Into Her Fire (Fantasy Heights) (7 page)

Amanda gestured toward the lake. “His son was just here last week.”

“Yes. Scott. He does a lot of computer consulting for us, and he’s a huge part of the gamer gig coming up.”

She nodded and didn’t interrupt again while Josh went on. “Things aren’t going so hot on the Accord right now. Wade and Mercury have never trusted Steph. They think she’s arrogant and shallow, and too ready to forget what’s happened in the past. In that, they have a point. Even though she knows all the details of how and why the Accord was formed, she still has no respect for the destructive force this place can turn into.”

There it was again: the word
respect
, and the implication that Fantasy Heights teemed with power. Considering how grave Josh looked when he echoed Thomas, Amanda was beginning to believe she hadn’t even the faintest idea of what really went on here.

Josh had not yet run out of surprises. He explained that each seat in the Accord had its own security presence on the resort. Jerod Hughes, as the new chief of security, answered to Steph and the other owners. Thomas answered to Wade Fraser and the Justice Department. Marla answered to Mercury and the syndicate families.

“Wait. Marla still works for Mercury?”

“Yes,” Josh said. “She has to report to him, and police what goes on, especially with Thomas.”

Amanda thought on that for a moment. She remembered Marla saying she’d been under orders regarding Gail Warnous. Orders from Milazzo? Maybe. And that would explain how Steph had gotten away with letting Thomas believe Marla had been the one to tell Warnous he was an agent. “Ah. So that’s why Marla and Thomas don’t get along. They work for enemy factions.”

Josh took a pull off his beer bottle before responding. “It isn’t supposed to work that way and most of the time, it doesn’t. Mercury’s an all-right guy. He takes his responsibilities here seriously, but Marla… I don’t know. She likes having power, and it always puts Thomas’s back up. They’ve had some rough times dealing with Andrew West, the security chief we just fired. But now that West is finally gone, things should calm down.”

She didn’t think he looked too optimistic about that, but sat back to listen to the rest as Josh began to talk about his wife. “Kay was… complicated. Our marriage was too, and when she disappeared, I was suspect number one. Even with Dixon’s confession, I’m sure there are still people who believe I killed her.”

Amanda’s stomach rolled over, but she stayed quiet. It hadn’t occurred to her that Josh might have been a suspect, but of course he would have been. Wasn’t it always the spouse the authorities looked into first? And Josh would have made a juicy suspect if their marriage was troubled. He had stood to inherit an extremely lucrative stake in Fantasy Heights.

“There was only one person who believed I was innocent,” he said.

“Thomas?” she guessed.

He snorted. “No. Bill Dunkirk, Thomas’s partner. Stick around long enough, his name’ll come up a lot. He wrote all the screening tests for staff and clients.”

“What, so he was like a psychiatrist or something?”

“Sort of. I can’t really say more, but I think it’s important you understand something. Thomas was no choirboy before he came here. The Bureau hand-selected him from the military to protect Bill, and Thomas wasn’t chosen for his looks, if you know what I mean. He had his work cut out for him, too. Bill went from prison to prison, crime scene to crime scene gathering profiling data. When they weren’t doing that, they hunted murderers and fugitives. They did that for four years, nonstop. Thomas worshipped the guy. Thought he was the bravest, most honorable man there ever was.”

Oh, no, Amanda thought. She knew from all those Internet articles that Bill Dunkirk had died the night they tried to execute a search warrant on Kay’s killer. Thomas must have been devastated.

Josh confirmed as much. “What happened the night Bill died was Bill’s own fault. I don’t think Thomas even remembers most of what happened. If anyone’s dumb enough to bring it up, Thomas either walks away or says the Bureau gave him one job to do, to keep Bill Dunkirk alive, and he failed. End of story, and he isn’t interested in taking arguments.”

Amanda blew out a long, low whistle. “What happened to them? What killed his partner?”

“An IED. A bomb, rigged on Dixon’s property. There’s a lot more to the story but you should hear it from Thomas, not from me.”

Now she chewed the inside of her bottom lip. She could respect that, but there was one thing she needed to understand. “If Thomas was assigned this post by the Bureau, why does he perform? Don’t they mind?”

Josh pondered the label on his beer bottle a long time, probably deciding how much he could tell her without getting himself in trouble. “The short answer is that it would be unrealistic to station someone in a place like this and expect them to keep their hands inside the vehicle, so to speak. The longer answer is that after Neil—your blue-chip client, by the way—got Thomas patched up and walking again, he was still a mess, inside and out. I can’t prove this, but I think at first they started him performing for the adrenaline and endorphins.”

“You mean they medicated him with his own chemicals.”

“Yeah. It was pretty bad, back then, but he’s pulled himself together, and ruled this place without so much as a ripple until recently. Something caught his interest about three months before you showed up. He started making inquiries, and he’s been spending a lot of time at the branch office, doing favors to get favors.”

“Hence the haircut.”

Josh smirked. “The Bureau gave him no end of shit about the hair. As for the rest of it, I sure wish I knew what was going on with him lately. He’s my best friend, and he’s not talking.”

To Amanda, it felt as if a question hung from the end of that statement. Certainly the look Josh gave her asked if she knew anything more than he did, but there was no question of telling him what had happened the other night in Haynes House, or repeating the accusations Thomas had made. She had learned the hard way that little filter existed between Josh and Thomas. If Thomas hadn’t told Josh what happened, then something had changed. She was neither obligated nor entitled to share.

Testing the strength of Josh’s good will, she steered him onto a different topic. “I overheard something a couple days ago, and I was wondering. What’s the Paramour Project?”

Josh winced. “Ask me again after the Accord raises your security clearance.”

“Got it,” she said. “And what about DriveRate?”

He turned sideways in his chaise. “Has Eric been letting you run wild? Where are you hearing this stuff?”

“It’s not Eric’s fault. I just hear things, is all.”

“Yes, well, stop. Forget DriveRate. Forget you ever heard the name, and if anyone approaches you about it, call me, and I promise they will never bother you again.”

That was the closest to angry she had ever seen Josh Taylor.

She apologized and expressed her gratitude for the history lesson by straddling him on his chaise. She appreciated Josh more than ever for taking the time to explain, especially when words weren’t his strong suit. He expressed himself physically with much more ease, and the two of them exhausted themselves into the wee hours before Josh decided to break a few rules. He drove her home, sent Eric off duty, and stayed with her until morning.

She made them breakfast, knowing that after Josh left, they would go back to acquaintances with no ill will. Josh borrowed intimacy from her. That was all he wanted, and the arrangement suited Amanda just fine.

They were still sitting on the couch together, finishing their coffee when her alarm system chirped.

Josh sat up. “What’s that?”

“I think it does that when someone pulls into the driveway. I’ll go check.”

“No, I got this. You stay put.”

He headed for the foyer, and a moment later, Jerod Hughes and a frazzled Derek came strolling in.

Derek was all apologies for the interruption. He needed to talk to Josh, who had deliberately left his phone back at the Palace.

Josh did not look happy. Neither did Jerod, and she could see the very edge of a dark purple bruise peeking out from beneath his t-shirt sleeve.

Without thinking, she asked, “How’s your arm?”

He raised his eyebrows, and when she reached out to lift his sleeve, he stepped back as if she were made of poisonous spikes.

Jeez. Jumpy. “Must be sore, I take it.”

Jerod glanced down at the bruise, and then looked back to her. “How did you know I got hurt?”

“I spied on the auditions. Eric wouldn’t let me talk to anyone, so I watched from an observation booth. You and Ben were impressive.”

Amanda didn’t realize how upset Derek was until he lost his patience. He raised his voice at Josh. “I told you something wasn’t right. Nic never showed up this morning, and she’s still not answering her phone, so I called her mom, and guess what? Nicole was never even there. There was no family emergency. She lied. And now she’s gone. Missing. What are we gonna do?”

Both men reassured Derek that security would do everything it could to locate Nicole, but after four or five minutes of heated back and forth, Josh attempted to put his foot down. “Take it easy, man. I don’t know what you expect me to do. I’m her employer, not her father.”

“God dammit, Josh. What if it was Amanda? What would you do if she started spending a bunch of time with Ridley, then started lying about everything? What would you think was going on? They’ve been going to DriveRate together. I just know it.”

“You don’t have any proof, and even if you did, what could we do about it? Nic’s an adult. If she wants to throw her money away on motivational speakers, we can’t stop her.”

“Oh, come on,” Derek complained. “Motivational speakers? Really? Quit trying to sugarcoat everything, and open your damn eyes. Amanda’s not some fragile little flower who’ll swoon in the face of danger. It’s about friggin’ time someone let her know that this place is a hell of a lot more than a sexual amusement park, and just because you all protect her doesn’t mean she’s safe. If they can get to Nicole, nobody’s safe anymore.”

Both Jerod and Josh began to shuffle like nervous horses, but Amanda held still, and kept quiet. If she said one word in that moment, she knew Josh would cut her out of the rest of the conversation.

Josh finally shot a resigned look toward Jerod. “Call your dad. Find out how soon we can file a missing persons report. And Derek, if it turns out Nic’s phone battery is dead or she’s just not speaking to you, I swear to God you are in for it.”

Watching Derek, Amanda thought how strange it was that someone could manage to look furious, grateful and scared at once. And then he turned to Jerod, expecting him to call that very second.

Jerod was not so easily swayed. “Are you sure there’s nothing else we need to know about? Any trouble between you and Nicole? Did you two have any words about a certain new performer who had better not repeat a single word of what she’s hearing right now?”

She gave Jerod a pained expression in the split second before Derek’s sense of humor left the building. “You aren’t listening to me. Something is seriously wrong with Nicole. She’s never lied to me before, and I’m pretty sure she was the one who sneaked onto that set last week and whispered to Amanda.”

Everyone else said, “What?” in unison.

“I know I should have said something sooner, but I didn’t want to get Nic in trouble if I was wrong. But I saw her after that, while everyone was still flipping out. She wasn’t supposed to be back from her leave yet, only she was on the resort. When she came into our dressing room, she had oil all over the place. When I asked about it, she said she’d been to the spa.”

“No.” Jerod shook his head. “They closed the spa that day because of the thing with West.”

“Exactly. And now that I’ve betrayed someone I really care about, let’s see if I’ve got your attention. You ever think about it? Didn’t you ever wonder how far Steph would go to turn Robert Warnous into a cash machine? Maybe make a deal with the devil to resurrect a legend and buy herself some clout with the Accord?”

Jerod clamped a hand onto the back of Derek’s neck and propelled him toward the front door. “That’s enough. I know you’re scared, but you and me need to have a talk.”

Once they were gone, Amanda sent a cautious glance toward Josh. “What the hell, Josh? What is this DriveRate thing?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Yes, you can! Did you ever consider Derek might be right? That shielding me from everything only leaves me more at risk?”

Josh’s dark eyes were brutally direct when he turned to face her head-on. “It’s not up to me how much you’re told. If the Accord upgrades your security clearance far enough, you’ll learn more, and let me tell you something. I’ve been in your position. I’ve been the outsider looking into this fishbowl, wondering what was really going on. And then I found out. You ever hear that saying ‘be careful what you wish for?’”

“So what are you saying? That you want me to leave the first time things get complicated? What if I could help?”

“And what if you can’t? What if it turns out Derek’s not overreacting and Nicole really is missing? What could you possibly do to help?”

She turned her palms up. “Well, for a start, I could find Ridley and tie her hair to a pole until she told me why Nicole lied about her family emergency.”

Josh sighed, and then muttered. “Trust you to make that backfire. I better go find Ridley.”

Her punishment for shooting holes in his doubts was a soft, lingering goodbye kiss. After Josh took off, she spent the rest of her day with Eric in tow, pretending to sightsee while clutching her cellphone, hoping for news of Nicole.

Josh finally called late that night: still no sign of her. Ridley admitted that she had brought Nicole to a couple DriveRate events, but none during the time of her alleged family emergency. Without a reason to suspect Nicole was in imminent danger, the local authorities wanted to hold off on filing a missing persons report for at least another twenty-four hours.

That did not stop Jerod from using the resort’s resources to make inquiries. The GPS wasn’t working on Nicole’s phone, and there had been no activity on her credit or ATM cards. Her car was still in her driveway and none of her neighbors had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary.