Broken (37 page)

A pair of shoes came into his field of vision, but Quinn barely noticed. Numb, he fell back on his ass and continued to stare at the picture.

A hand touched his arm. Dazed, Quinn looked up and watched as Martin knelt down next to him. “Rafferty, are you okay? You’re white as a ghost.”

He swallowed the knot in his throat and flipped the picture around, showing it to Martin. “Who is this?”

Martin’s eyes dropped to the picture. His mouth flattened out in a tight line. “You didn’t read a single message I sent you, did you? None of the e-mails?”

No, he hadn’t read any of the e-mails. He hadn’t seen any reason—why did he need updates when he already knew where to find Sarah? He shook his head and repeated, “Who is this?”

“Why in the hell do I put up with you?” Martin muttered. He grabbed the folder and rifled through it, plucking a sheet from the back and thrusting it at Quinn.

“Her name is Samantha McElyea—Sarah’s twin. She disappeared at the same time as her sister. From what I’ve been able to tell, the police think they disappeared together.”

S
AMANTHA McElyea tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and tipped her head back, staring up at the ebony and glass tower that jutted up into the sky. She’d been to the Renaissance Building before, but not often.

James had despised Sam, pretty much on sight. The feeling had been mutual. If she hadn’t loved her sister so much, there was no way in hell she would have even attended the wedding. Of course, maybe
not
going to the wedding would have given her sister a much-needed awakening.

It wouldn’t have done any good.

Sarah had to make the decision for herself—she had to see for herself. And nothing Sam did would make that happen any sooner.

Sam slid her sunglasses on and tried to release the tension that had turned the muscles in her back into a mess of knots. It had been a good long while since she’d seen James, but she knew she had to be careful around him. He was too good at reading people. He always had been.

It was part of the reason she’d avoided coming here, even the few times Sarah had invited her—always under the guise of some sort of business meeting, something that James’s PR people would set up.

As often as she’d been able, she’d tried to convince Sarah to leave. To run away. To get a divorce. Sarah could have absconded with the pool boy and Sam would have been delighted. But Sarah hadn’t ever done anything unseemly, not in her life, and she wasn’t going to start while she was married to James.

No matter how cruel he’d been, no matter how many times he’d left marks on her, Sarah had remained the picture-perfect, so very polite and proper woman that he’d married.

Sarah had taken being a good girl to the extreme.

Sam had delighted in being the wild one, the one who had probably been responsible for their mom’s first gray hairs, the one who’d gotten in trouble at school.

And she’d been the one to recognize, before anybody else, that there was something dangerous about James Morgan. Even their mom hadn’t believed it at first. None of Sarah’s old friends believed it. They’d thought Sarah was living the fairy tale—some rich older guy had fallen head over heels in love with her and swept her off her feet.

The real-life version had been way different. Morgan had been the rich older guy, all right. But when he’d swept Sarah off her feet, it had been to isolate her—most of Sarah’s friends hadn’t seen her in years. There had been weeks when Sarah and Sam had gone without even talking on the phone.

Sam had her fears about James, but it wasn’t until their mom got sick that she realized maybe there was something to them. Sarah hadn’t come to the hospital until three days after their mother had been admitted. Alice McElyea had been in a drugged stupor for those first few days and she hadn’t been aware of her oldest daughter’s absence. But Sam had. Achingly, painfully aware and she’d left message after message at the Morgan house, each one getting more and more heated, more and more pissed.

The final one had been,
If you don’t get your ass down here to see Mom, so help me God, I’m going to come get you and haul you down here myself
. Sam had needed her twin there with her—she’d needed her best friend and she’d been utterly pissed.

Even when Sarah had come into the hospital room, Sam had been biting back her temper. Her twin had arrived that afternoon, full of apologies and explanations—she’d been out of town on a business trip with James and the staff hadn’t passed the messages on.

But Sarah hadn’t been able to look Sam in the eye while she told her story. And then Sam had glimpsed the bruise when Sarah bent over to kiss their mother’s cheek. It had spread over the ivory flesh of Sarah’s breast like an ugly stain. If Sam hadn’t been standing in just the right place, looking down at just the right time, she never would have seen it. As Sarah had straightened up, the ivory silk shell had fallen back into place and once more the mark had been hidden.

Sarah hadn’t confided in her right away.

But Sam didn’t understand the meaning of quit and she’d pushed and pushed until finally Sarah broke down. It hadn’t been easy, and it hadn’t happened overnight. It had taken more than two years, and some threats that even Sarah hadn’t been able to live with.

Threats against Sam.

But then James made one huge tactical error. He was so used to controlling people, so used to people jumping when he said jump. He’d made a mistake with Don. Don might be his go-to man when it came to business problems. Don might be one hell of an employee—the kind who never said no, who never blinked when it came to things like tax evasion and fraud. After all, he was a numbers man. If anybody could take dirty numbers and clean them up, make them make sense, it was Don Hessig.

Sam knew all about Don. Unbeknownst to his employer, the general public, hell . . . possibly even his own mother, Don had a double life going.

He was one of the “donors” who helped supply funding for a project of hers.

In a rather karmic twist of fate, James’s right-hand man had no tolerance for the bastards who abused women. And Don sure as hell wasn’t going to kill somebody for his boss.

Sam could still remember that particular meeting. She’d gotten the call one night when she’d been working late. She’d recognized Don’s voice, tried to avoid the conversation because she’d had her hands full.

But Don had been adamant. “We need to talk. Privately.”

She’d met up with him, but it wasn’t until she arrived at the arranged meeting spot that she realized he’d called Sarah, too.

Sam hadn’t understood why . . . not until she saw how Don had watched Sarah. The poor idiot had something for her twin, Sam had realized. And he’d found a way that might get her away from her husband.

It had been a hastily concocted plan, one that Sam still couldn’t believe had worked.

James could arrange for somebody to kill Sam, but he’d wanted it to be Don—his trusted assistant could certainly provide an alibi, should either of them need one. Thanks to the fact that Don had been helping James with his little tax evasion problem, James had been utterly convinced that Don wouldn’t dare balk at the idea.

Just went to show the man didn’t judge people as well as he thought. He might have Don terrified and might be able to make Don break all sorts of laws when it came to white-collar crimes, but Don didn’t have it in him to kill.

It had been Don’s idea that
both
Sarah and Sam disappear.

“It will throw the cops off. They will investigate when Sarah disappears, but if you both disappear together, it’s going to throw them off.”
He’d smiled then, giving Sam a rueful glance.
“We keep things quiet, but quite a few of the cops know about the project. If you both go off the grid, they’ll assume you did it together. So maybe . . .”

“It could help you,”
Sam had guessed—correctly.
“If there is an investigation and the cops come to the decision that we made ourselves disappear, they’ll be less likely to look at you.”

“Yes. But that’s not the only reason.”
He had looked at Sarah, then away.
“It will keep her safe. If you do it this way, both of you will be safe.”

If Sarah had waited, God only knew what James might have done. Sam had been the reason he held back, because once Sam knew about the abuse, she’d become very persistent in keeping close tabs on her sister. She’d called the police twice—although each time, James made it all go away.

He had wanted her out of the way and had been willing to do whatever was necessary to accomplish it. Once she was gone, she couldn’t interfere with him and Sarah anymore.

But if Sarah was gone, too . . . if they
both
disappeared . . . So that was what they’d done. Sam hadn’t liked it. She’d wanted to stay and fight, but Sarah had been terrified.
Finally
, she’d agreed to leave her bastard husband, and there was no way on earth Sam was going to do anything to change her mind. If it took disappearing . . . fine, she’d disappear.

She could make damn sure both she and Sarah all but fell off the face of the earth.

She knew how. She knew the system. All because of her special project—the project that Don had helped bankroll.

Sam had been working that system for years. Instead of going to work at a hospital when she graduated from nursing school, she’d gone to work with the victims of domestic abuse.

Most of her work had been legit.

But there were certain aspects to her career that were less than legal. Not necessarily wrong—helping the abused escape their abusers couldn’t ever be wrong.

Still, there were questionable legalities taking place, entire underground networks devoted to helping an abused woman disappear. Once she’d finally convinced Sarah to leave Morgan, Sam had put her sister into that network and to this day, she had no idea where to find her.

She
could
find her, though. And if she could deal with James, she
would
. When it was safe.

After two years, it was time to do just that.

Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and started toward the entrance. The glass walls reflected her image back at her as she strode across the sidewalk. Her hair, that boring, totally blah shade of blondish brown, was pulled back into a ponytail. Her sunglasses were cheap, bought from Walmart a few months earlier. Her clothes were every bit as simple, jeans, a plain white T-shirt, a denim jacket, and a canvas tote that served as a purse.

Once he caught sight of her, James would have a cow.

Of course, he would assume she was Sarah. Seeing his wife dressed so casually would give him a fit of massive proportions. Too bad the bastard didn’t have a weak heart.

From the day he’d married Sarah, maintaining appearances had become a huge part of the woman’s life. Sarah had never left her home without being impeccably, and acceptably, groomed. T-shirts and jeans were
un
acceptable. Cardigans, trousers, tailored suits, and designer labels—discreetly elegant, of course—replaced Sarah’s once casual wardrobe.

Once Sam had clued in on just
how
much James focused on appearances and image and all that other shit, she’d figured out how to work him. She’d used every resource she had at her disposal to make sure he didn’t try to force her out of her sister’s life—and he’d tried. Up until Mom had gotten sick, he’d been winning, too.

Once she realized what he was, though, once she realized what made him tick, he’d stopped winning. Sam had forced her way back into her sister’s life—all it had taken was showing up at a literacy fund-raiser. Thanks to her own job, she had a number of connections and she’d used them to place herself in James’s path—and back in her sister’s life.

Of course, the twins were close. Of course, they would spend a great deal of time together. The society pages had just loved Sarah. Sam had used that, worked that angle for everything she was worth.

She was prepared to use it again if she had to, and the means to doing so were stowed safely in her tote. She was getting ready to break a promise and it was entirely possible her sister wouldn’t ever forgive her.

But Sam was willing to take that risk.

She should have taken it months ago.

Her heart beat a wild tattoo inside her chest, jumping, jittering around like she’d just guzzled a gallon of Monster. Hitching the tote a little higher on her shoulder, she sauntered through the entrance and made her way to the information desk.

Pasting a polite smile on her face, she smiled at the lady behind the desk.
Hi, can you please tell my bastard-in-law that Sam’s here to kick his ass?

Bravado could be a powerful tool. Desperation, too. As long as she was careful.

Desperate measures. Dangerous measures. Going up against a man with seriously violent tendencies and enough money to make damn near anything he wanted disappear.