“You realize I’m likely to fire you over this.”
“Yes, Sir.” A faint smile curled his lips. “However, I consider it odd that you would fire me when she was always safe on the excursions I arranged, but on an evening when she was home with both you and your security team present…”
It was a blow I hadn’t expected, and I realized in that moment that Doug was angry.
He’d hidden it, but he was angry.
“You want to tell me what the problem is?” The question came out more harshly than I'd intended, but I didn't apologize for it. My sister was missing and he was pissed at me.
He hesitated a moment and then rocked back on his heels, linking his hands behind his back. He served time in the military – security details, my father had told me. Old habits died…never.
“Permission to speak freely, Mr. Lang?”
“That’s not what you’ve been doing?”
His lips twitched in what might have been a smile. He inclined his head slightly. “I’ve considered how lucky you are on a number of occasions, you know. Had Isadora been any less of a sweet child, or if she’d decided at any point in her life that she didn’t want to always make you proud of her…things could have been very different. I’ve thought, often, about how easily you could have lost her too.”
“Why do you think I want her safe?” I demanded. Of all people, I'd have thought he would understand.
The anger in his eyes faded away to something else. Sadness. “If I may, Sir. There are other ways to lose somebody than by burying them. Isadora is a sweet young woman…and an insightful one. Many people, including you, often don’t realize just how insightful she is. She always knew why you fought to protect her and why you treated her as though she were made of glass. It’s why she’s tolerated it for so long. But her patience was…is…growing thin. I don't know if this has anything to do with her disappearance, but there's more to your sister than you know.”
I drew in a slow breath. “What's been going on that I don’t know about?”
“Perhaps…” He gestured to the couch. “We should sit down.”
***
It had been nearly an hour since Doug had finished talking to me.
Fifty minutes had passed since I'd torn out of the underground garage in the Bugatti, the need to tear something up burning hot and fast in my gut. The road happened to be available, so the road it was.
It was Monday night, which meant fewer people would be out late in general, so it hadn't taken me long to get to roads with enough room for me to actually move.
It wasn’t doing anything to help my state of mind, though. A light in front of me turned red, and I would have blasted through, but at the last minute, I saw lights pooling on the road and I hit my brakes. A car on the cross street came through and I stopped, shoving the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Shit!
I was being stupid.
Anger did that to me.
But it didn’t always make me careless. And what just happened was fucking careless. My parents died because someone hadn't been paying attention when they were driving.
I had to slow down and I had to think.
No. What I had to do was find Isadora. Maybe she had just left, taken off for the night like Lieutenant Green said. I didn't want to believe it, but I supposed it was better than the alternative.
If she really had slipped out voluntarily, then I just had to figure out where she would've gone. After a minute, I knew. She would've gone to see that lousy boyfriend of hers. So…
“I’ll go see that lousy boyfriend.”
I whipped the wheel to the right at the next available chance and headed for Brooklyn. It hadn’t escaped my notice that Toni only lived about a mile away from Isadora’s boyfriend.
For all I knew, Isadora had slipped out and Toni was covering for her. Toni liked my sister. Everybody liked my sister. I scowled. I loved my sister too. I just put her safety before her happiness. How did I know Toni hadn't decided that Isadora's happiness should come first?
But I wasn’t going to think along those lines yet.
I’d see Colton first.
I’d talk to him.
We’d be calm and rational.
***
I was partially right.
Colton Stevens, although clearly freaked out by my sudden and angry appearance, had managed to be calm and rational.
I, on the other hand, had listened to him for all of thirty seconds before I grabbed him by the front of a wrinkled Star Wars T-shirt and hauled him up until we were nose to nose.
“Where the fuck is my sister?” I snarled.
“She's not here.”
“The hell she's not.”
He pushed away from me. He might've been lean, but he was still strong. He fell back a few steps. “She's not here.” His eyes widened suddenly. “What happened?”
“Like you don't know.” I swung at him, my knuckles cracking against his nose as he took the hit.
He came to his feet in a fast, easy bounce, blood dripping down from his nose. He wiped it on the back of his wrist, flinging the drops away without even looking at them.
Either he’d taken a few punches before or I’d hadn’t broken it. Maybe both. I had to admit, the fact that he came back up so fast was pretty impressive. Even more impressive was how level his voice was, despite the nasal twang.
“I’ll give you that one,” Colton said. “Now tell me what the hell is going on.”
Shit. He was either an extraordinary liar or he really didn't know. As pissed as I was at the guy, I tended to believe it was the latter…but I wasn't going to give him any details. Just in case I was wrong.
“She's not at home and she's not picking up her phone. I figured she was here.” I hoped he'd think I was just being an asshole brother and not that I was freaking out because I didn't know where Isadora was.
Blood continued to drip and he muttered something under his breath, then turned. I stared at his back, feeling a little sick as he turned away and strode down a small, cramped hall. He had an efficiency apartment. Since it wasn’t right smack dab in downtown, it had more room than some, but the entire place would've fit inside my home office. It was clean, though, and judging by the décor – heavy on the geek – he’d put his stamp on it.
When he came back in, he had a rag shoved up against his nose and his eyes were snapping.
I tucked my hands into my pockets and studied him, hoping to figure out what it was about this twenty-six year-old meat packer with the messy bronze hair that had entranced my baby sister so much that she'd been sneaking out for six months to see him.
His face was grim, or what I could see of it.
After a minute, he lowered the rag. The blood had slowed to a trickle.
“I gave you that one, rich boy, and only that one, because I understand. I got a sister too, and I'd be upset if I was in your shoes. But you come at me again and it won't be free.”
Rich boy?
I ran my tongue along the inside of my teeth. He wasn't making me like him any better. I gave him a longer, harder look. He might've been thinner than me, but I could see the corded muscles in his arms. He wasn't a pushover.
“If you’re looking for a piece of me,” Colton offered. “I wouldn’t mind blowing off steam.”
It was like he was reading my mind.
Then he grinned, and the smile had a hard slant. “And since you’ve already thrown the first punch, I don’t have to worry about Dory getting pissed off at me when she sees that I marked up that pretty boy face of yours.”
“Dory?” I echoed.
He cocked a brow at me. “What of it?”
“That’s the name of a fish.”
“I know.” He grinned. “It suits her. She’s adorable and ditzy. She cussed me out and smacked me when I told her that.”
I was tempted to do the same – maybe not a smack – but I could punch him again.
Except I had a lousy feeling in my gut. It was one I’d experienced a few too many times today. The one I got when I was wrong. And I’d been wrong a lot today. I had a feeling I’d been wrong about this guy too.
“You really care about my sister, don’t you?” I kept my eyes on his face as I asked the question.
“You just now figuring that out, rich boy?” He said it with a bit of a sneer. It was only mildly softened by the light of sympathy in his eyes. “Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to invite me for Christmas or anything. I’ll keep my dirty, blue-collar germs to myself.”
I could feel heat climbing up my neck, but I didn’t bother to try and correct him. It had nothing to do with the fact that he worked for living.
But at the same time, it had everything to do with it. Especially now.
He’d already told me he didn’t know where Isadora was, and from what I'd recently learned, if anybody would know, it was him. But if that was the case, then it was looking more and more like she’d been taken.
So I didn’t give a damn if Colton worked with his hands for a living, but wasn't it possible that someone with only a little money would be the kind of person who might want to find a way to make some easy money. Like a ransom.
I should've felt bad suspecting something like that about someone who cared for my sister, but if I didn't have him as a suspect, who did I have?
Nobody.
***
After a couple of drinks, I could admit, to myself at least, that I’d handled the night badly.
Of course, this was the first time I’d ever had my sister kidnapped, so it wasn't like I'd had a lot of experience in dealing with the proper way to handle it. Still, I'd always liked to think I was one of those guys who could maintain his composure even under pressure.
Now, I knew the truth. Under pressure, I was exactly what I was at any other time in my life.
An ass.
I’d lashed out at anybody and everybody but the persons responsible – the sons of bitches who’d grabbed my sister…and myself for failing to protect her.
That was the honesty yielded by a couple of drinks.
Of course, I also sucked when it came to any kind of self-reflection.
So I had a few more drinks.
That’s where things got fuzzy.
At some point between brooding and having my keys taken away by the nice but firm bartender – admittedly, I wasn’t so far gone to know that I needed to give them up – my brain started to spin in and out of focus.
I think I tumbled into one cab, and then out.
I should have gone home.
But something else I sucked at too many times was doing what I should do.
Things got
really
fuzzy after that.
Which was probably how I ended up staggering up a set of stairs that I didn't recognize.
What I did know was that I’d asked the cabbie to drop me off somewhere around here.
Why?
That was the fuzzy…
The door opened, and everything snapped into focus.
Toni.
Toni Gallagher stood there glaring at me. Her dark red hair piled on her head. She was wearing an old t-shirt that hit her mid-thigh.
Her eyes, dark and blue, raked over me from head to toe, and the look on her face was one of vague disgust.
For reasons I couldn't recall, that pissed me off.
I lifted a hand and pointed my finger at her.
Both of her.
“You…”
I swallowed and realized I was slurring my words. Damn. I was drunker than I realized.
She finished for me, an elegant eyebrow arching over her pretty eyes. “You're drunk.”
“Are you?”
Toni rolled her eyes. “Go home, Ash.”
“Home.” I nodded. That made sense. I guess. Then I remembered and my face fell. “Iz…she’s gone.”
Toni’s face softened and she moved closer.
That made it okay, right?
Chapter 3
Toni
The last thing I expected at nearly three a.m. was to have somebody banging on my door.
No. Correction.
The last thing I expected at nearly three a.m. was to have Ashford Lang knocking on my door, drunk off his ass. Once I managed to get his drunk ass over to my couch, I saw that his knuckles were busted up.
At some point, he’d hit somebody. I really hoped it wasn't someone who was going to press charges. That was the last thing he needed at the moment.
Sighing, I pushed his hair back from his face. “What in the hell am I supposed to do with you?” I murmured. It was a rhetorical question. He wasn't even close to coherent enough to answer.
Besides, common sense already told me what I should do.
I should call a cab and send Mr. Lang back home. At the most generous, I should call the emergency number for Doug that Isadora gave me and have him come get his boss.
I didn’t listen.
Forty minutes later, I was practically drowning him in water, tomato juice and a little extra something I learned helped replace the lost electrolytes and helped beat a hangover. Well, I hadn't technically learned it. Aside from all of the tips pre-med and psych students exchanged, I'd had years of watching my four older brothers come home drunk and not wanting our parents to know. I'd paid attention.