Wish Her Well (9 page)

“Ah, shit.”

“Get to work. See if you can break their encryption and find out what they were sending back and forth. Find out who the three users are.”

“One of them is easy,” Scott said. “Ridley Pierce.”

Thomas took hold of Amanda’s upper arm and led her to the door, telling Scott, “Seems obvious. But you still need to prove it.”

Scott gave him a brisk nod.

Out in the hallway, Thomas urged her forward at a brisk pace. “You come out here to rip open my investigation, or was there some other reason?”

She was still busy trying to figure out what had happened. So far, they only thing she understood was that Derek and Brent and their crazy organic script hadn’t been a fantasy at all. And when Derek said he’d done some dumb things to get Nicole away from DriveRate, he had not been kidding.

Ridley knew it, too. She had accused him of using people. Derek had used Amanda and others to stage that interrogation. Derek had nearly admitted as much.

To Thomas, she said, “You’re welcome. And I’m here because Josh said I should help you.”

Thomas’s step faltered, and she watched his mouth compress into a tight line and his eyes harden into blackened flint. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yes, he should. In fact, he should have done it a long time ago. You need me.”

He didn’t exactly argue. “Can we fight about this later? There’s somewhere I need to be.”

“Then let’s go.”

In the lobby, the duty officer stood up and began snapping his fingers to get Thomas’s attention. In his other hand, he held up the phone receiver. “Sir, it’s that detective from Arizona.”

They way Thomas went after the phone, Amanda had to wonder how many calls he had been waiting for. He certainly seemed game enough to take this one.

He gestured for the officer to connect the call, and gave his usual brusque greeting. While he listened, she could tell he did not like what he was hearing. He didn’t say much, only the occasional yes or no. His gestures were more telling: first the swipe across his mouth, then the hand sunk into his hair. Agitation. Worry and fury infused his eyes with a dangerous spark.

After nearly two minutes, he wrapped the call. “I’ve got a thing tomorrow night but I’ll get there as soon as I can. And listen, I really appreciate the call. You didn’t have to keep me in the loop. This won’t be forgotten.”

He hung up the phone a different man than the one who had taken the call. Tense as a suspension bridge. He didn’t speak, and Amanda didn’t bother to ask questions. She was learning to pick her battles. This one, she wouldn’t win.

He drove across town to the bus station. Amanda could hardly believe her eyes when they drew up to the curb. She sat there, stunned, staring at Carter Warnous until the teenager scrambled into the backseat. “Go,” he said.

Thomas immediately drove away. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call your aunt and send you straight back home.”

“Because I’m ready,” the boy said. “I don’t care what they do to me anymore. Someone has to stop this before they turn on my dad.”

“So start talking.”

Silence.

Thomas said, “It’s okay. Amanda won’t say anything.”

“But she knows my mom. She’ll tell her.”

Amanda hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on, but of one thing, she was certain. She turned in the seat to look back at Carter. “I would never repeat a confidence. Never. Thomas wouldn’t bring me along if he thought I might.”

The boy stared at her, as if trying to judge whether she was telling him the truth. Beneath the fluid, shifting illumination of the streetlights they passed, it nearly stopped her breath, how much he looked like his famous father.

The kid’s story came out in a rush. “It was me, that day. I sang, not my dad. They talked me into it and swore no one would know the difference. Not even Steph.”

Amanda watched Thomas readjust his hands on the steering wheel. She didn’t realize what Carter’s admission meant until Thomas spoke. “But I was there. So was Amanda. We were sitting right next to each other in the front row. How could that have been you?”

“Stage makeup. They used some sort of egg white mixture and some latex stuff and they put lifts in my shoes. But they didn’t have to fake the vocals. That was all me.”

“Does your mother know you can sing?”

“Are you nuts? If you were me, would you tell her you inherited my dad’s voice?”

Thomas edited himself in front of the kid. “Heck, no. She’d exploit you for everything you were worth.”

“That’s why. That’s exactly why. I was so mad at her, and those people said it would help Dad if I sang for him, but now I think they were probably lying. Dad left a message on my phone about getting engaged, and… Now they won’t tell me where he is.”

“It’s all right. It’s okay. Tell me exactly who they are and I’ll do whatever I have to do to help your dad.”

Amanda wanted to clutch her head. Carter. It hadn’t been Robert Warnous who had finally performed that day in The Hall. It had been his son, in stage makeup. And despite what Thomas had said, she could swear he had suspected something along those lines even then. She remembered him staring holes in her head during that performance, no doubt wondering if he was the only one who sensed something wasn’t quite right.

Yes, he had definitely suspected something. Hadn’t he challenged Robert to sing to Steph in front of everyone at dinner the other night? No wonder Robert had looked so panicked, and Steph so confused. Robert still couldn’t sing, but Steph thought he could.

Amanda rubbed her eyes, and listened to the inevitable come from the sixteen-year-old kid in the backseat of Thomas’s SUV. Robert Warnous had sought DriveRate’s help to get over his stage fright. He’d even brought Carter to a couple rallies, and one of the counselors had convinced the boy he would be helping his father if he performed for him. Then afterward, that same counselor threatened to hurt Robert if Carter told anyone what he’d done.

Amanda didn’t understand. Why go to such trouble to trick people into believing Robert Warnous could still perform?

Thomas’s knuckles turned white when Carter said Steph had attended rallies alone and with Robert.

Thomas reassured Carter that he hadn’t done anything wrong, then took out his phone to start making calls. First Jerod, telling him to pick up Steph along with Derek and Ridley. Robert Warnous was not to leave Dr. Carpenter’s sight. He called Max to give the doctor some backup.

The next call went to Marla, warning her she was about to have a house guest. Twenty minutes later they dropped the boy in Marla’s custody.

Amanda prudently stayed in the car while Thomas had a quick word with his Accord counterpart. Once they were on the road again, she could contain the questions no longer. She asked the only two that mattered. “Who would want that performance faked, and why?”

He answered only the latter. “Steph owns fifty-two percent of the voting stock. Someone wants Fantasy Heights, and they’re using Warnous to secure Steph. They make her own personal fantasy to resurrect a legend come true, she does something reckless like marry him—which looks pretty damn likely—and bam, they’ve got her locked.”

Logic drew a straight line between Robert Warnous and his ex-wife. That picture Wade showed her of Thomas’s visit to Gail took on a completely different dimension. “How long have you known this was happening?”

“I haven’t
known
anything. I’ve suspected a lot of things. And the low point is wondering whether Gail Warnous might have been right all along.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“She keeps saying that Steph or someone else did something unnatural to Robert to make him sing again. I’m starting to think she wasn’t so crazy after all.”

“But no one did anything to Robert to make him sing. He
didn’t
sing. Carter did it for him.”

“Don’t. Don’t assume stage fright was the only hurdle DriveRate was trying to clear. And don’t argue, don’t speculate. There’s been enough of that already.” Thomas shook his head. “Let me think. I need to think this through.”

She could respect that. Though it was agony not to grill him, she kept the questions to herself all the way back to town.

He appeared to be heading straight for her house, and as soon as they turned onto her street, Amanda reflexively scanned for any sign of Shelley’s return.

Nothing, but it was the only small relief available, and she refrained from mentioning the unexpected visit as Thomas walked her inside. She didn’t like the way he was acting. His hardness, or the way his jaw kept flexing, like he was grinding his back teeth together.

She was working up the courage to ask him if he was in a hurry to be gone or if there was something he was forcing himself not to say. She’d watched him struggle the same way in the shower last week, and it made her feel guilty. For whatever reason, she seemed to have a singular knack for making this man’s life difficult, intentionally or otherwise.

Standing in the hallway, he buried his hands in his pockets. “Amanda, you need to leave. Pack up your stuff and go. Now. Tonight.”

Half of her immediately jumped up to argue. The other half, the more logical, prudent half, had a simple question. “Why?”

“It’s the only sane thing to do,” he told her. “I wish I could say it’s good news, now that there’s a logical explanation why Robert Warnous was able to perform again. But that doesn’t explain why Steph’s been acting so strangely. Doesn’t explain what happened to Nicole, either.”

“But we don’t know that anything has happened to Nicole.”

A pause ensued that nearly made her heart stop. Did he know something? He knew something. She could tell by the way he artlessly dodged the question.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “If I ever got that phone call saying you were missing… Don’t make me live through that. Please.”

The finality of his tone ignited a burning in her throat and a sting of tears at her eyelids. So this was it. After everything, this was how her time at Fantasy Heights would end. Not just because Thomas wanted rid of her, but because she knew now that she’d been foisted onto him by Steph. Against his better judgment, he had come to care for her, and she would sooner die than let that phone call happen to him.

Speech was out of the question. If she opened her mouth, there would be tears and awkwardness involved. Instead, she picked up his hand, lifted it to press his palm to her cheek. Dangerous. So dangerous. He was worried what would happen to her. But what would happen to him? She wanted to tell him that he should leave too, that he should get away from the danger, but she knew he never would go. He would never leave Josh.

Josh. She couldn’t leave him, either. But she would worry about that later. Josh had Thomas to protect him. Thomas had no one.

A fleeting thought of Wade’s orders to secure his asset survived only as long as it took Thomas to slip his hand behind her head, and wrap his other arm around her waist, drawing her up against him.

Oh, no. Not now. He couldn’t do this to her right now. “Thomas Bishop, I swear to God if you pick tonight to… You can’t tell me to leave and then twist the knife like this.”

“Eruzione.”

“What?”

“Thomas Eruzione. It’s my real name, the name I was born with. Nobody knows that. Not even Josh.”

She stared up at him into inky, guarded eyes. Why was he telling her? Why would he trust her with his real name? With it, she could do serious damage.

So much for the idea he didn’t trust her. The gesture took on an abrupt enormity that sparked a sort of panic she didn’t dare diagnose too carefully. Instead, she wound her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. Electric contact, mouth to mouth. Bittersweet at first but quickly heating into a deep, possessive cadence when she tugged his shirt from his jeans.

She heard that gravelly growl sound that had given him away that day in Haynes House as his body responded to her insistent desire. She could feel that intoxicating mixture of strain and restraint he sometimes got when their appetites were in charge, as if he feared he would accidentally hurt her if he ever let loose the full force of it.

The only strain involved for her was to get closer. To feel skin on skin. Of one mind by that point, they worked in tandem to get his jacket off, tugging, and muttering a few frustrated sounds when one sleeve hung up around his wristwatch.

She successfully tugged it off, then left it fall to the floor as she backed him against the wall. She worked at his shirt buttons one by one while he toed his boots off, and their hands met at his belt. Yanked and pulled until she could get at the button and zip beneath, then strip off the jeans. Finally he was naked, and finally she had a chance to touch Thomas Eruzione. Any way she wanted. Anywhere. Of course, watching the erratic rhythm vibrating along the vein running from collar bone up into his neck, she could see she was living on borrowed time. It wasn’t his nature to be passive for long.

She pressed her mouth to the vein, feeling that jack-hammer pulse against a swelling, sensitized bottom lip. Her hands travelled lower, one hand closing just south of the tip of his cock, the other descending to cup his balls.

The air leaked slowly from his lungs as his torso compressed against the sensation. Losing control. She could feel it was costing him dearly to preserve what little he had left.