Wraith (Debt Collector 10) (5 page)

She locks me in a gaze that lasts for seconds. Finally, she looks away. “Tomorrow then.”

My chest sags with relief.

The door clicks behind me.

Wyatt steps through the threshold, his bunny-suit hood blowing back in the air curtain, leaving his neatly-styled hair mussed. He ducks but doesn’t have a hand free to fix it—he’s juggling his open palm screen, a larger hand-held screen, and an insulated cup that’s steaming something into the air.

Wyatt’s my assistant. Actually, he’s my father’s assistant, but I inherited him, along with a controlling share of Sterling Cybernetics, a seat on the board of
Lifetime,
and a host of other things I don’t want, but can’t give away. He’s my age, ridiculously overqualified for his job, and just the kind of man I’d date, if I actually dated. And if he wasn’t my employee.

He knows all my secrets except one.

“Alexa,” he says, chastising me from the door. “You didn’t tell me you were coming in early.”

I give a one-shoulder shrug, but my insides clench. “How did you even find me down here?” He worries about me, which is generally fine, unless he’s tracking me now. That would be a serious problem.

Wyatt gestures with his palm screen before closing it. “I get an alert every time you swipe into Sterling?” His look says this is something I should remember, and he’s probably right. A lot of things have been slipping through my mental cracks lately. As he picks his way through the boxes of electronics strewn across the floor, I give Miral a slant-eyed look. She drops the bag with my suit discreetly to the tiled floor and slides it under the bench with her foot.

I turn back to Wyatt as he arrives at my side. “Had a late night.” It’s a reasonable excuse for my scattered state. Also true. “If that’s a coffee, I’ll give you half my shares of Sterling for it.”

 “Half?” He scoffs to me while giving Miral a charming chin-lift hello. Wyatt has two degrees from Ivy League schools, a natural talent for politics, and an easy-going nature that makes people like him anyway. He showers me with that sexy smile he has, the one that makes the women in the office fan themselves when his back is turned. “Half is only twenty-four percent, and with Saffron Industries holding twenty-eight, and Triton Electronics and Origin Entertainment in merger talks, I’d be a fool to give it away for less than thirty-two.”

It’s early, but I can still play. “Triton and Origin will get shot down by the DOJ, and Saffron is about to break into holo-imaging and leave hardware behind. Twenty-nine. But I’m keeping my car and my driver. And access to the lab.”

“Thirty, no driver, and you pick up your own dry cleaning from now on. That guy at the InstaPress is hot for me.” He makes a face of mock horror.

I grin. “Everyone is hot for you.”

He feigns an elaborate
I know, right?
look. I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have survived the last three weeks without Wyatt. He kept Sterling running while I wrestled with the abyss. Plus he’s gorgeous and brings me my coffee.

He hands me the cup, and says, “Double latte, that dark roast you like, plus a shot of espresso.”

I sip it, and the aroma alone calms some of the shakes inside me. “I need to give you a raise.”

“You gave me one yesterday.”

“That was brilliant of me.”

“It would have been, if you’d thought of it.” He misses my smirk because he’s already pulling up something on his screen, moving on to whatever he has lined up for me today with his usual efficiency.

“You have two interviews this morning,” he says. “One with the LA Times, the other with Cybernetic Life. Both are holo so you can take them in your office. I’ve blocked some time for lunch, but after that, the board wants you at one.”

I take another sip and sigh. “Tell them I’m busy.”

“You’re not busy.”

“I’m extremely busy.”

Miral flicks her hands at us.
“I
am extremely busy. Take your corporate nonsense out of my lab.” She slips her goggles down over her eyes, turning her into a petite, telescopic-eyed menace.

Wyatt sighs. “Miral, tell her she can’t avoid the board forever.”

“Since when can I tell her anything?” Miral juts her chin at him. “Out!”

Wyatt grimaces, but I take him by the elbow and steer him toward the door. “Best not to mess with them in their natural habitat,” I say in a stage whisper.

Miral snorts her reply behind me.

Wyatt doesn’t bite on my joke, just frowns and keeps his tongue until we’re out of the ultra clean room. Then he pulls me to the side, near the supply closet and far enough away that the lab workers can’t hear us over the thrum of the vents.

All the humor is gone from his face. “You can’t keep putting this off, Alexa. The board just wants reassurance that—”

“That I’m going to liquidate my shares?” I cut him off. “That I’m going to boost all their payouts by finally taking the company public rather than keeping Sterling in the family? I know what they want, Wyatt. They can wait a little longer.” I’m committed to carrying my father’s mission forward, and not just out of respect for the war he spent his life waging: because it’s the only thing that gives me a chance at atonement. But I can’t do that with one foot dangling off the cliff. I need more time. Once I have it together, then I’m all in, fighting for the cause. And when I find the debt collector who killed my father, I’ll be dispensing my own ironic kind of justice. I ignore the urge to check my palm screen for a message from Jax, but a twitch in my hand makes the coffee slosh inside my cup.

Wyatt frowns at the near coffee spill. “Even if you put off the board,
Lifetime
can’t wait. Your father’s bill is going to be voted out of committee the day after tomorrow. They want you to testify—”

“Senator Lacket wants me to testify? I doubt that very much.”

“No, the board of
Lifetime
wants you to testify. Jesus, Alexa, your father has worked on this for two years—”

I cut him off with a glare. “Don’t tell me what my father did, Wyatt.” He knows the two of us were my father’s right and left hands. And it doesn’t take a psychologist to see Wyatt was the son my father never had. Or that Wyatt was nearly as devastated as I was by his death. If I hadn’t been drowning in my own loss, I could have been there for him. Should have been. But that one secret Wyatt doesn’t know makes everything infinitely more complicated.

He huffs and digs his hands through his hair. The slow shake of his head is for me: like he thinks I’ve fallen back into the abyss when he wasn’t looking.

“You look like hell,” he says.

“Like I said, late night.” My glare grows hot, warning him off. Then I steer him away, just in case. “Any word on the investigation?” This is the secret only Wyatt and I share—we’re not waiting for the LA police to pirouette through their many levels of incompetence. We’re going to find my father’s killer ourselves. The only difference being that Wyatt wants to see the murderer behind bars, and I want to see him under my palm.

Wyatt rolls his eyes at my obvious diversion. Then he relents. “It seems the police are even more corrupt than I had assumed. And yet strangely not corrupt enough.”

“You can’t buy your way into the police report?”

“No takers. It’s like everyone’s afraid of something, some invisible power at play here that I don’t understand.” His jaw works. Not understanding things isn’t how Wyatt operates. He tears into something until he’s figured out all the angles. “I’ve gone ahead and contracted with a private investigator.”

I raise my eyebrows. Wyatt doesn’t know Jax, and I pay Jax to stay far away from Wyatt. “And?”

“And he can’t even slash into the police department records to get a look at the evidence. It’s as if the whole thing is completely locked down. Untouchable.” His frustration ticks up another level. “He’s tracing down some leads, but it’s nothing. Just a bunch of theories. We’re assuming it’s a debt collector, but beyond that, we don’t have much.”

I sigh. That’s no more than we started with. “We
know
it’s a collector. What I need are names and addresses. Even collector names. Anything, Wyatt.” My leg itches. I ignore it, but the agitation of this entire conversation is ramping up my need to pay out. I sorely want to check my palm for messages, but I resist.

He runs his hand through his hair again. It’s a complete mess now. “I’m doing the best I can, Alexa.”

“If that’s the best you’ve got, I take it back. No shares for you. You’re fired.”

My palm tones. It makes me jump, spilling a dash of coffee on the sterile lab floor. I freeze, not wanting to look at the message with Wyatt right there, but then he grabs a tissue from a nearby bench and bends down to sop the coffee off the floor. He’s muttering something, probably cursing me out. I swipe my palm screen on and take a quick look.

Meet half hour. Usual place. Will have charities in need of donations.

My whole body sags with relief. Jax has a payout for me. This is the best news since finding Odel unarmed in his bed. I wait for Wyatt to stand up again, but he’s lingering on the floor, staring at my leg. The bandages itch even more under his attention. I cringe as I see blood trickling down, a bright red line of indictment.

He stands up. I think he might kill me with that look. “You went jumping last night.”

I hold my breath. “I just tripped on the way to the car.”

“Alexa.” He knows I’m lying. I don’t know why I even bother. “You said you were done with that. You
promised.”

I promised
myself
I would stop telling Wyatt about the jumps. Thrill leaps from tall buildings didn’t mix well with fighting your own personal abyss after your father’s funeral… at least in Wyatt’s mind. Besides, I thought I was giving up the collecting, and the jumps themselves were mostly useful as a quick exit from a target’s sky-high apartment.

“I’m fine,” I say, pushing back on his worry-mode.

His teeth grit so hard I hear them squeak. “You’re bleeding on the floor.”

Half an hour.
“You’re right. I’m going to run home to patch up a little better.” I turn away, but he catches my arm.

I let him stop me, just long enough to give him my excuse. “Tell the board I’m sick. I’ll meet with them tomorrow.”

Wyatt’s scowl digs into me.
“Are
you sick, Lexy?” He thinks there’s something wrong with me. Which there is, but not the thing he thinks. Or maybe that, too. I can’t tell anymore.

I turn my head away. “I’m fine. And don’t call me that.” My father’s nickname on Wyatt’s lips twists something inside me. Like my father is accusing me from beyond the grave of being the very thing he died fighting against.

Wyatt’s touch on my cheek whips my head back. I step away, suddenly unnerved. “Don’t touch me.”

He looks wounded, and that rips a hole in my chest. It’s not like he’s making a pass at me—more like he thinks I’m damaged, and he’s trying to fix me, and I won’t let him. Which is a hell of a way to treat a man who’s kept me afloat for the last three weeks.

I draw in a breath and peer up into his eyes. They’re the color of the sky from a hundred floors up. “Wyatt,
please.
I promise I’ll do everything you want. Everything we
both
want. I just need a little more time to prepare.”

He gives me a soft look. Like he cares for me in ways that can’t ever happen between us. In another life, I would put my arms around him. Or lean into him. Or flat-out kiss him and short out the crackling tension building in the air between us. But in
this
life, I’m a debt collector… the kind of person Wyatt has devoted his life to stopping. The kind who kills people like him, either for the money or the hit… or by accident.

I keep my distance and let my eyes do the pleading.

He relents, and somehow that pains me, too. Like he’s finally given up on me. “Okay, Alexa. I’ll make up an excuse for you. But I can’t put them off for more than a day. Then they’re going to start setting things in motion to oust you.” It’s a challenge, the one he’s been saving for when he thinks I’m beyond reason and need a slap in the face to wake me up. I can tell. I know how his mind works.

“I won’t let that happen,” I promise. And I won’t. It’s my father’s company, and I’ll be damned if I let some board of twitchy-fingered corporate types take it and run it into the ground. Or turn it into something he never wanted. I drop my gaze to my bleeding leg. “I have to go.”

I turn and leave Wyatt standing there, probably wondering if I’m about to take a running leap into the abyss.

I wish I could tell him I wasn’t.

The defunct electronics store on the east side belongs to my father—it’s one of the many businesses left to ruin in the rapid expansion of Sterling. It doesn’t exactly stand out. The street is littered with the empty carcasses of businesses past. It took me more than half an hour to arrive, but when I swipe inside the back door, Jax is still waiting for me.

She’s leaning against a battered workbench, running some game on her screen. Her short gray hair is a wild poof around her head, and her brown trenchcoat and boots are covered with dust that looks too ingrained to have originated in the shop. Given I’m late, I opt not to harass her about her online gambling addiction. Besides, I’m the last person to talk about being an addict, and her need for cash is what keeps her in my employ.