Chapter 23

If I have to put on pants for you to come to my house, then you’re clearly not that good of a friend.

-T-shirt

Rafe

“Goddamn ticking time bomb,” Trace muttered over and over again. “Jesus Christ. Whatever you do, don’t freak out, okay?”

I had absolutely no idea what he was babbling on about.

When I’d walked into the room on my own, the first thing I’d seen was Trace. He’d been sitting in a chair, much like I was, and his eyes were directed at the door. Waiting.

He had his hands tied behind his back which was then attached to the metal chair he was sitting in.

Much like I had now.

I tested the knot of the rope one more time and felt it tighten farther.

Fuck!

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

I looked at my friend, and if my hands were free, I’d punch him square in the face.

I shook my head. “Trace, I literally have no fucking clue what you’re carrying on about. I don’t have a ticking time bomb in my head. I’m fine.”

Trace shook his head. “The doctor…”

“It was the best thing I ever did,” Layton drawled as he entered the room.

“What was?” I asked, spitting out a mouth full of blood next to his feet where he came to a stop directly in front of me.

“Telling your friends and family that you had an inoperable aneurysm was a great job on my part,” Layton explained. “I told them that due to the recent head injury, that the aneurysm couldn’t be treated because you were too unstable. I also made sure that they knew any upsets could also trigger it. They were to treat you with kid gloves, and not tell you a goddamn thing.”

“You what?” Trace bellowed.

I looked at my friend and told him without words that he needed to chill the fuck out.

Trace’s shoulders tightened, his eyes narrowed, but he shut his mouth.

“Why?” I asked, turning back to Layton.

“Because it left you vulnerable, and it alienated them from you,” he answered. “Now you’re all alone and nobody is here to save you.”

It had.

I’d felt in the dark this entire time, and their refusal to tell me anything, even when I’d asked, had really brought back old feelings I’d rather have left buried.

Meaning just like the rest of them, Trace had known, too.

I clenched my jaw.

“It was your medical chart, you see.” Layton’s amused words made me want to punch him in the non-existent cunt.

The fucker.

“Elspeth begged me to look over your chart. ‘Daddy, please look over him. I want the best taking care of the man I plan to marry.’” He mimicked his daughter’s voice. “So, I did, for her. And you wanna know what I found?”

I closed my eyes as dawning understanding washed over me.

My sister was my point of emergency contact. The nurse on call had called her and asked for my medical history.

She’d likely given everything to her without a second thought.

Where I had been trying to keep myself under the radar, my sister had blown that cover sky high. Just by giving my medical history.

God. Fucking. Dammit.

Of all the chances.

Everything was starting to make sense.

The way that Janie lived life like she was going to lose me at any moment. The way she was capturing every single memory that she could.

Her request to have a baby.

Her promise that she would never, ever love another man.

Her desire to get married in Vegas.

Everything was all adding up, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put two and two together to get four until now.

“I see understanding is dawning.” Layton grinned. “Fucking sucks, doesn’t it, having all your hard work take a nose dive right in front of you.”

He walked to the wall at my back, and I could no longer see him.

I could see Trace, though, who was tied just like I was, only facing me.

And Trace’s face showed me that whatever Layton was doing back there, I wasn’t going to like.

“I spent years setting this final payout up. Hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden. It was going to be the perfect retirement gift from the US Army. Even though they didn’t exactly know that they were giving it to me. But still…this was going to be perfect. I had it all lined up. All my ducks in a row…then you happen along. Every single thing I had planned, you foiled. First it was the guns. Then it was the hack into my account. After that, it was the rerouting of not just my retirement, but all of my present wealth, too. And, on paper, it doesn’t look like I lost a goddamn thing. That’s where I was hoping your computer came in handy.”

Layton came back around and stopped in front of me, a scalpel in his hand.

“You’re going to use this computer and give it all back. If you give it back, I’ll consider allowing you to live.”

I hadn’t done a damn thing with any of his money.

None.

I’d tried.

Oh, how I’d tried.

But I hadn’t been able to get a fucking thing. It was all too random. There was no rhyme or reason to anything that Layton did.

I couldn’t get a handle on a single thing.

I had a ton of information…and none of it made any fucking sense.

Yet, Layton apparently thought I knew something.

And maybe I did, and I just didn’t know it.

I did know that I didn’t have his money, though.

“You’re going to use this computer, and you’re going to get my money back to me. Now,” he said. And, before I could so much as flinch, he sliced me from eye to chin. “Or I’m going to slice you up and make it hurt.”

I felt the blood start to well on my face, and drip down my neck in a steady stream.

“I need my hands to do that,” I told him honestly.

“One,” he said, then walked around me while keeping the computer on the table, facing me.

The computer wasn’t my computer. It was Janie’s.

Thank God she didn’t know about the program that I’d installed on here. Otherwise, I just knew she’d be watching what was about to happen next.

Because I wasn’t going to find that money.

There was just no way around it. I couldn’t. Not if I didn’t know where it was.

And it wasn’t like I could just give him that kind of money. I had a hundred thousand in the bank, sure, but not thousands and thousands.

My hand came free from the bindings behind my back, and I brought it forward.

A door slammed, and I lazily pulled my eyes up to see Elspeth standing there.

“Hey, y’all!”

Layton jolted.

I didn’t. I’d seen her enter the room. Her eyes were taking in absolutely everything in one quick glance.

“What are you doing in here?” he barked, his eyes warily going to me and then Trace. “Who let you down here?”

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” Elspeth came swaggering into the room. “You don’t think that I was going to allow you to get away with all this, did you?”

Layton looked stunned speechless.

“Your men aren’t yours any longer. They’re mine.”

I blinked, unsure of what to do.

“What?” Layton said. “You’re being ridiculous. Get out.”

Elspeth smiled then. “I guess you could always try to kick me out.”

Layton stalked toward her, and the man that had taken me stepped in front of her, blocking his way.

“No.” He said a single word.

Layton didn’t stop.

He kept coming.

And then his face was filled with a bullet from the man’s gun.

“Bummer,” Elspeth said as she watched her father fall. “I really had plans for him, you know. Seriously, Stav. I told you not to shoot him until I was finished.”

“You’re finished,” Stav said.

Elspeth sighed.

Then she stepped over her father’s rapidly cooling body and wrapped her arms around Stavros. “Give me a kiss. Then go let the feds know what’s up.”

Stav did what she said, and I watched it all with stunned disbelief.

The moment the man was out of the room, Elspeth turned those eyes to me.

“You’ll have to thank your girlfriend for me. I really, really didn’t want to do anything with you that might hurt mine and Stavros’ relationship,” Elspeth said. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I never intended to do those things, but we were having to stall for time. It was either that, or what I found for the Feds wasn’t going to be good enough to put him away.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it, unsure of what to say.

“I guess had I known that you were who you were a long time ago, I might’ve been able to work with you.” She sighed. “I still feel like you have no clue how much you helped me. When Daddy saw that I was being ‘pursued’ by another man, he started to let his guard down.”

That was true.

Had I known that she was a willing informant, this could’ve gone a whole lot smoother.

But I hadn’t.

“I…I don’t know what to say,” I admitted.

She smiled. It was a different smile than the one she used to give me.

“Just say that whatever you found you’ll give over to the Feds when they ask for it,” she said as she wiped her hands off. “And ask your girl to forgive me.”

I nodded.

“My father was an asshole.”

I agreed. “He was.”

“We really are a lot alike, you know. We both have daddy issues.” She bared her teeth. “When I was twenty, I met Stavros. He was a new bodyguard for me.” She smiled. “I didn’t know why I needed one, but I never complained. I thought I was just a military brat who might’ve caught the attention of one of my father’s enemies. It never occurred to me that it was my father who was bad. Not until mine and Stavros’ relationship turned into something more, and my father nearly killed him.”

I grunted.

Yeah, sounded like we both had daddy issues.

“One day, Stavros and I were wonderful. The next, Stavros and I were no longer an item. I couldn’t understand why. Not until years later when I finally got Stavros to tell me the truth…which was round about the time I started to get curious about some of my observations about my father and his military career.”

She looked at her father’s body.

“Stavros had changed from the man that I’d fallen in love with. And that change had everything to do with my father. Stavros was forced to do things he never wanted to do, and if he didn’t do them, my father threatened the one thing that could keep him doing them. Me.”

“Asshole.”

“Right?” Elspeth said. “So, Stavros and I went to someone that could help. An FBI agent named Lynn. Stavros knew him from somewhere, and though it’d been a very long time since they’d spoken, he hoped that connection was still there. And it was. Which led us to gather as much evidence as we could. Stavros’ job was to do what he was told to do within reason.”

Within reason. I smirked.

Her eyes narrowed. “You almost killed him today, though.”

I held my hand up. “I didn’t know. I was just protecting Janie.”

Elspeth smiled sadly. “We knew the risks.”

They had. And, so did he.

Which was why he was no longer going to play this dangerous game. He was done. D.O.N.E.

Starting now.

I nodded. She didn’t need to justify her reasons for doing what she did. I agreed wholeheartedly based solely on my own convictions.

“You mind untying me?”

Elspeth jumped. “Yes, sorry. I meant to do that earlier. Your face is still bleeding, too. I’m sorry about that. Stavros was supposed to stop any of this from happening. But then your friend showed, and started causing some chaos.”

We both looked over at Trace, who at some point in this discussion had blended into the woodwork. He’d been paying attention, but he hadn’t said a word.

“I don’t really know what you wanted me to do here. Layton told me to come with a gun pointed at my head,” Trace pointed out.

I sighed and turned back to Elspeth expectantly.

“Let’s do it,” I ordered, wiggling my free hand at her.

She untied me, then Trace, moments later.

“I need to call Janie,” I said as I reached for my phone that was sitting on the counter next to the scalpel Layton had used to cut my face.

She answered on the first ring.

“We heard,” Janie said as she answered the phone. “Elliott just went outside to tell the officers. He said someone will be on their way to come get you momentarily.”

I looked at my watch. “I have my own ride when this is finally all sorted out here.”

And I did.

Trace was going to take me home in his truck—which I’d seen outside when ‘Stavros’ had parked the van next to it.

Then I wasn’t going to have another damn thing to do with him for a very, very long time.

Out of everyone that could’ve told me the truth, I expected it most from him. He’d been my longest standing friend. The one man that had been there from the very beginning.

“I’ll be home in a little while,” I said, smiling then.

Why did it not surprise me that she knew I’d been watching her?

***

“For what it’s worth,” Trace said, “I didn’t want to go. It was either bring you there, or they take my woman. And, now that you have Janie…you know that you’ll always choose her.”

I did know.

Which was what sucked.

I couldn’t blame him for going and giving up my location.

He’d called earlier and asked where I was while I was in the shower. I’d told him, and hadn’t thought another thing of it.

“And your wife? She’s okay?”

“I left her there and drove myself to the lovely Casa De Crazy. They said if I cooperated, then she wouldn’t be hurt.”

I nodded and opened the door, stepping out.

“Rafe?”

I looked over my shoulder at him.

“Yeah?”

“I’m here if you need me.”

I snorted. “I won’t.”

Then I slammed the door in his face.

I walked up my driveway, past a cop, and through my front door.

Before I could close it behind me, Janie was in my arms.

She was there for about point five seconds before she let go of me, and then dashed outside.

Frowning, I turned to look at her, only to get an eyeful of her ass as she bent over into the grass and lost her lunch.