The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 2 (5 page)

I needed to get out of here.

They’d been asking me questions for hours, mostly about Cepheus and the products that had been developed there in the past few years. I answered as well as I could, but I only knew about the projects I worked on. The Alessa telescope. That was it, really. I didn’t know anything else. I hadn’t been with the company long enough.

I wanted to scream at them, to tell them I was just a stupid kid. I was just a grieving sister who worked too hard to finish school early so that I could help my parents pay off the medical bills my condition and my sister’s death had left them with. I wanted to say that I was just a stupid kid who made the mistake of propositioning my new boss for sex the night before I was due to begin work. I wanted to tell them I was just the girl who fell in love with the broken knight in shining armor.

But I didn’t think any of that would make much difference.

“She doesn’t know any more than he does!” the woman suddenly yelled. “We wasted our damn time. The only way this is going to get us the results we wanted would be if—”

She didn’t finish what she was saying. At that moment, a huge crash reverberated through the building. My chair was pushed over by someone running past me, and my head slammed on the hard floor. The last thing I remembered as I fell was the sight of my captors’ feet running away, leaving me to my fate.

Mellissa

I stood in the shower for a long time, trying to quiet that ball of need. There didn’t seem to be any way to do it though. It just kept growing, even as my heart shriveled with the realization that I could never feel Conrad’s touch again.

Afterward, I wrapped a warm, familiar bathrobe around my body and sank down on the edge of the bed. I needed to call my grandmother’s nurse, but I hesitated. She thought I was having some sort of romantic getaway. It would set off alarm bells if I called and sounded like my best friend had just died.

Finally, I dialed, relieved when the phone was answered on the first ring.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. She ate most of her dinner and went to bed without too much fuss.”

“Good.” I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Thanks for staying, Christy. I know it’s something of an inconvenience.”

“Don’t worry about it. I can watch my shows as easily here as I can at home.”

“Well, still…I don’t know for sure when I’ll be home.”

“Have a good time, Mellissa. You deserve a little time off. I’ve told you that. And I’m perfectly happy to stay as long as necessary.”

“Thanks.”

I switched off my phone a moment later and was sitting there with it in my lap when Conrad burst through the door.

“Don’t you know how to knock?” I demanded as I stood and pulled my bathrobe closer against me.

“They found her,” he said, somewhat breathlessly. “She’s at the hospital.”

***

Conrad drove too fast, almost as though he were as anxious as I was to find out what had happened to Madison. When we arrived, he parked the car haphazardly in the center of two parking spaces and grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the main entrance. There were reporters there, just a small handful, but they recognized Conrad as Cepheus’ PR man, and they began calling out questions to him.

“Is it true one of Cepheus’ employees was kidnapped?”

“Is it true the victim was shot during a rescue attempt?”

“Is it true the victim is your former wife’s assistant?”

Conrad slid his arm around me, tucking me under his arm to keep the reporters from snapping pictures of my face, as he called out, “No comment.”

Their words, however, began to bounce around inside my head until it was all I could think about.

“Is it true the victim was shot during a rescue attempt?” “Is it true the victim was shot during a rescue attempt?” “Is it true the victim was shot during a rescue attempt?” “Is it true the victim was shot during a rescue attempt?” “Is it true the victim was shot during a rescue attempt?”

I suddenly felt very sick to my stomach.

“Madison Miller,” Conrad said in a deep, commanding voice, as we approached the triage desk. “Where is she?”

“Are you family?” a woman sitting there demanded in a weary voice.

“Yes.”

That single syllable was so clear, so confident, that the woman didn’t seem to doubt it. She gestured toward a set of double doors behind her desk.

“Room 4.”

Conrad continued to hold me against his side as he rushed through the doors and down the corridor. He whispered numbers to himself as he went, pausing once to read the directions painted on the wall: Rooms 10-19 to the left, Rooms 1-9 to the right.

And then I saw Annie.

I pulled away from Conrad and broke into a quick sprint, nearly knocking her over when I reached her.

“They found her,” Annie whispered. “I can’t believe they found her.”

“Is she okay?” I pulled back and wiped the sweat dampened hair from Annie’s forehead.

“I don’t know. They haven’t let me see her yet.”

“Where’s Rawn?” Conrad asked.

Annie shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

The door to Room 4 opened then and a doctor in light blue scrubs stepped out. “Are you here to see Miss Miller?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” Conrad stepped up and shook the man’s hand. “How is Madison?”

“Well, she was pretty shaken up when they brought her in, but, aside from some mild dehydration, she seems fine. We’re going to keep her overnight just to be sure, but I think she’ll be okay to go home in the morning.”

“Thank God,” Annie sighed.

“Can we see her?” I asked.

“Of course,” the doctor said. “It might make her feel better to be surrounded by family.”

“Go on in,” Conrad said as the doctor walked away. “I need to make a few phone calls.”

I took Annie’s arm and led the way in. Madison was dressed in one of those thin, blue and green hospital gowns that had the power to make even the prettiest girl look frumpy. There was an IV attached to her right hand and wires snaking under the chest of her gown. Her eyes were closed and, for a minute, I was afraid the doctor had been wrong, that there was something desperately amiss with her.

But then Annie said her name and Madison’s eyes opened.

“Annie!” She held out her hand to her, tears flooding her eyes. “I’m so sorry!”

Annie leaned over to hug her, crying just as hard as Madison. They mumbled something to each other, but the words were so full of emotion that only the two of them could really understand them. I stepped back, a little afraid that when Madison realized I was there, I would see accusation in her eyes.

And then Rawn burst into the room, and I knew I was only in the way.

***

“They kept asking me what Cepheus had planned for release in the next few months and what I knew about the products Cepheus released in the past six months.” Madison shuddered. “I couldn’t tell them anything.”

I leaned back against the far wall of the hospital room, my arms over my chest, and listened as Madison described her ordeal for the third time. Two plainclothes cops were standing at the end of her bed, taking notes.

“Did you recognize any of your captors?”

“No.” Madison stole a glance at Rawn, who was at her side, holding her hand, where he had been since he stormed through the door. “I told you, there were only two whose faces I saw, but I didn’t know either of them.”

“How many were there all together?”

Madison shook her head, again glancing at Rawn. “I don’t know for sure. I heard four distinct voices—”

“Including the woman?”

She nodded. “The others were all men.”

“Would you recognize any of them if you saw them again?”

Madison raised a hand to run her fingers through her hair. When she did, the bruising caused by the zip ties her captors had used to tie her with was obvious, growing more obvious as the moments ticked by. It made my stomach twist into knots.

“Probably.”

The taller of the two cops closed his notebook and made a subtle gesture toward his partner. “Thank you for answering our questions, Miss Miller,” he said. “We’ll be in touch in a few days to arrange for you to give a formal statement at the station.”

Madison didn’t even look at him. Her eyes were glued to Rawn, almost as if she was afraid if she looked away, he would disappear.

Those knots in my stomach only tightened.

The cops brushed past me on their way out the door. As they left, McFarren came inside, followed closely by Conrad. McFarren had a cellphone in his hand that he promptly handed to Rawn. “Her parents,” he said.

Madison had held it together quite impressively through all the questioning, first telling her story to Rawn and Annie, then to Rawn’s security people—including McFarren—and then to the cops. But the moment she put the phone to her ear and heard her father’s voice, she fell apart.

I turned into Conrad and was grateful when his arms came gently around me. He cradled me to his chest, his body offering the strength that had seeped from my body at the first sounds of her sobs. I couldn’t do this…I couldn’t stand here and listen to her cry when I knew that it was me her captors thought they had kidnapped.

Conrad pulled me out of the room just before my own eyes welled with tears and began to spill against the starched front of his shirt. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t judge me or try to offer empty words of comfort. He just ran his hand slowly over the back of my head and let me cry.

Annie followed behind us. She rubbed my back lightly.

“This whole thing is so insane,” she said.

I could hear the emotion in her voice, too, and that should have pushed me over the edge. What it did, however, was give me a reason to pull myself together. I rubbed at my cheeks and turned to her, welcoming the hug she offered.

“She’s going to be okay now,” I said. “Rawn won’t let anyone near her again.”

“I guess we’re lucky he let us in there.”

Annie laughed, but her soft chuckle turned into a sob. She looked away, struggling to keep her emotions under control. I felt so impotent in that moment. I wanted to have the right words, to be able to make this all better for both her and Madison. But there really weren’t words for things like this.

Rawn came out of the room a moment later.

“She wants to talk to you,” he said to Annie, holding the door open so she could go in. She glanced back at me for a brief second, a soft smile on her lips when I gave her an encouraging nod. Once she was inside, Rawn let the door slide shut.

“I’m taking her to the apartment,” Rawn said. “The doctors want to admit her, but I think she’d do better if she went home.”

“You’re probably right,” Conrad said.

Rawn half nodded, his attention moving from Conrad to me to a nurse walking along the corridor to the cellphone forgotten in his hand. “McFarren and his guys are looking for these people but…” He shook his head. “The cops are still pretty pissed that they managed to get out of the house through the cellar. No one thought to watch the alley for movement. They were too busy watching the back door.”

“These people are pretty smart.”

“Yeah, well, between the cops and McFarren’s team, they won’t be on the run for long.”

They both looked at me, as though they both had the same thought at the same time.

“I think you’re probably safe for the moment,” Rawn said. “They won’t try anything again so soon after this.”

“Do you know what they were after?” I asked.

Rawn shook his head. “They asked her a lot of questions about Cepheus, but she also got the impression that they had an insider working with them, which makes me wonder why they couldn’t get the information they were asking her about from that person.” He turned slightly, studying the door to Madison’s room, as though he could see her through the thin wood and metal. “I think they were after something else. I think they were messing with her, so if she was rescued no one would know what their real intentions were.”

“Then what were they after?”

The question hung in the air for a long moment, heavy enough that I could feel the weight of it on my shoulders. But there was no answer.

***

Conrad drove me home. The silence was heavy between us as he drove, navigating the car slower than before through the late night traffic. When we stopped in front of my grandmother’s house, neither of us immediately moved.

“I’m glad she wasn’t hurt,” Conrad said.

I sat up a little straighter and ran my palms over the jeans. “I don’t think Rawn’s ever going to let her out of his sight again.”

Conrad smiled. “I don’t think he needed an excuse to do that.”

“You knew?”

“I’ve known for weeks. I accidentally walked in on the two of them in his office a month before the launch party.”

“I guess everybody’s going to know now.”

“This whole thing is going to be a PR nightmare. But my team can probably keep Rawn out of the fire if we stay on top of it.”

“Is that what those phone calls were about?”

Conrad nodded. “I’m Cepheus’ PR man. I had to get my team out there, making sure the press that were there at the hospital didn’t start putting out a story we didn’t feed them. It could have been bad for Cepheus if they had.”

“What? If they told the truth?”

“The truth as they saw it.” Conrad turned toward me in the small car, his shoulder nearly brushing mine as he did. “The truth is not as black and white as people want to believe it is. It’s complicated, with lots of gray thrown in. My job in PR is to make sure the press sees the most polished and gray-free truth we can possibly put out.”

“What are you going to tell the press about Madison’s abduction?”

Conrad tilted his head slightly. “That she was taken by criminals who wanted to steal Cepheus’ secrets.”

“But we don’t know that that’s really what they wanted.”

“Doesn’t matter. If we don’t give the press a reason, they’ll make up their own. And their version of things could hurt Cepheus, even if it is proven to be wrong later. People believe what’s right in front of them, so we have to make sure we give them something juicy but close enough to the truth that it won’t come back and bite us later.”