Annihilate Me (Vol. 3) (The Annihilate Me Series) (12 page)

“Let’s do it.”

And we did.
 
Alex’s
office was large and modern, with slate gray walls, colorful, cutting-edge art,
and a bamboo floor.
 
A massive
glass table faced a wall of windows that overlooked Manhattan, which shined
beyond the windows in a way that underscored the enormity of our
situation.
 
Millions of people
living in this city, and only one or a few wanted us dead for whatever reason.
 

On his desk, was one of the latest iMacs—the one with the
largest screen, which was perfect for what we needed it for.
 
He brought up his email, and downloaded
the photo.
 
I pulled up a chair,
and we were able to see a hell of a lot more than we could on my cell.
 
Due to the amber lighting Peachy
favored, the photo was a bit grainy, but it was easy to make out the faces in
the crowd.
  

One struck me almost immediately—Gordon Kobus, whose
airline Wenn was preparing to take over in what Alex already had said would be
an ugly battle.
 
In the photo,
Kobus was standing just to the right of my shoulder, talking to a group of
people but looking directly at us as we left the room.
 
I pointed him out.

“Kobus,” I said.

“So it is.”

“He doesn’t look particularly involved in his conversation.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Could it be him?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.
 
I’ve already put his name forward to the FBI and to my
team.
 
If I was no longer alive, he
might think that Wenn would no longer have an interest in his airline.
 
But that isn’t true.
 
The board will take over Kobus Airlines
with me or without me.
 
They know a
smart opportunity when they see one.”

“Does he have it in him to direct someone to kill you?
 
To kill us?”

Alex put his arm around me and drew me in closer.
 
“Kobus is a son of a bitch.
 
I can see him hiring this out.
 
Is he the one behind the emails and the
shooting?
 
I don’t know.
 
But he’s being investigated.
 
Unfortunately, he’s just one of many, Jennifer.
 
It could be anyone.”

“What about Immaculata?”

“That, I don’t see, despite all the drama she’s created since I
first hired you.
 
That said, I’m no
fool.
 
She’s obviously off her
meds—there’s something wrong with that woman that suggests she could be
psychotic—so her name goes on the list.
 
After all, she
was
there tonight.
 
And look how tonight went.
 
Still, a part of me doubts it.
 
It’s a gut instinct.
 
I don’t think she’d go that far.”

“Who’s he?”
 
I
pointed at a younger man who was at the far right of the photograph.
 
He was just beyond me, and thus his
face was close-up.
 
He wasn’t so
much looking at us as he was at the photographer.
 
His mouth was a grim line.
 
He appeared tense.

“No idea.”

“Is that a tray in his hand?”

“Looks that way.
 
It’s a silver curve, but no glasses are on it.”

“Maybe he ran out.
 
Maybe he’s a server.”

“He either is or he’s posing as one.”

“With that large of a crowd, he should be hustling, but he’s
not.
 
He’s just standing
there.
 
It’s clear that he isn’t
moving.
 
And look at the expression
on his face.”

“It’s pretty intense.”

“And look at the servers around him.”

“They’re a blur.”

“So what about us made him stop?”

“Could be a number of things.
 
Your dress.
 
Your looks.
 
He might have
recognized me.
 
He might have
noticed that we were having our photographs taken and was wondering who we
were.
 
The good news is that we
have a great shot of his face.
 
We’ll
have him profiled and see if anything turns up.”

“Do you see anything else?”

“I see a room filled with people I’ve pissed off,
Jennifer.
 
So, you’re right.
 
We get the guest list from Peachy, and
we find out exactly who was there tonight.
 
Then, we see if on that list are people other than Kobus
whom Wenn is either battling now, has battled recently, or has battled in the
past.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As we left his office, Alex asked if I’d like another martini.

“I think another martini for each of us is warranted at this
point,” I said.
 
“Thank you for
sending everything to your team and to your contacts at the FBI.
 
I appreciate it.”

He walked into the kitchen.
 
“I’m not screwing around with this, Jennifer.”

“I know you’re not.”

“You are my first consideration.”

“We both should be your first consideration.
 
What good am I without you?
 
What’s the point of any of this without
you?
 
Tell me?”

He didn’t answer.
 
Instead, I heard him gathering ice, pouring liquids, and shaking them
together with more aggression than usual.
 
I knew where his mind was.
 
Like me, he was wondering who was targeting us.
 
Was this a game to them?
 
They easily could have killed us a few
nights ago, but they didn’t.
 
Would
they soon?
 
It seemed to me that
they would.

Alex entered the living room with two fresh martinis.
 
He handed me mine, and put his down on
the coffee table before sitting heavily on the sofa.
 
He looked tired and troubled.
 
I knew he was trying his best to put a cap on this, but what
if he and his team couldn’t?
 
The
answer was simple.
 
We’d live our
lives at risk.
 
Was I willing to
die for him?
 
As absurd as it
sounded, I was.
 
He meant that much
to me.
 
And I knew that he’d do the
same for me.

“I wrote you a letter,” I said.
 
“Earlier tonight.
 
Just before I went to Peachy’s event and everything went to hell.”

He turned to me in surprise.
 
“You wrote me a letter?”

“It was in response to the letter you wrote to me.”
 
I felt butterflies in my stomach when I
said, “Would you like to read it?
 
Or would you like me to read it to you?”

He was silent for a moment, then he said, “If you don’t mind,
I’d like you to read it to me.”

I got up from the sofa, got the letter from my clutch, and sat
back down on the sofa so that I faced him before I started to read.
 
My heart hammered against my
chest.
 
The letter was written on
the fly, but it came from my heart and from my gut.
 
It was raw with true emotion.
 
It was filled with everything I felt for him.
 
“Would you mind turning to me?” I
asked.
 
“I’d like to look up at you
and see what your feeling while I read this.”

He swung around and faced me.

“This is how I feel about you and how I feel about us.
 
You said in your letter to me that
people don’t write love letters anymore, but that you thought that they were
important.
 
You said that you
thought love letters were romantic and could define a relationship.
 
And lift it.
 
That’s what yours did for me.
 
I’ve never written one of these
before—obviously—but it’s all true.
 
It’s all here.”
 
I took a breath.
 
“So, I’ll
read.”

He leaned back against the arm of the sofa and said
nothing.
 
Instead, he just watched
me intensely.
 
I unfolded the
letter, feeling thrilled, terrified, excited, and nervous all at once.
 
I was no writer—I knew that.
 
But I’d read this twice now.
 
And at the very least, I knew that I
meant every word of it.

“Dear Alex,” I began.
 
“As you’re about to find out, I’m no Steinbeck, whom you quoted in your
beautiful letter to me.
 
He had a
way with words that I’ll never have.
 
But these are my words and they come from my heart.”
 

“From the very first day I met you, when that man on Fifth
Avenue nearly knocked me down, I’ve been smitten by you.
 
That day, we met at Wenn in an
elevator.
 
Who could have known
then that the man who stood next to me and asked if I was all right would
become my first and hopefully last great love?
 
And that he would fall in love with me?
 
I look back at these past many weeks
that we’ve been together with a kind of elation and shame.
 
But now, as I write this, I also look
back with a profound sense of love for you.
 
With the exception of Lisa and maybe Blackwell, I think you,
of all people, know what it takes for me to say those words, to stare down my
fears and to admit that I am in love with you.
 
I’ve never said this to anyone else because those words mean
that much to me.
 
They are precious
to me.
 
I’ve held them close to me
and I’ve saved them for the right person, the only person, for reasons you already
know.
 
But now I finally get to say
them with meaning.
 
I’m deeply in
love with you.
 
You have no idea
just how much I’m in love with you.
 
You probably never will.
 
But I hope to show you just how much through my love and my actions.”

I wanted to glance up at him, but I couldn’t.
 
I felt too exposed and vulnerable to
look at him now, so I just kept reading.

“I feel as if I owe you many apologies for the walls I’ve
thrown up and for some of the ways I’ve behaved, all of which are borne out of
the rotten root that is my past.
 
So, please accept my apologies.
 
All my life, I’ve resisted love.
 
All my life, I’ve felt unworthy of love because I was told
time and again that I didn’t deserve love.
 
And I stupidly believed it when it’s the last thing I should
have believed.
 
You know about my
trust issues, yet you stood by me and waited them out because you saw something
in me.
 
Whatever that is, Alex,
I’ll never know, because to me, it’s a mystery.
 
But you’ve been patient with me because, for whatever
reason, you do love me—I can feel your love.
 
I can feel it in how you look at me, in how you touch me, in
how you kiss me, and in how you make love to me.
 
And I’m grateful for it.
 
I’m the luckiest girl in the world.

“I’m happy to be part of your life, and I want to be a good
partner in your life.
 
Whatever is
happening to us now will be weathered together.
 
I want you to know that.
 
Sometimes I won’t be perfect and there are times that I
might be frightened by what’s happening, but I need you to know that I’m with
you and beside you and that we will beat this.
 
And we’ll beat the next one if it comes.
 
And the one after that, should it come.

“I love you with all of my heart, Alex.
 
You’re my first thought, you are my
in-between thoughts, and you’re my last thought.
 
I love you so much.
 
Thank you for being the wonderful boyfriend that you are.
 
Thank you for coming out of Wenn that
day to help me pick up my runaway resumes, and especially thank you for going
to Blackwell to ask who I was.
 
If
you didn’t, I wouldn’t know what love is.
 
But I do know now.
 
I love
you.
 
—Jennifer.
 
P.S.
 
Don’t ever lose your stubble, OK?
 
That I can’t have.”

I still couldn’t look at him.
 
That was the single largest emotional risk I’d taken in my
life, by far dwarfing the guts it took for me to move to New York.
 
Leaving Maine and coming here had
nothing on putting my heart on the line and telling the truth about my feelings
for him.
 
I folded the letter in
thirds and tried to steady my nerves.
 
And then his hand reached out and covered mine.

“Do you want to know what I see in you?” he asked.

Finally, I looked up at him, and was surprised to find that his
eyes were bright with emotion and that his expression was serious.

“Can I have a sip of that martini first?”

“You can, but you don’t always have to turn to humor to diffuse
a potentially scary moment, Jennifer.
 
I know it’s in your nature to deflect like that, and it’s fine.
 
I get it.
 
But you don’t need to.
 
What you wrote to me was beautiful.
 
I’ll never forget it.
 
I’ll cherish it.
 
I’m also
grateful and lucky, because what I see in you is someone I want to spend the
rest of my life with.
 
An
equal.
 
You’re my friend, my
wonderful partner, my fantastic lover.
 
I never thought I’d be here again, but I am.
 
I don’t trust easily for reasons that you also know.
 
But once, I was given the gift of love,
and I recognized it again in you.
 
That took four years.
 
Because I’ve known love, this has been easier on me than it has been on
you.
 
What I see in you is a smart,
sexy, loving, kind woman who has a spark who isn’t afraid to speak her
mind.
 
You’re like a
firework—colorful, bright, and sometimes explosive.”

“Sometimes too explosive.”

“It’s who you are.
 
I’d rather be with someone who expresses her feelings openly than be
with a woman who seethes in silence, like my mother did.
 
Do you know what that cost her?”

I did know.
 
Blackwell
told me, but I remained silent in case she shouldn’t have.
 
I wasn’t about to throw her under the
bus.
 
He finally was going to tell
me himself.
 
I let him.

“It cost her her life.
 
My father shot her and then he shot himself.
 
That’s why they died at a young age.
 
Maybe you already know that.
 
Maybe someone told you or you Googled
it.
 
I don’t really care because,
to the world, it isn’t exactly a secret.
 
It’s as well known as Wenn itself.
 
But I learned a great deal from my parents’ relationship.
 
I learned that what they had was no way
for anyone to live.
 
They hated
each other—I’ve told you that.
 
And yet they stayed together all those years because of money.
 
In the end, money won.
 
That and a couple of bullets.
 
Think about that.
 
They died over money.
 
Mere pieces of paper.
 
How pathetic and irrational is that?”

“Alex—” I said.

“There’s nothing to say.
 
You just said more than I could have hoped for.
 
May I keep the letter?”

“Of course.
 
I
wrote it for you.”
 
I gave it to
him.

“I want to make love to you now.
 
Really make love to you.”

“Only if I get to return the favor.”

He smiled at that.
 
“Always my equal,” he said.

“I’ll try not to let you down, especially tonight.
 
Because my body has plenty to say to
you.
 
And it’s probably going to be
intense.”

With that, we went into his bedroom.
 
If I thought we’d made love before, I was wrong.
 
Before, we’d explored each other’s
bodies.
 
What we did that night was
filled with such naked emotion that it defined the act of making love.
 
It underscored the act of what making
love was about.
 
There were times
when I cried and times when I felt that he cried.
 
We drove each other to new, unexplored places.
 
We gave ourselves fully to each
other.
 
And when we were finished,
I felt absolutely bonded to him in ways that I never had felt with another
human being.
 
It was such a cliché,
but we were one.
 

When morning broke, as I lay in Alex’s arms, and felt his
breath against the nape of my neck, a thought occurred to me:
 
Last night, by telling him that he was
my first love and then by making true love to him, I’d lost my virginity twice.