Grounded (Up in the Air, #3)(98)

This was the chattiest I’d ever seen her, and it only seemed to make me more nervous, because it was a tell of her own nerves. Whatever strange mood had such an unflappable woman so anxious wasn’t good for my peace of mind.

I went back to packing up some old pictures, smiling when I saw some old shots of Stephan and me. There were several shots from my twenty-first birthday party, when we’d run around like fools on the strip. Someone had taken about a dozen shots of Stephan giving me a piggy-back ride through the fountains at Caesar’s Palace. We’d been dressed up, and we looked like crazy people, with the bottom of his pants wet, and my heels dragging in the water. I smiled at the picture. It was a fond memory, right around the time when things had really started to look up for us. The smile on Stephan’s face warmed my heart, both now and then. He was grinning at the camera, and I was smiling at him, the fact that he was the dearest thing in the world to me clear in every line of my face.

I took the stack of photos to my purse, thinking to myself that I had to give some of the photos to Stephan, and find a place of honor in my new house to put at least one of them.

I was just digging into my purse, still smiling at the memories, when my phone started to ring. I checked the screen.

It was James.

“Hey,” I said into the phone, still smiling. “How’s work going?”

“It could be going better, but at least it’s almost done. My lawyers and Tristan’s agent are making some revisions, but that shouldn’t take more than thirty minutes or so, and then we’ll be done, thank God. Tristan is trying to bankrupt the casino for some two-bit magic tricks.” James had gone into work to hash out some details in Tristan’s new contract, and I could tell by his tone that the other man must be close by and that he was trying to harass him.

“Tell Tristan I said hi,” I told him.

“Bianca says hello,” he relayed on the other end.

“I’ll be heading over there when I finish,” James explained to me. “Are you about done?”

I glanced around the room. I was pretty sure that I’d gotten everything that I’d wanted to pack myself, but I wanted to give the place another once-over, to be sure. “Yeah. That should be perfect.”

“Tristan is coming over for dinner tonight. As if I’m not paying him enough to make rabbits disappear, now I have to make him dinner.”

“I have a new trick where I can make pretty boy CEOs disappear,” Tristan said loudly on the other end.

I laughed.

“Will you let the guys know that they’re invited, as well?” James said.

I could hear the smile in his voice.

“That sounds fun,” I said, meaning it. There was just something so playful and mischievous about Tristan. There was never a dull moment when that man was around. “I take it he got a favorable contract for next year’s shows,” I added.

“He signed on for another year, but we had to double the bastard’s pay,” he said without rancor.

He said something else but a noise outside distracted me at just that moment. What had it been? It hadn’t been particularly loud, just something slamming against the concrete, but it sidetracked me enough that I completely tuned James out as he continued to talk on the other end of the line for several pregnant moments.

“Bianca?” he asked, snapping me out of my momentary distraction.

“Hmm? Oh, sorry,” I said, trying to focus.

It could have been anything. A neighbor had been working on building something on his back patio earlier, and that had been much louder than that single slam had been. What about that noise was troubling me so much?

I kept my phone to my ear as I moved through the house, looking for Blake. The noise was probably nothing, but I figured that we would both feel better if she checked it out.

I heard it again as I moved into the kitchen. This time it was louder, and I could have sworn that it was accompanied by a low grunt of pain.

“Blake,” I called out, sure now that something was wrong.

She burst into the kitchen right as James began to sound a little frantic on the other end of the phone.

“Bianca, what is it?” he was saying. “Is something wrong? Talk to me, Love.”

I opened my mouth to answer, my eyes meeting Blake’s, when I heard a noise that made my blood run cold and my heart stop in my chest. It was a loud echoing boom that I knew all too well, and it made me freeze in terror. A gasp escaped my throat, my free hand flying to my chest.

Blake was moving instantly, pushing me to the ground, her gun already in her hand. “Stay down, Bianca,” she said. “Don’t move, and whatever you do, don’t leave this house. I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared towards the front of the house, though I thought that sound had come from the back.

I was listening so hard for what was going on in the back that it took me awhile to remember that James was still on the phone, which was surprising, since he’d been keeping up a steady, desperate dialogue the entire time.

“Tell me what’s going on, Bianca? What was that noise? Why did Blake tell you to stay down? Where did she go? I need to know what’s going on!”

I blinked, my mind going very shocky in reaction to that noise and the memories it dredged up. How did he not know what that noise had been? Could it sound so very different across the line?