by Amy Saunders
Belinda blinked, but said she thought so against her better judgment. Kyle had rope and duct tape around most of the time. So Belinda hunted some up while Brooke watched Mrs. Sykes. She returned with the supplies, still very uncertain of what they were doing. Belinda contemplated running for it to the police station when she left the house to get the rope, but then what if Brooke killed Mrs. Sykes while she was gone? Instead, Belinda helped her assistant (though it felt like the other way around now) tie up Mrs. Sykes.
Then, even better, Belinda backed up her Mini closer to the carriage house (right on the street with only some bushes for cover, mind you), popped the trunk, and helped Brooke haul Mrs. Sykes out and dump her inside, then cover her with tarp, also borrowed from Kyle, who would never believe this.
Or, knowing him, probably would.
Belinda looked down in horror at the limp Mrs. Sykes as Brooke shut the trunk over her. She was committing so many felonies right now.
"Just so you know," Brooke said quickly. "I don't usually do things like this."
Belinda shook her head numbly. "Neither do I."
Brooke grinned, took Belinda's keys, and got in the driver's seat. "Exciting, isn't it? Hop in."
Belinda felt her way to the passenger's side and obeyed. Exciting, indeed.
So much for Kyle's lockdown.
Chapter 19
Brooke seemed to know where they were going, and neither of them spoke while she drove. Belinda worked on clearing her head. Her heart had slowed down considerably, but then picked up every time she remembered they had a human being tied up in the trunk. But she needed to think. Seriously. About what she was doing.
Why did she just help Brooke tie up Mrs. Sykes and put her in the trunk to do—what? Not that Belinda thought Brooke would kill her at this point. It seemed awfully complicated if that's what she wanted. And why bring Belinda into it? Wouldn't she just have to kill her too? So that seemed out. If it was somehow related to protecting Mrs. Sykes, why did Brooke care? Especially if Brooke hated that Mrs. Sykes involved Sawyer in her schemes.
"Here we are." Brooke interrupted her problem-solving, and Belinda became aware that they were at the Portside Harbor Marina. Oh, dear. What if Kyle saw them?
Belinda watched people milling around, drifting through the harbor, washing and waxing crafts of all sizes, her eyes searching for a bronze face with golden brown hair. "You seriously think we're going to sneak her onto a boat in front of all these people?"
"I seriously think we're going to sneak her on board your boat, yes."
Belinda's eyes widened. Then she shook her head stubbornly. "I don't have the keys."
Brooke dangled them in front of her and thrust them into her palm. How did she find those? "Go get one of those carts. I have a plan."
Belinda wrapped her fingers around the keys. "I don't like being bossed around when what I'm being told to do is sketchy at best." This was all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
"She intended to inject you with that stuff. You do know that, right?"
Belinda pressed her lips tight. She kept feeling the side of her neck where a nice bump cropped up after her needle experience. Sadly, she did know.
Belinda sighed and pushed out of her car to get a cart, panicking every time she saw brown hair. But it was never Kyle. She set the cart by the trunk and took a deep breath as she opened it up. Blue tarp. Blue tarp and one woman underneath it. This was insane. Brooke was insane.
Brooke came around and together they tried to make it look like they weren't lifting a body into the cart.
"What did you do?" Belinda hissed. Mrs. Sykes should have come to by then.
Brooke just shrugged and ignored her.
Belinda pushed the cart nonchalantly, because, you know, she hauled bodies onto her family's cruising yacht ALL THE TIME. She smiled politely to everyone they passed, focusing on the fast clunk, clunk, clunk of the cart's wheels over the dock slats. It was one thing getting Mrs. Sykes from the trunk to the cart. It would be another thing to get her from the cart onto the boat.
Belinda unlocked and opened the stern door, then unlocked the cabin's sliding door. No Kyle. She should have felt relieved, but part of her really wanted to stumble onto him. He might be able to get her out of this.
This was going to be fun without looking suspicious. No one was right in the vicinity, and everybody in the marina was busy with some sort of seasonal prep work. But she felt like they all knew she had just kidnapped someone.
"Let's do this," Brooke said. They each took an end with Belinda on the swim platform and Brooke on the dock. Belinda slowly backed up toward the sliding door that led into the cabin. They'd managed to keep the tarp fluffy and not squeeze it around Mrs. Sykes like mummy wrappings.
They made it inside, set Mrs. Sykes on one of the couches, and Belinda shut the sliding door. "This is crazy," she whispered. "Who are you? And why do you know how to kidnap people?"
"I don't." Brooke appeared serious. "But I do know something about sneaking around, and this is not that different."
It's a little different, Belinda thought.
"Look," Brooke said. "We put her in one of the staterooms, secure everything, and go. I've got to take care of something and then I'll come back and check on her. We'll go from there."
"Go from there?" Belinda covered her face with her hands. "What is the plan exactly?"
Brooke smiled patiently. "Mrs. Sykes is putting us both in danger. We need her to not be able to cause trouble. And I'm convinced now that we can't trust her not to lose her marbles and put on shows like today's. She's too unstable. And desperate. We keep her here, out of the way, and try and talk sense into her to just stay put until things get sorted. Okay?"
Okay? Belinda thought. All of that and Brooke expected her to just go, Okay.
"Fine," Belinda grumbled, trying to sort out her own plan of action beyond this. Run to Jonas? She would go to Bennett, but things between them weren't quite sorted either. And Kyle would help, but Belinda didn't want to involve him with everything that had happened just weeks ago.
They picked up Mrs. Sykes again and ferried her down some carpeted stairs to the staterooms below the main deck. Belinda didn't like leaving her all tied and taped up. She'd woken up once like that herself, and it was the scariest moment of her life ever. But Brooke made a valid point about her screaming and claiming she was kidnapped. So they left her as is with the door barricaded from the outside. Whatever Brooke had done, she claimed Mrs. Sykes wouldn't come out of it for hours.
Belinda just hoped Kyle didn't drop in.
They walked back up to the main deck, Belinda taking steadying breaths. This was all too crazy. Like a weird, random nightmare that would be fun to tell your friends the next day. Only she couldn't talk about this, nor did she want to. Living nightmares were no fun.
She had Brooke alone, and if she wouldn't talk in-depth about this little thing they were doing, then maybe she'd talk about something more personal. "Why are you and Sawyer hiding your relationship?" Belinda blurted.
Brooke avoided her eyes, but she looked unsure. "Sawyer has a reputation to manage. It's a part of his image. His brand."
"That's it? You hide your relationship because Sawyer is supposed to be a playboy."
Brooke picked at her cuticles. "Something like that."
"How did you meet?"
Brooke considered her question. "Through a mutual acquaintance."
That was suitably vague. Belinda folded her arms. "Why did you put up with him flirting with me?"
Brooke looked up. "Who says I did?" She rocked from side to side. "He promised me he'd drop the whole charade when I insisted. He swore it was just part of his image, but I wasn't so sure. We had a big fight before the pool party and then he...he was still coming onto you. So when Bennett kissed me, I took advantage of it to get even."
"Well, it worked." Belinda clenched her hands to keep from strangling Brooke. "Sawyer got jealous."
"Yeah." Brooke didn't sound pleased with the
results. And she looked bothered. So maybe their relationship was staying south. Or perhaps Brooke was the one who tried to kill Sawyer. "It's what I get for mixing business with pleasure." Brooke moved to the door. "We should go."
Belinda hesitated. Mixing business with pleasure? Kidnapping? Sneaking around? "You told some people I know that I cheated on Bennett."
"We really need to go..."
"Why?" Belinda blocked the door. She wasn't stepping off that boat until she got some answers. Real ones. Not vague, evasive responses.
Brooke moistened her lips. "I told you I was mad at Sawyer."
"So you lied, which by the way, didn't hurt him that much. But it did pretty much destroy my relationship with Bennett."
Brooke adjusted her glasses, looking her directly in the eye. "I don't think you can blame me for that. Why would someone like Bennett Tate want a spoiled brat like you?"
Belinda stared at her.
"The pool party for instance," Brooke said. "Throwing a tantrum because someone else took your favorite toy? Very classy."
Belinda's face turned red and she started to shake. "I suppose I could have behaved like you. Underhanded, deceitful, and rude."
Now Brooke colored.
"I don't know who you are," Belinda said, "or what you're doing in Portside. But I can tell you I'm done. You're fired."
Brooke wasn't quite back to playing the mousey assistant, but she wasn't as self-satisfied either. For all intents and purposes, and for whatever it was worth, she did look disappointed.
Belinda walked back to the car feeling a little queasy. She'd never fired anyone (and certainly never kidnapped somebody) and she didn't like it, even if Brooke did do and say all those terrible things. One thing she couldn't wrap her brain around was why? Why did Brooke do all of this in the first place?
Then there was the weird transition from mouse to jerk. Was Brooke just riding high on Bennett kissing her, and feeling superior because she spread those rumors about Belinda? Or was there more to this duality than Belinda could fathom? Just because she had only just seen it didn't mean the duplicity wasn't there all along. Sawyer's facade slipped frequently in front of her, but maybe Brooke was a better actor.
They got back to the carriage house and Brooke handed Belinda her keys, half-smiling. "I'm sorry this didn't work out."
Belinda folded her arms, studying the girl she thought was pretty much an open book. "Me too."
Then again, even an open book can have missing pages.
Chapter 20
Belinda had stopped buying shoes. Well, not entirely, but let's say, she stopped buying shoes as a hobby. After Mark Nichols, her old love interest, passed away, she unintentionally used shoe shopping as therapy and wound up with more shoes than closet space. Her mother finally intervened, and after examining her shoe collection, Belinda realized she hardly wore any of them anyway. So after a massive clean out, she vowed not to use shoes to make her feel better ever again.
But Belinda had other reasons to give it up, and she listed these as she gripped the steering wheel of her Mini in the driveway once she had time to digest what she'd just done. And all of the horrible consequences if anyone ever found out.
ONE: Shoes—even cheap shoes—get expensive when you buy multiple pairs. At this time in her life, she was hardly in a position to spend like money came from hacking up bushes in the front yard. (Though some video games would lead you to believe otherwise.) She'd never had to ask her parents to bail her out (unlike some of her former classmates), and she wasn't starting now.
TWO: Shoes require storage space, as previously mentioned. And while space wasn't a major issue at that moment (discounting the living-in-the-carriage-house situation), Belinda knew she would not always live in her family's home. (But that was a problem for another time.)
THREE: Shoes require wearing or there's no point in buying them. Again, as stated, she gravitated toward a handful of pairs. She didn't picture that changing.
FOUR: Belinda had avoided shoe-buying therapy for years and she didn't want to backslide now!
FIVE: (She couldn't think of a five.)
SIX: (Well, if she had no five, then she had no six.)
This crisis did not justify slipping back into old, unhealthy patterns. Buying a new pair of shoes for the summer, however strappy and cute, would not solve the problem. Making things right would. But she had no idea how to make this right. Belinda sighed and leaned back in the seat.
She did, however, know how to make things right with Bennett. Well, sort of.
Put it this way: Belinda was more determined than ever to make things right with Bennett. No two-timing personal assistant was stealing her man. And no manwhore designer was ruining Belinda's chances with the finest piece of man meat she'd ever dated. Bennett was hers. Hers. And that was all there was to it. He could say what he wanted, and make Grumpy Cat faces at her for eternity. But he wasn't getting away. Not now. Not ever.
Okay, that sounded a bit stalkerish. But it's how she felt at that moment resisting the urge to go buy a pair of sandals. She'd overcome other obstacles. Belinda could overcome the obstacles separating her from Bennett. And buying shoes would not get her what she really wanted.
Her phone blipped and she checked it, expecting a text from Victoria, but it was Finnegan.
Finnegan!
She'd completely forgotten to call him back...again. After promising she would.
He'd texted, saying he had something important to tell her and would she please call...if she had time. Belinda responded immediately. Maybe he had something that would bash through the dead end and help her avoid a complete catastrophe.
"I'm a horrible, horrible person," she said as soon as Finnegan picked up. "I'm soooo sorry! I'm not usually this scatterbrained, I swear. I should have called you back. I'm so sorry!"
"I believe you," Finnegan said, then laughed. "Sort of. But let me just tell you this before something more interesting comes along and you hang up on me again."
He had her undivided attention.
"So I know I didn't impress you with the phone info," Finnegan said quickly, "so I did some digging into Sawyer. I think you'll want to know what I found. I just e-mailed a link to you. Take a look at the caption."
Belinda hurried to open her e-mail and pulled up Finnegan's link. It led to a shot of Sawyer smiling with Brooke, but without her glasses. She figured it was recent, except that Brooke wasn't openly at the cocktail party or jazz club. And it looked like a nighttime thing. Plus, Brooke was dressed a hundred times fancier than Belinda ever saw her. She scrolled over to expand the photo and read the caption like Finnegan told her.
It was tagged Sawyer and...
Riley.
She gasped. Belinda's eyes darted from the photo to the caption and back.
"Did you see it?" Finnegan said once she came back.
"This changes everything!" Belinda's mind flew to the Sykes' hidden notebook with Riley's name, the Sykes firing Riley for peeking at confidential files, and now Brooke (aka Riley) kidnapping Mrs. Sykes! "Finnegan, you have to call Jonas and tell him this! Now. I can't explain fully right this second, but I promise you this info is more vital than you probably realize."
"O–okay. I will. Are you about to hang up on me again?"
"I'm sorry, Finn. But I am. I owe you big time. Call Jonas!" She threw her phone on the other seat, put her car in reverse, and slammed on the accelerator. She made the two minutes to Victoria's in about thirty seconds.
"Why would she change her name?" Victoria said in disbelief as she stared at the photo in her kitchen.
Belinda paced, her heart in overdrive with this new information. Why, indeed? With Brooke's seeming CoveOps experience, Belinda was seriously starting to wonder who she'd hired. "Victoria, I have to tell you something."
Victoria stared with wide eyes while Belinda filled her in on the assault by Mrs. Sykes, the subsequent rescue by Brooke, and then their foray into kidnapping. She tried not to leave out any important details
or nuances of the experience.
"I would say how horrifying," Victoria said when Belinda finished, "but this is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to either of us. Please, go on."
"Why did Brooke act like she doesn't know these people?" Belinda paced. "She worked for Sawyer and the Sykes, plus she's involved romantically with Sawyer, but she pretends like she's never seen them until now."
"You also need to consider that they pretended like they didn't know her." Victoria raised her eyebrows. "Mr. Sykes didn't tell you Riley is Brooke, and he must have known she was here at some point."
Belinda stopped by the window, staring off into the side yard. "Okay. So we know that Riley—Brooke or whoever she is—worked for the Sykes, got caught trying to access protected files, and got fired."
"Then, using the same name," Victoria said, "she left Portside for New York and got a job as Sawyer's assistant."
Belinda nodded. "Then Riley's employment stalls out for a year."
"She shows up here as Brooke and becomes your assistant working on a fashion show where two of her former employers converge."
"Two former employers who we know are involved with each other somehow, and at least one of them is embezzling from her business and fundraiser." Belinda meandered back to the plate of chocolate chip cookies on the counter, picking at one. "And the Sykes' notebook has Riley listed, so she may have been receiving money from them."
"So what does it mean? What is she? A blackmailer?"
Belinda shook her head. "It doesn't make much sense, unless Sawyer and the Sykes have something to hide that Brooke knows about. Or vice versa. Though that still doesn't explain all of Brooke's odd skills. Unless they're all secret agents."
"Well, Mr. Sykes volunteered the embezzling situation." Victoria drummed her nails on the counter. "So that's essentially out, and may be in bigger ways eventually. They won't be able to hide that forever. We don't know any of Sawyer's secrets, unless you count the shellfish allergy." Victoria leaned on the counter. "So, hypothetically, they make a deal that they won't give Brooke away if she leaves them alone?"