“The circuit breaker? Where would that be?”
“I couldn’t say, miss, but I could schedule someone to come out and take a look next week.”
“I’ll see if I can find it. If not, I’ll call you back.”
I remembered the electrical panel at my grandfather’s house was in the garage. This house didn’t have a garage. It had a basement, though. I had no idea why I remembered that, but I did. It was unusual for houses in Texas to have them, another fact I had no idea how I knew.
Grabbing my phone, I pried open the door that was between the kitchen and the back porch, and then remembered the porch was partially collapsed. I went back inside and out the front of the house. The double doors that led to the basement were around the back, closer to where the garden had been. I vaguely remembered that my mother kept root vegetables we’d grown down there because they’d last longer.
I was stunned at the random memories that continued flooding back to me.
The doors I thought might be hard to open, did so very easily. Shining the light from my phone ahead of me, I walked down the stone steps.
When I got to the bottom, I moved my phone in a semi-circle. It was creepier down here than I remembered, probably because I’d never been down here without any light.
I also didn’t remember it being this big. At first glance, there was nothing resembling an electrical panel. There had to be a furnace, though, right? And a water heater? Maybe the panel I was looking for was in the same vicinity.
“Yes!” I exclaimed when I opened a door to my right and saw not only the furnace but, behind it, the electrical panel. I tucked my phone under my chin and pried the panel’s cover off. At the very top, there was a breaker larger than the others. When I flipped it one way, my phone slipped and fell on the dirt floor. “Dammit,” I mumbled and flipped the switch back the other way. I leaned down, picked up my phone, and shined it near the doorway. There was no switch, but there was a string hanging down. Who knew how old the light bulb in it might be, but it was worth a try.
“Yes!” I exclaimed again when the light went on.
Feeling very proud of myself, I pulled the string again to turn the light off and pointed my phone at the way back out.
I switched it off when I got close enough to the steps that the light from outside shone in.
Not only had I called my father and told him I needed money, which I thought he’d agreed to send—mainly because of my veiled threat—but I’d also turned my own electricity back on. That probably wouldn’t seem like a big accomplishment to someone like Decker.
Decker. After being with him around the clock for the last few days, now that I wasn’t, I missed him. Even I didn’t understand my reaction to him earlier; it was totally illogical. One minute, I trusted him, wanted him, enjoyed being with him, all implicitly. The next, I was so angry, I couldn’t stand the idea of him touching me.
What had he done wrong? Nothing. He’d been kind and loving, protective, and so fucking sexy that imagining him naked made me almost lose my footing.
I wondered if he and the rest of the Invincibles were still meeting. I smiled at the name I’d given them and his warning that they were an arrogant bunch and didn’t need me pumping their already overinflated egos.
When I got to the top of the steps, I tucked my phone in the pocket of my shorts and closed the two doors. I pulled it back out and swiped the screen. I needed to call Decker and apologize. Looking at both, I wondered which of his numbers I should call first.
“Hello, Mila,” I heard someone say from behind me at the same time he reached around and snatched the phone from my hand. “Remember me? We have some unfinished business.”
I spun around and looked into eyes that looked so familiar. They were Adler’s eyes, but he wasn’t the man standing in front of me, sneering.
35
Adler
“Do you know how much money that bas—, man stole from our family? Billions.” I told the woman who had been relentlessly questioning me for what felt like hours but was probably not even thirty minutes.
“Walk me through it, Adler. You and your father blackmailed Sybil Knight—”
“No! We didn’t blackmail her. She needed money. We offered to pay her to get the information from her father that would prove my father should’ve been listed as the real inventor on Knighthawk’s patents. That was it. It took her a few months, but about a week ago, she made contact and said she believed she found what we were looking for. I told my dad, thinking he’d tell me to make arrangements to get it from her, but he said he’d handle it himself.”
The woman was studying something on her phone. She walked to the other side of the room, and I could hear voices but not what they were saying.
“Jesus,” I heard her mutter.
“What?” I asked, but she didn’t respond. Whatever it was, held her attention for several more minutes. She opened the door that led to the outdoor patio and closed it behind her. When she came back, she looked even more pissed off than she’d been before.
“We’re gonna start all over again, this time on a completely different subject, Adler. Now we’re gonna talk about Mila Knight and what your sick fuck of a father did to her.”
36