Read The Arrangement (The Blankenships Book 9) Online
Authors: Evelyn Glass
CHAPTER SIX
She half expected to see federal marshals boarding the plane as soon as they landed. She half expected to be dragged off the plane in handcuffs while the other passengers alternated between pointing and laughing and staring in horror. That she and Alex took down their carry-ons, then stepped past the flight attendants who smiled at them politely was disorienting, to say the least.
But Luke was waiting for them in the concourse.
She couldn’t read his expression. His arms were crossed across his chest. In a movie, he would have done it so that he could more easily reach his gun. But his balance seemed wrong. He was shifted to one side, more weight on his left leg than his right. Irritated? Nervous? She wasn’t sure. His face was smooth and cold, his eyes heavy.
If Alex was concerned, he didn’t show it. He led her through the disembarking passengers directly to the man he’d once described as a friend. “Mr. Commissioner,” Alex said, and there was a lilt of question to the phrase, as if there was something more that he was asking.
The two men stared at each other for several long moments, and Zoey’s belly clenched tight, twisting and turning. For a long moment, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to stay on her feet.
And then Luke shook his head, ever so slightly. “Nah,” he said, tipping his head back just a little to look Alex in the eyes. “Just your buddy, here to pick you up from the airport, save you from needing to get a cab, or call a car, or whatever you rich assholes do these days.” He held out a hand, and Zoey felt her stomach starting to settle down, just a little, as Alex took it. It was more of a grip than a shake, but it was something. Something good and important. “This way,” he said.
Luke led them away from the main concourse of JFK, towards the darker hallways and maintenance corridors. They eventually emerged in a nearly deserted parking lot, where Luke directed them into a nondescript sedan in a dirty brownish gray color. Alex tried to gesture Zoey into the passenger seat, but she pushed him that way herself and slid into the back before he could argue much at all.
Once the car was in gear, Luke was all business. “I can only give you 24 hours, and if you call attention to yourselves, there’s nothing I can do.”
“I understand,” Alex said. “I don’t want to make things worse for you.”
Luke waved that away with an impatient hand. “Friends, Alex. And I’m not an idiot. I’ve protected myself. Now, where am I taking you?”
“AEGIS, please.”
Luke glanced back at Zoey in the rearview. She tried to look calm and confident. “You realize that it’s the middle of the morning, and despite your absence, the building is going to be in full swing?”
“I know.”
“And that we’ve been heavily canvassing the building for the past few days, trying to locate you, since you’re wanted in connection to several recent homicides?”
She could almost feel the tension that was rolling off Alex’s shoulders in waves. His jaw was locked tight, and the muscles of his neck were almost corded. “I’m aware, Luke.” Her stomach clenched all over again. She wished again that they’d arrived in New York in the dead of night, or the wee hours of the morning. That they’d left Luke out of it. Yes, Alex’s point that Pyramus might be able to run interference for them, get them a certain level of protection, was valid… until it wasn’t. Because they were in his car, and if he decided to just drive them to 1PP, there wasn’t anything in the world they could do about it.
“So I think that maybe it’s time for you to be a little clearer with me about your plan.”
The silence in the car weighed down on them until Zoey started to feel more than a little dizzy. And then he sighed, shook his head, and nodded. “It’s not a particularly good plan,” he said. “But okay. Let’s talk. Did you bring what I asked you for?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
As far as she was concerned, though, his plan for getting into the building was vastly more risky. He swore to both her and Luke that it would be fine, that no one would look at him twice, but she wasn’t sure which idea horrified her more—if he was right or wrong.
She scanned the badge at the security desk. The light in front of her flashed from red to green, and she walked past the security desk without the guard doing more than glancing up at her.
She tried not to pull at the hem of her blouse, or tug at the waistband of her skirt. She’d gotten spoiled by clothes that were tailored to fit her far more quickly than she was entirely comfortable with. When Alex had asked Luke for supplies, Luke had pointed to a couple of shopping bags in the back of the car. Both of the men had looked away as she slid out of her comfortable traveling clothes into what would pass for business attire. She’d twisted her hair up with a clip, and looked more or less like any woman who might be headed to a middle management meeting. Luke had even supplied her with a purse, and she had the Chinese phone that Zhu had given both her and Alex.
The giveaways were obvious to her—her purse was empty other than the phone, and she was wearing flats instead of heels. She didn’t have hose. But if someone was looking closely enough to notice those things, the jig was already up, as they said.
She made it across the lobby and into the elevator, her heart slamming against her ribs so hard that she was sure her sternum would crack.
No one was looking at her, noticing her, watching her. Her dark gray skirt and light blue blouse were virtually indistinguishable from anyone around her, but that didn’t stop her from feeling other people’s eyes crawling over her like bugs. She was convinced that she was noticeable, that people were seeing her, and that any moment a heavy hand would close over her arm, angry, cold eyes glaring at her as she was pulled away from the stream of people heading up into the upper offices.
But no one gave her so much as a second glance. A relatively attractive woman in nondescript business wear was invisible in this building. The elevator doors closed, and she reached forward to push the button for the floor that held the office she needed. She closed her eyes just once as the elevator started to move, and then forced her eyelids open again. She had to breathe. She had to make this happen. Alex was depending on her.
When the elevator opened on his floor, her stomach flipped over. Was it really just a few weeks ago she’d strode out onto this floor, fresh off what felt like the journalistic success of the century—okay, not really at all, but the closest she was likely to get—of breaking the story of the dude who was flashing single people on the subway, thinking she was about to do a puff piece on AEGIS, but maybe also get a couple of quotes to write some real investigative journalism that was actually meaningful and relevant the kind of thing she’d gone to school for. And then as she’d walked into that office—she could see it from here, even though the door was closed—she could feel the edge of the desk pressing into her thighs and her ass as he’d fucked her. She shivered, nerves pushing her body towards arousal far faster than she’d ever gone on her own, her nipples tightening into sharp points that were clearly visible through the cotton of her blouse. Her cheeks were red and heated; she wanted to hide somewhere.
Instead, she pushed herself into motion again, walking past Alex’s office into the office just past his. The door was slightly open, and this was the part that terrified her. He’d told her, over and over, that the office hadn’t been used in several years and was used by visiting executives from other divisions. It connected to his office for the convenience of those executives, but that wasn’t why he wanted it.
She went inside the office, sat down like she owned the place, flipped up the laptop that stationed on the desk, and confronted the login screen to the AEGIS networks.
She wanted to close the door to the office more than anything, but when she’d mentioned it in passing to Alex, he’d shaken his head so hard she’d thought his neck would snap. “No,” he’d insisted. “That door closed will surprise people, make them take notice. The door sitting open, even if there’s someone at the desk they don’t recognize, is common enough to blur into the background.”
“But what if—”
He’d just shaken his head. “It’s too late for you to stop trusting me, Zoey. Are you in?”
His dark gaze had been so intent on her, so focused, that it shook her somehow even more deeply. She’d nodded, trying to project even half the confidence he was carrying.
“And what do I do once I’m in?” She’d asked. She’d seen his lips bend up in a little bit of a smile and heard Luke’s rough grunt of approval. Growing up, her daddy had loved watching spy shows with her. The modern ones, like
Alias
and the rebooted James Bond movies, but also the older, British ones, like
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
What would he make of her now, if he saw her, hunched over a laptop, consulting her phone like she was trying to remember her login information.
I’m sitting,
she messaged Alex.
His reply took long enough that her stomach clenched with fear. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of getting out, not really. After all, if she was leaving without Alex, it would mean that something had gone horribly, disgustingly wrong, and she wouldn’t let herself contemplate that possibility. They were going to find what they needed.
I’m on my way,
he sent back.
Stay busy.
She resisted the urge to snort with derision. First of all, he wouldn’t be able to hear her. Second, it might draw attention to her. Capable type-A business women who made senior executive and had a travel budget didn’t snort. She was nearly sure of it.
She reached into the desk and found a pen and a pad of yellow lined paper. She started making bullet pointed notes of absolutely anything she could think to write down. The names of her parents, the ins and outs of everything they’d found so far, the connections that had to exist—had to—between Philip Blankenship and his many bastard children, the horror that they’d survived, and what kind of flowers she wanted at her wedding if they survived all of this.
Her cheeks heated at the memory of Alex’s face when she’d proposed to him over the Pacific Ocean. It had seemed like the only sensible thing to say, and she’d been right to tell him not to answer now, but at the same time, she rather desperately wished he had. Or at least sounded like it was a good idea, and that she wasn’t completely crazy to have made the suggestion.
It had come out of nowhere, but it also hadn’t. They’d been as close as two people could be since they’d met, and no, it wasn’t in any way a good barometer for their long term success as a couple, but at the same time, she didn’t know how she could find another relationship after this one. She’d discovered in the past few weeks that she quite literally trusted Alex with her life. She didn’t know that she could go off and be with another man that she trusted less after this.
“I love him,” she said, entirely to herself.
And then she heard his voice in the outer office, and her blood turned to ice. She tried to stay still, to keep from looking up, but she couldn’t force herself to keep her focus down on the pad of paper. She at least tried to keep her gaze disinterested, drawn more by the sound of conversation than the specific voice of the man speaking.
It didn’t really sound like Alex, after all. His voice was still smooth and deep, the soft sound that made the skin on the back of her neck give a soft shiver, but he’d picked up a Georgia drawl that made her laugh. It was a passing fair accent, though it was far too generic to fool someone like her, who could sometimes pin down what county someone had grown up in by the exact nature of their vowels, but to the New York secretary, he was addressing, it was all the same. “I have a package for a Ms. Smith, in office 503?”
The secretary sounded bored and tired. “There’s no one in that office.” She hadn’t even looked up from her computer.
“Uh,” Alex said, and Zoey knew, she knew without question, that if she didn’t know it was him, she would have dismissed him out of hand and never ever made the connection. “I’m sorry to contradict you, ma’am, but it looks like there is.”
The secretary looked up, finally, and followed Alex’s pointing finger toward Zoey’s face. Her eyes focused for just a minute, and then she blushed under her BB Cream. She picked up her phone and dialed a few numbers; the phone on the desk in front of Zoey rang. Zoey managed not to roll her eyes at the nonsense of it all, and picked up the phone. “Hello,” she said.
“Ms. Smith,” the secretary said, only the faintest question in her tone. “I’m so sorry. Things have been in such a disarray—not that that’s an excuse—I didn’t realize you were in town—”
“It’s fine, of course,” Zoey said, letting her own drawl morph into something closer to Helen’s Londoner tones. It wasn’t precise, and just like Alex’s drawl, it would never fool someone who was actually British, but it was more than enough to convince this nervous secretary, who was almost certainly a temp replacement for the woman Alex had let go due to the danger she was facing.
“I’ll sign for it, if you’d like—”
Alex interrupted, out in the office, his voice oozing apology and almost a bit of fear at interrupting them. “I’m so sorry, ma’am, but I was told to wait for a response. Is that—”
The secretary actually conveyed the information to Zoey via the phone, as if she couldn’t damn well hear everything that Alex was saying perfect well.
“Yes,” Zoey said. “Send him in, please. I’ll take care of it.”
He gave the secretary a smile—just enough to seem polite, not enough to actually draw her attention, and stepped past the desk into Zoey’s office. She closed the door—the secretary gave a slightly knowing smirk, clearly imagining the opening to some kind of porn novel—but all Zoey could do was breathe a slow and steady sigh of relief.
Alex wore a bitter smile. “Told you,” he said, his voice back to its standard New York patterns. “No one looks twice at a polite black man in a uniform.”
She hadn’t wanted him to be right. They’d needed him to be right, but the idea that a CEO could walk straight into his own building and be unrecognizable because he wore a brown uniform shirt turned her stomach into knots. Sure, the secretary was new, but security? Everyone he’d had to pass in the lobby, the people in the elevator with him? “I’m sorry,” she said, but he brushed away her words.
“There’s no point,” he said. “At least it worked.”
She had the idea this wound was deeper than they could delve into right now, so all she could do was to take the package he’d carried away from him, set it on the desk, and pull him into a hug. In her flats, she had to reach up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck, and it took a moment for him to embrace her back. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
This time, he accepted the apology. It seemed like he knew she was apologizing for more than just this one humiliation. She tried to tell herself that she was both apologizing and accepting what it would mean, the two of them building a life together. The thought that it might not ever be easy, but she thought it would always be worth it.
“I love you,” he said. “Yes.”
She knew what he was saying yes to all the way into the pit of her stomach, and she wrapped herself up around that quiet assurance, using it as a fire that could warm the edges of the cold fear that had gripped her since their first plane had lifted off in China. He’d said it to her before, on the plane, and she’d given him what she still considered a well justified smack. Now, it was different. “Good,” she said. “Now, tell me the password.”
He leaned back, blinking at her for a moment until he seemed to understand. “Oh! No, we’re not logging into the system. Jesus, I have no idea what the guest password is. Seriously, I considered having my own password tattooed on the inside of my wrist, but then IT reminded me that I have to change it every 30 days, and I only have so much wrist.”