Adam puts a steadying hand on the small of my back. “Think of it as window shopping.”
“Seriously?”
“We’re just looking for anything that stands out.”
I want to laugh, but if I start, I might not stop. So I press my lips together and follow Adam into the fray.
I’m bracing myself to fake small talk with one of the other women fluttering around the room when someone jostles Adam. Another man in a suit. He turns around with a practiced smile on his face. “My apologies—I didn’t see you there. I’m Senator Ewan York.”
Adam shakes his hand without missing a beat and gives a fake name for both of us.
The senator has a nasty bruise on his forehead, and he sees me looking. “Oh, that. A skiing accident. They call them double black diamonds for a reason.”
Adam laughs, and the senator goes on to tell us how a near-miss on the slopes resulted in him going headfirst into buried ice. “Oh, no,” I hear myself say. “I’m glad you were all right.”
The senator’s eyes light on me. “The company of a beautiful woman could speed up the healing process. Perhaps you’d let me tell you about my new clean air initiative.”
Every inch of my skin crawls, but I force myself to put on a smile. In this room of people with perfect spray tans and perfect clothes, the bruise is an ugly departure. “I could use a drink and some conversation.”
Adam seems distracted. Bored enough to let the senator “steal me away” for a trip to the bar. He offers me his elbow and I take it, stomach turning. He tells me more about his ski trip while we approach the bar and he orders two of the signature drinks. All of the details are surface level, like he read a Wikipedia article about tourism in Aspen.
I’m nearing old age when he reaches the end of his story. “What brings a woman like you to our little party tonight? I haven’t seen you at one of these fundraisers before.”
I wave a hand next to my head, murmur something about how loud it is, and steer us toward one of the exits. “Oh, that’s better,” I say in the open air of the hallway. Several smaller ballrooms line the hall, all of them dark, and I pretend to choose a direction at random. The farther we are from the rest of these people, the better. “I came here to meet a friend of a friend.”
The senator has put his hand low on one of my hips, and he slowly works it around to my back. “Is this friend of a friend destined to remain a secret?”
“He knew someone I met through…complicated circumstances.” I frown a little, to show him this might be difficult to talk about, and lean toward one of the empty ballrooms. The senator comes willingly. He moves us into the cut of light from the ballroom door, still letting me hover on the edge of safety. “A certain colonel who recently met a bad end.”
His eyes turn mean and dark, a fist clenching by his side. “Who the hell are you?”
“My real name is Holly Frank.”
“So you’re the tits and ass.”
My eyes narrow. “What a gentleman. I’m sure your constituents would be thrilled to know they elected a person like you. Maybe we should go out there and tell them what you’re really like.”
“My constituents don’t give a fuck how I treat little sluts like you.”
That’s probably not an amazing sound bite for him, but I’m not satisfied with a comment that some news sites won’t even air. I want a full confession. “Elijah told me all about you. How you gave orders to the colonel, how you’re going to find another Army front man now that he’s dead. I know everything.”
A smirk. “Another Army front man? I have twenty, sweetheart. In every goddamn government department and agency. When one falls down, another stands in his place.”
I shiver at the menace in his voice. “You don’t need to worry about Elijah North. You worry about me. I’m the one who knows your secrets.”
“If you know a single thing about me, you know that I could shoot you right where you stand. And I could get away with it. That’s my power.”
I pull my phone out of my clutch, pressing the pause button on the record app. “That just got uploaded to the cloud, by the way. So I hope you’re ready to answer questions about that.”
His eyes narrow. “You little bitch.”
My heart is ready to leap out of my body and sprint for the lobby. But instead of leaving, instead of abandoning me to this empty room and his threats, he plants his feet. The senator blocks the door.
The hallway isn’t empty anymore. There are shadows out there, suited shadows, and in a rush of shame I realize how foolish I’ve been. Of course he would come here with people.
Of course he wouldn’t say all those things to me and let me live.
I’m trapped.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Elijah
She’s not at her apartment, and I’m a human train wreck.
I pound on the door one more time. “Holly, answer me.”
There’s nothing but silence on the other side. No hint of a person avoiding me. No lights on, no TV on, nothing. No sign that she’s alive. What if they never let her go? What if she’s been tied to a chair like me for weeks? What if she died during one of the torture sessions?
I force the lock. It’s pathetic, and if she ever comes back here again I will personally come change the damn thing, but my suspicions are confirmed. Holly’s gone.
Fear cuts into my already bruised belly.
The confession I made was to free her, which means she should be here. In a city like this, there are a million reasons to leave your apartment. Doesn’t matter. Something’s off. Something’s wrong. She’s an author, for god’s sake. She works from home; she should be here.
I search through the unopened mail and takeout receipts until I find one with another address scribbled on it. Sushi, enough for two women to eat. It could be a loose lead, but I’m betting this will take me to her sister.
The trip to London’s apartment is as excruciating as the twenty-mile trek back into the city. The stolen shoes don’t fit my feet, and my skin bleeds from the rough terrain. I found a replacement shirt with long sleeves but no new pants. It explains the strangled gasp London makes when she opens her door. “What happened to you?”
“You shouldn’t be so quick to undo the lock. You never know who’ll be out here.”
London beckons me inside. It’s not necessarily a good idea to invite a guy like me into her apartment, but she’s determined, scanning the hallway in both directions before she shuts the door behind us. “Holly has been worried sick about you. Literally.”
Guilt burns a path through frozen skin. “Where is she?”
“She went to look for you.”
“What do you mean?” My blood runs cold at the thought of her in some Army office, asking questions that will get her in trouble. Or worse, in an airport hangar somewhere.
“There was some event. I told her not to go. I told her it was dangerous. But does anyone listen to me? No. I’m not even going to talk to Adam ever again.”
“Wait. Adam was here?”
“Yeah, I know you two have some kind of beef, but he seemed really shook up about the colonel being dead. He said that changed everything.”