Two days later, Shana knew she couldn’t put off telling Jace any longer. Her morning sickness wasn’t going away, and he had spent the past two nights with her. But again, she was grateful he’d left before morning. What if he decided to stay the entire night without leaving early the next morning? She ran the risk of his being there when she was sick in the mornings. If that happened, she would be forced to tell him what was wrong with her, and she preferred not having to tell him that way.
Drawing in a deep breath, she knocked on the door that connected her office to Jace’s. He opened it and smiled down at her. “Hello, beautiful.”
She couldn’t help returning his smile. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“Okay, what is it?”
She shook her head. “It’s private. Personal. I’d rather do it at my place. I just wanted to make sure you were coming over again tonight.”
He leaned in the doorway. “Yes, as long as you have a welcome mat for me, I’ll be there.”
She met his gaze. “The welcome mat is there.”
He reached out and touched her cheek. His eyes darkened with concern. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Yes, but I’ll be better once we’ve had our talk.”
Jace knew that to be true. He had been putting off telling her how he felt and decided tonight he would do it. He wasn’t sure what she needed to talk to him about, but they would discuss whatever was on her mind tonight. As well as what was on his.
“Expect me at the usual time, and I’ll bring dinner,” he said.
“No, it will be my treat this time.”
He lifted a brow. “You’re cooking?”
She chuckled. “No. I plan to stop and pick something up for us on the way home.”
“That won’t be an inconvenience for you?”
“No more than it’s an inconvenience for you whenever you do it.” He’d fed her for the past three nights. Now it was her turn.
“All right, if you’re sure it’s okay.”
“It’s okay, Jace. In fact, I want it to be a special evening.”
He definitely liked the sound of that. He leaned down and brushed a kiss across her lips. “Then I can’t wait.”
* * *
Jace glanced at his watch. It was a little after six and time for him to call it a day. He looked forward to leaving to head over to Shana’s place. He stood to slide into his jacket and lifted a brow when he thought he heard a sound outside his door. As far as he knew, everyone had left for today.
Moving to the door, he opened it and glanced out. He frowned when he saw Shelton Fields at Brandy’s desk. “Shelton, is there anything you need?”
The man jerked around nervously. From the expression on Shelton’s face, it was apparent he hadn’t known Jace was still at the office.
“No, I was just leaving. I needed to place something on Ms. Booker’s desk.”
Jace nodded as he locked his office door. “I’m about to leave, as well. We can walk out together.”
“All right.”
Jace made a mental note to read Shana’s report on Shelton Fields again first thing in the morning. The last time, there hadn’t been any red flags, nothing to give the man a second look, but now that he thought about it, Fields had been acting kind of strange lately. But then, he hadn’t been the only one. Once word had gotten out about Melissa, Arrington and Freeman, a number of the other employees were acting like they thought someone suspected them.
“We had nice weather today,” Jace said when they stepped in the elevator.
“Yes, it was.”
And that was all he said. Jace tossed around in his mind just what he knew about Fields. In his early forties, the man had been hired by Jace’s grandfather around seven years ago. He was divorced, and his ex-wife lived somewhere in Oregon. Jace recalled his grandfather mentioning that, after his divorce, Fields had become a ladies’ man around the office. But all it had taken was his grandfather letting Fields know he disapproved of such behavior to put a stop to it.
They left the building together and walked out to the parking lot not saying anything else to each other until they needed to part ways to go to their respective parking spots.
“Have a good evening, Jace,” Fields said as he moved in the direction where his car was parked.
“You do the same, Shelton.”
Jace continued to his car, thinking of the evening ahead and how he couldn’t wait to get to Shana’s place. He pulled the keys from his pants pocket to open his car door and that was the last thing he recalled after feeling a needle sting in the back of his neck.
* * *
Shana smiled as she looked over at the table she’d set for two. Whenever Jace brought the food, they would eat right out of the carry-out boxes. Tonight, things would be different. She had no idea how he felt about her, but she would tell him he would be a father nonetheless.
She was about to step on the patio and relax a minute when her cell phone rang. It was Kent. “Yes, Kent?”
“Get to your computer. I’m about to send you a report that you need to see.”
She glanced at her watch. It was forty minutes past seven. Jace’s arrival at her place was always like clockwork. He was late tonight. “Is it something I can look at later?”
“No, I believe it’s something you should look at now.”
Shana had worked with Kent long enough to know when he was onto something. “All right. Give me a second to boot up my system.”
“Okay. I’m hanging on the phone until you do.”
Shana walked to the extra bedroom she’d made into an office and slid into the chair behind the desk. “You’re still there, Kent?” she asked as she placed her phone on speaker.
“Yes, I’m still here.”
Once the system came up, she immediately pulled the file Kent had sent her. She began reading, and her eyes widened. “Holy cow! How did you find out about this stuff?”
“Doesn’t matter. Jace Granger needs to know.”
Shana agreed and glanced at her watch again. It wasn’t like Jace to be late.
“Hold on, I’m switching to a new line so I can call Jace’s cell phone.” He should have left the office a good forty-five minutes ago, Shana thought.
She tried Jace’s phone and didn’t get an answer. Maybe he’d been detained at the office for some reason, so she decided to call his office number. When he didn’t answer, she clicked back over to Kent as she nibbled on her bottom lip. Something wasn’t right...she could feel it.
“I couldn’t reach him on his mobile line, and I even tried his office and couldn’t get him. It’s not like him not to be accessible,” she said.
“Maybe you need to contact his brothers. There’s a chance he might be somewhere hanging out with them.”
Or his ex-wife, Shana thought, and then forced the thought from her mind. When she saw him at the office, he’d said he was looking forward to tonight. “Okay, I have their numbers. I’ll give them a call.”
* * *
Jace’s head was hurting something fierce when he slowly opened his eyes, regaining consciousness. He glanced around, and the first person he saw when he tried focusing his eyes was Titus Freeman.
And as Jace began coming around, he realized that Freeman was bound to his chair with his hands tied behind his back like Jace was. The only difference was that Freeman was also gagged.
“Welcome to my secret hideaway, Jace.”
Although it hurt to do so, Jace twisted his head to glance up at the man standing in the doorway. He closed his eyes, certain he was seeing things, but when he reopened them and sharpened his focus as best he could, there was no denying the man standing there with a gun in his hand.
Jace’s tongue felt thick, and his mouth felt dry, but he forced the words through his lips. “What’s going on?”
Vidal Duncan let out a screeching laugh, one that grated on Jace’s skin. The man then placed the gun on a table and sat in a chair. “What’s going on is that you messed up my plan, Jace. So this is plan B.”
Jace frowned, ignoring the ache in his head. He wasn’t sure what Vidal was talking about. Vidal laughed again, then said, “You are so clueless and so damn trusting. A pity. There’s so much you don’t know, so let me tell you everything before you die.”
Jace’s body jerked. What was Vidal talking about? What was going on?
“And yes, you’ll die. I’m going to make it seem as if Freeman did you in before turning the gun on himself. Nice end to the both of you, don’t you think?”
Jace glanced over at Freeman and saw the fear in the man’s eyes. Whatever Vidal was involved with, Jace would not let him get away with it. Shana would be expecting him, and hopefully she would think something was wrong when he didn’t show up. And he still had the tracker on his phone enabled. He had to believe help would be coming. What he needed to do was to keep Vidal talking.
“Why, Vidal?” Jace asked in a raspy tone.
He watched as the man filled his glass with wine and stretched his legs out in front of him. “I guess I should take the time to tell you since you don’t need to die right away. Besides, you might appreciate my plan.”
Jace doubted it.
* * *
Dalton and Caden stepped off the elevator. Dalton frowned. “I can’t believe you came back here for a stack of papers you need to read tonight.”
Caden rolled his eyes as they walked toward his office. “Stop whining. You could have stayed at McQueen’s.”
“I could have, but I didn’t.” There was no need to tell Caden that no other woman had interested him since he’d seen that woman Saturday night at the club. There had been something about her that continued to plague his thoughts, although he wished otherwise. Jace had suggested he hire a private investigator, and he’d been giving it a lot of thought. Just the idea that he was considering such a thing was crazy, but there had been something about her that had pulled him in, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until he found out what it was.
“I noticed Jace’s car is still in the parking lot, and I thought he told us he had someplace to be by seven,” Caden said, glancing at Jace’s closed office door as he entered his own office. “I wonder why he’s being detained.” He headed toward his desk and Dalton closed the door behind them and then dropped down in the nearest chair.
Caden’s cell phone rang, and he lifted a brow when he saw caller ID. “It’s Shana Bradford.” He answered the call. “Yes, Shana?”
“I’m trying to locate Jace. There’s been a major development, and I need to talk to him immediately.”
Caden leaned against his desk. “His car is still here, so I assume he’s in his office. Hold on, let me check.”
He muted the phone and then glanced over at Dalton as he headed for the door. “Jace never showed up for his seven o’clock appointment.” Jace hadn’t had to tell them his seven o’clock appointment was with Shana. They weren’t dumb.
Dalton followed Caden out of his office to knock on Jace’s door. After several knocks, Caden glanced over at Dalton. “He’s not here.”
Dalton’s lips dipped into a frown. “Where would Jace go without his car?”
Caden put his phone on speaker so Dalton could hear his conversation with Shana. “He’s not here, Shana.”
He could hear her deep sigh. “Is there a chance he visited Eve at the hotel?” she asked.
Caden snorted. “I doubt it.”
“We need to make sure, so can you check? If Jace isn’t with her, then I’m worried.”
“Why are you worried?”
“Because Kent was able to dig up info on another one of your employees, and what he found is disturbing. This person covered his tracks well and has no idea we’re onto him. And I have a feeling he’ll do anything to make sure he’s not found out.”
Concern appeared in both Caden’s and Dalton’s faces. “What employee are we talking about, Shana?” Caden asked.
Shana paused before briefly saying, “Vidal Duncan.”
* * *
“Well, you see, Jace, my plan started four years ago,” Vidal said, sitting down and sipping on a glass of wine as if he had all the time in the world. “With your wife, actually. That year when the two of you came home for Thanksgiving, she approached me asking that I talk to you about returning to Virginia and working alongside Richard. I pretended I was all for it, even promised her I would do what I could.”
He chuckled. “Then I asked how badly she wanted me to succeed in doing what she wanted, and she claimed she would do anything. So I had her prove it. We became lovers that night and our affair continued after the two of you returned to California. Nice little piece you were married to. She could become a real freak in the bedroom. And just so you know, that baby she aborted wasn’t yours. It was mine, and she did so with my blessing. There was no way we could let her give birth to a kid that might come out looking like me.”
A sharp pain sliced across Jace’s chest and he drew in a deep breath, not wanting to believe what he was hearing. “No!” he shouted as loud as he could.
Vidal chuckled again. “Having a hard time believing it, huh? I understand. Eve is a rather good actress. I’m going to let you digest that for a minute before I continue.”