Forbidden Attraction: A Contemporary Romance Box Set

by K. C. Crowne

  I decided to get a cup of coffee. Maybe that would lift the fog around my brain a little bit, and I’d be able to carry on a more coherent conversation. Being alert might help me get a clear idea of what I needed to do to help my daughter. At any rate, it couldn’t hurt. And maybe if I stepped away from the computer, there would be a message from LM when I returned.

  This last idea was preposterous. I knew it was. But it felt as if it might be true all the same. I was allowing myself to succumb to madness. I needed to get it together. Tess needed me.

  I stepped out of my office and into the hall—and froze.

  Mr. Kepler and two of his associates were standing in the entryway.

  I saw red. It was all I could do to keep from launching myself across the office and slamming my fists into their faces. They knew where Tess was right now, I was sure of it. How dare they stand there in their natty business attire and look around as if they were here for financial advice? How dare they make friendly small talk with my secretary? As insane as it seemed, I almost wished they had come in guns blazing. At least that would have freed me up to fight back.

  But I couldn’t fight. I had to keep myself in check. I had to wait and hear what they had to say. LM hadn’t emailed me back, but there was every chance Kepler was here to tell me what my next steps should be. If I just listen to him and do what he says, I’ll get her back, I told myself. I had to believe that.

  Kepler saw me and inclined his head slightly. He said something to my secretary and strode across the floor toward me, his two colleagues flanking him.

  I had a split second to decide what to do. Would I invite these abominable people into my office as if they were human beings, or would I force a confrontation out here in front of witnesses?

  In the end, I made the same decision I’d been making over and over since the emails from LM had begun. It was too risky to involve other people. The last thing I wanted was to make these people feel cornered. They might resort to rash actions. Tess could get hurt.

  I stepped back and opened the door of my office, about to show them in, and then I someone that made me feel as if I’d turned to stone.

  Eric had just stepped off the elevator.

  He was looking around as if expecting to see someone. And I knew—I just knew—that he was here with Kepler. They had arranged this. They had planned to meet here, to talk to me together.

  That son of a bitch had my daughter. He’d had her all along.

  I wasn’t aware of crossing the distance between us. I wasn’t aware of my hands seeking out his throat. I didn’t even have the chance to enjoy the few moments of physical contact, the moments when I had him in my grip and could transfer a fraction of the pain and anguish I’d been living through onto another person. Onto the person who deserved it. He was supposed to be my best friend, but he’d thrown in with the mob to destroy my life. I couldn’t understand why he would do it. Could his need for drugs really be that bad?

  Or maybe he’d never been my friend to begin with.

  At any rate, the next thing I was aware of was the feeling of arms around mine, pulling me back. The crisp blue uniforms of building security and the hard pressure of a wall against my back. I realized all at once that I’d lost track of sound, that my brain had whited out all noise, but now it cut back in and I heard screams of “You bastard! You fucking bastard!”

  A moment later I connected the screaming with the rasp in my throat and realized it was coming from me.

  Eric looked terrified. His eyes darted from me to the security officers holding me in place. A third officer took him by the arm and began moving him toward the elevator.

  “No!” I yelled. “Goddamn it! Leave him here!”

  They ignored me. I was raving like a lunatic. I wouldn’t be able to have a conversation with Eric if I couldn’t behave like a human being.

  The elevator began its descent as soon as the doors closed with Eric and the security guards inside. God knew whether I’d ever see him again.

  I turned around slowly. Kepler was still behind me. A smile had split his ugly face now, as if my meltdown had been supremely entertaining for him. He reached into his pocket.

  And pulled out a blue card.

  I recognized it as soon as I saw it. I didn’t even need to see the letters embossed on the front to know what I was looking at. “What is this?” I whispered. “What the hell is this?”

  Kepler winked. He strode past me, pausing only to slip the card into my breast pocket.

  “Wait!” I howled after him. “Where’s my daughter! You have to tell me what you want!” Everyone in the office was staring at me, but I didn’t care. “You can’t just leave me with nothing!”

  But apparently he could. He reached the elevator just as the door opened, as if on cue, and stepped inside. I shook the security guards off me and ran for the stairwell, but by the time I reached the bottom floor, he had disappeared. I rushed outside, looking in all directions. The city seemed to rush around me. I felt dizzy and disoriented. Kepler was gone.

  I pulled the card out of my pocket and looked at it. A name was written on the back. Charles Sterling. I knew who Sterling was. He ran a coworking space downtown and was the CEO of a tech marketing startup.

  “We’ll give you a name. Take them out. Eliminate their business.”

  This was the name, I realized. This was what they wanted. I was being ordered to bankrupt Charles Sterling.

  And if I did it, I would get my daughter back.

  There was no question in my mind. No hesitation. I had been shown the path to getting Tess back. I would do whatever they asked me to now.

  My phone rang.

  I fumbled for it. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Noah.” It was Paul.

  “You have something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It might not be anything. But a doorman from the building across the street from yours says he spotted a guy hanging around outside your condo the night your daughter went missing.”

  “A guy? What guy? What did he look like?” I fully expected a description of Eric.

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Paul said. “According to the doorman’s description, he looked a lot like the guy who was accused of breaking into Jenna Robertson’s apartment. Joshua Michaels.”

  Chapter 29

  Jenna

  It should have been a relief to be back in my own apartment, but after everything that had happened, relief was an emotion I couldn’t quite seem to access. Not to mention, something was off with me and it ticked at the back of my mind. I hadn’t felt good in days and the stick laying on my bathroom counter explained why. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. How was I going to tell Noah? How would he react? How could I have been so stupid and careless? I lay sprawled on my couch, having double- and triple-checked the locks on all my doors and windows. I felt confident that nobody could get in without breaking something—although, whoever had broken in before had shown pretty clearly that they didn’t mind breaking things.

  I’d paid for a service to come and clean the place up. I had enough on my mind without having to worry about stepping on pieces of broken glass for the next week. And because nothing had been stolen, everything was more or less back to normal. I should have felt right at home.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t relax.

  I had considered going to my grandmother’s apartment. It was mine now, after all. But I wasn’t going to live there full time. At some point I would have to face my fears and come back to my own place. No sense in putting it off.

  Days had passed since Tess had gone missing, and at this point I had to concede that Noah had probably been right: she’d been taken against her will. A girl her age couldn’t just wander around the city for this amount of time. No, somebody else was involved.

  I felt painfully guilty about my efforts to convince Noah that she’d just run away. I didn’t think she’d necessarily have been found by now if I hadn’t insisted she’d l
eft of her own free will. But I knew that I’d made Noah feel as though nobody was in his corner. I’d been trying to help, trying to reassure him, but I’d inadvertently made him feel as though his fears were unfounded.

  On top of all of that, of course, I was just plain worried about Tess. Where could she be? Who would have taken such a sweet little girl, and for what reason? It had occurred to me that whoever had her probably didn’t know sign language, which meant she wouldn’t be able to communicate. That made the whole thing more horrifying somehow.

  I was itching to go out and explore the city, to look for her myself. There had to be something I could do. But New York was a big place. When I’d offered to search her favorite spots, Noah had been adamant that I stay home. That had been weird, actually. Why did he want me to stay home so badly?

  My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the apartment door. I rolled off the couch and hurried to answer it. I couldn’t suppress a flutter of hope—maybe it was Noah. Maybe he’d come to tell me that Tess had been found.

  When I opened the door, I found two men I’d never seen before. They wore official looking grey suits and each held up a badge. Detectives? I’d assumed Noah had spoken to the police, but we hadn’t spoken much. But that didn’t explain why there were here.

  “Jenna Robertson?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Detective MacReady,” he said, then gestured to his partner. “This is Detective Strauss. We need you to come with us down to the police station.”

  “What is this about?” I frowned.

  “We have a new lead on the break in you experienced a few days ago,” MacReady said. “We need you to come in and look at some photos. We also think the break in might be connected to the disappearance of Tess Clark.”

  “You have a lead on Tess?” I turned to get my shoes, which I’d taken off before sitting on the couch. “That’s great news. Have you spoken to her father?”

  The detectives glanced at each other. “Another detective is getting in touch with him,” Strauss said.

  “But you think the same person might be behind my break in and Tess’s kidnapping?” That definitely lent credit to Noah’s theory that Josh hadn’t had anything to do with it. What could he possibly want with Tess? But who would stand to gain by going after both Tess and me? What did we have in common?

  “We’ll get into it down at the station,” MacReady said. “It’s best we don’t discuss things here.”

  “Let me just grab my purse.” I snagged it from the counter. “Do I need anything else?”

  “No,” MacReady said. “The car’s waiting outside. Come this way, please.”

  I followed the detectives out of the building and into a white car parked on the street. They climbed into the front seat and I got into the back. I felt more excited and energized than I had in days. Would Tess be back home in her father’s arms before the day was over?

  I was so excited that I didn’t even register, at first, the fact that we were driving past the turn into the police station. When I realized what had happened, I assumed I’d made a mistake. This was New York, after all.

  “Where did you say we were going?” I asked, leaning up.

  “Quiet,” Strauss barked, his air of calm, suddenly gone.

  My stomach lurched as if I’d stood up too fast. “We passed the police station,” I managed.

  “I said be quiet,” Strauss said.

  Something was wrong. I should have known. I hadn’t even looked at those badges. This wasn’t a marked squad car. What was going on here? Even if I’d been mistaken about what police station we were going to, there was no reason for Strauss to speak to me the way he had.

  But they had to be real detectives. How else could they know about the break in at my apartment? How else could they know about Tess? I felt dizzy and confused.

  With as much force as I could muster, I ordered, “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Strauss turned around. His face had changed dramatically. He looked angry and frightening and not at all like the smiling, benevolent detective I’d seen outside my apartment door. “I told you to shut up!”

  “Tell her,” MacReady said. “No reason not to, now.”

  “We’re just supposed to get her, not tell her shit.”

  “Whatever,” MacReady said. “Listen, girl, if you want to know why you’re here, the answer is you have your boyfriend to blame. You want to know why your apartment was broken into? Ask him about that.”

  “And the little girl,” Strauss put in.

  “Yeah, that’s right, the little girl too. If Noah Clark had done as he was told, none of this would be happening.”

  I shivered as I realized the trouble I was in. “What did you tell him to do?”

  “That’s not your business.”

  “You made it my business when you broke into my home!”

  Strauss, with the speed of a bullwhip, slapped me across the face. The pain hit before I was even fully aware of what had happened. I gasped and my eyes filled with tears, but I refused to let them fall. I let the anger I was feeling fill me up, let it project outward at these two fake detectives. There was nothing Noah could have done, or refused to do, that would merit the actions they’d taken. They wanted me to blame him, but I wouldn’t.

  “I don’t care what he did,” I seethed. “I don’t care what he didn’t do. You’re the ones who kidnapped a child! You’re the ones who took her away from her father. And she didn’t do anything to deserve that. She’s just a little kid!”

  “Don’t make me fucking hit you again,” Strauss threatened.

  “No, just put her out,” MacReady told him.

  I gasped and looked at Strauss, a grotesque smile spreading on his face. I felt a sharp prick, then everything went black.

  I woke up feeling like my skull had been split in two and my hand instinctively went to my belly. What if what they had given me to drug me hurt the baby? I said a silent prayer and tried to force my eyes open.

  The only thing that made it possible for me to open my eyes was the incredibly dim light of the room in which I found myself. I squinted, taking stock of my surroundings.

  The room was big and unfinished. I lay on damp concrete floor. The walls appeared to be made of some kind of aluminum siding. I saw a door at the far end of the room, so I struggled to my hands and knees, thinking to make my way over and try to get it open.

  A small hand grasped my wrist, scaring me, and I looked back.

  “Tess!”

  She was grimy and obviously tired, her hair ratty and knotted and her face tear-streaked, but she looked unhurt. Jenna, she signed. I pulled her into my arms, hugging her tightly, feeling as though I’d never let her go. Thank God. Thank God she was alive. Thank God they hadn’t done anything awful to her.

  You okay? I signed.

  Yes. She hesitated. No. Yes and no.

  I nodded and hugged her again. She must be terrified. She’d been trapped here for days with no one to talk to, no one who could so much as explain to her what was going on.

  I pointed to the door and mimed opening it. I didn’t know the signs to ask whether it was locked. Tess shook her head and mimed pulling unsuccessfully on a door that wouldn’t give. I nodded. So much for that idea.

  Communicating was going to be hard. The signs I had learned didn’t apply to this situation. They were all about the privileged life Tess usually led. Noah had told me that resorting to pantomime when I didn’t know a sign was considered impolite, but I thought under the circumstances an exception could be made. Still, we’d get farther if we stuck to real signs. I thought for a moment. You eat?

  She nodded. Eat two day. They fed her twice a day.

  Hit you?

  No.

  H-u-r-t? I had to spell that one out.

  She signed something back.

  What?

  S-c-a-r-e-d.

  Me same. I hugged her again and felt her sob against me. You and me okay, I said, trying to put on a brave face so she’d
think I really believed it. P-o-l-i-c-e looking.

  Why? she signed. Why here?

  That was too complicated to even try to explain. Besides, I didn’t have much information to offer. I don’t know.

  Daddy?

  Daddy okay. Home. Looking for you.

  She nodded and wiped away her tears. I was stunned by her bravery. She was so young, and she’d been in this situation all alone for several days. If I’d been in her place, I would have broken down by now. But she was strong. I knew Noah would be proud to hear how well she’d handled herself.

  If we ever get out of this.

  No. I wouldn’t allow myself to think that way. I was the adult in this situation. I owed it to Tess to step up, to be brave for her. Now that I was here, she should be permitted to give in to her fear.

  I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. “Everything will be okay,” I whispered aloud, not even embarrassed that I was talking to myself. I just hoped that I was right and everything really would be okay. We could hold out for just a little while, long enough for Noah to track us down.

  Chapter 30

  Noah

  I went straight from the office back to my apartment, but Paul beat me there. He was waiting for me outside my building in an unremarkable dark blue sedan. I wouldn’t have noticed him at all if he hadn’t rolled down the window and called out to me.

  “Get in,” he ordered.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Get in the damn car, Clark.”

  I hurried around the car and climbed in, terror seizing me.

  “I don’t want anyone to see us talking,” he said, rolling up the window. “If you’ve got me watching the situation, who knows what the other side has going on.”

  Hearing him refer to the Mob as the other side gave me chills. It was the same sort of language they’d used themselves, asking me to prove what side I was on. I didn’t want any part of this, on either side. “Where are we going?” I asked again.