything sound so nice, you know? I wouldn’t have to follow her around anymore or listen to her nasty attitude anymore. I could just be…me. And he liked me. He saw me. I wasn’t invisible to him.” A little slice of pity stabbed me when she said that. Yeah, she was invisible. It was easy to forget she was around, the way she faded into the background.

  She shrugged, tucking hair behind her ears before wrapping her arms around herself again. “Anyway, he came up with the idea—although I guess he didn’t just come up with it then, did he? He must have had it in mind all along. I was such a sucker.” She took a shaky breath, almost a sob. “I was such a sucker. He told me he…”

  Ricardo cleared his throat. I could tell the direction she was taking made him uncomfortable, and I didn’t blame him. Still, part of me felt just the slightest bit sorry for her. She was so starved for attention, she’d listened when he lied to her.

  “What was this idea?”

  “We would scare her a little. Make her a nicer person. Make her figure out that she needed to stop being such a bitch to the people who took care of her.” Her eyes went wide. “I swear to you, I didn’t know he was going to attack her the way he did. I mean that. He only told me he was going to play a trick on her, something that would scare her into straightening up a little. So I left the trailer to get tea and didn’t come back for fifteen minutes, just like he told me. And when I came back and she was on the floor of the trailer like that…” She shook her head, throwing her hands over her face.