by Maya Hughes
I grabbed a seat on the bench and took a slug of water, and a deep breath.
“I have her digging to find out more about Beth’s death,” I said, staring out at the bleachers across the gym. The other games were wrapping up and people filed out of the gym.
“Why? It’s been almost three years. Why now?”
“Allan.” I braced myself for the onslaught.
“Fucking Allan?” Grim spit. “Are you serious? You’re making plans based on shit Allan’s telling you?”
“It’s not just based on what he said. She called me. She asked me for help. I was too late and then she was dead. I know she was in trouble. I know she was trying to leave. She needed money.” Another person I’d let down. Another person who died because I couldn’t get my head out of my ass. A shiver ran down my spine as I remembered the sinking feeling I had standing outside the bathroom door, water running. My sneakers squishing into the soaking wet carpet.
“Why would Beth need money? Thayer has more money than god.”
“He was practically keeping her prisoner. She needed help and by the time I got to her, she was dead.”
“Ever think that maybe he wasn’t giving her money because her little problem had resurfaced?” Grim shot me a knowing look.
“She was clean for a long time.”
“Oh, yeah and we all know once someone gets clean they never fall back into that trap,” he scoffed and packed up his stuff. I grabbed his arm. I let it all out then. I told him all about Thayer, my plan, my dad and my mom’s suicide. I hadn’t told anyone yet, so I figured it might as well be him.
“I’ll bring him down. Show everyone what a fraud he is. Without being on those boards, he won’t give away a cent. He won’t be able to. The only reason he’s done any of this is because he doesn’t get a penny without it.”
“What does it matter? If he’s giving away the money, why does it matter why he’s doing it?” he said, shrugging. He didn’t get it. No one got it. This mask he wore, this good guy shtick he had. It ended now.
“Because,” I said, gritting my teeth. “He gets to play the altruistic billionaire out there. He can pretend he’s not the selfish prick I know he really is.”
“Killian, what is it with you and him? I’ve never understood it. You were best friends back in high school, then next thing I knew, you were kicked out of school and hated him. What happened?”
“He’s the reason my mom is dead,” I said, balling up my fists. A shudder traveled through my body and my stomach dropped as I thought back to the worst morning of my life.
“What? How?” Grim’s shocked outburst echoed in the gym. He stared at me wide-eyed.
“If it weren’t for him, she’d still be alive.” I couldn’t go into it. A flash of that bathroom doorknob sliced through my mind. If it weren’t for him and me. Guilt stabbed me in the chest and I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbing my knuckles over the spot where the pain radiated from. I went along with his plans back then and it cost me dearly. Guilt soured my stomach. I wasn’t going to let him continue wrecking lives without consequences.
He was my best friend along with Frankie. I let out a sigh. I told him all about Beth, Allan, and what I thought had happened to her. She didn’t die like he said she did. When I finished everything up he blew out a long whistle.
“That’s a lot to be taking on, Kill. Are you sure about all this? Sure, it’s not going to put you in a bad place? I still don’t understand why you believe anything Allan has to say.”
I rubbed my hands over my face. Allan and Beth grew up on the same street I did growing up. The three of us were scholarship kids to Havert Prep. We’d gone through a lot of the same shit when we first got there. Now, Beth was dead, Allan was a recovering addict, and then there was me. I’d fallen in with the rich kids’ crowd, headed by Rhys Thayer, and I watched him destroy my friends one by one.
For a while I was cool with him. Hung with him. People gravitated to him. Saw him as this nice guy. But I saw another side of him. The side so greedy and unrelenting, he wouldn’t be happy until everyone else around him had nothing left. Rhys stole Beth from Allan and that destroyed him. Allan turned to drugs, then Beth fell into the same trap, but with all Rhys’s money to feed her addiction.
Then she died. An accident with sleeping pills or some bullshit like that, but I knew there was something else going on.
“I know he’s hiding the truth and I’m not going to give up until I figure out what it is,” I said, shoving my ball in my bag.
“Good luck, man, but don’t let yourself get mixed up in Allan’s shit again. You did that once before and it didn’t turn out so well for you,” he said, slinging his bag over his shoulder. Most of the other people had already cleared out. Grim headed out after them, while I sat and checked my phone, scrolling through my messages. When I glanced up, I noticed a flash of long black hair in the corner of my eye. It was a woman. She scrambled back when she saw me looking at her. Okay, now I was intrigued. She was watching me. She was familiar. I’d seen her before, but it took me a minute to place her.
She’d been at the foundation when I met with the chairman. In the waiting room, she stared up at me with her big doe eyes, nearly falling off her seat when I got into the elevator. And now she was here at my gym. That seemed like a bit too much of a coincidence for me. I sat for a little while longer, sliding closer to the edge of the bleachers to see if she’d peek around again. My patience was rewarded after a few minutes when she did and I stood only a couple of feet from her hiding spot.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice booming in the cavernous and now empty court. She squeaked and backed up.
“What? Me? I’m no one,” she said, taking a step back, her back banging against the wall beside the locker room door.
“I’m sure you’re someone, sweetheart. Who are you and why are you here?” I said, intrigued. I’d never been followed before. Well, not by a woman I hadn’t slept with. Those somehow found a way to hunt me down. But she was different. She was cute, kind of squirrelly. The black horn-rimmed glasses she wore brought out the chestnut in her eyes.
I looked her up and down. I had a feeling her prim and proper clothes covered a nice body, but that didn’t explain why she’d followed me. I’d seen her before and I racked my brain to remember where. It wasn’t just from the foundation. She’d flittered in and out of my vision before. On the peripheral, but as I struggled to place her, her watch caught my eye. It looked simple, but I knew for a fact that it cost more than most people made in a month. Why was she wearing it? Who was she? She certainly piqued my interest.
“I’m not following you,” she said, her throat working a mile a minute. Time to change tactics. I plastered on a smile. She relaxed a little. The death grip she had on her bag strap eased the tiniest amount, her fingers pinking back up a little. Delicate. Innocent. Let’s play.
“Okay. Let’s just say you weren’t following me. What are you doing here?”
She glanced around. I looked her up and down again, letting my gaze linger. She squirmed. “Not exactly gym attire.” Her shoulders immediately slouched and I actually felt kind of bad for her.
“I’m sorry. Mr. Thorne. I’m sorry, I interrupted you, but I’m here because I need some information from you,” she said, glancing up at me. If her eyes got any wider, I’d have to get her a tiny cartoon bunny and bird to perch on her shoulder. She reached into her bag and pulled out a notepad and a pen. Her hands shook as she put the pen to the page.
“I’m a reporter and I had a few questions. I wanted to know if I could ask you about your charitable contributions?”
“A reporter?” Not a chance. Her ability to lie was overshadowed by the fact that she couldn’t hold a pen and ask a question at the same time. Curiosity got the better of me. If she wasn’t a reporter, what was she doing here?
“Yes,” she said, nodding emphatically.
“With which paper?”
“Ugh…the…I’m freelance,” she stammered.
&nb
sp; Right, time to make things a bit more interesting.
5
RACHEL
Why was I doing this? What did I expect to happen? I begged the receptionist at the foundation to let me know the name of the man from the previous meeting, and she relented after I gave her the Starbucks gift card my mom sent with one of her care packages. It had at least ninety dollars left on it.
Once I had a name, I did some digging. I searched and found the address of his office. His office didn’t have a gym. I took a flying leap that maybe he went to a gym near the office. That body didn’t come from healthy eating and long walks. Yes, he could have had a gym where he lived, but I didn’t have much to go on.
Ten gift cards later, after running from every front desk person, receptionist, and assistant I could find, I’d tracked Killian to a gym three blocks from his office. And the time of his weekly pickup game of basketball. Great! Now what? What the hell did I expected to happen once I found him?
I was face to face with a man I had no business trying to squeeze information out of. But I couldn’t turn back now. He’d seen me, and I was already completely screwing this up.
“Fine, you want an interview?” he asked, staring at me. His eyes roamed all over my body and it made me squirm. Not just squirm, my skin vibrated and I struggled to keep my breathing under control.
“Yes, that would be great.” I could try to figure out what he had in mind for the boards he was trying to get elected to. If Mr. Thayer was kicked off those boards it would severely impact his charitable contributions in the coming year. Impact the people who depended on him, if Killian wanted to change directions. Mr. Thayer told me how important those were.
“I’m busy, you’ll have to follow me,” he said, pushing past me and right into the men’s changing room. The door slammed shut and the sound reverberated throughout the whole gym. I stood there for a solid minute. Was I supposed to go in after him? He was going to make me work for this information. I straightened my shoulders and pushed through the door, jumping when it slammed behind me.
The smell of sweat and cologne smacked me in the face the minute the door closed. Holy gym socks, Batman. At the metal clang of a locker door slamming shut, I peeked around the corner of the row of lockers. I took the pen cap off with my mouth and stepped into the row, determined to get my information. Killian stepped out into the row in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. His body was—words failed me. There seemed to be ridges and bulges where I’d never seen them on a man up-close before. He turned to look at me and I was frozen. The clink of the pen cap hitting the locker room floor broke me out of the spell.
“Sorry,” I said, turning my back to him. Footsteps rang out, the hard locker room floor amplifying the sound. My pulse pounding with each foot fall. His shadow loomed over me and I willed myself not to turn around. I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep from licking my lips, or worse, him. How was it possible for a guy to have a body like that?
“Don’t be. If you want your interview, you’ll have to do it in here,” he said, nodding toward the shower in front of me. Now it wasn’t just my pulse pounding. I squeezed my thighs together as I thought about him all soapy, standing under the spray of the shower. Snap out of it! You’re on a mission. He brushed past me, his tight muscles rubbing against my arm.
Was I seriously going to follow him in there? I struggled to form words. My ivy league education gone in an instant after standing face to face with this man, with this body that left me speechless.
The shower turned on and I took a tentative step into the lion’s den. My shoes squeaked on the tile floor in the shower. Killian ran his hand under the spray of the water as steam filled the shower room, and he whipped his towel from around his waist and hung it on one of the metal hooks on the wall. I gulped as I zeroed in on his muscled, toned butt. It was like a tractor beam. I could not pull my eyes away from his ass. I took a step before I caught myself.
“My eyes are up here, sweetheart,” he said, chuckling over his shoulder as he ran a bar of soap over his body. I licked my lips. What I wouldn’t give to be that bar of soap as he worked it over his biceps and shoulders. “You did have questions, didn’t you? Or was this just a ploy to see me naked. Because I assure you, all you had to do was ask,” he said, flashing me a dangerous smile. Barbed wire, dripping with honey. Dangerous, topped with something so sweet you could barely resist.
I shook my head, clearing the cloud of sexual fog he’d cast over me, and got down to business. But the fogging on my glasses was another story. I needed answers and I’d get them tonight. I managed to ask Killian a few questions that didn’t make me look like a complete moron. He seemed to be humoring me. Not giving me any of the information I needed, but giving me just enough to keep me in the shower a bit longer. I was jotting down the last little bit of information when the water turned off.
The deafening silence in the shower other than the drip drip drip of water hitting the floor had me keeping my eyes firmly on the floor. Little rivulets of water danced around my shoes as they flowed down one of the shower drains.
“I’ve got a question,” he said, his voice coming through loud and clear without the spray of water to mask it. My stomach hadn’t stopped fluttering since I stepped into the room.
I nodded, keeping my eyes on the floor. “Okay, go ahead.”
“I need you to look at me when I’m speaking to you, sweetheart.” When he called me that, it made my knees weak. I usually hated pet names like that. They tended to piss me off. But on his lips, it didn’t sound like an endearment. It didn’t sound patronizing either. It sounded downright dirty. I took a deep breath and glanced up from my notepad. I expected him to be wrapped up in his towel, looking as delicious as ever, but I was at a complete loss as he stood there in the middle of the shower with the towel slung around his shoulders, using it to dry off his hair.
“Holy shit,” I said out loud before slapping my notepad over my mouth. My face was as red as a beet. I could tell. I could feel it. Had I really said that out loud? Please tell me I hadn’t. His chuckle let me know that I had indeed said it out loud and I needed to go crawl into a hole somewhere.
His bare feet came into view. Toe to toe with my shoes and suddenly I felt completely naked in front of him, although I was way more dressed than anyone should be in a shower.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice commanding me to obey. I couldn’t help it. I closed my eyes to skip over the danger zone and opened them, my head tilted up and staring into his eyes.
“Why are you here, Rachel?” he asked, his eyes boring into mine. My breath froze in my chest. He knew who I was. I did my best impersonation of a goldfish as my mouth opened and closed. So much for being stealthy. Everyone always said I was the worst liar, well here was proof staring me right in the face.
“I…How did you know my name was Rachel?” I squeaked.
“Because,” he said, leaning in closer. I felt myself rising on my toes without even meaning to. He was pulling me in. Drawing me into him like a riptide that threatened to drown me before I even knew I was in over my head. He flicked my hair over my shoulder and slid his finger under the strap of my bag. His fingertips skimming along the skin near my collar bone. “It’s on the button on your bag,” he said, his lips a whisper’s breath away from mine before he pulled back and strode past me back into the locker room.
I was left reeling, nearly toppling over at his sudden exit. It was like all the air left the room with him. I pulled the shoulder strap of my bag back and stared at the button Dahlia’d bought me at a street fair a while ago. ‘Hi, I’m Rachel’ laid out in bright pink with dancing peonies surrounding it. Well done, sleuth.
I barely contained the urge to smack myself on the forehead. I’d already made such a fool of myself. I didn’t know if I should just stick my tail between my legs and tell Mr. Thayer I couldn’t find anything, or to push on.
I peeked around the corner of the shower and he was sliding his pants on and buckling his b
elt. I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed. When he rolled his t-shirt on over those defined abs, I knew it was definitely disappointment. He sat on the bench and slid on his shoes.
“Did you get everything you needed, sweetheart?” he said, not looking up. And there it was again. The pounding, throbbing was back when he called me that.
“I have a few more questions. Maybe I could visit you in your office to finish this up?” I suggested, trying to buy more time. I was hoping to get an in, so I could figure this out.
“How about you try to keep up with me, and I’ll see if you get to ask me any more questions,” he said, sliding in, coat on, grabbing his bag, and heading out of the locker room. I scrambled to keep up. I wasn’t going to lose track of him now. I wouldn’t give up, no matter where I had to follow him.
6
KILLIAN
I was angry at myself that I hadn’t recognized her sooner. She’d changed something about her look, but once I saw her lips wrapped around that pen cap, I knew exactly who she was. My blood boiled as I thought about Thayer sending his little minion to snoop after me. How cute.
But the simmering anger at Rhys turned into something else as I saw her standing there in the shower. She wasn’t exactly what I expected, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have a little fun. I thought she’d run out the minute I dropped my towel, but she hung in there. There wasn’t anything she or he could do to stop me once Frankie got back to me with the real report about Beth’s death, I’d have everything I needed to put the nail in Rhys’s coffin, ending him and his legacy.
She thought she was some kind of spy. Thought I hadn’t noticed her before. She had the glasses on and the frizzy hair going. She was like the before picture of the dorky girl in the movies who’s transformed by taking off her glasses. I could see all the work she put into not drawing attention to herself. She’d avoided my attention for a while, but not for long. Trying to downplay her beauty to be taken more seriously, unfortunately she’d fallen flat on her face.