Dared by a Dangerous Man Read online

  And I was a pushover. Rob and I were management. There was nothing wrong with delegating work to someone else.

  I was starting to understand why murder rates went up during heat waves. At the moment, I wanted to peel off my sweaty skin.

  Standing under a bridge, the air heavy with stale piss and human desperation, I realized what was really bothering me. I was still angry with Corbin. He’d said he thought I knew his super secret assassin group was trying to get in touch with him, but then he’d contradicted himself when he said it was different this time.

  Either it was different or it wasn’t. Either Jennifer contacted him personally, or she didn’t. I should have pushed, but he’d distracted me. Intentionally.

  He should have told me.

  I wondered if the two of us had been spending too much time together. I didn’t have a problem with it when things were good, but I wanted a night to myself.

  As I walked back to the car, I also decided to toss this case. As a partner, I could do that.

  I got back to the office just before 5:00. Rob and Katrina were in Dad’s office, talking something over. Rob waved me in.

  “Did you think about it?” he wanted to know. Kat, wearing her scary game face, blew past me. I felt bad for the person she was tracking.

  “Think about what?” I asked.

  “Expansion. We get more space. You get your own office. When Corbin comes by, you can close the door to make lovey-dovey eyes.”

  I felt my frustration at Corbin flare up. “We aren’t like that at all.”

  “What’s going on with you two? You seemed kinda weird yesterday. And you said something about him getting married again… Did he propose?”

  “No, and nothing’s up,” I snapped.

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  And then, because this thing had been festering inside me since lunch the day before, I started talking. “He wants to go back to work,” I said.

  “Bounty hunting?”

  I shook my head. “The other job.”

  Rob reflected, face grim. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. And he didn’t even tell me directly.”

  “What, did he play whisper-down-the-lane?”

  “You’re so funny, but yeah, he kinda did.” What else could I call Jennifer’s visit, and the you’re in the way mini-speech?

  “Audrey, he’s a good guy. He treats you like a princess.” Rob shrugged. “Talk to him.”

  “It so happens that I asked if he missed it and he said he hadn’t thought about it.”

  “If he’s not thinking about it, he doesn’t miss it. What’s the problem?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head in exasperation. “He didn’t mean that the concept of missing the work has never crossed his mind. If that were the case, I’d be ecstatic. He meant it more along the lines of… He hasn’t reached a conclusion. He can’t decide if he misses it or not.”

  “Ok…”

  “You don’t think that’s an excuse?”

  Rob’s eyebrows lifted slightly. I waited for him to dispense some bit of guy insight that would calm me and put everything into perspective. Instead, he looked away and cleared his throat.

  “You know what? Never mind. You’re just going to take Corbin’s side.” It was all over his face.

  “Audrey—”

  “What did you want?”

  “Will you support me on the expansion?”

  I sighed and leaned against the door frame. “Yeah,” I said.

  “Yes? Why?”

  He was so stunned that I almost laughed. “Because you make a good point.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “And we’re going to trade. I’ll support the expansion if you back me up. I want to focus on private investigation work starting now. For six months. It’ll take that to build up a reputation. Chasing bail skips and bounties and trolls under bridges really screws up my schedule.”

  Rob’s features twisted in a pained expression. “Audrey, you’re the best person we have.”

  “Tied for best.” I flicked at the stack of files on the desk. “We’re taking everything that comes through the door, and that’s great, but it’s not what I want to do with my life.”

  He looked like he wanted to tell me something important. Then, “What about big bounties? You’re allowed to go after them. I’ll always vote for you, so it’s not an issue.”

  “Thanks to Corbin, there’s nothing in the area. I don’t understand why it even matters to you if I hang out my shingle. Dad still thinks I’m a kid, but you…”

  He made a face.

  “What?”

  “It’s just… It’ll suck not having you around.”

  “Rob, seriously? When was the last time we actually worked together?” I walked over to the desk and shoved the chair, and Rob, aside with my hip. I opened a drawer and pulled out a piece of paper and drew a large rectangle.

  “This is—”

  “It’s a box,” Rob said. “A television set. A laptop. A bad boob job—”

  I flicked his arm to shut him up. “This is the building,” I said, looping my finger in a circle to indicate the office. I added on a second rectangle. “The expansion, right?” I added doors, some windows.

  “Yeah, I get it,” Rob said. “It’s a crude drawing, but I see.”

  I shaded in part of the second box. “All this would be part of Stroop Finders. But this…” I jabbed the pen into the unshaded part. “This would be Twin Investigators.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  I frowned. “Obviously the name needs finessing—I made it up ten seconds ago—but the point is that we’d be working together. Once I’ve got a toehold, you can join me.”

  “Investigation?” He shrugged.

  “What?”

  “Not really my dream,” he said apologetically. “That was always your thing. Paperwork and research are my least favorite parts of this job.”

  I traced the wall of the building while I thought. An idea came to me. “Ok. Instead of taking six months, I’ll try three months. We could work it out so that I spend half my hours there, half here, and you could do the same. So we’d be working together, and I’d have help getting the business started. We’d be sharing Erin, so less paperwork—”

  “Not to pee on your dreams, but that’s not a plus. She’s overworked as it is.”

  “Then we’d hire a second receptionist, part time to start. So?”

  “You haven’t said anything about Corbin.”

  “Way to change the subject.”

  “But he wanted to work with you.”

  “So yet another employee to pay for?”

  Rob’s face said he knew that it was a weak argument. He didn’t know the extent of Corbin’s wealth, but he wasn’t clueless.

  Anyway, I didn’t want to work with Corbin. I shrugged, drew a stick figure outside the building, back where we kept the dumpsters. “Fine. His desk would go here.”

  “Where would my desk go?” Corbin had come out of nowhere to stand in the doorway, his electric blue-green eyes curious. Heaven help me, his tight white shirt, designer jeans and cowboy boots made him look like a hunky movie star who’d wandered off set.

  And he was carrying a bag from my favorite bakery.

  Now it all made sense. He was feeling guilty. Lots of sex, now carbs and sugar.

  I flipped the paper over. “Looking for me?”

  “Ok,” Rob said, practically jumping out of Dad’s chair. “It’s a deal. We’ll support each other. That way we can both be miserable.” He looked at Corbin, then at me. “Think I’ll head out. Kat could use backup.”

  Corbin closed the door almost before Rob was gone. I crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the trash as I came around the desk. “You’re in my way.”

  Surprise flickered across his face. “I am?”

  “Yeah. I have more work to do because someone made me late this morning.”

  He smiled gently, refusing to be sucked in. “Heaven forbid you pu
t in a seven-hour shift amid all the ten-hour days.”

  It was something we’d talked about far too many times. “It’s not for here. I have a second job, someone to investigate. I would have told you, but apparently we don’t share things anymore.” I was talking louder, faster.

  His face hardened. “It’s clear we need to sit down and work through this. I’d been hoping to do it this weekend.”

  I stepped back, peeved. “This weekend? If you’re going back to working for them—”

  “I’m not,” he said firmly. “And I disagree that I should have told you immediately.”

  Arms crossed, I just glared at him.

  “Audrey, I don’t have all the details yet. But I will soon, and that’s when it will be appropriate to discuss this.”

  “In that case, why bother telling me at all? It’s your life to live as you want.”

  “You’re being childish,” he said.

  “Name calling. Lovely.” I stepped back and angrily gestured. “Now if you’ll please move out of my way, I have things to do.”

  “Baby. Love. I don’t want to go back to that,” he said, his voice clipped.

  “Jennifer says you do.”

  “And why would you believe her over me?”

  “Then what? What do you want?” I was so tense that I could feel the heat building up in my chest. “Something’s not right between us, Corbin. Something happened. I feel it here.” I pressed my trembling hands into my gut and stared up at him, daring him to contradict me, to tell me I was imagining things.

  He didn’t, and I felt all my confidence bleed away. “I suck at relationships, ok? I know that. So I don’t know how this is supposed to go. You kept things from me and it hurts.” My voice cracked, but I pushed on. “I don’t want to be mad at you, but I am, and I’m also mad at myself. But I don’t think I’m being unreasonable.”

  The fire in his eyes intensified, then died. He took a step back.

  “Say something! What? What happened? What’s going on?” My voice was loud enough that anyone in the office could probably hear.

  “It’s Audrey,” he said.

  I shook my head, confused at how he’d phrased it. “What did I do?”

  “No. It’s Audrey, my wife.”

  “What about her? You’re not ready to move on?”

  His lost expression broke my heart. “No, baby. I’m clear on that.” He hesitated a long time, his eyes staring into mine like he was looking for something. “What I mean is that she might be alive.”

  Sweat drenched my brow and chest, trickled down the small of my back. I tried to swallow the sudden lump in my throat as I forced myself to look at Corbin.

  The pained look in his eyes told me that I hadn’t misheard, hadn’t misunderstood.

  His wife might be… alive?

  “How?” I tried to say. The acrid taste of bile filled my mouth, burned my throat. My legs went rubbery.

  “We’ve… They’ve got a man who claims her murder was faked. I didn’t want to say anything until we knew for sure.”

  There was a sudden buzzing in my head, so loud I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. My eyes fell to Corbin’s lips. They were moving. He was saying something, but I didn’t know what it was, couldn’t make out the words over the high-pitched ringing in my ears.

  “She’s alive,” I managed.

  “We don’t even know if it’s true. They’re still trying to figure it out.”

  Like a switch had been thrown, my panic transformed into burning white anger. “Still trying to figure it out?” My words came out in fast, embarrassing gasps. “When were you going to tell me?”

  “When I knew something for certain either way,” he said. “This, upsetting you, was exactly what I wanted to avoid.”

  That wasn’t what I needed to hear, and not just because I hated secrets.

  Corbin was supposed to be saying that he was glad if she was alive but that it didn’t matter. He was supposed to pull out the goddamn ring—or not, if he hadn’t picked one yet—but get down on his knees and propose.

  But now he was waiting—we were waiting, apparently, because I was part of that group—to know if she was still alive.

  I was waiting to hear if I’d lost him.

  I’d been clenching my jaw to avoid losing the half-digested donut that I’d eaten as a late lunch, and the muscles ached from the effort. The numbness in my fingertips, so familiar. Darkness, closing around me. The weight on my chest.

  We don’t even know if it’s true.

  But I could tell he thought it probably was. Otherwise he would have said it was probably a hoax, a rumor, a lie.

  He wanted it to be true. Of course he did.

  This was the thing he’d wanted since he was twenty-five. And now he’d gotten it. The only wish on the tip of his tongue, the woman whose death had driven him to murder. Me, I was just a passing fancy, an amusing diversion compared to his need for her.

  I remembered how his voice had sounded when he’d talked about her, about how he’d first seen her fixing a moped or some bull crap on the streets of Paris. Rich girl down in the muck. She was so perfect, so sexy, so irresistible.

  I despised her so much that it hurt. And I hated him, too, for doing this to me.

  Because it felt intentional, like the conspiracy I’d imagined the day before was real.

  Then his arms were around me, crushing me against him. His feel, his scent were so familiar.

  Not mine.

  In his embrace was supposed to be safe, but his touch hurt. Every cell in my body was suddenly plunged into mourning. My hands clenched into fists because to chase comfort in what I couldn’t have was foolishness.

  And I hated myself for the black longing that I tried to suppress… I didn’t wish her dead, but…

  I was despicable.

  My stomach lurched as the room began to tilt.

  Every piece of me was coming unglued, and I knew that if I stayed there another moment, I was going to dissolve into so many pieces that I’d never get myself put back together again.

  Desperately, I struggled out of Corbin’s arms. “I have to go.” My voice was breathy, hoarse. “I have work to do.”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  “I think I need to be…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t say aloud that I needed to be alone. Not when I now knew I’d spend the rest of my life deprived of him.

  “But I need you,” he said.

  I looked into his eyes, that electrifying blue-green framed by dark lashes. How many times had I lost myself in his gaze? Or maybe it was just once, but it had been permanent. I didn’t know my way back to normal, my way back to life without him.

  But I’d have to figure it out, somehow. Despite what he’d said, he didn’t need me. Corbin Lagos didn’t need anyone.

  Because I was the wrong Audrey. Always had been.

  Still, as I searched his familiar face, I desperately wanted to believe the lie he now held out. I wanted to believe in all the mornings we’d woken up next to each other, all the evening walks where we’d lingered by the swans. I wanted so badly to believe in his love.

  No one could know what they would want, who they would choose, in a situation like this. It just wasn’t possible.

  I did know one thing, though, an undeniable truth. I felt it in every fiber of my being. Corbin Lagos would never desert the woman he’d pledged his life to.

  And even though he was blocking my path, I was the one in the way.

  “Please. Move.” The words were forced through my choked vocal cords. “Move.”

  “Audrey—”

  “Don’t say that name!” I screamed, the words tearing rawly through my throat, heat rushing to my face.

  Startled, Corbin stepped aside and opened the door, and I barreled out, plowing between Martin and Erin.

  “Audrey! Looks like we’re tied again,” Martin said. I knew he’d heard me screaming, that he was trying to pretend things were normal.

  I didn’t g
ive a fuck what Martin thought, or about normal.

  I needed to get home where I could cry in peace. Then I’d dry my eyes and get back to my life.

  Chapter 8

  I stood in front of my apartment and stared dumbly at the lock. In fact, I had no idea how I’d gotten back, but I was soaking wet. I’d driven out of the office parking lot in some sort of fugue state, then, unable to trust myself behind the wheel, I’d parked in a convenience store and started walking.

  Bits and pieces came back. Cutting across the football field, the sprinklers erupting when I was halfway across. I remembered it now. Someone had been yelling at me, trying to warn me. Everything after that… I remembered trudging up the stairs. Sort of. How long had I been standing here?

  My arm seemed to weigh a thousand pounds as I lifted my keyring. The strength to shove the key into the lock was almost beyond me, and for a moment I stood there, unsteady on my feet, and wondered if I shouldn’t sit on the top step and wait a few minutes.

  Or lie down there.

  I continued thinking about it even as I turned the key, twisted the handle, stumbled through the opening door. I was halfway to my bed before I realized I hadn’t closed the door hard enough to shut it.

  With a choked moan, I fell forward, onto the mattress, the bedding crumpled and twisted and smelling like Corbin, like me. I hadn’t made my bed when I’d last been here. How long ago?

  I was soaked. Getting my sheets wet. I’d have to put them into the dryer if I didn’t move soon, and I didn’t think I had any quarters. It had been easier to do laundry at Corbin’s place, with his top-of-the-line machines. I’d always balked at letting his house cleaners wash and fold my dirty clothes.

  Suddenly, I loathed quarters. And my wet clothes, and my bed, and my apartment, and Corbin; though I still loved him desperately, I hated him more than I’d hated anyone before.

  I needed to get up, but I couldn’t move.

  All the different ways Corbin had broken my heart had never, ever hurt this badly. This was the first time I’d felt hopeless.

  This was the first time when he was the problem, not his job.

  A situation like this called for hitting the bars with my best friend. But I couldn’t call up Veronica, tell her to get her ass into town and help me drink my no-good boyfriend into nothing but a blurry memory. I didn’t want to forget him. I wanted to keep him.