BIG: (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (35 page)

In the end, she settled for an infantile scrawl, clicking the button to ‘sign’ the papers that would give Brad and Elsa access to her entire stock. Her screen refreshed, showing the send confirmation. She was just shutting her laptop down when the bell for her apartment rang, making her jump.

It kept ringing as she got up and fumbled for the keys for the internal deadbolt she’d fitted. “All right, all right!”

The ringing continued like someone was actually leaning on the bell.

She abandoned her fight with the keys and lunged for the intercom to make the noise stop. “I’m here! I’m here!”

“Please let me up. Now.”

“David?” Annalesa buzzed the outer door open and it seemed like it took him less than ten seconds to sprint up three flights of stairs. She just had the deadbolt drawn back when he banged on the door, and had to dive backwards out of the way as he lunged into her apartment, spraying drops of coffee from the takeout cups in the little cardboard tray. “David, what’s wrong?”

“I’m being stalked.”

“What?” She shut the door and locked it. “How long’s this been going on?”

“For the last hour. I saw him when I left to meet the glazier and just saw him pop up again as I was approaching the door.”

She strode over, took the coffee from him and put it on the kitchen table.

“Is this the first time you’ve noticed this?” She gripped his shoulders.

“Y-y-es.”

“Breathe!”

“Sod breathing—I’m being followed!” David tore himself away and darted across her apartment to the far window. He peered down into the road and waved an arm back, beckoning her over. “Down there, at the corner! He’s the stern-looking blond giant buying a copy of
Le Monde
.”

Annalesa joined him at the window and followed his line of sight.

She saw Henrik dwarfing the paper-seller.

Henrik? Here?

David jumped back from the window as Henrik glanced up. “I don’t know what he wants with me, but I don’t want to find out.”

Goosebumps travelled her body at express speed, leaving her shaking.

Calm down, woman. Maybe it’s just Ric being overprotective.

She straightened her shoulders. “David, could you do me a favor and grab my phone?”

“I think it’s too early to call the Gendarmes. They’ll just laugh at us.”

“I’m calling Ric.”

“Your brother? What can he do from another coun—ohhhh! It’s
you
being stalked!” He clapped his hand on his chest and exhaled hard, falling back against the wall. “Thank God!”

“You’re so brave.” Annalesa glared at him and went to get her phone.

“Cowardice is golden.” David now had a grip on himself, his face remorseful as he sat her down with her coffee and took his back to the window, where he glared three stories down to street level. “I’ll stand guard over here.”

“You do that.” Annalesa rolled her eyes and speed-dialed Ric, who picked up after just a couple of rings. “Hey, are you alone?”

“Yep. You okay, Leese? You sound freaked.”

“I’ve just seen Henrik outside. Is he on secret guard duty?”

“What? I thought he’d be in Maine with Elsa, Dad and Anders.”

“That’s a no, then.” She felt sick all of a sudden, thinking of the number of times Henrik had been nearby when she and Ric had stolen a moment. Then she remembered... when the helicopter came to pick them up from the cave, Henrik was
already walking towards them
. How long had he been nearby? Had he seen them in the pool while they were watching the northern lights? She nearly dropped the phone in horror. She and Ric had fucked in that pool!

“Leesa! You still there?”

“Yeah, yeah... scared to death, but here.”

“Sit tight and don’t go out, okay? I’ll make some calls. Oh, wait—is there a friend who can stay with you? Maybe your buddy, David?”

“I’ve got it covered, thanks.” She smiled inwardly as she glanced over to the theta male by the window who was checking his reflection in between snatching glances down at the street.

Ric hung up and she put her phone to one side, strongly inclined to go to the liquor cabinet and pour something stronger into her coffee. David pulled away from the window and came to join her on the couch, looping his arm across her shoulders.

“You all right? Sorry I wussed-out there for a minute.”

“Such a wimp,” she teased, nudging him.

David snorted. “If I were your brother’s size and shape, I probably wouldn’t worry so much about a mysterious man following me around.”

“He’s not that mysterious. He works for a man called Anders Arensen, who runs the military liaison unit of Ryker Arms.”

“Your family is
so
intimidating. Your mother’s always scared me, but
Ric
... bloody hell.” David gave an exaggerated shudder. “Still, I suppose there must be perks to being the little sister of an arms dealer who also happens to be a man-mountain?”

“Some,” she agreed faintly.

“He could probably fold that vast blond out there in half like wet cardboard.”

“Or just fire him.”

“That would work, too.”

David jabbered on cheerily for the next ten minutes, not seeming to mind that she was too tense to give more than two-word answers to anything he said or asked. He was just distracting her, and she was grateful for it.

Her whole body felt like a high-tension spring as she stared at her phone, willing Ric to call back. Even if he didn’t have anything good to report, she needed her man-mountain’s voice in her ear. It just seemed like the only thing that would calm her down.

Her phone vibrated and she snatched it up, almost smacking herself in the side of the face with it. “Ric?”

“Chill, it was Dad.”

“Oh, thank
God!
” She almost sagged sideways against David as all her muscles uncoiled at once.

“We got cut off halfway through the call, but from what I could make out, he had a little word with Henrik before they went to Maine and asked him to keep an eye on you.”

The relief dissipated enough to leave a little room for annoyance. “So what about his great big speech the other night about people consulting him about their good intentions?”

“Oh trust me, I brought that up. He said that as the owner, founder and CEO of Ryker Arms, he reserves the right to be as much of a hypocrite as he wants.”

“Got it. If you call Brad back, tell him he could’ve chosen someone subtler. Henrik’s six-five, blond and can’t hide behind anything. He’s terribly unsuited for stalking.”

Ric gave a soft chuckle at the other end of the line. “I’ll pass that on.”

She looked over at David, whose brows rose in expectation of an explanation. She gave him a thumbs up and told him, “My stalker turns out to be an unsolicited bodyguard.”

“Splendid. I’ll be off, then. I’ve got builders to pay.”

She pecked his cheek and waved him out, returning to her call the moment the door had clicked shut behind him.

“You never told me how it went with the video-conference yesterday?”

“It was good. Good enough for me to go right to bed afterwards and sleep for nearly fourteen hours straight. Dad told this little group of wannabe insurgents they could take a hike—and he did it with the full blessing of the
whole
board.”

“You showed them the exposé footage?” She sank down until she was lying on the couch, draping her legs over the far arm, feeling giddy at the loss of tension. It was a wonderful feeling.

“How did you...?” Ric sighed. “Elsa told you, didn’t she?”

“I pushed her. I don’t like being left in the dark, Ric. I trust you, but I just... I feel better knowing what’s going on.”

“That’s fair.” There was a long pause at the other end of the line. “I’m sorry you were scared, but I know why dad ‘sicced’ Henrik on you. Those were some nasty people we refused to do business with. Some of that footage... well, let’s just say a couple of the guys in the Norwegian office were glad we had trash cans in the room.”

She shuddered. “What do I do about Henrik?”

“Give him a friendly wave. Let him know you know he’s there.”

“I might as well invite him up to have dinner.” Annalesa laughed.

“No, don’t do that.”

“It feels weird having the poor man lurking out in the streets at all hours of the day! It’s not very warm out there and he can only nurse a coffee at that café for so long.”

“No, I mean... I’m coming over and I don’t want him there.”

“Ah. Yes, I can see how he might get in the way.” Annalesa closed her eyes, wanting him with her already so they could share a shower and then go to bed early. She was tempted to grab a nap before he arrived so she’d have plenty of energy to not-sleep later on.

“Call me when you get to Paris Le-Bourget so I’m all tidied up when you get here.”

“I don’t want you tidy.” Ric dropped his voice low. “I want you naked. See you in a few hours.”

She hung up, tingling already at the thought of getting him entirely to herself in a few hours.

Her buzzing phone nudged into her consciousness, slowly pulling her out of sleep more aggressively as it got louder and louder.

She sat up on the edge of the couch, patting her hand across the coffee table to find it through bleary, half-shut eyes.

“Hello?”

“Leesa, I’m at Paris Le-Bourget—”

“Oh wow.” She squinted at the clock, now able to discern that it’d been barely three hours since she’d spoken to him last. “That was fast!”

“There’s been a change of plan.” There was nothing playful in the way he spoke.”

“Okay.” She woke up fast at the strain in his voice, getting to her feet. “Ric, what’s up?”

“I need you to pack a bag for a couple nights, grab Henrik, and meet me at the airport. I got a call from the Feds. They wouldn’t give me any details but we’re needed in Maine. There’s been an incident.”

A hard rumble jolted Annalesa out of sleep. She sat bolt upright, flattening her face to the little round window in time to see Maine’s landscape whiz past her at ground level. Her head pounded and felt unusually heavy.

She massaged her temples with her fingertips, wondering if Ric had slipped something into her apple juice after they’d taken off. She wouldn’t put it past him. She didn’t know where he’d get something that would work that quick and didn’t want to know.

A warm hand landed on her thigh and she saw his anxious eyes lock onto hers. His hair was down, face pale. Clearly he hadn’t given himself the luxury of sleeping the long, tense hours across the Atlantic. The plane’s clock was set to local time, which completely screwed her head up, because it was barely an hour after the time they’d actually taken off.

The satellite phone buzzed as the jet came to a halt and Ric lifted the handset, his knuckles white around the plastic.

“Yeah? Yeah... I hear you. Agent who? Fine. Wait...” He signaled at her urgently for a pen and the moment she handed it over, he took details from the phone, writing on the back of his hand. It looked like a cell number and a serial number.

“Fine, we’ll meet Goddard at the perimeter, but you can warn your agent that I’m done with this business of being told jack-shit.”

Normally, she’d have flinched as he hung the phone up with a slam, but after the jolt of waking with a start, that creeping feeling of formless dread was snaking through her again.

“They’re still not telling us why?”

“No.”

“I think we know.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d had the chance to feel them, much less form them.

“Leesa, let’s not go there just yet, all right?”

“I’ll try not to.”

He squeezed her thigh and didn’t let go until the jet came to a stop. She, Ric and Henrik grabbed their bags in silence and filed down the stairs, making their way to the Homeland Security desk.

No questions were asked of Ric, but both Leesa and Henrik ran the gamut of ‘why-are-you-here’ questions, as neither of them had a US passport. What the hell was she supposed to say?

‘I’m here because I’m wanted by the FBI?

It was just an interview—but still. They wouldn’t say why.

It was driving her to distraction, and no one had answered her calls.

Ric stepped forward and had quiet words with the nervous young guy from Homeland Security, giving him the details scrawled on the back of his hand. The kid made a quick call and waved all three of them through the desk.

There was a car waiting—unmarked, Annalesa noted—and she focused only on the road whizzing past the tinted windows until they reached the Ryker estates. As the car banked right towards the house, instead of left towards the compound, she felt Ric straighten sharply next to her.

“Why are they meeting us at the house?” She found his hand with her fingers.

“Conference center. Makes sense.”

“Oh. Right.”

No, it doesn’t make sense at all.

An icy numbness spread through her legs, both up and down, from the backs of her knees. She couldn’t feel the balls of her feet as she hopped out of the car inside the gates of her huge home, and her whole body moved on autopilot as she and Ric followed Henrik around the side of the house to the door that connected to the conference center.

Then she saw police tape.

A lot of it.

Three state vehicles were parked haphazardly in the driveway, and a constant trail of officers in uniform khaki with black lapels streamed in and out of the building, looking grim. Her slow, deep breath in defiance of the cold east coast air turned into a choke at the sight of a coroner’s van parked alongside the gym. The same sight stilled Ric in his tracks and he turned, putting heavy hands on her shoulders.

“Leesa, stay put a sec.”

“But there are bodi—”

“Please, Leesa
.
”

She gaped, shivery and alone as he took off towards the conference center at a jog, brushing aside an official-looking person in a suit who tried intercepting him.

The suit pursued more vigorously, running to get in front of Ric and turn to show a flipped-open wallet card. FBI identification. Annalesa could work that much out even from a distance.

Ric stopped long enough to let the guy speak, then while the Fed explained, he stared at a point out of Annalesa’s line of sight, his shoulders jerking with sharp, uneven breaths.

“No!” The hoarse disbelief in his voice carried right across the compound. He stumbled backwards, his hands dragging through his hair, then dropped to his knees, propping himself up with his hands spread on his thighs while he fought for breath.

Annalesa dropped her bag, sprinting over. As she got within a few feet, he stood, herding her back, blocking each attempt to duck round him and get into the house.

“Leesa, you don’t want to see.”

“What happened to my Mum?”

“Seriously, you need to stay back.”

“Ric! What is it? What’s happened to my Mum? Ric!”

She knew she was screaming and didn’t care.

A moment’s disorientation on Ric’s part gave her a gap under his right arm and she darted past, sprinting a few steps forward before she brought herself up dead and cold at the chalk outlines on the ground and the blood spatter all the way up the wall by the outer door of the gym.

The knowledge of their parents’ death rose up in her as an icy gush of black water and she turned back towards Ric, sobs not just rising but exploding from her.

He opened his arms, folding her against him as she staggered in to him. The agent gave them a couple of moments together before appearing at their sides and laying a light hand on her shoulder as a gentle hint that they needed to speak.

She pried herself away from Ric but couldn’t bring herself to let go of his hand as she looked up at the agent, who was a dark-haired, sober-looking guy in his early thirties.

“I’m Agent Cyrus Goddard, and my partner’s around the back of the site, talking to your chief of security. I’m very sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

“Wh-why are the Feds here?”

“Anders is here?” Ric’s bark cut across the agent’s answer, but Goddard didn’t need to reply. The agent’s partner emerged from the doors of the conference suite, guiding Anders Arensen, who looked like a trembling husk of a man, his gaze darting everywhere. He looked an earthquake victim trying to figure out where his home had gone.

“He called it in,” Goddard explained quietly. “He wasn’t here at the time of the attack, but cut down a prowler who was a couple of hours late to the party. He found the bod—” Goddard bought himself up short, staring down at his shoes. “I’ll give you a moment to talk to him. Then, I’m sorry—I have to ask you to make a formal identification of the deceased.”

The bland request hit Annalesa like a fist in the gut. She could barely get her legs straight enough to hold her weight up when Ric drifted over to Anders as if in a dream, his confident stride a lost entity.

She watched them talk, Anders twitchy and distressed, Ric nearly silent and apparently numb, and accepted Goddard’s arm at her elbow as he led her back to the unmarked vehicle.

“Why were we asked to meet you here?”

“I didn’t ask you to meet me here.” Goddard looked like he was stifling annoyance. “I’m very sorry. The field office clearly hadn’t taken into consideration what would be waiting for you at the other end of your flight.”

There was something wrong with this picture, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Unable to process the thought of seeing her mother dead on a slab, she focused on practicalities to keep her mind busy.

“How long have you been questioning Anders Arensen?”

“He’s not under questioning.” Goddard frowned. “He’s been helping with the investigation.”

“Okay—how long has he been ‘helping’?”

“A couple hours. He slept under sedation for a few hours after alerting the State Police. Why?”

“How do you know he wasn’t involved?”

“Traffic cams put him behind the wheel at the coroner’s established time of death.” Goddard gave her a long, steady look. “Miss LaFevre, is there something I should know?”

“No... no.” She shook her head clear, ashamed.

The sedation at least explained why he was still walking around the site talking with the Feds nearly nine hours after the attack. She glanced at her watch again, trying to remember what time it had been in France when Ric had asked her to meet him at the airport. A long time ago, one way or the other.

Her brain didn’t seem to be working too well. She picked her bag up off the ground and got back into the car, scooting to the far side so Ric could climb in next to her.

Goddard climbed in the front seat and a moment later, Ric was strapping himself in, his face wet but composed.

For expedience, the viewing took place at the mortuary attached to the Sheriff’s office. The ground was like marshmallow beneath her feet as Ric led her by the hand into a cool, unfurnished room, painted duck-egg blue and with too much of a breeze from the air conditioning system. There was a curtain across half of the rear wall, behind a viewing glass. Goddard followed them in and shut the door behind them.

“We don’t
both
need to do this.” Ric turned blazing eyes on him.

“Sir, at the point we made contact with you, we were aware that your parents were a divorced couple. We were seeking next of kin identification for both Mrs. Elsa Ryker-LaFevre and Bradley Ryker. We were just fortunate that you managed to contact your stepsister and bring her with you.”

“Elsa’s been, for all intents and purposes, my mom since I was thirteen-years-old. I can make the damn identifications myself, okay? There’s no need to put Leesa through this!”