The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 3 (15 page)

“Jealous?” I asked.

He half smiled, but Rawn didn’t seem to find it amusing. “You need to go lie down, my love,” he said, coming over to me. “Let the grownups finish talking in private.”

“No.”

But he didn’t give me much choice, lifting me out of the chair and carrying me into the bedroom. I couldn’t have fought him if I had wanted, but—to be honest—it was kind of nice. I felt like Sleeping Beauty.

And sleep was exactly what I did for the next few hours.

***

Annie

I packed my things, carefully placing the red ball gown back in its box along with everything else that came with it, setting it aside with a scrawled note that simply said,
Thanks.
I was ready to go quicker than I was ready to make this trip. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next, but when I saw Madison’s car—a sweet Lexus RC—I almost cried with relief. I dug my keys out of my bag, tossed the bag into the back seat, and took off.

Madison had kindly gassed up fairly recently, so I had nearly a full tank of fuel. A quick touch of a few buttons had the GPS glowing with block by block directions, and I was all set. I turned on the radio, nearly laughing when I heard the hard rock strains of some band I’m sure Madison didn’t even know the name of, scanning to find something a little more my style. Maroon 5 filled the car, moaning about animals, and I sat back, glad to get the hell out of Dodge.

It was my own fault. I never should have lied to him. I should have told him the truth, admitted that I’d been in love with him since I saw him in that stupid zombie movie. I should have told him that meeting him had been my deepest wish and getting to know him had become something so much better than I ever could have imagined. He was exactly the man I had thought he would be, but better. He was the man I had always known I would meet someday.

I just shouldn’t have begun things with a lie.

But, again, according to Madison, he was holding things back, too.

Why wouldn’t he tell me what his secret was? Why wouldn’t he explain what Madison knew but I didn’t? And why was he so willing to go over and smooth things over between Rawn and Madison, but he didn’t want to be truthful with me?

The answer seemed perfectly obvious. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.

Madison clearly meant more to him than I did.

There it was. The one thing I had feared since the moment he asked for Madison instead of me. Hell, from the moment he showed up at our apartment to check on Madison after her kidnapping ordeal.

He was in love with Madison, and I was a poor substitute.

I wanted to be angry with Madison. I wanted to hate her. But she was my best friend, the closest thing I had to a sister. I couldn’t blame her for Logan’s failings. I could be angry and hurt, but I couldn’t blame her, but I knew nothing would be the same between us.

I drove for a long time, trying not to think too much. That was hard, especially since I was tired…my lack of sleep the night before added to the wine I’d had at dinner were making it hard for me to keep my eyes open. I pulled into a Starbuck’s drive-thru and got a chai tea latte, hoping the heat and the sweetness would keep me awake.

When I began to see signs for San Jose, I considered pulling into a hotel for the night. But, once again, my lack of available funds made the decision a difficult one. I had a credit card that had enough credit on it to pay for the hotel, but then I would have to rearrange all my bills next month and likely the month after to get the card paid off again. It wasn’t an easy decision.

While I was still debating, I felt the back of the car stutter. And then it slid to one side. Another stutter and I lost control of the wheel.

I was going to crash. I could see it unfolding in my mind even before it happened, the car hitting the concrete barrier on the side of the road and flipping, rolling several times before it would come to a stop in the median.

I was about to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“Logan…”

***

Madison

I vaguely heard Rawn’s cellphone ring, the chimes of his chosen ringtone sinking into my dreams, making them a little more fevered than they had been before. It stopped after a moment, and I settled back into sleep. But then it rang again, the same insistent chimes eating away at my peaceful sleep.

I rolled over and found him curled up beside me, contentedly sleeping through the annoying sound. I grumbled a little as I reached over him to retrieve the phone, pleased to see that all my nerves and muscles seemed to be working a little better today.

“Hello?” I mumbled into the phone after I accepted the call.

“I’m looking for a Mr. Rawn Jackman.”

“He’s sleeping. Can I take a message?”

There was some hesitation on the other end of the line. Then the voice said, “Would you happen to know if Mr. Jackman owns a 2015 Lexus RC?”

I sat up, a few of my muscles—especially around my joints—screaming in protest. “He’s co-owner of the car. Why? Has it been stolen?”

“No, ma’am. It’s been involved in an accident.”

“An accident? That’s not possible. I left the car in my friend’s driveway.” And then it hit me.

Annie.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but if I could talk to Mr. Jackman…”

I slapped Rawn’s shoulder hard enough to leave a red handprint on his skin. “Something’s happened to Annie.”

He sat up and took the phone from me. He grunted a greeting and stared at me, as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line. And then his eyes fell, and I knew the worst had happened. I quickly climbed out of bed and began pulling on clothes, shoving others back in my overnight bag.

“There’s been an accident,” he began to say. But I didn’t need to know. I just needed to get to her.

Madison

We rushed into the hospital’s emergency room—a scene that was becoming much too familiar to me these days—and Rawn approached the nurse’s station, telling the woman sitting there who we had come to see.

“She’s been moved up to the surgical floor. Fourth floor.”

Rawn glanced at me, then his eyes slid to Logan’s face.

Logan had returned to his house last night and found Annie gone. He didn’t call her; he didn’t call me or Rawn. He didn’t think it was his place to send out the alarm because of everything I had said. And that had allowed Annie to be on the highway in the middle of the night where she was run off the road by some maniac.

“A drunk driver, they think,” Rawn had said, after speaking to the California Highway Patrol officer in charge of the investigation.

But it didn’t take a wild stretch of the imagination to realize that it wasn’t as impersonal as that.

The three of us rushed to the elevator, our adrenaline still pumping after the furious rush to the airport that morning to get here as quickly as possible. Logan had asked if we should call her parents, but I was torn. It might be more logical to call my parents. Annie was closer to them than her own.

But I made the call anyway.

They said to let them know if it was life threatening.

Another nurse’s desk, another bored nurse who couldn’t care less about the drama that was suddenly dumped in our laps first thing this morning. She told us to wait; the doctor would come out and tell us what was going on.

I paced, my arms wrapped tight around my chest.

“Should I call Mellissa and Conrad? Maybe they should be here if things…” I bit my lip, as much for the pain that ripped through my chest as to take my mind off the small sound Logan made.

Rawn shook his head. “We’ll wait a minute. See what the doctor has to say.”

I nodded and continued to pace, moving around the tacky green and blue chairs and the cheap end tables, the tiny nugget of fear that I had been able to control for hours suddenly swelling and growing in my belly.

All the what-ifs began to play in my head.

What if I hadn’t had that meltdown at dinner? What if I hadn’t caused Annie and Logan to fight? What if I hadn’t left my car at Logan’s house? What if I hadn’t driven to LA at all, if I had flown down with Rawn?

And then the other what-ifs…

What if she was paralyzed, or so badly hurt that she had to stay in the hospital for months? What if she couldn’t finish school? Would she lose her scholarships? Would she lose her place in grad school? Would this change her entire future?

And then the biggest what if—

What if Annie was dead, and they just didn’t want to tell us?

I couldn’t deal with the unknown.

That’s how it had been with Allison, all the waiting in hospitals, not sure if she was still alive or not. Every time they came out and told us that she had survived another attack, that her pneumonia was finally responding to the antibiotics, that she would come home again, it was a little hope that made that final moment, the moment they told us that she would not survive the night, that much harder to accept.

I didn’t want to go through that again.

And I didn’t want the people I loved to go through it either.

I paced because I didn’t know how else to contain the fear. I couldn’t stop the wheels turning in my head, the thoughts chasing one another like a hunting dog flushing out rabbits. An inhuman cry came from a room on my left. I turned and watched as a family was escorted out, the woman being consoled by the people around her, all of them so pale that they might have been extras in a horror film. I knew. I knew that walk. I knew they had just lost someone very close to them. But then the woman who had screamed, the woman being consoled by people who could only be her grown children, saw me watching, and she nodded.

She nodded.

She had just lost someone close to her, and she had enough wherewithal to nod at me.

Then, I turned and found both Logan and Rawn watching me, concern etched across their faces. And that’s when I realized I wasn’t giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, not even myself.

As individuals, we were strong. Rawn had survived his mother’s alcoholism. Logan had survived the reality of his disease. Annie had survived me, her heartless parents, and life in general.

And I…I had survived the worst pain the world could dump on me—the loss of my sister—and the uncertainty of my disease. I survived a kidnapping, the heartache of loving a man I was unsure of, the darkness of someone else’s secret.

Individually, we were strong.

Together we were even stronger.

We could do this. No matter what happened, we could do this.

That realization didn’t stop the stuttering of my heart when the doctor approached.

“Annie Warby family?”

Rawn stepped up beside me. “How is she?”

“She is a very lucky girl.” The doctor touched my arm lightly, speaking directly to me. “She has multiple broken ribs and lots of bruises and scratches. The most significant injury was her arm. She broke it in several places, so we had to go in and set it surgically with a few rods. She’ll likely set off metal detectors for the rest of her life, but she’s going to be fine.”

Relief washed through me so quickly that my body went slack. Rawn slipped his arm around me and pulled me tight against his chest as I lost it and sobbed against his chest.

***

They told us we could see her a short time later. I gestured for Logan to follow, but he turned away.

“Give us a minute, okay?”

I nodded and watched Rawn approach Logan before I followed the nurse to Annie’s bedside.

They had moved her out of the surgical recovery room and into a private room of her own. She had her eyes closed, her left arm in a dramatic cast with a rod that held it up at an angle from her hip. Her face was nearly unrecognizable, so swollen and bruised. There were bandages on her chest, her other arm, clearly covering the some of the many cuts the doctor had mentioned.

It physically hurt me to look at her, but I was so grateful that she was still alive that I would have been happy to see her in almost any condition.

“Hey, chick,” I said softly as I sat in the chair at her bedside and slipped my hand into hers.

“Hey.” She peeked at me through one swollen eye. “You’re here.”

“Of course I’m here.”

She started to smile, but it must have caused her some pain because she grimaced instead.

“You sure know how to make a dramatic exit.”

She grunted. “I’m sorry about your car.”

“Cars are replaceable. Best friends aren’t.”

She peeked at me again, then her eye shifted to the door. “Logan?” she asked softly.

I didn’t answer at first because I didn’t know how to tell her that he wouldn’t come see her. But I apparently didn’t need to say anything because she turned her head away as a single tear coursed down her face.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly, lifting her hand to my face. “I never should have interfered. I should have trusted that the two of you could handle whatever came your way.”

“It doesn’t really matter now.”

I squeezed her hand. “You shouldn’t give up. The Annie I know, she never lets an obstacle stand in her way.”

I smoothed my hand over the back of hers and waited for her to say something else. But she didn’t.

“I suppose the cops have talked to you about the accident,” I said after a while.

She peeked at me again. “They said someone ran me off the road.”

“Did you see who it was?”

“I didn’t even know there was someone behind me. He must have had his lights off because I don’t remember seeing headlights.”

I nodded, swallowing my disappointment. I had hoped that she saw something that could help us figure things out. I still wanted some sort of proof before I told Rawn what I had remembered. The last time I started pointing fingers without evidence, he had Conrad arrested.

I really didn’t want to get this wrong.

“There was one thing.”

I looked up at Annie. “What?”

“After the accident, I was in the car, upside down. But I saw legs, a man’s legs. He was wearing suit pants, like he had just come from the office. And I heard a voice say, “Fuck, Madison. You must have nine lives.”

My heart sank low in my belly, as my mind went automatically to that moment during my kidnapping, that moment when that familiar voice said my name.

“Was he wearing wingtip shoes?”

Annie’s swollen eye widened. “Black with a glossy shine.”

And that was the connection.

The door opened behind me, and Logan stuck his head in. I stood and leaned close to Annie. “Thank you,” I whispered against her cheek.

Then, I stepped away, touching Logan’s shoulder as I passed him. I stepped out into the hallway and paused, Logan’s voice floating to me through the partially open door.

“So, here’s the thing. I have Wilson’s disease…”

I smiled, as I pulled the door closed and walked away.

***

Rawn and I stuck around a few more hours, but there didn’t seem to be much reason for it. Logan was at Annie’s side constantly, and the doctor assured us she would be able to go home in a few days. Rawn promised to send the jet back for them, and we left, headed back to Portland and the disaster that waited for us there.

Conrad had been working on the press release that was supposed to put pressure on Rawn’s tormentor and make him back off the resignation demand. Rawn called from the plane and updated him on everything that had happened over the last twenty-four hours, asking him to check in with his police contacts and find out if we could get a copy of Annie’s accident report sooner than later.

As they talked, an idea crossed my mind and I asked Rawn for the phone.

“Conrad, could you do a little research on the employees of Cepheus for me?”

“What kind of research?”

“Employees are required to register an email address with human resources for company correspondence that might be sent out before their company email account can be set up. I was wondering if you could check out the male employees in the development department, see if any of them ever registered an email address that has the words sun or dial or both in it.”

“I can do that. But do you really think it’ll be that easy?”

“Probably not. But it’s worth a try.”

“Okay. I’ll take a look. And tell Rawn to let me know if anything comes up on the security video outside his parents’ house.”

“I will.”

I ended the call and handed the phone back to Rawn. “Has the security video arrived yet?”

“I don’t know. I was about to check.”

He tugged his laptop out of its case and booted it up. I moved closer to him, my body still aching all over from my little episode last night, the effects of the muscle relaxer still making my eyes droop like I hadn’t slept in months. I even dozed off a little until I heard Rawn’s grunt of satisfaction.

“It’s here. But there’s so much of it, it might take days to get through it all.”

“Start with three days ago. Didn’t the doctor say it would take at least that long for the medication to build up like it did?”

“Good idea.”

Rawn sifted through the electronic file and clicked on the one he wanted. The screen of his computer was immediately filled with the view of his parents’ front porch and the face of their mailman.

I settled back against his shoulder again, drifting off once more as he occupied himself with the video.

By the time we arrived in Portland he hadn’t made much progress. He continued to look at it on the drive to Conrad’s office, pausing the playback each time a strange face appeared in the frame. None of them were familiar, and we had no way of knowing which might have poisoned his father since he didn’t exactly hold up a sign saying, ‘
I’m here to sabotage your father’s pills.’

We walked into Conrad’s office, and I expected to find Mellissa sitting behind his desk, as she had been so many times in the past few weeks. But she wasn’t there, and Conrad looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep these past few days.

“How did you know?” he asked, as I walked past him into the office.

I looked sharply at him. “What do you mean? Did you find a match?”

He nodded. “It is so obvious, I should have seen it from the start.”

I knew exactly what he meant. The same thought had crossed my mind the moment I realized the truth.

Some people just knew how to hide their true natures.

“Fuck!” Rawn suddenly cried out. He was standing at Conrad’s desk, his computer still open, still running through the security footage.

“Did you find something?”

He looked at the two of us. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

He grabbed a cord out of the back of Conrad’s computer and stuck it into his. An image flickered on the flat screen monitor that hung on the wall behind us. I turned just as Russell’s face filled the screen.