CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ridge

I am asleep with a beautiful woman in my arms. Then I get the app alert and all hell breaks loose. I spare a glance for her, one of regret. I wish I could stay here in this bed, in her arms, and block out the world. I wish the devil wasn’t on my doorstep tonight.

“You can go back to sleep. I have to go down there and see what’s going on. It could be a vandal or a burglary. Or it could be someone from the syndicate. Lock the doors. There are guards on the perimeter.”

I’ve got my clothes back on by now. I see her face in the moonlight, the fear marring her beauty. I do something I never thought I’d do in an emergency. I stop to comfort her. With one shoe on, I turn around, bend over the bed and kiss her softly on the lips.

“It’s okay, Reva. I’ll take care of it,” I tell her. She nods. I can tell she’s trying to resist reaching for me, pulling me back into bed to hold her.

She looks so young right now in my bed without her makeup and her sarcastic armor. This is a lot for her to take in. I feel for her now, a wave of compassion. I hug her. I, who have never hugged anyone but my own child. I give her a reassuring hug and kiss her again.

“Come back to me?” she says, her voice quiet, hopeful.

“Yes,” I tell her, putting on my other shoe, “I will.”

“I’ll get dressed and go in with Lydia.”

“There’s no need to wake her. You can go back to sleep yourself. It’s just a break in at the office,” I say. I want her to stay up, be vigilant, be dressed and ready.

“I won’t be able to sleep until you’re back.”

“Okay, then you’re right. Get dressed. Wait up. Make some hot chocolate,” I try to smile at her as I leave.

I drive across town to the office. The police are already there, summoned by the same alarm that I got on my app. They’re holding two big guys. I charge into the building, unnerved by the sight of my heavily secured offices standing wide open. I go straight to my office to see what’s missing or compromised. A cop already in there tells me to leave.

“This is my office,” I say, “I want to inventory—”

“This is a crime scene in a police investigation, sir,” she says, “you’ll have to step outside.”

“No. You can fingerprint whatever you want, but I have to see if the firewall was breached. Your job is to catch the perpetrators, which you’ve clearly done. Now let me investigate what damage was done to my property. The taxpayers, myself included, don’t pay you to get in our way.”

She escorts me out while I argue. What right do they have to keep me away from my own property? Her partner rolls his eyes at me. I’ve dealt with this jerk before. Local law enforcement isn’t exactly on my Christmas card list, and I’m not their favorite either. I have better tech, more money, and the city hired me to do an audit on internal affairs last year that got a couple of pretty popular officers fired. So they’re basically all out to get me.

“Buddy, all they had was a couple of laptops and a tablet, one printer already loaded in their car. It was small time,” the officer tells me.

“No way,” I say, “Why would they break in to a heavily secured office to steal something they could knock off at a Walmart?”

“Criminals are pretty stupid, or didn’t you know that? That’s why they get caught,” he laughs.

Breaking in to my company would be more trouble than it was worth. Any idiot knows that if there’s a keypad and a retinal scan, there’s a silent alarm as well. That law enforcement and private security would be on site before they had five minutes inside. Two small time crooks could never have gotten past the nine-digit code on the keypad or faked a retinal scan without some seriously advanced tech. They had to have help, big time help. And why would anyone who could afford that expensive and specialized tech and knew how to use it want two laptops and a table off my secretary’s desk?

Easy. They didn’t. They wanted me away from my house at two in the morning with a distraction.

“We’ll need you to walk us through the offices and make a statement,” the cop is telling me.

“I can’t,” I say, “They’re at my house. That’s what this is. You have to come with me. Or send a patrol out to my house. I live in Seven Hills gated community, like five minutes away. It’s the Rativan family—they’ve been targeting me since I did some contract work—please,” I say.

“No way, buddy. I’m on this call. You need help, call 911. I think you’re just too high and mighty to do the walk through and file the report.”

“No, look—I’m begging you. My daughter is there. Send someone—”

I see I’m getting nowhere with this guy. I probably got his brother fired last year or something. I get in my car and take off.

My blood is pounding. I know this is it. This is the threat I’ve been dreading, trying to prepare for. It’s here, and I took the bait, left my daughter alone to check on my goddamned office. Just like they knew I would. I want to be sick. I run a red light and don’t even look back. The app on my phone is shrieking alerts about the house being breached.

I drive like a maniac, call the guards screaming that there’s going to be an attack on the house. I call Reva, but she doesn’t answer. I see lights and hear the sirens. They’re pulling me over. The same damn cops who wouldn’t help me are going to keep me from getting home to my baby when she’s under attack.

I pull over, roll down the window, shaking because I’ve got to go, I have to save them.

“Sir, do you realize you were going eighty-five miles per hour in—”

“Here,” I say, shoving my license, my wallet, my phone at him all at once, “take these. I’ll pay the ticket. Follow me home. There’s a crime in progress!”

The cop won’t take what I’m holding out. I throw it at him. My wallet hits him in the face. That’ll be a criminal charge against me, I bet. I don’t care. I reach out the window and shove him back so I can drive without running over him.

I peel out and head for my house. I hear the sirens, see that they’re pursuing me. The gate slows me down, but I get to the house, my police escort close behind. I don’t care that I’ll be arrested. As long as I get home in time, as long as I can stop the Rativans from killing my daughter, they can take me to jail afterward.