Keeping Her

by Holly Hart

  Chapter One Hundred Eight

  24. CASSANDRA

  My heartbeat is galloping as I speed walk across the park toward Twenty-Third Street Station and the subway that will get me the hell out of here.

  I had no choice. If I hadn’t, and if Richard Linkletter had handed me a little brass key, the Chase would have been over and there would be less than a million in my Cayman account. Nowhere near enough.

  I don’t want to think about the other part.

  I feel like I’m on a black ops mission and I just avoided the enemy fire sparking overhead. Lying is second nature to me, but I’ve never been in a situation where the consequences were – well, so real.

  Misinformation is standard operating procedure during a mission, because once the operation was over, everything resets. That’s not the case here.

  Everything I do now has real-world consequences. I just told Carson we’re dating, and I have no idea how he feels about that. I have no idea how I feel about it. I don’t even know what it means.

  He didn’t contradict me, which is encouraging. But what if now he thinks he should call me? I can’t have a boyfriend during the Chase!

  Can I?

  I slow my pace as I reach the stairwell off the street down into the subway station. People rush past like ants on a hill, everyone going about their own business, close in body only. Their minds, like mine, are on other things.

  Probably not the same kind of things as mine, obviously. They’re wondering what to make for dinner. I’m wondering how to avoid capture. And how to avoid a sixty-year-old stranger taking my virginity.

  The train hisses to a stop and I hop on board. As it pulls away, I scan the car for anything out of the ordinary. An Armani suit, for example, or a platinum Rolex. It’s possible that my pursuers have dressed down for the occasion, but it’s been my experience that it’s hard to cover up the scent of money. It leaves a mark.

  Only a handful of people are sharing the ride with me at this time of day: a pair of teen boys with their skateboards; an elderly Asian woman with three shopping bags; a tall Sudanese man eating a platform hot dog.

  No male billionaires here, unless Sudanese billionaires have a thing for cheap red frankfurters that taste like a mustard-covered salt lick.

  As I settle into the molded plastic seat, my phone vibrates. I turned the ringer off the minute the Chase started, just as a precaution; I don’t want any unnecessary attention drawn to me over the next two weeks. My training taught me that staying invisible means taking away anything that might cause someone to look in my direction.

  I groan as I see the caller ID: it’s Tricia. We haven’t spoken since the day Carson and I met in the ice cream shop. She’s called before but I haven’t picked up. Better not blow her off again or she’ll get suspicious. And in all honesty, I owe her a call. We’re supposed to be business partners, after all.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and hit the answer button.

  “Hey, Trish,” I say. “Sorry I never got back to you. It’s been a crazy week.”

  “You are so dead to me,” she huffs. “I’m actually thinking of adopting you just so I can disown you.”

  “Oh, I’m fine, how are you?”

  “Don’t try to be funny. You never called me to tell me about your date with Carson! What kind of bitch goes out with a rich demi-god and doesn’t call her best friend right after?”

  Apparently, that’s what BFFs are supposed to do. I wouldn’t know, I’m new to this whole thing. I’ve never had a close friend like Tricia. I was always too busy studying, or training, or working. Or killing.

  All the things my father wanted me to do.

  “I’m waiting,” she says with practiced coldness in her voice. She obviously prepared for this.

  “A stupid one?” I offer.

  “A stupid one!”

  I chuckle in spite of myself. She’s got a way of pulling me out of my head and turning me in a direction that I never would have seen. It’s one of the reasons I love her so much.

  “Sorry, sorry, a million times sorry,” I plead. “Can you forgive me?”

  “That depends on the details. Hand ‘em over.”

  “There’s not much to tell,” I lie. “We toured the Museum of Modern Art and had dinner.”

  I leave out the extracurricular activity in the coatroom. Partly because I don’t want to talk about it, partly because it always makes my nipples pop. I’ve been thinking about it every night in bed. Masturbation is a wonderful sleep aid.

  “And?”

  “And I went home.”

  “You didn’t sleep with him?”

  “No.”

  The line goes silent for a full five seconds.

  “Tricia?”

  “Now I wish I did adopt you,” she says. “Then I could have you committed, because you are fucking crazy!”

  “Hey, now…”

  “Honey, you had the opportunity to make Carson Freakin’ Drake your first, and you didn’t take advantage of it! Believe me, any thirty-year-old straight guy who looks like him knows his way around a woman’s body. He has got that roadmap memorized.”

  Does he ever.

  Tricia thinks she’s helping, but all she’s done is remind me that there’s no way Carson can be my first. If I can just manage to hold things off for a couple weeks, though, maybe something can happen.

  Please, God, let it happen.

  “Look, it just wasn’t the right time,” I say.

  Boy, is that ever the understatement of the year.

  She clucks her tongue. “There’s no such thing as the right time when it comes to your first, Sandra.”

  “Cassie.”

  “What?”

  “I decided I want to go by Cassie now.”

  “Seriously? One date with Carson Drake and you want to change your name? And yet it ‘wasn’t the right time?’”

  I sigh. This conversation is going south faster than a flock of Canada geese.

  “Tricia, to be honest, I don’t even know how he feels about me. I mean, we spent a few minutes together that morning and then had dinner.”

  “That’s why I’ve been calling you!”

  I see the stop for Fifty-Seventh Street Station coming up, so I head to the door and grab the stabilizer bar. My plan is to walk the couple of blocks to Central Park and lose myself in it for the afternoon.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “Look, Tricia, I have to go.”

  “Listen to me, bitch – and I don’t say that lightly: if you hang up right now, I will break up with you for six months. Do you understand me?”

  I roll my eyes as I step out of the car onto the platform.

  “All right, all right, what is so fucking important?”

  “Carson Drake has been in the shop every day since you two met up that morning!”

  I stop in my tracks and the two teens run right into my back, knocking me forward. They dash up the stairs without even looking back. Part of me wants to yell after them, but I’m too stunned.

  “I thought that might get your attention,” Tricia says smugly.

  “Has he – has he asked about me?”

  “Not specifically, but he’s talked to me each time. I didn’t pry, even though I should have, because my soon-to-be-former best friend doesn’t feel the need to tell me anything.”

  “Thank you for that, Trish. Things between us are – complicated.”

  “Well you better un-complicate them quick, girl, or I might just try to boat that fish myself. A prize like that starts swimming around, I can’t be blamed if I decide to drop a line in the water.”

  I grin and shake my head.

  “Give me two weeks. That’s all I ask.”

  “Two weeks and that’s all. After that, I make no promises.”

  “All right,” I say, pausing at the stairs that lead up to the street. “And I really am sorry. I promise I’ll be in tomorrow. We need to talk business, anyway.”

  “Fine. I’ll try not to be mad at you by then. Peace o
ut.”

  As I slide my phone closed and drop it in my purse, I glance at my reflection in a polished steel panel on the wall. Hair’s okay, make-up still good. I glance down to my blouse.

  My nipples are standing at attention like soldiers.

  Sigh.

  Chapter One Hundred Nine

  25. INTERLUDE

  The big man steps out of his spot under a weeping willow in Madison Square Park and into General Worth Square. His eyes follow Carson as he heads northeast on Fifth Avenue.

  This is highly unusual. Two contestants meeting with the quarry, neither of them giving her their key. Then the quarry leaves, and the contestants walk away in different directions.

  It makes no sense. Unless…

  He takes out his phone and dials a number.

  “Yes?” the voice says in Russian.

  “Something is happening. Something we’ve never seen before.”

  “What?”

  “I am not sure just yet,” he says. “But I fear we may have been compromised.”

  Chapter One Hundred Ten

  26. CARSON

  Sometimes being a nerd can come in handy. I mean, outside of building and selling multi-billion-dollar tech companies.

  The computer server room in my penthouse is something to see, although no one else ever has. The window wall that looks out on the Manhattan skyline actually acts as my monitor, reflecting multiple desktops projected from a lens that’s set into the ceiling. It allows me to see images at almost life size.

  I created a program the night the Chase began that’s been helping me narrow down my leads. It combines facial recognition software with a reverse search engine for image files, and it all works in a Tor browser. Translated, that just means I upload photos I’ve taken and the program analyzes the facial features. Then it searches the dark web for any potential matches in its clandestine databases.

  Of course, that might all be unnecessary; the information might be out there on the plain old Internet, so I’m also running the program on social media.

  Personally, I limit just about everything about me online. Nobody needs to know where I live, or what I’m doing, or how much I’m worth. That’s one of the reasons I’ve managed to stay off the Forbes list for so long.

  So between the dark web and Facebook, I should be able to wrap up the Chase long before my competitors. Richard Linkletter may have more money in the bank, but he’s Forrest Gump compared to me when it comes to gray matter.

  Even with the hardware I’ve rigged up, the process takes time. The system is currently working on camera phone pics I snapped of three different women I’ve seen multiple times in different spots around midtown. All during the day, which precludes a regular job.

  None of them were in expensive designer clothes or shoes, so they’re probably not rich. All of them are stunning, and they move like they’ve had training. Little things like walking with their feet pointed forward, instead of at an angle.

  It stabilizes the knees and makes it easier to avoid injury in a fight-or-flight situation. One of the many things I learned from Matthias.

  I find myself comparing all of them to Cassie, and to that woman they come up short. I don’t know what she does to stay in shape, but it’s probably CrossFit or something else regimented. She moves like a natural athlete these days, which is amazing, since she never got involved in sports in school.

  Then again, neither did I, and look at me now.

  I’m staring at the screen from my custom-made gaming chair as thousands of potential matching images stream by on the window wall, when my phone chimes.

  It’s a text from Maksim: I am being downstairs. Up I come.

  I leave the program to its task and head out into the living room. There’s a half-full decanter of Macallan’s on the bar – I picked up a bottle after my encounter with Red Dress at the Regent bar because damn, it was good.

  Of course, it better be at thirty grand a bottle.

  The aroma hits my nostrils as I pour the scotch into a couple of crystal glasses. I carry them to the elevator door that opens onto my living room just as I reach it. Maksim’s hand is open to receive it as soon as he walks into the room. After all, when you’re born into money, you become accustomed to the little details.

  From the outside, it must look like a choreographed scene out of a movie. It’s just one of the rituals we’ve developed over the course of our friendship. We’re cool like that.

  Says the geek who threw together a computer program in one night.

  “What is up, my homey?” Maks grins, raising his hand for a fist-bump. Every time he does it I want to slap him – fist bumps are so ten years ago – but I indulge him. He’s trying.

  “Chillin’ like a villain,” I grin back as we amble over to the study that adjoins the living room.

  Unlike the modern functionality of the rest of the 6,000 square feet, the study is done in rich wood and hand-woven Persian rugs. I designed it to look like the British gentlemen’s clubs I used to read about in Sherlock Holmes stories when I was a kid.

  We take our seats in a pair of antique wingback chairs. All that’s missing is a couple of Cuban cigars. Matthias would literally beat me with a rusty rake if he ever found out I’d been smoking, of course, so the air remains unpleasantly clear.

  Maks holds the first sip of scotch in his mouth for a moment, savoring it before it goes down. At least he has enough class to do that.

  We catch up for a while on what we’ve been up to. I’m sparse on details, of course, because we can’t talk about the Chase, even behind closed doors.

  Then Maks decides to throw me a curveball.

  “So, Carson,” he says with a grin. “When were you going to be telling me about your new red hair friend?”

  I almost choke on my drink.

  “What are you talking about?” I say, trying to be nonchalant.

  “The other day, I am walking past that Patty’s icy cream place you go to and I see you talking to the lovely red hair lady through the window glass.”

  His grin is supposed to put me at ease, but for some reason it only succeeds in annoying me.

  “She’s a friend of mine from high school,” I say. “No big deal.”

  “Yes big deal! Front of Wall Street Journal kind of deal. She is drop down gorgeous, my friend. I hope you enjoyed your time with her. When is, how you say, acquisition and merger?”

  “Merger and acquisition,” I correct him automatically. “But it wasn’t like that. She’s a friend.”

  She’s obviously more than that; she said so herself. But I don’t know what I think anymore.

  Maks smiles and nods.

  “You are making joke,” he says. “I get it.”

  “No joke. Cassie and I aren’t … together.”

  “Cassie,” he sighs. “Like Cassiopeia, the constellation of stars. Breathtaking.”

  I can’t argue with him there.

  “So you are not with her? You are not pulling on my leg, are you?”

  “No pulling,” I say. “Besides, we both know I’m … busy on something else right now. I have other things on my mind.”

  He nods thoughtfully.

  “So you will not be angry if I am making the move on this beautiful red hair?”

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hell to the no.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I say, desperately searching my brain for a plausible reason to say that.

  “But why are you saying so? You are not interested.”

  Suddenly it comes to me.

  “Cassie and I used to be really good friends,” I say. “If you started ... you know, pursuing her, it would just be weird. Like if you were dating my sister. You know?”

  Maks frowns. “It would be the honor if you dated my sister,” he says.

  I bet it would be. I’ve seen his sister – her eyebrows are even thicker than his.

  “You know what I mean,” I say.

  “I think I know that you don’t want anyone else to hav
e her, even if you don’t want her yourself. That is not cool, tovarishch.”

  “Look, I’m not going to go after any woman until I’m finished with … my activities for the next couple of weeks. After that, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Cassie and I might develop into something.”

  Maks drains his glass and stands up. I can’t remember him ever being angry with me, but right now he’s about as close as I’ve ever seen.

  “I think that is being pretty selfish,” he says. “And you are not the boss of me. If I want to talk to Cassie the red hair, I will do it. Maybe she will like me. You don’t know that she won’t.”

  “Maks…”

  I follow him into the living room, where he calls up the express elevator that only comes to my floor. He avoids my gaze, flipping through messages on his phone as he waits.

  “We’re friends,” I say. “Friends do favors for friends.”

  He looks up from his phone, as serious as I’ve ever seen him.

  “Like introduce you to women everywhere we go?” he asks. “Like make sure there is always party going on with beautiful ladies?”

  Okay, he’s right on that one. I’ve hit him below the belt.

  The bell rings as the doors open. Maks steps in and turns to face me.

  “I am thinking maybe you need to look at yourself in the mirror,” he says. “If you have so many thoughts of Cassie the red hair, why are you chasing someone else you don’t know even know what she looks like?”

  I have no answer as the elevator doors close in front of him, sending him straight to the ground floor.

  Chapter One Hundred Eleven

  27. CASSANDRA

  I’m at the stage where faces are starting to look familiar, which means it’s time to up my game.

  It’s not easy to keep track of them all. In my work, I always had a database to reference, teams of analysts forwarding me data, or a surveillance control with access to satellites or other means of tracking and identifying people.

  In the Chase, all I have is my wits. I’m not allowed to use any work-related technology. Even if I could, I’d be hard-pressed to pull it off without my former employers finding out.