“Shit!”
“What?” Jacob asked again, snatching the phone from me. He read the text, then looked at me, his eyes narrowed with concern. “I’m guessing she didn’t tell you about these?”
“She wanted to leave the party early. I didn’t know why.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I thought she was just tired.”
“Adrienne doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who gets tired easily.”
Sergio snorted. I glanced at him, but I really wasn’t interested in what he had to say. I wasn’t interested in what anyone who thought they knew her better had to say right now.
“Who sent those texts to her?”
Jacob shook his head. “I have no idea. The number was blocked.”
“But we need to find out. If we knew who sent them, we’d know who has her.”
“Obviously. But I’m sure it was a burner phone.”
“Then why not send the demands to my phone?”
Jacob shook his head. “I don’t know.” He went back to his desk and sat down, the phone still in his hands. “Why would someone take Adrienne?”
“To get to me.”
“But why?”
“To get to you.”
Jacob shook his head again. “Why not take you or Rachel or Lynn? Wouldn’t that be simpler? You and Adrienne hardly know each other. Someone on the outside wouldn’t even know about her.”
“Then it’s not someone on the outside.”
Jacob didn’t answer me. He continued to stare at that phone as though it would suddenly have all the answers he wanted.
“None of it makes sense,” he said slowly. “If this person wanted to get a loved one onto one of the FDA trials, they could have gone about it so many different ways.”
“Has anyone within your company asked to have a family member added to the trials recently?” Sergio asked. It was the first time he’d spoken since we left San Antonio.
“No,” I said.
But Jacob looked up, his expression thoughtful as he studied Sergio.
“Two.”
“Two? Who?”
“Tito asked about the trial for the cholesterol pill we went public with last month. The trials are just about done on that one. We’ll be going to market soon.”
“But it’ll be public, so what’s the big deal?”
Jacob dismissed the thought with a flick of his hand. “I gave him a bottle of it. Told him to run it past his father’s doctor before he gave it to him.”
“Who was the other?”
Jacob was quiet a long minute. Then he turned around and started typing furiously on his computer keyboard. Sergio got a call at the same moment.
“Boss is at your office,” he said to me. “He thinks he might have found something.”
“What?”
Sergio just shrugged.
“Go,” Jacob said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Chapter 28
Adrienne
Time passed incredibly slowly. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I wasn’t tied to a chair. I thought about Lucien. I thought about the moment I first saw him, watching me across that crowded bar. My dad had shown me a picture of him, but it didn’t do justice to the man in reality. He was so tall I almost had to stand back and lean so that I could see him properly. His shoulders were impossibly broad. And that charming smile he had was enough to make my heart melt just at the sight. I’d never known a man quite like him before. And no man like him had ever taken notice of me before. If not for the little scheme my father had cooked up—me pretending to be his girlfriend so I could get close to the people he worked with and figure out which one was selling business secrets—we probably wouldn’t have looked twice at each other.
But he came over, whispered in my ear and dragged me over to the table he’d been sharing with Jacob. And the story he told, dragging it out like it was a real drama. I’d fallen, kit and kaboodle, before the first kiss.
All I could think about was how badly I wanted to see him again.
I’d been in worse situations than this. I’d served in Afghanistan. I’d walked patrols where children carried hand grenades and tried to blow us up even as we handed out candy bars. I’d seen friends lose limbs, held a twenty-two-year-old father in my arms as he bled out. I’d seen worse.
But I had some measure of control in those situations. I had no control in this one.
The cable ties were cutting into my skin. I could feel the chafing. They’d be bleeding soon. And maybe then the blood would lubricate the way, allow me to pull my hands free. But my ankles… That was going to be more difficult.
I wish I’d had pants on when she walked into the room. I had a little pocket knife I always carried in the pocket of my jeans. Maybe, if she hadn’t discovered it, I could cut the cable ties with that. But I wasn’t planning on going anywhere in that moment. I’d expected Lucien to come back and pull me into bed again. The man was insatiable… A slow smile touched my lips at the memory of just how insatiable he was.