So that was what he’d taken from what she said in the office about not doing this anymore. His head was up his ass and once he got over his sulk, he’d realize that. Way back at the start of their relationship, before it really was a relationship, he’d tried to tell her that he wasn’t a good bet as a boyfriend. After she accepted that, he got belligerent and told her he wasn’t going to leave her on the open market. She expected this experience to play out the same.
“Thank you,” she said, flattening her hands against the wall at the small of her back. “I suppose that means you are too.”
“Right then,” he said, taking a reverse step.
“I’ll be seeing you, Tucker.”
What could have been pity in his eyes morphed into melancholy then in a flash it was gone, leaving his stare blank, black, vacant. He didn’t say another word, just looked for a second, turned, and left.
Taking a long, loud breath, she closed her eyes and told herself it would be ok. He might have accepted a job, but he’d never accepted one then vanished in the same hour. There were things of his at the apartment that he would need, and in the basement of the office too. This was a man she knew better than she knew herself and he’d have preparations to make before disappearing from her life, which gave her the chance to make him see sense before he was gone.
Explaining to Dempsey that they were leaving only took a few seconds, her cousin assumed that Tuck was outside, so he accepted that she was safe. Except Tuck wasn’t outside and the car they’d arrived in was gone. Kadie couldn’t ask for Dempsey’s or he would know that Tuck wasn’t giving her a ride.
Getting herself to a main road took longer than she thought, but eventually she got there and found a cab. The driver took the long way around for a shortcut, but she didn’t mind as it gave her a chance to think about what she was going to say.
Of course she wouldn’t tell Tuck that she had followed him. Instead, she decided to go with the work angle. Saying she was ill would make him baby her, so he wouldn’t talk to her, which was what she needed. There were files at home that needed her attention and Tuck wouldn’t know that they weren’t urgent.
When they finally got to her apartment, she trawled the cars, but his wasn’t there. Asking the cab driver to wait, she ran up the stairs just to double check. Nothing was out of place, not until she went into the bedroom. Some of his clothes were gone, but that didn’t alarm her. What alarmed her was the electronics, or rather the lack of them. He’d taken all of his toys, all the computers and gadgets that were usually locked in the bottom drawer of his long secure cabinet under the bed.
The solid metal case was pulled out, unlocked, and emptied, there was nothing left. Her knees gave way and she sank to the bed. Had she just made a mistake? She let him go without a fight because she thought there would be time for the fight here, in their home. After all the arguments were done they would be in a private place to have wild, make up sex… Except, he wasn’t here.
The blare of a car horn woke her from her daze, and she bounced to her feet. If he wasn’t here then he would be at the office, there was nowhere else he would go. That Tuck was working fast to clear out gave her the fire under her ass that she needed. Running for the door, she didn’t even lock it, she just hoped that the latch caught when she slammed it. Getting to the office before Tuck could leave was urgent, nothing else came first.
Slamming the car door, she gave abrupt instructions to the cab driver, then promised him an extra twenty if he stepped on it. Sinking back into the seat, she closed her eyes and tried to calm herself, Tuck couldn’t have more than a forty minute lead on her. Of course, he was in his own vehicle, and could drive as fast as he liked, and on whatever route he liked. But, this was crazy thinking, she couldn’t let herself believe that he was trying to get away from her in such a hurry. There was no reason to think that he wouldn’t be in the office basement.
Sure enough, when she got there his vehicle was outside and relief relaxed her muscles. She paid the cab driver and got out. Straightening her clothes, she reminded herself of why she was here, work, nothing else, if he happened to be here, so what. At least, that was what she wanted Tuck to think.
Ignoring the niggling worry that she didn’t see any lights on, even in the narrow basement windows that showed on one side of the building. She convinced herself that he didn’t need to have lights on and the glare from the computer screens wouldn’t show because of the angle. Also, he’d tinted the window slats to conceal what was inside, so there would be no light.
Unlocking the door, she frowned at the flashing alarm panel. While punching in the code, she forgot all about a cover story, and ran down the stairs. Only she and Tuck had ever been in here, the whole building was his but this section was only for them. It was filled with flashing lights and gizmos he wouldn’t trust anyone else to see.
Only one corner contained anything approaching comfort. It had a large top-of-the-line sofa bed, and a huge-screen TV that he had brought in for them to watch movies while he was working with one of his systems that she didn’t understand. Sometimes he could be down here for days, but when that happened, she just moved in with him and they simply stayed here, together. There was a small bathroom that was nothing more than functional, and a few kitchen necessities, but this was his lair. There for them to enjoy each other while he worked, nothing more.
Typing in the code, and giving her fingerprint, she waited for the door to open. It beeped and whooshed open, and she didn’t hesitate. The moment she stepped into the dim haze, her heart froze. The usual beeps and flashing lights on the panels and screens around the room were silent and dark.
He’d shut everything down. He never did that. Never once, in all the time she had known him, had he turned anything in this room off. These machines were his babies and always doing a dozen things each and every second. He used the servers he nurtured in here to piggyback many of the things he did when he was working here or away.
With another step inside, she saw a large brown envelope on the nearest facing desk, “Toots” was scrawled in his script, and then she knew. He was gone.
FOUR
Eight months later
When your man leaves you alone in a nightclub parking lot after telling you he’s never going to see you again, it stings. Kadie decided, not too long after her heart broke, that she wasn’t going to take his declaration lying down.
For too long she’d accepted his excuses and sat at home waiting for him. Bringing up their situation in the office was supposed to be a move toward changing it, to integrating her deeper into his life. It wasn’t supposed to finish their relationship.
After wallowing in self-pity for a few days in the basement, where she locked herself up alone, she’d given herself a mental shake. If she wanted to talk to Tucker Holt then there was no goddamn reason that she shouldn’t be able to, she deserved at least a conversation with him.
Tracking him down wouldn’t be easy, she’d been under no illusions about that. One reprieve was that the business was never going to excel in the same way now that the real brains had abandoned it. Dempsey was good with computers, he had qualifications and knew procedures, whereas Tuck had an instinct that put him at one with the machine. Without her job to worry about, she had plenty of time to find her ex.
Tuck was careful about not leaving things lying around, which was how she was so sure that he wanted to divide her from his other life, but she’d known that there had to be something that would point her in the right direction. He might not be expecting her to stroll up and present herself in front of his colleagues, but he had no right to dump her ass and take off without any follow-up discussion, not after five years together.
Determination was inspiring on a mission. Kadie had learned that making a plan and focusing on how to implement it was more productive than lying around whimpering about how her life had gone wrong.
The apartment was a dead end. She’d stood in the middle of his basement lab, surrounded by the silent machi
nes, and known her journey to find Tucker would start right there.
Wishing that she’d paid more attention when Tuck was doing his hacking, she made little progress with the computers. Frustrated, she wouldn’t let herself be beaten and decided to take advantage of her intern. Without telling Howie who the computer belonged to, she told him they had a digital forensics job and asked him to pull up any names or addresses that might lead to contacts of the computer’s owner.
Staying out of Dempsey’s way was easy, he had enough business to keep him occupied. Almost immediately, she could tell that Howie was suspicious. Given the level of security on Tuck’s machine, and probably the kind of encryption too, it had to be obvious that the computer belonged to a person who knew what they were doing and one who didn’t want to be snooped on.
Still, it took the kid just a couple of hours to pull up one file. It was a document containing spotty background information and incomplete observations that she guessed came from surveillance. It gave her one name: Nykiel Sikorski.
On gaining that information, she was confident it wouldn’t take her long to find the man who would be her first link. Turned out she was wrong, for months she’d chased down leads and just when she was about to give up, someone found her. Howie.
The kid had been tailing her, which was sort of embarrassing because he was such an awkward geek, in no way a pro. She’d like to think that she would have noticed him schlepping along behind her. In her defense, she’d been distracted by the various bars and clubs that she had to frequent to try to find Nykiel Sikorski.
He wasn’t an easy man to track down, and when she did, she was struck by such elation that she might as well have found Tuck himself.
“He’s here?” she asked, and the barman she’d been talking to nodded to the corner.
On a raised section in the corner of this pounding nightclub was a booth filled with people. Bulky men stood around it in poses suggesting they were security agents. There at the head of the booth was her man: Sikorski.
Not wanting to get too close, she ordered a drink and began to edge in the direction of the booth. Striding up there would be impossible with all of the security men standing around, and she didn’t want to ask Sikorski about Tuck until she was sure they were friends.
This was the first concrete link she had found. The first connection to her man in months. So many times, she’d been ready to give up and grieve for the relationship, but without him, she had no purpose. Getting up in the morning depended on her belief that she would see him again, that she would find him and prove to him that she couldn’t be cast aside.
What he had done wasn’t fair, and someone had to tell him that. It had occurred to her that he may have moved on with his life. He may have a new girlfriend or be screwing around with a posse of females. There was also a chance that he had no interest in rekindling their relationship either. With what she’d been through over the last seven and a half months, she wasn’t sure that she wanted him back anyway.
Love still warmed her, but she ignored it because she couldn’t trust him, not after what she’d been through. Anger was easier to find and at first, she’d believed it was unsated passion, a pent up, rageful lust aimed at the man who she resented for still having control over her. Even now, after months apart, he dictated her life and it was like he couldn’t care at all.
Since she’d packed a bag and snuck away, she’d made only a brief call to her cousin, Dempsey, to tell him that she was getting out of town for a while. Confused as he was, she could tell from his questions that he believed she was with Tuck, and she didn’t correct that assumption. Dempsey would never have let her come on this kind of a mission alone.
Edging down the bar until she got to the end closest to the booth, she noticed Sikorski looking in her direction a few times. She smiled, blinked her eyes away, and looked back, playing the furtive but interested onlooker. Straight away, his lips began to curl, not in attraction as such, but in satisfaction that he’d been spotted.
Ok, so he had an ego, she could use that to her advantage. Flirting it up, she kept the little eye dance going and hid her mouth in her drink letting him think that she was loose, maybe a bit tipsy. All she had to do was get close, if she could talk to him then she could figure out what kind of a person he was and why Tuck might want to associate with him.
The idea that Tuck might appear just because she did also crossed her mind. If what she’d seen on the computer were surveillance records then it was possible that Tuck was tailing this guy. That being the case, Tuck could see her here and intercept her before she spoke to Sikorski. So far, that hadn’t happened.
Sikorski got the attention of one of the security men and spoke to him while keeping his focus on her. She had him. Trying to remain clueless, she didn’t look straight at the security guy as he came over to her.
“The boss wants you to join him for a drink,” the oaf said when he leaned in to grumble in her ear.
He didn’t wait for an answer, just grabbed her upper arm and began to pull her along beside him. So much for civility. Kadie maintained her smile, as if she was perfectly fine with this idiot manhandling her. Tuck sure could pick his friends. It stood to reason that he kept her away from this aspect of his life when it was so dangerous. Though she hadn’t faced it while they were together, the only reason to maintain a barrier between her and the truth of what he did was because it might hurt one of them if he didn’t.
Adapting to the caliber of people her ex worked with hadn’t taken her long, she’d grown up in poverty, surrounded by crime, and bounced around several foster homes before her aunt, Dempsey’s mother, took her in. The duration between past and present shrank to nothing when she started questioning people on how she might find the man in the booth she was being dragged toward now.
Tuck had given her a good life, set her up with responsibility, and made her feel important. Now she speculated that it had all been a trap, a gilded cage, meant to seduce her away from making her own decisions, keeping her right where he wanted her. Manipulation came in many forms, Tuck had never been violent, always let her have freedom, but the chain on her ankle had been loose enough for her to miss its presence for half a decade.
Her anger came back. Locating Tuck was supposed to give her closure. Initially, it had been meant to win him back. Now, all she wanted to do was smack him in the face. She felt used, abandoned, and didn’t like being vulnerable because a man walked away from her. But he had been her whole life and she’d lost sight of her own dreams because she’d been too busy deferring to his while being the dutiful housewife, sitting at home, waiting patiently for her man to return and indulge her with his presence. She wasn’t sure who she angrier with, Tuck or herself.
“Good evening,” Sikorski said, half-standing to take her hand so he could pull her around the booth and seat her beside him. “Your eyes are mesmerizing.”
The thick accent wasn’t attractive, not that she expected to feel any sort of sexual pull toward this man. Instead of being exotic or commanding, it just came off as cold, just like the eyes he was trailing over her body.
Touching her collarbone, she slid her hand up into her hair. “Thank you,” she said. “I feel very privileged to be here.” Ego, she’d noticed he had one, now it was time to appeal to it.
“You are,” he declared, proud of his superior position in the room, and the respect of those around him. Those who were at his table said little and what they did say was in low whispers. Either these people worked below him or were terrified of him, maybe both were true. “Sapphire.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, not understanding where the word had come from.
“It’s what I’ll call you.”
Like she was a pet. Her eyes were a striking blue, very brilliant, and she’d been told that before, so the name didn’t surprise her. It also served her interest that he played this game because it meant she didn’t have to reveal herself to him. Being a passing fancy was fine and she could play a role for one ni
ght until she found out what she needed to know.
Widening her smile, she nodded, trying to seem pleased that she’d been named by him, rather than insulted. Whatever game he wanted to play, she’d play it, as long as he kept his hands to himself. Maybe after another drink or two, she’d ask him about what he did and who he worked with. A drink or two for him that was, not for her. Kadie had never been much of a drinker and with so many variables floating around, she wasn’t going to take the risk of putting herself in too vulnerable a position.
Right now, they were in a bustling nightclub. At any time, she could excuse herself to the ladies’ room and depart if she felt unsafe. Protecting herself came before obtaining any information Sikorski might have, and if she didn’t get what she wanted from him then she’d find another avenue to get it.
If this man, who could be dangerous, knew who she was, he might link her to Tuck. More likely, he’d link her to Dempsey, who was sitting at home unaware of where she was or what she was doing.
Although she didn’t plan to upset the man sitting beside her now, rubbing her thigh, she also didn’t know enough about him to trust him. Dempsey wasn’t expecting an Eastern European criminal to come busting in to kick his ass, so she wouldn’t give Sikorski any ammunition to want to hurt her.
As back-up, she’d make sure he never knew her real name, and she’d left all her ID’s at home meaning no one would be able to trace her family. As long as everyone she cared about was safe, and she was the only one taking risks, she’d push forward and take the precautions she needed to ensure her own survival.
Though her desire to track Tuck down was waning, she could only go so far before she had to admit to herself that Tuck didn’t want to be found. A few months of looking for a man she’d loved for five years was acceptable, much longer and her desire for closure would come across as obsession, and she didn’t want any man to sneer at her with ridicule.
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