Then You Hide (12 page)

Damn it all.

He silently retraced his steps to the back, reaching the patio before the back door opened. He set the box there and the cat right next to it.

As he darted through the next-door neighbor’s yard to where he’d parked his car, his cell phone beeped with a text message.

Lucy? Well, would you look at that. The lioness had invited him to her lair.

He texted right back.
Will be there at noon tomorrow
.

They had a lot in common, Lucy and him. She’d never admit it, but they were both suckers for justice. And each other.

CHAPTER TEN

“WOW. THAT WAS
easy.” Vanessa dangled the key to Mango Plantation as they left Nevis Properties and walked to Wade’s rented Wrangler. She used the roll bar to hoist herself into the passenger seat, scooping her hair off her neck and fanning, the homemade breeze not nearly enough to counter the oppressive tropical sun. Even at nine in the morning, the vinyl seats burned her bare thighs like a waffle iron.

Wade appeared unfazed by the heat as he moseyed around the front of the vehicle and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“No kidding it was easy,” he said, lifting aviator sunglasses from the breast pocket of his navy cotton T-shirt while surveying the empty streets of Charlestown. “They gave you entrance to a house and never even checked your ID.”

“Less complicated than the mandatory return of my rental car this morning.”

“You’re still bothered by that?” he asked. “It makes no sense to have a second car if we’re doing this together.”

“I like having my own wheels.”

“If you need to go somewhere, I’ll drive you.” At her disgusted look, he added, “Or give you the keys.”

“I just want to be sure I get concession credit on the imaginary bargaining table.”

Though after last night, there was a lot more than an imaginary table between them. There was a little distrustful silence and a lot of…space.

“Yeah, Vanessa. That was a huge concession. You’re from a city where no one but cab drivers can handle the traffic. It’s no hardship for you to give up left-side driving on winding mountain roads.”

He was right, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that. “I can do it. I did it all day yesterday. I don’t like being dependent.”

“I can tell.” He rubbed a hand on a clean-shaven, perspiration-free face, checking out the scenery again. When had he shaved? When had he
slept
? She’d crashed in the bed, and he’d never so much as lain on top of the covers to sleep. She assumed he spent the night on the sofa in the living room, but he was awake, showered, shaved, and ready to roll when she opened her eyes.

All she knew is that she fell asleep inhaling the scent of his T-shirt, trying to forget their “audible” pretend lovemaking, and wishing he’d insist on faking some more.

She hadn’t intended to swear off men for the past few years, but there was always an excuse not to get too close. Sex, unless it was raw and meaningless, usually came with some affection. And she just wasn’t demonstrative that way.

She stole a glance to her left. Wade could probably do raw and meaningless very nicely and wouldn’t require hugs and handholding afterward.

Wild monkey sex instead of a trip to South Carolina? She still had a few days to work on renegotiating their verbal contract.

“It was strange that they just gave you the key to a privately owned villa,” he said as he adjusted his shades.

“Not strange at all when you drop Marcus Razor’s name.” She snapped an elastic around her hair into a ponytail. “There’s a reason we call him the Rainmaker around the office. The man gets things done. They said he called and told them to expect me.”

She frowned as he tipped the sunglasses down to train his eyes on a spot over her shoulder. “What are you staring at?”

“Will you look at that?”

She turned to see empty wrought-iron chairs in a deserted café’s stone courtyard, all tucked under a huge poinciana tree. On the street, two locals, wearing bandanas and carrying water jugs, lingered in the shade to talk.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Look. Don’t you see that?”

A dented, rusted yellow truck with the remnants of black stenciled letters on the driver’s door pulled onto the road about two hundred yards from where they sat.

“What?” she asked again. “The truck? The people? The tree?” Impatience pulled. What was he looking at?

“Way over there to your right.”

She twisted even farther, toward a stone wall around an ancient church and a white balustrade balcony over a tiny grocery store. Frustrated, she pivoted around to face him. “I don’t see…
hey!
”

His sunglasses were way down his nose, and he was squinting at her neck.

“You bastard.” She touched her hairline, exposed by her ponytail. “Even if I hadn’t had it lasered off, you couldn’t see it.”

“Then why take it off?”

He’d never understand. No one would, which is precisely why she’d never tried to explain it. She waved her hand toward the road. “Move it, will you? You’re the one who said anybody could be following us when we slinked out of the Four Seasons at the crack of dawn. Why are we sitting here?”

When he finally pulled out of the parking lot, she reached into the back and grabbed the Yankees cap from the side of her tote, jerking her ponytail through the back. The adjustable plastic band covered the curlicues of the faint lasered scar, a constant reminder of who she really was. A reminder of how her most powerful childhood fantasy had blown up in her face and how Eileen Stafford was responsible for her father’s death.

“Tell me about our host who owns this place,” he said, giving a “go ahead” wave to the yellow truck, which took its sweet time getting by.

“Nicholas Vex, a dickhead CEO of a big chemical company.”

“Vexell Industries? Big is an understatement.”

“So’s dickhead. Vex is one of Marcus’s cronies, and probably our biggest and most influential client. I’ve handled a few acquisitions with him. We make a lot of money off him, and since his company holds the patent on the plastic coating that’s on every keyboard manufactured in the world, his stock has done exceedingly well for many of our clients. But the house is free, so who cares if he’s a jerk?”

Vanessa studied the run-down clapboard houses with tin roofs that stood beside Victorian gingerbread masterpieces painted lavender, fuchsia, and cream, a total mishmash of poverty and cash, of new money and old culture. Ahead of them, the yellow truck turned off, but Wade didn’t pick up any speed, just jostled them on the potholed road that might have been asphalt once but wasn’t much more than gravel now.

Their destination, the town of Cotton Ground, was about six miles to the north—but they were winding, steep, and occasionally breathtaking miles, so it wouldn’t go fast. The island smell of citrus and salt permeated everywhere, and since Wade was driving at a leisurely pace, Vanessa inhaled and leaned back, closing her eyes and letting some stress seep out of her pores.

“Let me ask you a question,” Wade said, the intensity buried in that drawl tensing her right back up again. “Why don’t you tell your boss the truth? Surely he wants to find Clive, regardless of the fact that the guy resigned.”

“Don’t you ever hide the truth from management because it could have a negative impact on your job?”

“No.”

“Then you must have some impressive job security.”

“Isn’t your job secure?”

“On Wall Steet, nothing is secure. Clive is a traitor in Marcus’s eyes, regardless of what he says he’s going to do with his life.”

“And you’re not allowed to remain friends with someone who left the company? What kind of operation is that?”

“A successful one. When someone quits, he takes millions of dollars’ worth of insider information. It’s not just that Marcus hates to lose good people, although he does. I’m sure he thinks Clive’s secretly planning to go to another firm, and that the whole ‘I’m moving to the islands’ thing was a fake-out.”

“Maybe it was.”

“I don’t think so,” she said honestly. “Clive would never make a move like that without telling me. We have no secrets.”

“He obviously does, or we wouldn’t be here.”

She shifted her gaze to the mind-numbingly beautiful horizon, where a line of turquoise water met robin’s-egg-blue sky.
Did
she really know Clive that well? They were buddies, confidants, coworkers. But…

“I guess anything’s possible,” she conceded. “Clive is so damn good at what he does that the headhunters call him daily, just like they call me. And if Fidelity or Legg Mason waved obscene amounts of money, hell yeah, he might go. But he’d tell me. He wouldn’t just disappear—he’s got too much at stake. Money’s important to him, but so is his reputation.”

Wade put a hand on her arm. “I’m not trying to paint your friend in a bad light, Vanessa. I’m just trying to look at all the possibilities, because one of them might lead us to him. Is it possible he wanted to lie low while he orchestrated a move to another firm? Or, I don’t know, maybe he’s involved in some kind of insider trading?”

“Of course, anything’s possible, but it just isn’t likely,” she said. “Clive’s very ethical and aboveboard. He doesn’t even cheat on his taxes—and, believe me, everyone at Razor does that.”

“What does everyone at Razor actually do, when they’re not cheating on their taxes?”

She smiled. “Well, not everyone cheats. And we’re asset managers. We handle and invest about eighty billion dollars a year of funds and portfolios, with ten offices around the world. If you have an IRA or retirement account, chances are, whoever holds it uses a company like ours to grow it.”

He let out a low whistle. “Eighty billion?”

She shrugged. “We’re not actually huge in the investment world. Razor is considered a boutique.”

“And you’re pretty young for a VP, right?”

“Not really. My dad used to say if you weren’t a VP headed for partner by thirty, you’re not enough of a shark.”

Wade threw the Jeep into a lower gear to start up a winding climb. “Are you a shark, Vanessa?”

She’d been called worse. “I prefer barracuda. Shark is so masculine.”

“And you’re
so
feminine.”

“You thought I was pretty damn feminine when you attacked me in the bathroom last night,” she retorted.

“Womanly,” he responded. “You are that.”

No argument on the “attack,” she noticed. “So, womanly and feminine are two different things to you, huh?” She crossed her bare legs, stretching them into his line of view.

He dropped his hand from the gearshift to her leg. “This is feminine.” He grazed his knuckles along the skin, leaving goose bumps in their wake. “What you do with it is womanly.”

They went down a dip and took a sharp curve, taking her stomach on a roller-coaster drop. “I bet you prefer feminine to womanly.”

“I prefer ladylike.” He threw her a look, but she couldn’t read his expression behind the sunglasses. “But they all have their place in the world.”

“Which means what—that you’d fuck a woman but date a lady?”

He lowered the glasses, his eyes smoky blue and serious as hell. “I don’t
fuck
women, but I’ll make love to a lady.”

“Well, good for you.” She looked away, right up at MountNevis ringed with clouds. “And the lucky lady.”

He took another tight turn and glanced in the rearview mirror, frowning. “We have company.”

Vanessa checked the side mirror and instantly recognized the bright yellow pickup. “That’s the truck we saw in town.”

He didn’t respond but kept his speed steady as they veered gently around a curve.

Vanessa watched in her mirror as the truck approached, noticing that even though the owner couldn’t afford to restencil the name of his business on the side, he’d had enough money to tint the windows heavily.

He was easily going five or more miles an hour faster than they were; if Wade hit the brakes hard, they’d be sporting yellow paint all over the back of the Jeep.

“Asshole,” she muttered.

The truck came closer.

“Where I come from, we call that brand of idiot a hammerknocker,” Wade said.

The truck rumbled to within a car’s length of them.

“That hammerknocker’s getting too close, Wade.”

She leaned back, bracing herself, but Wade calmly swerved to the left just as the truck revved its engine and tore by, so close she could have touched the side.

“Jesus!” she exhaled. “What the goddamn hell is his hurry?”

“Whatever it is, he’s on his way.” He eased them back to their lane, smiling at her. “Miss Potty Mouth.”

“Oh, that’s right.
Ladies
don’t say
Jesus
or
asshole
or
hell
or
fu
—”

He held his hand up. “No. They don’t.”

Ahead, they saw the yellow truck turn onto a dirt road.

“Where do you come from, anyway? Alabama?”

“South of Alabama.”

“Really? I didn’t know there was anything south of Alabama.”

“Then you ought to look at a map.” He glanced into the rearview mirror and slid off his glasses, throwing them onto the dashboard, his expression darkening. “But you’re right about one thing.” He tilted the mirror a little. “This guy is an asshole.”

“What the hell—” Vanessa swung around to stare down at the truck driver, who had apparently turned around on the dirt road and decided he wasn’t finished with them. “Hey!”

The pickup’s engine roared, and he tapped their bumper. Wade moved to the side again to let him pass, but this time he didn’t. He bumped again, making the Jeep swerve.

Vanessa raised her fist and stuck her middle finger in the air. “Back off, Jack!”

Wade pushed her hand down. “Don’t antagonize him. Just wait for him to pass.”

“I’m a New Yorker. I live to antagonize.” Space grew between the two vehicles. “See? He’s backing off.” She settled down a little but kept her gaze on the heavily tinted windshield behind them.

Wade took another smooth turn, then hit the accelerator and shot ahead. But the truck took off like a rocket, careening toward them at about eighty miles an hour.

Vanessa sucked in a scream, then covered her face with her hands. As they curled around another tight turn, she squinted through her fingers to see water and the cliff twenty feet in front of them.

“We’re going to die!” she squeaked.

“Not even close.” Wade threw the wheel to the left, spinning them, in total control as he worked the gas and brake and wheel in brilliant choreography. “Just hang on.”

The truck flew right by, squealing on the asphalt as he slammed on his brakes. Wade whipped the Jeep in the same direction, punched the gas, and ate up the thirty feet between them in a spray of gravel.