by Kelly Favor
“A friend.”
“A friend?”
“Yes, Charlotte. A friend. Someone who’s looking out for you.” The voice was male, not exactly creepy, but still scary, if only for the fact that it was so obviously attempting to be disguised.
“Josh?” I demanded. “Is that you?”
“No.”
“Then who is this?”
“You need to find a man named Audi James. He can help you, Charlotte.”
“What?” My heart was starting to beat fast in my chest, and I looked toward the bathroom door, wondering if I should call for Noah.
“Things aren’t exactly what they seem, Charlotte. Trust no one.”
“What?” I asked desperately, pushing the phone tight against my ear, as if that would help me figure out who was on the other end of the line. “What does that mean?”
“It means that if you want the truth about who killed those women, you need to go to Force. Look for Audi James. He’ll help you, Charlotte. Trust no one.”
“And what do I –”
But the line went dead.
I stared at the phone in disbelief, almost willing it to ring again.
After a moment, I put it back into my bag and walked back into Noah’s office.
He was at his desk, looking over some papers.
He looked up when he saw me. “Everything okay?”
I opened my mouth to tell him what had just happened.
Trust no one.
“Yeah,” I said finally. “I’m fine.”
“Will we be still be attending your stepfather’s birthday party tonight?”
My stepfather’s birthday party. I’d forgotten all about it. Noah had agreed to go with me.
I raised my chin in the air. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I want to go to Force.”
NOAH
She said it with such conviction, but her voice betrayed just a hint of weakness.
“You want to go where?” I asked.
“Force.”
She adjusted her bag on her shoulder and pushed her hair back from her face.“No,” I said. “We’re going to your stepfather’s party.” I pulled my wallet out and walked over to her, handed her a credit card. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
“Your new card.” She ran her fingers over the letters. CHARLOTTE HOLLOWAY was spelled out in raised silver type.
“You got me a credit card?”
“It’s hooked up to my account. Buy yourself something for tonight. Something sexy that I can rip off you later.”
She stared at the card, and I could see her grappling with the implications. She nodded slowly and slipped it into her bag.
“Noah,” she said. “Please. I want to go to Force.”
My dick immediately got hard at the thought of things I could do to her there, the ways I could ravish her body, the techniques I could use to make it clear she was mine. But these things couldn’t be rushed. And she wasn’t ready.
“You’re not ready.”
I saw the look pass over her face – not lust, not disappointment, but frustration. Why was she frustrated? All she’d been talking about was not wanting our relationship to be purely based on sex, and now she was insisting we go to a hardcore BDSM club instead of a family function.
She’s hiding something from you.
I kept my voice even. “Force is a place you go when you’re ready to take things to the next level.”
“I’m ready to take things to the next level.”
I put my fingers on her chin, tilted it up so she was forced to look me in the eye. “We haven’t even gone over my expectations.”
“Let’s go over them. Tonight. At Force.”
She was definitely hiding something. I could read her so well already. It was part of my job to be able to read people, and I was good at it. But this was beyond that. I was falling in love with her, and it connected me to her in a way I couldn’t explain.
“You’ll have to sign a contract,” I said.
“What kind of contract?”
“Committing to be my submissive.”
“And we’ll go over your expectations for me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
I leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips. “The car will pick you up at my apartment at nine o’clock.”
“Where will you be?”
“I have to work late.”
She hesitated, like she wanted to say something else – perhaps that I shouldn’t be working with everything that was going on, or that I should have helped her more when it came to my case. But she decided it against it.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”
She slipped out of my office, and I stood there for a moment after she was gone, staring at the closed door.
She was definitely hiding something from me.
And tonight I was going to find out what it was.
END OF BOOK SIX
WHAT HE HIDES (What He Wants, Book Seven)
by Hannah Ford
CHARLOTTE
I stood outside Noah’s office, my hand frozen on the doorknob. I thought about going back inside. What was I thinking, demanding to go to Force just because I got some crazy phone call? I knew nothing about who was calling, knew nothing about this Audi James person I was supposed to find, nothing about who he was or how he might help me.
You should go back in and tell Noah, I told myself. You should tell him what happened, you should confide in him. You say you trust him, so prove it.
Aside from anything personal that was happening between Noah and I, he was my client, or at least, I was working on his case. He had the right to know exactly what was happening.
But if I told him, he wasn’t going to take me to Force. And if I told Professor Worthington, the same thing would happen. They would insist I not go. Noah was already reluctant to take me, saying I wasn’t ready, that I wasn’t prepared for the kind of things that happened there.
But I was ready. I wanted to go to Force with Noah, not just because of the case, but for our relationship. The idea of officially becoming his submissive, of him teaching me and testing me… it sent a warm thrill through my entire body.
My head was spinning, my thoughts swirling around, knotting themselves into a confused tangle.
“Can I help you?” a voice asked. I turned around to see a smartly dressed woman in a grey suit standing next to me in the hallway. She looked down at my hand, which was still on Noah’s door, and frowned. “Are you here to see Mr. Cutler?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, I just… I was just leaving.”
I made my way down the hall.
If I didn’t hurry, I was going to be late for class.
When I got outside the building, Noah’s car was parked against the curb, ready and waiting to take me to campus.
I hesitated. I wanted to be able to use my iPad to google Audi James. And something about doing that while Noah’s driver sat a couple of feet away from me felt like a risk.
So I turned away from the car and began walking toward the subway. I was clutching my phone in my hand, almost afraid to put it in my bag in case my anonymous caller called back.
Sure enough, as soon as I got onto the train platform, my phone rang.
My heart leapt into my throat as I checked the caller ID.
But it wasn’t Anonymous.
It was Noah.
“Hi,” I said.
There was a long pause. “Charlotte,” Noah said, his voice careful and even. “Jared tells me you didn’t take the car.”
“Um, no,” I said. “I didn’t. I’m taking the subway.”
“The subway is not an acceptable mode of transportation for you, Charlotte. I thought I’d made that perfectly clear.”
“You did, but…I don’t know, that car is too stuffy. It’s nice out, I felt like it would be nice to walk to the station.”
“If the car is too uncomfortable for you, we can replace it.”
/> “No, it’s not the car. It’s just… I don’t know, I just felt like being normal for once.”
“You’re not normal, Charlotte. You’re extraordinary, and I need to protect you at all costs. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Noah.” My pulse quickened at the tone in his voice – stern and admonishing, the kind of tone that made me wonder if he was thinking about punishing me.
“Defying me needs to be paid for,” he said, his voice husky and dark. “There will be consequences for your behavior, Charlotte.”
“I understand.” Heat flew through my body in short little bursts that almost seemed to move in time with my heartbeat. They settled in between my legs, and I felt myself getting wet.
“When you’re done with class, please call me. I will have Jared pick you up and bring you back to my apartment.”
“I’m going to the library after class,” I said. “So I can write up my report for Professor Worthington.”
“Good bye, Charlotte,” he said.
And then he hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand, frustrated. What was that supposed to mean? Did he want me to call after I was done at the library? Or did he want me to call after class and not go to the library? I felt like the rules of his game were ambiguous and fluid, always changing and morphing, making it impossible to keep up.
The train was pulling into the station, and I boarded the car quickly, sliding into a seat and immediately pulling out my iPad.
There was a middle-aged man sitting on my right with his legs spread wide open, a bag of cheese popcorn on his lap. He munched loudly, and I did my best to angle myself away from him. The New York City Subway Authority had just put up new signs explaining good subway etiquette. There was literally a poster over our heads that showed a stick figure sitting in the exact same position as the man next to me, with a big red X through it, indicating you shouldn’t do it.
I tried to tamp down my annoyance as I pulled up my internet browser.
I typed “Audi James” into google and waited. The service was spotty down here, and it took a moment for the page to load. I held my breath, crossing my fingers that I’d find the information I was looking for. What if Audi James had no internet presence? What if he was one of those the rare people without a facebook page or a linkedin or an online wedding announcement?
Or, worse, what if there was no Audi James? What if whoever called me phone didn’t know what they were talking about, or had done it just to fuck with me? Josh’s face popped into my mind again, the way he’d just stood there outside my room after what I’d seen him doing, the way he’d denied it to Julia, even though I’d caught him red-handed.
Could he have made the call? But why would he do that? Just because he was crazy and liked to toy with people? Was it possible maybe he wanted me off the case, that he thought if he could somehow get rid of me, he’d be able to slide in and take over, be the point person for Professor Worthington? That wouldn’t make any sense. Josh knew Noah hated him, knew Noah would never stand for that.
But still. Was that why Josh had told me he didn’t think Noah was guilty? So it would put the idea in my mind and he could send me on some wild goose chase?
The search results popped into view a second later, and it became instantly clear I’d had nothing to worry about. There were pages and pages of results for Audi James – articles and websites and pictures and anything else you could think of.
Because Audi James was a murderer.
I scrolled through, scanning the headlines with my eyes.
“AUDI JAMES ARRESTED FOR MURDER OF UPPER EAST SIDE SOCIALITE”
“WOMAN FOUND MURDERED IN PENTHOUSE APARTMENT”
“AUDI JAMES FOUND NOT GUILTY IN MURDER CASE”
I sucked in a breath as I clicked on the Wikipedia page.
I read the article quickly, taking in the specifics of the case, trying to turn on my lawyer brain and distill, the way they’d taught us in law school, trying to focus in on the details that might be important, instead of the minutia of the case.
I got the gist of it pretty quickly – Audi James had been arrested for the murder of Rhonda Callahan, a wealthy socialite, in her Upper East Side apartment. Rhonda Callahan was married, but had been rumored to be having an affair with James. The prosecution contended that the two of them had been involved in a bunch of scandalous sex games – BDSM, swinger’s clubs, online sex shows, the works. The DA’s office painted Audi James as a psychopath, the worst kind of sex predator, the kind of man who forced women into playing these sex games, tortured them mercilessly and then hurt or killed them.
The parallels between his case and Noah’s were almost shocking. There had been other women Audi had been involved with, other women who’d ended up missing or murdered. But there had never been enough evidence to arrest him.
They’d finally gotten him with Rhonda Callahan. Audi had been spotted in her apartment building moments before she was killed. His DNA was all over the scene, and the knife he’d used to kill her was left in the bedroom with his fingerprints on it.
The prosecution painted a picture of a sex game gone wrong. They claimed the sex had started out as consensual, but that Audi had pushed it too far, that he’d kept going, tying Rhonda up and raping her for hours, even after she told him to stop.
Audi admitted that he’d killed Rhonda. But he claimed it had been in self-defense. He said he’d gone to her apartment to break up with her, that they’d had sex before he told her he wanted to end things. They’d participated in their rough sex games that night, but Rhonda liked it, had pushed for it, had insisted it was the kind of sex she wanted.
When it was over, Audi claimed, he told her he didn’t want to see her anymore. He said Rhonda lost it, ranting and raving before coming after him with a knife, which he’d then used to kill her.
It was a crazy story that stretched the edges of believability. Audi was a big man, and to think that he needed to stab Rhonda twenty-one times in self-defense was really beyond incredulity.
But he’d gotten off.
The man next to me shifted on his seat, his leg pushing into mine and interrupting my thoughts.
“Sorry,” he said, giving me a smile. He held out the bag of popcorn. “Want some?”
“No, thank you.”
He was dressed in a pair of khakis and a white dress shirt, obviously on his way to work. I had no idea why he would be eating cheese popcorn for breakfast, but his fingers were turning orange and it was making me nervous. He was going to get a stain all over his crisp white shirt.
He leaned over and glanced at my screen. “Audi James, huh?” he said. “That shit was crazy.”
“You know the case?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m kind of a trial junkie. I watch them on livestreams, that kind of thing. You?”
“I’m a law student.”
“Oh, nice,” he said. “You doing some kind of report or something?”
“Or something,” I said. I gave him a polite smile, but I didn’t really feel like making small talk with a stranger. I had too much other stuff on my mind.
“That case was crazy,” the guy said, obviously not getting the hint. He munched on his popcorn and shook his head, remembering. “That guy was guilty as all hell. It was so obvious to everyone. But his attorney, man, he was something.” He frowned, a deep V appearing in between his eyes as he tried to remember. “What was that guy’s name? He was the reason Audi James got off. No one else could have done that. Guy’s a legend.”
My heart pounded in my chest and the blood rushed through my ears.
I knew who had defended Audi James before I even looked back down at the Wikipedia page.
But I did anyway, just to see it there in black and white.
Audi James had been defended by Noah Cutler.
I couldn’t concentrate.
All during class, my mind was a million miles away. When it was over, I had no idea what had been discussed. I was dimly aware of ta
king notes, but if you asked me what they were on, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you.
When class was finished, I walked across campus to the library, where I pulled out my laptop and typed up an email to Professor Worthington summarizing what I’d learned from Noah this morning. It wasn’t much, and I tried to pad the email without making it obvious that’s what I was doing. My fear was that if I didn’t get enough information from Noah, or prove myself to be helpful in some way, I was going to be taken off the case.
The fact that Noah was refusing to talk to anyone but me was only going to hold weight for so long. Eventually Professor Worthington was going to get sick of Noah’s antics. He’d been patient with Noah so far, because it was a high profile case that would lead to a ton of publicity. But Noah was sabotaging himself, and Professor Worthington wasn’t going to stay on a case he felt he had no chance of winning.
When I was done at the library, I packed up my things and walked outside.
Noah’s sleek black car was parked right in front of the building. Jared, Noah’s driver, was standing next to the passenger side door, his hands carefully folded in front of him.
I knew what he was doing – he was waiting for me, making sure I didn’t try to pull anything tricky like taking the subway. I was sure Noah had sent him here, had told him to park right in front and wait for me. I wondered how Jared had managed to get the parking spot right in front of the main library. I decided it was probably best if I didn’t know.
I sighed and walked over.
“Hi, Jared,” I said as he opened the door for me.
“Hello, Charlotte,” he said, and tipped his cap.
“Did I get you in trouble?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, with a glint in his eye.
“I’m sorry, Jared,” I said. “I’ll make it clear to him it wasn’t your fault.”
He nodded, but there was a slight smile on his face. He knew it wouldn’t matter that much, and he also knew that Noah wouldn’t really hold him responsible.
I settled into the backseat and stared out the window as the car moved through the city streets. I thought about asking Jared if he remembered Noah during the Audi James trial, if there was anything different about him, if Jared had picked up on anything significant.