“With me?” I stand. “Sofia wants to talk with me?” I press my fingertips to my temples. “Have you been paying attention? The note on my car? The vandalism in my office? And oh, so coincidentally, there’s Sofia sneaking around?”
“She had nothing to do with that.” I hear the tight edge in his voice and know that his temper is rising, too. Well, that’s too fucking bad.
“Oh, really?” I snap. “And how the hell do you know that? What did she want? Why exactly did she come to Malibu and creep around on the beach in the middle of the night?”
His entire body seems to crumple, and he moves to sit on the bed. I shove my hands in the pocket of my robe, forcing myself not to go to him. To wait, and to learn.
“She had a miscarriage,” he says, and I take a step back, shocked and saddened by his words.
“I—I’m sorry.”
He nods. “Me, too. It got under her skin. She told me that she spent days crying, then days wrapped in relief because she’s not ready to be a mother. Then she’d do nothing but sleep from the guilt of feeling even the slightest bit relieved at having lost the child.”
“How far along?”
“Two months,” he says. I just nod, remembering those horrible days after I miscarried. Then the euphoria when I finally got safely past the first trimester. The plans I made. The joy. But I’m not Sofia. Not by a long shot.
“She didn’t want you to know.”
“Why on earth not?” I ask.
“Don’t you get it? She holds you up as a standard.”
The words knock me backward, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. For so long, she wanted Damien. Maybe she still does. And I’m the woman who won his heart. Maybe that’s all the standard she needs. “She shouldn’t,” I say softly. “She knows better than anyone how weak I am. Back then. Today.” I think about the brunch and meet Damien’s eyes. “Nothing has changed.”
“Bullshit, Nikki. Everything has changed, and you know it. You’ve changed. And Sofia’s changed, too.”
He’s right, of course. And I’m truly glad for Sofia’s recovery and sorry for her loss. But that doesn’t change the fact that whenever Sofia’s name is mentioned, my composure goes to shit. I want to trust her—I know how much she means to Damien—but there are hard memories wrapped up with that woman, and I just can’t manage.
“Nikki?”
I hold up a hand as I gather myself. Then I take a deep breath and look at my husband. “So you’re telling me that she came to the beach in the middle of the night to tell you that she had a miscarriage? Did she go to a hospital?”
He shakes his head. Just one small movement. “The miscarriage was a few months ago. She called me because she wanted my help. I don’t know why she wanted to meet in the middle of the night—why she didn’t come to the office or ask me to meet her somewhere during the day—all I know is what she asked.”
I wait, saying nothing.
“She wanted a job, Nikki. She knew that Bree would be moving to New York, and she wanted to talk to me about being our nanny.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The words explode out of me, and I realize that I’m in motion, pacing the bedroom with my eyes on Damien. “How the hell can her doctors say she’s sane? That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. If you think I would let that woman near our kids like that, then—”
“I told her no.” He’s on his feet, his hands on my shoulders, his eyes hard on mine. “Of course, I told her no.”
Relief washes over me, and I step back, breaking contact, then look around the room, my mind whirling. After a moment, I go to the chest of drawers and pull on clean underwear and a T-shirt, not bothering with a bra. I find a pair of jeans in the closet, then slip my feet into a pair of flats. The dress I wore to Masque is still in a wad on the floor where Damien tossed it. I glance at it, swallowing as I remember last night. His touch. The way I’d curled against him, warm and safe and satisfied, before drifting off to sleep.
Damien just watches me. When I grab the keys to the Lincoln off the chest of drawers, he stands. “Give me five minutes to get dressed.”
“No. I’m going home. We’ll get past this—we both know that. But right now, I want to think.”
“Nikki. Baby, I—”
I hold up my hand. “I’m not mad. I’m not sure what I am. All I know is that you should have told me all of that. We talk about trust and secrets, but where Sofia is concerned it never seems to apply. And maybe I understand that there’s baggage there. Maybe I get that you’re trying to protect me. But, Damien, that’s not good enough.”
I turn and walk toward the door, half-afraid he’s going to follow me, and then a little bit disappointed when he doesn’t.
It’s not until I’m in the car and exiting the garage that I finally truly believe that he’s not coming. I tell myself that’s fine; it’s what I want. I need time alone. Time to think.
I eschew the highway, taking the long way home and eventually climbing the hill to Mulholland Drive. I have no particular reason to be there, but it’s one of my favorite places in the city, and driving that winding route always clears my head. This morning, I want to be clear.
There aren’t many other cars on the road, and I’m taking the curves faster than I should when the phone rings. It’s Damien, of course, and I punch the button to answer even though I’d be perfectly justified in simply ignoring it. “I told you I’d see you at home.”
“Baby, pull over.”
His voice is odd, and I frown in confusion. Then even more as I hear the steady thump-thump of a nearby helicopter. Around me, the plants blow in the sudden wind, and as a shadow falls over the car, I hit the brakes, careening to a stop as a familiar gray helicopter with Stark International printed on the side sets down on the turnaround just ahead of me.
The rear door opens and fear explodes in my chest as Damien climbs down, then runs to my car, his body bent over and his shirt tail flapping in the copter’s down draft.
I throw my door open and leap out, my hand shielding my eyes from the dust. “Damien? What the hell?”
“It’s Anne,” he says as ice fills my veins. “She and Bree have been taken.”
18
Less than a minute after the helicopter sets down at the Malibu house, Damien and I are racing side by side up the interior stairs to the third floor.
“Tell me,” Damien orders Ryan, who’s standing at the head of a huge table that now fills our third floor living area. Computers line its perimeter, each one manned by a person I’ve never seen before.
“Lara,” I cry, looking frantically around the room. “Where’s Lara?”
“With Jamie,” Ryan says, closing his hand gently over my upper arm. “Lara’s fine.” He looks from me to Damien. “Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll tell you both what I know.”
He’s speaking calmly, his voice steady and soothing, as if he’s speaking to a child. Any other day, I’d resent it. Today, I need i
t. Any emotion from him, and I’ll lose it. I’m certain of that. I need him to be absolutely professional. I need to believe that he’ll get us past this. I need to believe I’ll get my baby back.
I know very little, because Damien knows very little. He told me in the helicopter that Ryan called and said that we needed to get home. That Bree and Anne had been abducted, and that they were working on it and to get home as fast as possible. I spent the rest of the flight with my face buried against Damien’s chest, my body racked with sobs.
The pilot got us home in record time, and now it’s taking all my strength not to scream at the top of my lungs. Instead, I clutch Damien’s hand, my bones crushed under the force of his own grip on me.
“Now, Ryan.” His voice is dangerously low as we sit at the kitchen table. “Where the fuck is my daughter?”
I’ve seen Ryan work before, but never on something this personal. This important. And even through my horror and fear, I can recognize and appreciate his cool, professional demeanor. It’s calming, in fact, knowing that he’s here. That he’s watching out for my baby.
“Here’s what we know,” he says, still standing. “Anne and Bree left this morning for Anne’s art class. After class, as they were walking back to the car, someone approached them in another vehicle and ordered them into the back at gunpoint.
I gasp, and Damien’s hand tightens in mine.
“How do you know all of this?” Damien asks.
“Moira was here watching Lara. Obviously,” he adds, seeing me nod. “Bree told her to expect them back by ten-fifteen. When they hadn’t shown up by ten-thirty, Moira assumed they’d stopped to run errands. She texted Bree, asking her to bring back Cheetos as a treat for the girls’ lunch. When she didn’t get a reply, she got nervous. Five minutes later, she called. No answer, so she called me.”
Moira is Ryan’s little sister, and knows perfectly well what he does for a living, so her decision to call Ryan makes sense. “But how could Moira know about the car?” I ask. “Or the—the gun?”