Game of Shadows

by Amanda K. Byrne

  For lack of anything better to do, I uncap the water and drink, grimacing when my stomach twists in protest. “I mean it, Nick. Strong Cass has left the building.” At least for the rest of the day. Meek Cass is firmly in place, and she’s not giving up her spot.

  Our standoff stretches for several minutes, Nick blocking the door when a woman cracks it open. Finally he shifts on his feet and jerks his head to the door. “I’ll take you home.”

  A worm of hurt wiggles its way through my chest, whispering he should show more care. I shut it up. I didn’t ask for hand-holding and cuddles. I asked for sex, a good, thorough fucking, and I got it.

  We stop by the vacant office to back up my work and shut down the computer, and I hand the notepad to Nick for safekeeping. In the elevator, I lean against the wall, trying not to replay the events of the past fifteen minutes, but failing. Turner would have some choice words for my reaction. I press a hand to my stomach as I shuffle after Nick. It doesn’t want to settle, and I’m not sure I can handle a long car ride.

  The drive to Manhattan Beach doesn’t take nearly as long as it has in the past, leaving me to wonder if Nick’s more concerned than he’s letting on since he’s forgoing his usual winding route. More red flags fly when I tell him I’m going to take a sponge bath because I shouldn’t have let my wounds get wet last night. He produces some plastic wrap and proceeds to tape it over the gauze.

  As a result, my wounds are mostly dry after my shower, though I change the gauze to be safe. After pulling on a pair of yoga pants, a tank, and a zip-up hoodie, I shuffle out to make myself some tea. Then I remember I didn’t buy any at the store because I rarely drink it at home, and I bend over the counter, digging for the strength to go out and buy a box. It’s a few blocks. Some exercise will do me good.

  “Cass?”

  “Tea,” I mumble without lifting my head. “I want a damn cup of tea, and I don’t have any.”

  “What kind?”

  The strength it takes to raise my head is ridiculous. “I don’t know. Something tasty. I like hibiscus and chai.” Probably not ideal for an upset stomach, but I like the tartness.

  He palms the keys sitting on the counter and heads for the door. “Sit. I’ll be back in a few.”

  Sitting. I like sitting. Sitting means I’m on my ass instead of my feet. I make my way to the couch and curl into the corner, staring out through the French doors at the pale blue sky.

  True to his word, Nick returns about fifteen minutes later with a paper bag, and I struggle to my feet.

  Besides the box of tea bags, he purchased a loaf of potato bread and some chicken noodle soup, as well as a couple bottles of plain seltzer water. He picks up the bread. “Multigrain can be harder on your stomach. Figured you might want some toast.”

  Then he turns away to fill the kettle.

  I fumble the twist tie off the bag and pop a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster. The kettle shrieks about the same time the toast springs up. I carry my mug and plate into the living room, set them on the coffee table, and settle myself on the couch.

  I figure Nick will ensconce himself in the next room and do whatever it is he does in there, but he pulls the blinds, takes the plate from my lap and the mug from my hand, and nudges me from my corner, turning on the TV and handing me my snack before pulling me against his chest. He enables the box used to stream Netflix onto the TV and finds the show I’m in the middle of watching.

  Comfort. Comfort I didn’t ask for. Comfort I don’t know how to handle. I finish my toast, body tense, and he sets the empty plate on the table. “Relax,” he murmurs.

  Heart wary, my body obeys and melts, little by little, assured for now he’s not going anywhere.

  Chapter 22

  I don’t have time for this.

  I don’t know how to handle the mess in my head, all these feelings waiting to burst forth, and Nick’s taken to cuddling.

  Cuddling.

  In the office, he stays on his end of the floor, I stay on mine, and I lock down the riot inside, beating it into submission. It has no place here amongst the mergers and acquisitions and deals gone sour. My stomach jumps every time Marc’s name comes up, and Isaiah’s concerned I’m still ill because when we have lunch, I barely touch my food.

  How can I tell him my stomach’s turned traitor, and it’s the most innocuous of my punishments?

  Constantine’s been by as well, adding his insights and pushing a bowl of soup on me. I eat a third of it and stir the rest, hoping he’ll think I’m eating, because I can’t think of what to say to him, not after the information I found. Seems most of the deals that almost didn’t go through were brokered by Constantine, and Nick had to step in last minute to save them. Prime ground for resentment, yet Constantine doesn’t show any outward anger toward his cousin. Still, it’s not something I can ignore, though I do push it aside.

  Nick’s careful to stay away the first couple of days. Three days after he took me home early, he locked the door to the empty office, yanked my pants down my legs, and buried his face between my thighs. It marks the start of a change in our relationship, making it clear our age difference is no longer an issue.

  Not that I’m complaining. If anything, it’s one good thing, his appetite for me. It’s insatiable and varied. Torturously slow, rough enough to bruise, fast, soft, but there’s one constant.

  It’s intense.

  That, coupled with his newfound hobby of encircling me with his arms and lounging on the couch after a day of documents, documents, and more documents, has me jolting back and forth like the rope in a tug of war. Nick’s quiet, confident affection is screwing with my mind. Plain and simple. I’m getting to the point where it’s less about the sex and more about sex with Nick.

  Sex with Nick is beyond my scope of knowledge. Sex with Nick is rapidly approaching the area inhabited by the happy couples of the world. It doesn’t help that our evenings involve him distracting me with conversation in an attempt to get more food into me. Sometimes it works. When it doesn’t, he gives me his scary face, and I cram a few bites in.

  The conversation is the worst part of the whole deal. He tells me about his sisters and the rest of the family. He has story after story of the trouble he and Constantine caused growing up. He’ll change it up, throw in a snippet about his college days. They don’t sound so different from my own.

  If he was a person to me before, a friend of sorts, I don’t know what he is to me now. Which makes it so much harder to mention my misgivings about Constantine.

  We’re in what I’ve come to think of as our usual spots tonight, dinner over, the kitchen cleaned up and the food put away—he’s gotten really good at doing the dishes—slouched onto the couch, my back flush against his chest, a blanket he dug out spread over my legs. He’s got one hand tangled in my hair, the other tucked under my tank top, splayed across my belly. We’re several episodes into season one of The West Wing. Nick’s choice, over my protests that I didn’t like politics.

  The show is so frickin’ good.

  “Cassidy?”

  “Hmm?” I crane my neck around. “Yeah?”

  The hand in my hair works its way up my scalp. “You didn’t answer the question.”

  I was drifting, engrossed in the show, conscious of his chest rumbling and his hands on my skin. I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying.

  I shift so I’m facing him. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “Found anything useful yet?”

  It’s the same question he asks me every night, and every night I give him the same frustrating answer. “No. I ran a tally of times Marc’s name comes up in conjunction with any particular project, and the highest number of instances was the Nautilus project. Either it’s a dead end or there’s information missing because everything I’ve read substantiates Isaiah’s statement. It simply fell apart. There’s no reason that anyone involved would be angry enough to want to eliminate Marc. Or you, for that matter.” />
  My skin tightens, and sweat breaks out along my hairline. I’ve been steeling myself to do this all week, the urge growing stronger with each hour I spend hunched in front of that fucking computer. I need more information because, so far, all I’ve got is my gut telling me to take a closer look at Constantine, and I’ve been afraid to. I don’t want to think about what it’ll do to Nick if I’m right, and his cousin, his friend, is somehow behind this.

  Wanting Nick’s complete attention, I grab the remote and shut off the TV, then straddle his lap. “Tell me about Marc,” I say quietly.

  His gaze searches mine. “What do you want to know?”

  I fist my hands in his shirt to anchor myself. I haven’t eaten much today, anxiety a spring winding tighter. “Everything. Everything you can think of, everything you assume, what people said about him. Isaiah says they were more like brothers than cousins. One of your sisters was close to him, too, right?”

  “George. Georgina,” he clarifies. “You think he’s the key?”

  The room is freezing. I pull the ice inside, coating my stomach, stilling the blood in my veins. I climb off his lap and settle myself cross-legged next to him, stifling a wince as the skin around my leg wound pulls tight. “I think he was ready to die. I’m not sure it matters if we know if it’s suicide by assassin or if someone else really ordered the hit. He knew it was coming, and he’d made his peace with it.” I have to make my peace with it, otherwise the guilt will swallow me whole.

  I snag the blanket and wrap it around my shoulders. “Specifically, I want to know about the last year or so of his life. Did he screw anything up? Stop going out? Anything out of the ordinary, I need to know.”

  He regards me coolly, the heat between us dwindling to nothing. We’re allies here. Not friends, not lovers.

  He gets to his feet and walks out of the room. He returns with the notepad full of my scribbles. He drops it in my lap, along with a pen, and retakes his seat. “From what I remember, Marc wrapped up a project about two years before he died. It wasn’t an acquisition, more like a reorganization of one of my existing companies. With the personnel shifting, there were grumblings, but that’s business. He sat in on a search team to hire a new head of R and D a few months after that. I wasn’t involved. Con might have more information, or Terry.”

  “Terry?” The name’s been in the files.

  “He worked closely with Marc, and I think they were good friends outside of work.”

  Nick talks for almost an hour, running down who was most upset by Marc’s death. Besides his sister and his cousin, I have a list of ten names, some within the family, some people he worked with.

  I tap the pen on the pad. “Of those people, who knew about Josef?”

  “Isaiah was the only one high enough in the family to know what Josef was utilized for, but Josef wouldn’t have taken orders from him.”

  “Who could have given them?”

  He scuffs a hand over his jaw. “Other than myself, that would be my father, Constantine, and my uncles, unless someone managed to buy Josef’s loyalty.”

  We freeze at the same time as the implications of what he’d just said sink in. I lick dry lips. “How much money would it take to buy him off?”

  “Depends. The hit on my life is the first indication I’ve had there’s unrest within the family. If it goes deeper, it might not have been difficult to do.”

  It comes off like a rationalization, albeit a logical one. I set the pad and pen aside and get to my feet. Instead of narrowing the list of possible suspects, I opened a brand new can of worms. I imagine Nick could use some time alone. I wander into the kitchen and open a cupboard for a glass.

  He scares a squeak from me as he comes up from behind and scoops me up to carry me into the bedroom. His hands and mouth everywhere, I meet his fury with one of my own, willing to ignore the elephant in the room for a little while longer.

  * * * *

  With a viable list of suspects, there’s less need for me to go in with Nick every day. I can access information using one of the computers set up in the second bedroom to get what I need. Creating dossiers in a place where a large portion of the staff is related to the CEO either by blood or marriage doesn’t strike me as a smart idea.

  Nick, however, doesn’t want to leave me alone.

  “Why? There’s no reason for me to come with you. The only person who knows we’re here is Constantine. Do you think he’s suddenly going to blab?” If he was smart, he wouldn’t for a while, and that gave me time to figure out if my suspicions were founded or not. I sit up, sheet pooling around my waist, and start hunting for the sleep tank Nick pulled off me a little bit ago.

  His silence is disturbing, especially when it continues. I find the tank and slip it on, then twist around. He’s sprawled out, taking up over half the bed, hands under his head, muscled chest on full display.

  I check my chin for drool.

  He watches me through half-hooded eyes, mouth a slash under his nose. “We have to move.”

  “Move? Move where? Another safe house?”

  The bed creaks as he sits up, swinging his legs over the edge. Naked, he strides to the bathroom, shooting me a glance as I ogle his ass. “People are asking too many questions. We’re at my house starting tonight.”

  I locate my underwear in the sheets, pull it on, and follow him to the bathroom. “Your house is secure.” It’s not a question; a man like Nick wouldn’t live somewhere without safety measures in place.

  “Secure like your apartment was secure.” He turns on the shower and motions for me to strip.

  I lean against the counter instead. “So your house has a security system and a couple of deadbolts. Fabulous.”

  “I didn’t say that. Poor analogy. There are security cameras everywhere, and I spend several hours every few months upgrading the system and moving the cameras around. No gate, reinforced steel doors, bullet-resistant glass, fully fenced back yard. The safest thing about it is the location.” He steps into the tub.

  “What, it’s impossible to get to?”

  “It’s in Santa Monica. In the middle of the block. Surrounded by houses just like it.”

  I picture a man like Nick surrounded by snooty, older, rich people and snort. “I’m going to go make coffee.”

  “Start packing your shit up,” he calls after me.

  The rest of the day is like all the other days. Nick’s off doing whatever it is he does. I stare at the portal icon on my monitor. It’s one thing to look into his business dealings and weed out possible suspects. It’s another to investigate his family. My fingers tremble as I set them on the keys.

  Nick wants this information. Sucking in a breath, I type in the password he gave me and click submit.

  The sheer amount of data is daunting, though far easier to search. Nick must have told Constantine what I was up to because he drops by well before Isaiah would show up to take me to lunch and demands I try the new Thai restaurant a few blocks over. He helps me back up the dossier I’m working on and locks the office before hurrying us out of the building.

  “Why all the secrecy?” I ask when we’re ensconced in a booth at the back of the restaurant.

  Constantine lowers his menu enough to level a seriously? look at me. “Dom’s okay with Isaiah knowing what the hell you’re doing?”

  I stick my tongue out at him, my stomach a solid lump. All this time spent with him isn’t making it easier to eat. “Point taken. He thinks Nick’s paying me to go through old files.”

  “And we’ll just let him keep thinking that,” he says, going back to his menu.

  The afternoon is harder because I’ve switched to the dossier on Isaiah. He’s too new an acquaintance to be a true friend, but he adds another layer of guilt all the same with his friendly grins and ongoing concern over my eating habits. His ties to Marc are too strong to be ignored, though. My attention’s split between the computer and the door, nerves fraying as the minutes drag past.r />
  Nick shows up about an hour to quitting time. “You look like shit.”

  I go to push my hair away from my face and end up brushing at air, having twisted my hair into a tight braid in a fit of nervous energy. “Thanks for that.” He’s got his jacket on. “We’re leaving?”

  “Need to do some shopping. There’s no food in the house.”

  I back up the document the way Constantine showed me and shut down. “Somehow I think that’s a regular occurrence.” I snicker, but sober quickly when he doesn’t react. “What?” I follow him out of the room and wait while he locks the office door.

  His hesitation is slight, and I might not have noticed if I wasn’t watching him so closely. “It’s my night for family dinner.”

  I stop dead in the hallway while he continues toward the elevator. “Your family is coming to dinner?”

  “Not the entire family. Parents, sisters, their husbands, and kids. Con and Isaiah and their parents, most likely.” He glances over his shoulder. “Coming?”

  Hell no. I’m staying right here in this hallway where it’s safe. Where I’m not surrounded by Kosta men and women who will likely want to kill me after they learn what I’ve done.

  I fist my hands, wishing for the first time in days I had a knife on me. I’d wave it in front of his face to distract him and escape down the stairs. “I’ll call Denise and have dinner with her.”

  He approaches me like he’d approach a scared puppy, all slow and careful. “Scared?”

  Terrified. “Yes,” I admit. “They’re not likely to be as forgiving as you.”

  “Too late.” He grabs me around the waist and throws me over his shoulder, jerking when my fist lands square in the middle of his back. “Such violence, love.”

  “Put me down.”

  He doesn’t let go until we’re in the garage, and then he pins me to the car with a searing kiss. “You’ll be fine,” he murmurs. “No one else has to know.”

  Tell that to my angry stomach. There’s no way I’ll be able to eat anything tonight.