I stand still as a statue, thinking back over everything that’s happened between us so far, including everything that happened last night. When I recall our words, a chill runs down my spine.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because I know something you don’t.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“You, my friend, are about to get royally screwed.”
I thought she’d meant that in the obvious way—in light of what we were about to do—but maybe she’d meant something else altogether.
Whatever I’d been feeling before when I awoke—the tenderness and happiness, and that awful, blinding hope—turns to a sour sickness in my stomach.
I pick up the phone on my desk and dial a number I know by heart. When it’s answered on the other end—the same heavy silence as always, no greeting, only dead air—I say, “Connor. It’s Parker.”
The dead air comes alive with the rumble of a rich baritone. “Long time no talk, brother. What’s up?”
Looking at the Magritte, I reply, “I think I might need your help.”
The man who stands in my office an hour later with his bulging biceps folded over his massive chest is what one could politely call big.
As in, holy fucking shit, that dude is so big, he makes the Terminator look like a midget.
At six-foot-four and two hundred forty pounds of solid, military-grade muscle, Connor “Hollywood” Hughes owns and operates Metrix, the private security firm I’ve employed for years. He’s half Samoan and half Irish, and gets his nickname from his sparkling-white movie-star smile. He’s a doppelganger for Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock, except Connor has hair.
“Connor, sit. You’re making the room look cramped.”
Connor waves a giant paw in the air in a dismissive gesture. “I don’t sit on the job, brother.” He eyes the pair of white leather chairs opposite my desk. “Especially in something like that. The fuck is that, Barbie furniture?”
“Those are five-thousand-dollar Barcelona chairs.” When he looks at me with his brows raised, I say, “They’re designer.”
“You paid five large for chairs that don’t even have arms?”
“No. I paid ten large for chairs that don’t have arms. And if you’re not going to sit, we might as well go into the living room so I can make myself a drink.”
“A drink? It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”
I blow out a hard breath. “I’m surprised I waited this long.”
Connor’s eyes, the color of obsidian, bore into mine. “That bad, huh?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. That’s why you’re here.”
I rise and leave the office. Connor follows. For such a huge guy, he’s surprisingly light on his feet. I can’t hear his footsteps behind me. When we reach the living room, he leans against the wall with his hands shoved in the pockets of his black cargo pants and watches as I pour myself a glass of scotch from the crystal decanter on the sideboard. I raise the glass to my lips, swallow its contents, and fill it again.
Connor drawls, “Haven’t seen you this wound up since the night we met.”
The night Connor and I met—at a seedy cowboy bar—was the worst night of my life. I was twenty-two, piss drunk, and crying like a baby. I picked fights with all the biggest guys I could spot, including him. I wanted to kill everyone. I wanted them to kill me.
I wanted to die.
An hour earlier, I’d learned that the love of my life was dead.
Connor, five years older, fresh out of the Marines’ Special Operations Command and already running Metrix, knocked me out cold with a single punch and then dragged me out to his pickup so I could sleep it off in the back. When I woke up with a hangover and a black eye, he was leaning against the cab of the Chevy, calmly smoking. He looked at me and said, “You better do somethin’ about that death wish, brother, before it comes true.”
I stare out the wall of windows into the bright afternoon. A forest of skyscrapers stares back at me. Windows like blank eyes wink in the sun.
“There’s a woman—”
Connor laughs. “With you, there’s always a woman.”
I turn to look at him. I say quietly, “Not like this.”
He examines my face for a long, silent moment. “Go on.”
I turn back to the glass. “There’s a possibility I might be a mark.”
Silence. A moment later, Connor stands beside me at the glass, gazing at the view. “Money?”
I shake my head. “Doubtful. She’s got her own. Maybe more than I do.”
He slides me a look. “Blackmail?”
I shrug and take another swallow of scotch.
“This skank got a name?”
“Victoria Price.” I turn my head and stare into his eyes. “And if you ever call her a skank again, I’ll rip out your fucking throat.”
Not even mildly intimidated by my threat as almost every other man would be, Connor looks amused. “Wow. She must have a gold-lined pussy to get you so up in arms.”
I mutter, “You have no idea.”
Connor’s dark brows pull together. “Wait. Victoria Price? How do I know that name?”
I chug the final few swallows of scotch. It burns all the way down. “Bitches Do Better. Sound familiar?”
After a beat, Connor says, “You’re fuckin’ kidding me, brother.”
I run a hand through my hair. “No, brother, I am not.”
He stares at my profile and then—in his deep, hearty baritone—starts to laugh.
I growl, “Shut up, asshole.”
“You? The guy who goes through more tail in a week than he does underwear? You’re in love with the woman who makes a velociraptor look like a family pet?”
“I never said I was in love with her!”
Connor stops laughing. “Uh-huh. And denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.”
I curse under my breath and pour myself another two fingers of scotch.
After watching me carefully for another few seconds, Connor turns back to the view. “All right. Tell me what you got.”
I start at the beginning, from the moment Victoria walked into Xengu and sent me a death glare the likes of which I’d never seen, up to this morning and the crooked painting. Connor doesn’t think it adds up to much and tells me so.
“Don’t get your panties in a wad when I say this about your girlfriend, brother, but she’s a professional bitch. Famous for it. Made a career out of it. Acting batshit crazy is like the golden rule for bitches.”
“She also lies. About everything.”
He shrugs. “She’s a fuckin’ broad. Show me a broad who doesn’t lie to a man and I’ll show you another man. What else you got?”
I shake my head. “That’s it.”
“That’s it? Seriously? You called me up here for that?”
I close my eyes, exhaling. “There is something else. But you’ll think I’m crazy.”
“I highly doubt it. Try me.”
It takes me a moment to gather my thoughts. Then I open my eyes and look at my old friend. “I think I know her somehow. I think I might have met her somewhere before, but I have no idea where, or when. She just feels so…familiar.”
He stares at me. “What, like in a past life?”
“Jesus. Forget it. Forget I said anything. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am in love with her and I’m trying to come up with any excuse to fuck it up, because that’s what I always do with women. Fuck things up.”
Connor clasps a hand on my shoulder. His voice drops. “Easy, brother. Don’t start with that guilt shit again. What’s past is just that: past.”
I shrug off his hand. He always tells me not to feel guilt over what’s in the past, but he doesn’t know the whole story. I never told him what happened that night, the real reason I wanted to die.
If he knew the whole story, he definitely wouldn’t be telling me not to feel guilty.
Unable to stand still any longer, I turn away and walk to the opposite side of the room. Connor watch
es me with that stillness he has, not a muscle moving but his entire body giving off a sense of taut readiness, of violent action held in check. He’s watched me like this so many times, I’ve lost count.
It took a long time after we met for him to trust that I wasn’t going to do anything stupid to try to hurt myself.
He doesn’t know this, but one day I just decided it would be much better punishment for me if I lived.
“So I’ll look into her, then, yeah?” says Connor, still watching me from across the room. “See what I come up with. You need eyes and ears in her house?”
“No. Just see if…see if there’s anything strange in her background. Any connection between us…I don’t know. I’m not sure what we’re looking for.” I think of my office door, cracked open a few inches. “And put a lock on my office door, same type you’ve got on the safe.”
“All right. Lock’ll be on by tonight. I’ll get you some paper on her by Friday. Can do a quick scan today, call you if anything interesting pops up, but the other stuff’ll take a few days.”
“Thanks.”
Connor crosses the room, stops in front of me, and holds out his hand. We shake.
Holding my gaze, he says, “It’s probably nothing.”
I nod.
His black eyes grow piercing. “But if not, you should decide now what you want to do about it. Get your head straight, yeah? Because if you got feelings for this girl and she’s gunnin’ for you—”
“I know.” I cut him off, my voice curt. He doesn’t have to say more, and frankly, I don’t want to hear it. Because if Victoria Price is gunning for me, I’m going to have to make a choice between the two of us.
After last night, I’m not entirely sure I wouldn’t let her win.
Connor says good-bye and lets himself out, while I go back to staring out the windows, nursing my scotch and brooding.
Victoria. Who the hell are you?
26
Victoria
The moment the elevator doors slide open to reveal the private entrance of my penthouse, I shout, “Where are you!”
Tabby’s faint response comes from my office. “In here!”
I hustle in there so fast, I don’t even stop to take my heels off, though my feet are killing me. My new Louboutin platforms are over six inches high, and my arches hate me right now. I burst through the door, see Tabitha sitting at my desk, peering intently at the computer screen, and yell, “What the hell happened?”
Without looking at me, she calmly replies, “I told you. I was in the emergency room with food poisoning.”
I glare at her, huffing. “I just spent a hundred bucks bribing a valet guy to get my phone out of Parker’s car, the last fifteen minutes in a cab hyperventilating because you didn’t pick up your phone and only responded to my frantic texts with a VERY unhelpful ‘Chill, dude, it’s all good’—and now you’re sitting at my desk like the Queen of Sheba, surfing eBay for your next Hello Kitty handbag obsession while I’m suffering a heart attack about what leaked online? Tabitha, this is unacceptable!”
She looks over at me, blows her bangs from her eyes, and smiles. “Did you just stomp your foot? That was cute.”
“Arrrghhh!”
“All right, calm down! Take a load off, and I’ll give you the 411.” She waves to one of the chairs in front of my desk—my desk—and turns back to the computer.
“You’re so fired!”
She says nonchalantly, “I know. Sit.”
I make a growly noise, stomp over to the chair, sit, and toss my handbag on the desk. “Start talking, girl genius. What happened?”
She leans back in my chair, turning her attention to me. “The Drudge Report is what happened.”
The noise that escapes my mouth sounds like air escaping a balloon.
Tabby rushes to add, “But it was only a tiny mention, a few sentences, no pictures, only one eyewitness who claims he saw you at the Laredo airport exiting a private jet. It’s a total nothing story, Victoria. It wasn’t even picked up by any of the other major entertainment outlets.”
My eyes are in danger of popping out of my skull. “Nothing story? It mentions Laredo.”
She shrugs. “There’s nothing that ties you to that city, so…so what?”
I stand and lean over the desk with my hands braced against the desktop. “Parker Maxwell is so what!” I collapse back into the chair. “Oh my God. He’s going to figure out the whole thing. I’ll have zero credibility left. He’s going to ruin me. Everything I’ve built, everything I’ve worked for…”
I end with a helpless groan.
I can tell Tabby is resisting the urge to roll her eyes by the way her lashes are fluttering.
“Victoria. Think about it. Even if he did think it was a strange coincidence you were in Laredo, there’s nothing to tie you to it. Everything created by me and my predecessor, the late, great Mr. Dooney, says you’re from California. School records. DMV records. Voting records. Everything. And everything tying you to Laredo has been wiped out. Anyone looking for traces of you in Texas will hit nothing but dead ends. You’re a ghost there.”
When I don’t answer because my face is buried in my palms, she asks, “So how’d you explain it to him?”
I whip my head up and snap, “I had to make up a cover story on the fly about stopping to see my dearly departed old boyfriend’s grave on my way to see my sick mother in California, because my number one henchman—henchwoman—got sick and went AWOL!”
Tabby leans back in the chair, puts her feet up on my desk, crosses them at the ankle, and says sarcastically, “Why, yes, I am feeling much better, Victoria. Thank you so much for asking.”
I collapse back into the chair. After engaging her in a staring contest for a few seconds, I finally grumble, “I’m glad you’re feeling better. What was it?”
“Sushi, I think.”
“I keep telling you not to eat that disgusting sea urchin.”
“If someone told you filthy Grey Goose martinis were disgusting, would you stop drinking them?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Martinis can’t give me food poisoning.”
“They can give you cirrhosis.”
Tabby doesn’t drink. Normally I consider that a character flaw in a person, but she has other redeeming qualities, so I let it go.
“Can we please get back to the subject at hand? Namely, what can you do to prevent something like this from happening in the future?”
She swings her legs off the desk. “Nothing’s foolproof, Victoria. I told you that when I was hired. I’m one of the best, but I’m only human—and there’s only one of me. I’ve got programs in place that alert me to any mention of your name, but if I’m out of commission, that intel is useless. And once a story’s out there, trying to contain it is like trying to cut off a hydra’s head.” She casually inspects her fingernails. “Maybe we should consider staffing up.”
I stare at her with narrowed eyes. She’s been at me for at least a year to hire her an assistant. I’ve always given her an unequivocal no. There are only so many people I want knowing my business. As in, one. Her.
Watching her so nonchalantly inspect her manicure, I’m hit with a terrible thought. I gasp, bolting upright in the chair. “Tell me you didn’t do this on purpose so I’d hire you an assistant!”
She sighs. “You think I’d risk my job—my extremely well-paying job—to try to teach you a lesson? Besides, if you go down, I go down. I doubt the trustees of Stanford University, the Secretary of State of California, the IRS, or a dozen other public and private institutions will appreciate all my extracurricular activities associated with keeping the Queen Bitch on her throne.”
Her logic, as always, is impeccable, but I’m still not convinced. “Why couldn’t you just go in and crash Drudge’s servers like you did with that story from TMZ?”
She explains slowly, with exaggerated patience, as if speaking to a child. “Number one: if I had to crash every server of every company that ran a story on you, half the server
s in the United States would go down. Number two: there are people who track that stuff. People who work for government agencies with three initials, like FBI. CIA. Too much weird activity like that and it would eventually point a big red arrow at your head. At my head. Number three: I once met the guy who owns TMZ, and he told me I looked like the love child of Pippi Longstocking and Marilyn Manson. So any chance I get, I fuck with that dude. Number four: the story in Drudge had already been published, and it was a dud. It wasn’t worth the risk of drawing attention to it by taking it down. That would’ve made it more conspicuous, not less.”
“According to you!”
She looks at me from under her fringe of red bangs. “Yes. According to me. Who’s the expert here. And by the way, the best way to keep this kind of thing from happening again is to stay the hell away from Laredo, Texas.”
Game, set, and match: Tabby. Defeated, I sag back into the chair again and rub my fingers into my pounding temples.
Unlike me, Tabby isn’t one to wallow in a victory. She moves right on to the next topic. “Any luck with his safe this time?”
“His desk drawers were all locked. Locked! For a man who lives alone, he’s definitely paranoid about someone getting into his stuff. So I took another look at his safe, and I realized why there wasn’t a dial.” I give Tabby a meaningful look. “The round silver thingy that I first thought was where you insert a key is actually where you insert your finger.”
Her brows lift. Now I’ve got her full attention. She looks at me with eager eyes. “Biometrics? Sweet!”
“No—not sweet! Extremely unsweet! How the hell am I supposed to get past that? Chop off his thumb?”
She purses her lips as if she’s considering it. When I groan in frustration, she relents. “I’m kidding. No chopping. Now, listen, this is important. Since I didn’t find anything incriminating about him in the usual places, I dug deeper, like you asked. I hit both his business and home computers.”
Instantly I’m all ears. “And?”
One corner of her mouth curls up, as it always does when she finds something delicious. “And he’s got defenses on both systems that are so sophisticated, it made my panties moist.”
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