DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(176)

I was watching them from behind the window. They couldn’t see me: the lights were off, and I was careful to stay behind the curtains. They were too busy watching Jaime, anyway.

Why he had to include Jaime in this little deal, I had no clue. He said the idea was to keep Lucien distracted. He said that we had to keep him so busy that he wouldn’t notice what was going on right under his own nose. He said Jaime was his assistant, so she could make that happen. But I still didn’t see why we had to include so many people. The more people involved, the easier it would be for someone to figure out what was going on.

Lucien was a smart guy. But he was so focused on that girl, that Adrienne—what kind of a name for a woman is that, anyway?—that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if I’d stripped naked in the middle of the conference room and twerked right in front of him.

Jacob was just being paranoid. He was so afraid that Lucien would catch on before the deal was done that he would ruin the whole thing. But we had the power of attorney. We had all the paperwork we needed to sell the patents. And Lucien still had his artificial pancreas. He could rebuild the company. He would take some hits, but Jacob was confident he could survive this little deal. And Jacob and I would be off in the Bahamas, having the time of our life on the billions we would make out of the deal.

It was a win-win, right?

But having Jaime here was a threat. I didn’t like it.

She put the papers in the mailbox, as she was told. I watched her walk away and climb into her car.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

And then one of Ruben Garcia’s guys walked over and grabbed the papers the moment she was gone. It was going perfectly. Now all I had to do was get out of there and go meet Jacob at—

“Hello, Mrs. Callahan.”

His voice was low and rough. He grabbed my arms and pulled them behind my back, snapping what felt like handcuffs on my wrists.

“You can’t do this. You’re not a cop anymore.”

“No. But I have a few friends on the force. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind me handing over a kidnapper and blackmailer.”

“Blackmail? Who did I blackmail?”

“I’m sure that letter your partner left in the mailbox could be construed in that way for a judge.”

“What? It just tells where Adrienne is!”

“No, darlin’, it doesn’t. It asks for five thousand dollars to tell where she is.” He laughed, a deep chuckle that I could feel rumbling against my back. “Thing is, I would have paid much more than that for my daughter. Too bad she’s already safe and sound.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Who else are you working with, Mrs. Callahan? Is your husband, Jacob, involved in this?”

I twisted against him, turned so that I could see his face. Ruben Garcia. Jacob had told me all about him, even showed me a picture, but he didn’t tell me just how intimidating the former cop could be.

“I think I’d like a lawyer.”

“No problem,” Ruben said. “Like I told you, my daughter has already been freed, and I believe her captor would love to tell stories on her partners. I’ll find out all I need to know very soon.”

I just shrugged. I wasn’t worried. Jacob had promised he would get me out the moment I was arrested, should it come to that. Jacob always kept his promises to me.

Ruben turned me away from him and began to lead the way outside. But then his cellphone rang. He yanked it out of his pocket and made some sort of grunting sound before he answered it.

“This is he,” he mumbled, talking more like someone off the streets than the professional I was told he was. He listened a moment, and then his grip on my wrists tightened, tightened so much that I was almost afraid he was going to break my arm.

“Is he going to live?”

More silence. And then, “And Adrienne? She’s there with him? You stay with her, watch her. Whoever did this might come after her.”

When he disconnected the call, the phone was still in his hand when he shoved me up against the wall so that we were standing face to face. The look on his face so frightened me that I almost couldn’t breathe for a moment.

“Where’s Jacob?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“I know he’s the mastermind behind the whole thing. I know he’s the one who wrote those emails, the one who sent Rachel after my daughter. And I know he’s the one who just tried to kill Lucien Montgomery. So, if you don’t want to be charged as an accessory, you had better start talking.”

My head started to spin at the word ‘kill’.

“What are you talking about?”

He studied my eyes for a long moment, his expression so intimidating I felt as though I’d just fallen into some sort of street thug movie. He was the deadly drug dealer, and I was the lost society dame. My heart was in my throat, and my stomach was somewhere around my knees.

“Lucien’s insulin pump malfunctioned tonight. He’s fighting for his life in the emergency room right now. You wouldn’t know something about that, would you?”

I’d seen Lucien have a low once. It wasn’t a pretty sight. That big, strong man made weak by his body’s malfunctioning pancreas. I’d been brought to tears. That was three years ago. The night of the first fight Jacob and I had in our short married life. The first of many.