Rachel cried out as she fell back. I moved around her and slipped out the door, pulling it shut. It locked automatically, just as I’d suspected, and she was trapped inside. She immediately began banging against the door, screaming for me to open it, but I wouldn’t have known how even if I’d wanted to.
I was standing in a well-outfitted kitchen that I knew almost instantly. Stupid girl had brought me to her parents’ beach house. That’s how I’d known it was her. I’d recognized it when she brought me inside.
I went to the sink and ran cool water over my raw wrists. It burned, forcing me to close my eyes and whisper a few unkind words. I was bleeding pretty good from where the cable ties had bitten into my flesh. Nothing so bad that I would need stitches, but it would be pretty sore for a couple of days. I found a couple of towels in a nearby drawer and wrapped them around my wrists. Then I searched the cabinets for some sort of bandage, but couldn’t find anything.
I walked cautiously through the kitchen into the long, open living room. I didn’t think there was anyone else here, but thought I’d be better off safe than sorry. I pulled the blinds in the living room, blocking the dim moonlight coming in through the French doors and long, beautiful windows on either side of the room. Then down the hall, peeking inside each of the four bedrooms. Then the master.
Nothing.
I slipped into the room I’d shared with Lucien on our visit here this past weekend. He had a first aid kit in a drawer there. I fixed my wrists and removed the cable ties on my ankles with a pair of scissors in another drawer. Then, down the hall to the master bedroom, I searched through a few dresser drawers and found a pair of jeans that weren’t too terribly large for me. A belt could do wonders.
A pair of shoes and a light jacket, and I felt more like myself.
Now…what the hell was going on? And who the fuck was ‘we’?
Chapter 33
Lucien
“What? Who do you think it is?”
“We need to get to Katy,” Jacob said. “The meeting place.”
“But what about San Antonio? What did the hotel tell you?”
Jacob looked at me, his expression unreadable. “When you hired Ruben and his goons, did you have any idea what was behind all this?”
I started to shake my head, but he interrupted me.
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“It was a reporter. Some reporter called and asked specifically about the artificial pancreas. There are only a handful of people who know—”
“Don’t pull that bullshit on me,” Jacob said. “Tell me the truth.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “That is the truth. Only a handful of people knew about that project. Only one of those people could have said something to a reporter.”
“So you went to a private detective instead of talking to me about it?”
“What would you have done had I gone to you? You would have denied you had anything to do with it, and you would have wanted to handle it internally. I know you, Jacob,” I said, staring at him with the same hard expression he had on his face. “The last time something like this happened, you insisted on taking over. You insisted on handling it yourself. How did I know it wasn’t you?”
“Why would I go to the press about something that could only benefit our company?”
“Because you knew that there were issues with the device. Because you knew we weren’t quite ready to go to human trials. You would have wanted to slow things down.”
“Going to a reporter wouldn’t have slowed things down. If anything, it would have sped things up!”
“Unless the reporter found out about the trouble we’ve been having. Then the FDA never would have approved our request for human trials.”
Jacob shook his head, but I saw something in his eyes that worried me. Something wrong. I don’t know what it was, but it set off alarm bells inside of me that I didn’t understand.
“Does any of this really matter now?” I asked softly.
“You lied to me. You lied to me about Adrienne, about her relationship with you, and you lied to me about what she was doing here, in our company. That matters.”
“No,” I said. “The only thing that matters is that Adrienne’s missing and we have no idea who has her. We have no idea what they might do to her.”
“Are you telling me you actually care about this woman?”
He scoffed at me, the tone of his voice mocking me. I wanted to punch him. I’d known Jacob since I was five years old, and this was the first time I’d wanted to punch him.
“You talk like it’s impossible for me to have feelings for someone like Adrienne.”
“No. I just think that something that began as a joke will likely remain a joke.”
“It wasn’t a joke. And it definitely isn’t a joke now.”