by J. Kenner
“Give yourself a limit,” Jackson had told him. “You’re not an investigator, and you have a business to run. One week in the thick of it, and if you don’t have answers by then, you back off and let Ryan’s people do their thing.”
It was good advice, but that didn’t mean he would follow it. Right now, he couldn’t think past the next step.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know what the next step was.
He reluctantly believed Jeremiah. Not so much because he believed the older man had warm, fuzzy feelings for his grandchildren, but because he didn’t think Jeremiah had the balls to pull off a kidnapping, much less risk the fallout if he was caught. Jeremiah Stark was not a man who would do well in prison, and he had to know that.
And Jackson was right about Breckenridge. He’d boldly asked to be invited back into The Domino. Which meant he was either innocent or the boldest motherfucker on the planet.
With a frustrated sigh, he stepped off the stairs and into the chaos, then was rewarded when Nikki slid into his arms, a glass of Scotch in her hand for him. “The gatehouse guard called to let me know you were back. I thought you could use this.”
He grinned, the weight of the day sliding away from nothing more than the feel of the woman in his arms. “You have no idea,” he said, accepting the glass and giving her a very thorough kiss before taking a long, life-sustaining swallow.
Across the room, he saw Evelyn standing with Frank. He glanced down at Nikki, who nodded. “I think they’ve smoothed things over,” she said, drawing him toward the small seating area at the top of the stairs.
She pulled him down onto the love seat, then sat next to him, one leg tucked under her so that she was looking at him as she continued. “I still don’t know exactly what’s between them, but I think he’s gained back whatever points Evelyn docked him when he didn’t come home for me right away.”
“He’s trying to be a good father,” Damien said. “I respect that. It’s not an easy job.”
“You make it look easy.”
The words, so simple, shot straight to his heart. “I love you,” he said. “And God knows I’m trying.”
She leaned closer and kissed him. “Do you want to talk about today with Jeremiah?”
He made a scoffing noise. “It’s a rare day when I actually want to talk about Jeremiah. But, dammit, Nikki, he—” He cut himself off, a red-hot flare of anger making him grind his teeth and shake his head.
“Damien?” He heard an edge of panic in her voice. “Wait, wait a second. Are you saying—I mean, is he really involved? What did he say? Why would you wait so long to tell me?”
“No. Baby, no.” He stroked her arm. “I’m sorry I scared you. I thought it was him, but it’s not.”
“Then, what?”
The fury he’d tamped down began to boil. “Redemption,” he said, anger driving him to his feet. “My father said the girls were his redemption. And mine. Bastard.”
He saw a reflection of his own pain in her eyes. Then she stood, too. She slid one arm around his waist, her other hand going to cup his head as she lifted herself up on her toes and kissed him. Gently at first, but then he drew her in closer, claiming her mouth, taking what he needed. And, dammit, he did need it. Needed her. Her support surrounding him, and her love filling him.
“Redemption,” he murmured as they pulled apart. “You’re my redemption.”
She smiled, but it was bittersweet. “You’re wrong, you know. We’re a lot of things to each other, Damien, but I’m not your redemption. Because you don’t need redemption. You’re a good man, and you always have been.”
He looked at her face and saw that she believed those words. “Thank you,” he said, even though he knew damn well that they weren’t true.
* * * *
The hum and buzz of electronics and conversation filled the third floor, so much so that Damien almost didn’t hear the house phone. He snatched the handset up from the credenza, then frowned when the guard on duty announced the waiting guest.
“Nikki?” He lifted a hand to catch her attention, and she looked up from where she was reviewing the transcript of Rory’s confession and the formal statement he’d made when entering his plea. A long shot, but maybe he’d said something useful. “Did you order food?”
Her brow furrowed in confusion, and he was about to tell the guard to hold the scammer—probably a reporter trying to gain access—when Bree bounced across the room. “That was me. It’s Kari. She’s bringing by all the breads and cookies and pastries and stuff that were left over today.”
He must have looked baffled, because she went on. “I thought everyone could use the pick-me-up. That’s okay, right?”
“Very okay,” he said. “And very thoughtful. You can let her through,” he added to the guard, who still lingered on the line.
“I’ll go meet her at the door,” Bree said.
As she hurried down the stairs, he heard Ryan calling him over.
“What have you got?”
“Just come. You need to see this.” Ryan’s voice was low and level. “You, too, Nikki.”
“Something concrete?” He moved across the floor, coming to a stop behind the end of the table where Ryan had set up his laptop. He held out his left hand to Nikki, who had risen from her chair and come to stand behind him.
“Is it a lead on whoever was manipulating Rory?” she asked, twining her fingers with his own.
“Not Rory,” Ryan said. “Nikki’s office. Hang on, I’ve just about got this.” Ryan fiddled with a control panel that he’d plugged into one of his computer ports. Immediately, the third-floor projection screen descended and all windows that lit the room were shuttered, blocking out the waning light from the descending sun.
A moment later, as he heard the front door open and Bree chattering with Kari, the screen glowed white, then with a test pattern, then white again. Soon, grainy video footage started to play, a timecode running along the bottom.
“Is that—”
“The alley that runs behind your office building,” Damien confirmed for her.
“But I thought—” Nikki began.
“So did I,” Damien said, frowning at Ryan. “I thought there were no functional cameras back there.” They’d hoped that the perp had driven to the office and had parked in the small pay-for-parking lot two buildings down from Nikki’s office. Unfortunately, the security cameras for that lot had been tampered with a week before the vandalism occurred, and the lot owner hadn’t yet fixed them. The few other businesses that had cameras only aimed them at their own back doors.
And yet here was broad, high definition video coverage of the entire parking lot and a significant chunk of the alley leading all the way to the intersection. If Nikki’s vandal parked in that lot—or even just walked down the alley—they’d see.
“I don’t understand,” Nikki said. “Without cameras, where did this come from?”
Ryan tilted his head to indicate Ollie, who was coming to stand on the other side of Ryan’s workstation.
“What? How?” Nikki asked, voicing Damien’s thoughts.
Ollie shrugged nonchalantly, as if the whole thing was no big deal. But Damien saw the pride on his face, and knew that Ollie was pleased to be able to help. “Long story, but the bottom line is that the FBI has had a surveillance camera on that parking lot for a while. Nothing the FBI is interested in happened on that night, so I was able to get the footage copied for you.”
“And we are definitely interested,” Ryan said. “From my preliminary scan, I think we may have caught the perp on video.”
“Ollie!” Nikki ran to him and gave him a hug. “That’s amazing.”
“It really is,” Damien said, following Nikki and shaking Ollie’s hand.
“Perhaps we should hold off on showering him with praise until we see if the clarity is sufficient for an ID,” Quincy said, coming over from the far end of the table, where he’d been giving instructions to one of Ryan’s techies, an eager young man who looked to be
scrolling through data at the speed of light.
“Okay, here goes.” Ryan started to manipulate the video, fast-forwarding until a person entered the frame. “There, see? Look at this.” The screen split into two columns, the new video on the left and the security video from Nikki’s office on the right. On the right, they saw the now-familiar tall, thin figure in a white hoodie carrying a shopping bag.
“That’s our vandal,” Damien said.
“Bags look to be holding spray paint cans, and the timing is right,” Ryan agreed. “So, yeah, that’s the assumption.”
“Now we’re looking for him on the other footage?” Nikki asked. “Hoping that we’ll see his face so that we can ID him?”
“That’s the plan,” Ollie confirmed. “He probably kept his head down in the building on purpose. But he might not be so guarded outside.”
“Enhance the image,” Quincy said, and Ryan nodded as he manipulated the mouse, zooming in on the video footage of the alley until they were tight on the person walking across the screen, same outfit, the hood up, their head down.
“That’s not a guy,” Nikki said, her hands on the table as she leaned toward the screen. She turned to look at Damien, then Ryan. “See how she’s moving? Her hips.”
“Are you sure?” Ollie asked.
She turned to him. “Have you met my mother? I spent most of elementary and high school studying video tapes of women walking.”
“You may be right,” Quincy said. “But it’s all bloody useless unless we get a face. Boy, girl, teen, adult. We need more to go on.”
“Hell,” Damien said. “This isn’t going to—oh, fuck.” The word was ripped out of him, torn out by the image on the screen. Tall and thin, with a face he knew well.
Nikki was right. Their vandal was woman.
“Sofia?”
Nikki whispered the word, her voice full of pain. Damien ripped his attention away from the horrific image on the screen to find Nikki looking back at him, her haunted eyes breaking his heart. He took a step forward, as much to soothe as to be soothed, but she backed away, her hand up as if to ward him off.
“Nikki—”
“No.” She licked her lips, her eyes darting around the room. “Just, no.” For a moment she stood frozen, then she released a shaky breath. “You told me we could trust her,” she whispered. “That she was better. You promised me that, and then she went and destroyed my office? Called me a bitch?”
The words, so horrible and true, sliced his heart wide open. He wanted to scream an apology. To beg her forgiveness.
But he just stood there, shattering under the force of his failure, as she turned and hurried away.
Chapter Twenty
It might have been an eternity, or perhaps it was only an instant. Damien didn’t know. All he knew was that he’d stood there, useless, as Nikki left, leaving her tattered trust behind.
On his other side, Quincy bit out a curse. Damien barely heard it. He knew he needed to go to Nikki—needed to hold his wife in his arms and let her cry and grieve. He knew that—but goddamn it, how the hell could he do it, knowing that he was the one who had caused her pain? That she’d run from him when she was hurting, instead of into his arms.
“I need to check on her.” He said the words to no one in particular, then started toward the master bedroom, assuming that’s where she’d gone. He didn’t make it, though. He was brought to a stop by the quick, firm tug on the back of his shirt.
He turned to find Jamie shaking her head. “Let her go, okay? Just give her a few minutes to let it all settle. Seriously, D. It’ll be okay. But that bitch has been a thorn in her side from the beginning.”
“That’s why I need—”
“No. You don’t.”
“Goddammit, Jamie. You can’t—”
“She’s right.” Ryan’s voice was soft but firm. “She’s not saying forever, she’s just saying for now. Give Nikki some time to figure out how she even feels.”
He looked around the room, one of the few times he’d ever felt helpless. And he damn sure didn’t like the feeling. “Well?” he demanded, when Evelyn came over, his pain reflected right there on her face.
“You don’t need me chiming in. You already know they’re right.”
“Fuck.” In his head, the word came out loud and biting—a curse against himself, against the world, and most of all against Sofia. In reality, it was barely audible, and he sank back into one of the desk chairs, wondering when in the hell everything around him had begun to spin out of his control.
“I’m so sorry, Stark. I bollucksed that all up.”
“What?” Damien turned to Quincy. “What are you talking about?”
“I gave Sofia the polygraph, but I only asked baseline questions and then questions about the kidnapping. I didn’t ask about the vandalism at Nikki’s office. Didn’t even occur to me.”
Damien reached around with one hand and massaged his aching neck. “It’s not your fault. That wasn’t even on the menu. We didn’t have any reason to think the kidnapping was related to the vandalism. Still don’t.” He rolled his head, trying to release the tension. “It’s fucked up, but it’s not your fault.”
Quincy studied him for a moment as if uncertain. Then he settled into the chair next to Damien and leaned forward on the desk, his chin propped on his hand. “Why would she do this?”
So many reasons, Damien thought. Every one of which he’d foolishly believed had been relegated to the past or dealt with in her treatments. “Jealousy, for one. I have my kids. My family. And she doesn’t have me. Plus, she had a miscarriage recently. That was probably a trigger.”
“She’s in love with you,” Evelyn said. “She always has been. I’m sure she knows what she did was wrong, but her feelings got the better of her.”
“Got the better of her?” Jamie repeated. “I thought she was supposed to be all sane and stable now. Clean bill of mental health and all that.”
“Maybe she is,” Ollie said, returning from the kitchen with a basket of muffins. Behind him, Bree led Kari down the stairs.
“Um, hello? News flash. She totally tagged Nikki’s office.” Jamie looked to Ryan. “Right? I’m right, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “But I’ve been around long enough to know that she’s smart. IQ off the charts, right?”
Damien nodded.
“So why didn’t she pull the security feed from Nikki’s building? She had to know it was there?”
“Maybe she knew she couldn’t be identified,” Ollie suggested. “The angle’s wrong. That’s why we couldn’t get her face until we got the security vids from the alley.”
Quincy nodded. “All true. But if the second lobby camera had been working, we would have been able to identify her on day one.”
“That’s true,” Damien said. “She must not have known about the cameras.”
“Maybe she’s the one who tampered with the second camera,” Jamie said. “Because that was the one that would show her face.”
Ryan shook his head. “It was out for over a week before the vandalism.”
Jamie shrugged. “So? Maybe she planned it. I mean, remember what happened after Germany? She befriended Nikki using a fake name so she could toy with her and make her cut.”
“A fake name?” Quincy asked.
“It was freaky,” Jamie told him. “She had this whole persona going. I mean, she practically became Monika Karts. An actress, I think. Someone working in Hollywood. And she hung out in this coffee shop that Nikki used to go to on Ventura Boulevard, just down the street from her first office. And they got to talking. Nikki genuinely liked her. And then one day she goes to Nikki’s office, supposedly for some friendly get together, and instead she dumps out all these seriously disturbing photos of Sofia and Damien. Then she gives her this antique scalpel set and—”
“That’s enough,” Ryan said, his eyes on Damien.
“It’s okay,” Damien said, shaking off the memory of that horrible time when he came s
o close to losing Nikki.
“Sorry.” Jamie winced. “It’s only that—well, all I’m saying is that Sofia’s a woman who can handle some long-term planning.”
“She was messed up back then,” Damien said. “Really sick. And that’s not her anymore.” He drew a breath, hoping that was true. He believed it. The doctors believed it. But was it right?
“Are you sure?” Jamie asked, voicing Damien’s own doubts.
He shoved the doubt away. “I am,” he said, with as much force as he could manage. “She’s been under the care of the best doctors for years, and they all signed off on how well she’s doing. She’s gone through a twelve-step program. She’s doing okay.”
“Um, did you miss the part about the vandalism?”
“That doesn’t mean she’s unstable or crazy,” Ollie put in. “Maybe that’s who she is.”
Damien shot him a hard glance. “What are you talking about?”
Ollie shrugged. “People do stupid shit. They throw things. They have screaming fights. They cheat on their girlfriends. Some of them probably get pissed off at people they love and then pull out a spray paint can. That doesn’t mean they need to be institutionalized. Maybe it just means they need to talk it out with whoever they’re pissed off at.”
“He’s right,” Evelyn said. “I won’t deny Sofia has problems—we both know the hell she survived. But she’s worked hard to get her head on straight again. I think this is a blip. Not a relapse. At least,” she added, “I want to believe it is.”
“Believe me, so do I.” Damien rubbed his temples, trying to grab on to the small threads of hope that Evelyn and Ollie had dangled.
“What are you going to do?” Quincy asked.
It was the right question, because the truth was, Damien needed action. He needed to move. To do. He needed to fix what could be fixed.
He needed to grab some semblance of control in a situation where there was no real control to be had.
What was that saying? Fake it until you make it?
Right now, that’s exactly what he felt like he was doing.
“First, I’m going to call the UK and speak to her doctor, just to confirm what we’ve been saying. Then I’m going to go see Sofia. Talk to her. Tell her I know and get her to tell me what was in her head.” He drew in a breath. “I’m going to arrange for her to pay reparations—and then I’m putting her on a plane back to London.”