“I’m part selfish asshole and part idealist, I guess.”
I laughed. “I just get the selfish asshole part mostly.”
He grinned at me. “That’s what you like.”
“I don’t know. I like idealists, too.”
“You get that part of me. It’s just harder to see.”
“Right. Because it’s buried underneath all that cocky asshole behavior.”
“Pretty much.”
We both laughed together and I felt a little bit of the stress of the day fade away. Things weren’t better, exactly, but they didn’t feel so pressing. I didn’t feel like I was in a rush to do something, anything.
“Come on,” he said finally. “Let’s get back.”
“Okay,” I said, and we stood. As we walked back to the car, I suddenly grabbed his hand and stopped. He looked back at me, eyebrows raised.
“I want to see that other side of you,” I said softly. “Eventually, I mean. If you’ll let me.”
He looked at me then took my chin and gently kissed me. “We’ll see,” he said finally. “You’ll have to earn it.”
“Asshole.” I couldn’t help but smile.
He smiled back as we reached the car, got inside, and headed back home.
22
Carter
I parked the car and took Emily inside, making sure she got into her apartment okay. I shut the door behind her and headed back toward my room, anger rolling through my body.
I couldn’t prove that any of this was the work of Bruce and Cox, but I knew it had to be them. All of the scare tactics were classic Bruce, and the spy shit was right up Cox’s alley. The guy following Emily had to be Cox’s doing, but I couldn’t decide what the point was.
They must have wanted her to know they were following her. Emily wasn’t exactly trained to spot a tail like the vast majority of people weren’t. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to spot a tail unless they wanted to be spotted. Which meant that Cox wanted Emily to know she was being followed and, by extension, wanted me to know as well.
Why? What fucking game was this asshole playing?
It had to be another scare tactic. They were trying to force me to step down completely from Valor and were willing to do whatever it took. Scaring Emily and using that fear against me was just part of their mind-fuck.
I wasn’t going to give in to that. They wouldn’t actually hurt Emily, no matter how much they threatened it. And if they wanted to release all of the photos to the media, they could have done that already.
No, there was something else, some other thing going on. Until I knew what exactly they wanted, I wasn’t going to do a damn thing. I wasn’t going to bend to the will of lesser men just because they were playing some fucking game.
I wanted to kill them. I wanted to hunt them down and murder them in some glorious shootout. Unfortunately, the real world didn’t work that way. As soon as I fired a single bullet, I’d likely get arrested or killed myself. No, shootouts were for fantasy books and the movies, and not for real people. As much as I wanted to kill them, I knew that I couldn’t.
I had to find some other way to get back at Bruce and his helpers.
As I headed back to my room, an idea slowly came forward. It was a half-baked idea, vague and not fleshed out. I didn’t know exactly how it would work, but I had a notion. Not thinking too much about it, I got out my phone and called Nelson Pitts, my closest ally on the board.
“Carter,” he said, answering right away. “How are you?”
“I’m good, Nelson. I was actually wondering if you could help me out?”
“Sure thing, of course. What do you need?”
“Financial records. The stuff only the board has access to.”
He paused. “What for?”
“Can I say it’s for a project but leave it at that??
“Okay,” he sighed. “How far back?”
“Since Bruce joined the board.”
He groaned. “You’re not thinking of trying something, are you?”
“Of course I am. Help me out, Nelson.”
“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll send a courier with the papers when I have them.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“A big fat fucking one.” He hung up the phone.
I smiled to myself and opened the door to my room, still planning. As soon as I stepped inside, though, I knew something was wrong.
It didn’t take me long to figure it out. I usually had papers and notebooks lying around with ideas and numbers in there. Some of it was junk, well, the vast majority was junk. But some of it was actually pretty important, financial stuff surrounding the mansion and my other ventures. Stuff that I wouldn’t want someone to steal.
It was all gone. I tore through the drawers and realized that everything had been taken, every journal, every notebook, and every paper. Everything was gone.