Untouchable (The Blankenships Book 8) (5 page)

CHAPTER TEN

The two men hauled Alex back up to his feet as Zoey was put—not gently, but not viciously—into the back of the first town car. He’d gambled, demanding that the guard tell her that they’d be safe; he had no idea what was going on, no clue whether or not they were actually okay. He’d been fairly sure the man would just stay silent, directing that cold glare right at him, but he had to try something.

Why the man had responded, he didn’t know. Why he’d said they would be safe? No idea. Had it been a ploy to get them to cooperate or the truth? His stomach clenched at the idea that he’d reassured her, only to send her off into the darkness without any warning, but what she was doing—well, it wouldn’t have helped anyway.

He let the guards shuffle him along into the back of the waiting car. They’d bound his hands in front of him, which was helpful; he could steady himself better than with his balance thrown off by them behind him. He swung down into the car, kept himself from slapping his forehead against the frame, and then saw that he was not alone in the vehicle.

Tanaka greeted him with a broad smile that did nothing to warm the cold darkness of his eyes. “Mr. Blankenship,” he said, in his easy, unaccented English. “I am so glad that you could come and see me.”

Alex said nothing. He raised his wrists, bound by the uncomfortable zip tie, and lifted an eyebrow.

Tanaka tutted, and then reached out and patted his shoulder. “Those who work for me are sometimes incredibly cautious. It seems foolish in the American world, I know, where you trust no one, but here, those we trust are given everything. The keys to the kingdom, as I believe you would say. So we must be very cautious of those who come out of nowhere and begin to make trouble. We cannot give them leeway in order to harm us.”

Alex lowered his wrists, but he didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry that I had to separate you from the woman,” Tanaka continued. “I assure you, my guards will do nothing to harm or frighten her. She will be taken care of as if she were my very own.”

It should have been a reassuring thing to hear. It should have set his mind at ease. Instead, he found himself still more concerned about what happened next. There had to be a ‘but.’ There always was.

“We are here merely to talk,” Tanaka said. “But perhaps you are hungry. Perhaps you would prefer to discuss my concerns over some food?”

His resolve had been a meager thing to begin with; he wasn’t exactly surprised as his temper snapped. “Your concerns? You kidnapped me, dragged me half way around the world, terrified and hurt someone that I love, and now you want to make nice and talk about your concerns? Are you actually insane?”

The grin the man wore spread just a little bit wider. “Ah, yes. That is Philip Blankenship’s son. I began to wonder if you’d gotten anything from the man other than his philandering tastes.”

Alex sputtered, but his words were too incoherent for Tanaka to stop and listen.

“And besides that, Mr. Blankenship. I have done much more than kidnap you to draw your focus to my intentions.” The grin turned vicious, cold, and ugly. “I have done so very much more than that.”

Alex’s mind raced. He was badly out of his depth, and he had not planned for this, not really. He’d been caught up in panic since they’d seen Leo’s father on the tarmac, and he’d known that Leo wasn’t going to pull his ass out of the fire this time, after all. No, more than that. He’d been panicked since Olivia had died. Claire. Cindy. Since his own father had died, and he’d found himself leading a company that he hated. His panic was tangled up in his blood and his heart, and it wasn’t anything he’d ever wanted. It was everything he’d wanted to flee since he was a small child, and he’d seen how it twisted and turned his father into a man that he hated.

If it was just him here—wherever they were, he realized he didn’t have the faintest idea—he could afford to collapse and just try to survive, but it wasn’t just him. It was him, and Zoey, and all the hope and light that she had come to represent for him over the last two weeks. No matter what, he had to get through this and make sure that she was okay at the end of the day.

He forced himself to turn to Tanaka. He dug deep down inside until he found the shark-toothed grin that had made his father billions of dollars. “Well, you have my attention,” he said. It disgusted him to hear that voice coming out of his mouth, but he had no other choice. “What happens now?”

“Now,” Tanaka said, “We talk.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

At first, the talking was friendly. Tanaka took him to a hotel. Alex was fairly sure they were in China, in one of the major cities by the amount of intensity he was seeing in the people and the buildings, but to try and guess where exactly they were would have been no more than flinging a dart at a map. The car pulled into a space in front of a hotel. The zip tie was snapped before Alex got out of the car, but the two men flanked him, leading him up the stairs and into an opulent lobby. He looked like an American business man being escorted to a meeting. He had no idea how to tell anyone that the situation was different without putting Zoey at risk.

He studied the crowd as thoroughly as he could as he was rapidly marched through the lobby. The vast majority of the people he saw were Asian, and none of the Westerners had her lush fall of curls.

They led him to a small room with a long conference table and chairs lining each side. The room was luxurious, but in a utilitarian way, as if each of the chairs could be reordered from a catalog, instead of feeling that they were hand crafted and difficult to replace. The walls were painted a soft, warm shade of blue, and there were photographs of gorgeous landscapes and flowering trees along the length of the room. At the far end of the table was a spread of food, many different dishes of noodles, rice, and spiced meat that made his stomach flip over with delicious interest. He forced a nonchalant look onto his face and hoped the rumbling from his stomach wasn’t as loud as he was fairly sure that it was. “That’s quite a spread for a man you plan to kill,” he said.

Tanaka’s reaction was louder and more boisterous than he’d expected from the man. “You are far too useful to kill, Mr. Blankenship,” he said. “Please join me. You have been in the air a very long time. I’m sure you are hungry.”

The word all but flipped a switch in his head. Everything swirled for a moment, and he had to grab the back of a chair to steady himself as it occurred to him how very long it had been since he’d eaten anything more than peanuts.

One of the guards pulled out a chair for him, and he let himself all but fall into it. The world spun a little bit more, but he had a better sense of which way “down” was, and he gripped the arms of the chair to help center himself. A server stepped forward, and his food was piled high with food, food that smelled more delicious and wonderful than anything he’d ever experienced. “Thank you,” he murmured and dug in as soon as the server had their hands clear. The part of his brain that said things like
caution, it might be poisoned,
or
you will owe him now, you need to be careful
was completely over-ruled by the more base part of his brain that was incredibly, painfully hungry.

Tanaka gave a brash laugh as he settled back in his own chair, spreading his napkin in a precise way that made Alex feel even more grotesque as he shoveled food into his mouth. “Oh, Mr. Blankenship, no,” he said, gesturing to the server to begin filling a plate for him as well. “You are quite mistaken. I have no interest in your death. You are far more useful to me alive.”

It was the tone of his voice that turned Alex’s stomach. He forced himself to finish chewing the mouthful of food he’d taken and kept his voice steady. “In what way am I useful to you? You’ve decimated any ability I had to control the board of AEGIS. You’ve ruined my reputation and put the legality of everything my company has ever done into doubt.” They were a couple of long shot guesses, but Alex was more than willing to make them. It was worth trying to get more information out of the man and find out what he had actually done, what was really going on.

To Alex’s surprise, Tanaka just gave another laugh as he began to eat a pile of meat and rice. “Yes, I have done all of these things, have I not? And yet, you remain so incredibly convenient for me.”

There was a glass of water just in front of him. He was desperately thirsty, all of a sudden, but reaching for the glass would have meant showing just how much his hands were shaking. “Where’s Zoey,” he asked instead. “I need to know that she’s safe.”

Tanaka made a tsk sound with his tongue against his teeth. “Again, Mr. Blankenship, you insult me. I am a good man, an honorable man. I have done nothing to hurt you, and I would never harm your woman. She is good to you?” He waited a moment, and when Alex didn’t respond, the other man continued as if he had. “It is good that she is. Every man needs a good woman—or a good man, I suppose, if it comes to that—to support him in his actions.”

“We’re done here,” Alex said, moving to stand.

It didn’t surprise him that every person in the room except for himself and Tanaka reached for a gun. Alex was standing, his knees pushing the chair back from the table, but he knew better than to move further. Tanaka, for his part, stayed still, chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of rice and vegetables. “Unfortunately, Mr. Blankenship,” Tanaka said, his voice the height of polite apologies, “we are not done here. We are very, very far from done. I ask you again to sit and talk with me. After we are done our conversation, I will see that you are taken to the woman, and you may see for yourself that I am a man of my word, a man who would never hurt a woman merely because of those with whom she chooses to associate.” His face hardened then, his expression chilling down into something much darker and colder than Alex had seen in their dealings. “What information she has chosen to acquire,” he said, in a tone cold enough to match the expression, “and what she chooses to do with that information? That would be an entirely different conversation. And to be entirely truthful, Mr. Blankenship, we are men of business. I think it better you and I have this conversation, and come to an understanding and an agreement. I think she will be… safer for our conversation.”

There was the knife twist he’d been waiting for. Alex forced the rising tide of fury out of the way—it wouldn’t help him, not to save himself, or Zoey, or get them out of here alive—and forced himself to slide back down into the seat. When he reached for the glass of water, his hand was very nearly still. “All right,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

They blind folded her before they let her out of the car, but they untied her wrists. She found herself appreciating that; after all, if she got away from them somehow, it would be a hell of a lot easier to uncover her eyes than it was to break a zip-tie.

When they took her out of the car, she heard the kinds of busy sounds that she associated with a city. Rushing cars, shouting people, horns, traffic. But the sounds were muffled somehow, farther away. Strange. She couldn’t quite grasp what was going on.

When they pulled her to her feet, her head spun like a Tilt-a-Whirl, and she felt her knees start to give out below her. She gasped, suddenly completely unsure which way was up or down; the only thing that kept her from falling was someone’s arms closing around her waist and hauling her upright. Something plastic was pressed against her lips—a bottle—and when it was tipped up and cool liquid brushed over her lips, she drank greedily. She hadn’t realized she was thirsty until she was gulping down water as fast as they poured it for her, and hunger followed closely, her stomach clawing viciously at her spine. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten a proper meal, but she suspected it was in the penthouse.

After a moment, the spinning world didn’t exactly settle down, but it did at least begin to spin in milder circles. The hands on her arms guided her along. The surface she was walking on was uneven, but not enough to make her trip. The guards didn’t push her too quickly, letting her have some time to adjust and move. It was something.

They put her in some sort of elevator—she recognized the disorientation in her stomach as the car shifted into motion, which meant it was older, or at least less expensive, than many of the ones she’d gotten used to in New York. In Alex’s penthouse building, if you’d closed your eyes before the elevator door closed, nothing would have clued your inner ear in to the change in motion except the soft and muted ding of the various floors being reached. Without her eyes to help her focus, she slid badly sideways, her forearm slapping into something square and metal—the railing around the outside of the elevator car—and she had to cling to it until the car jerked to a stop when she heard the doors rattle open. Someone took her arm again and led her forward. The hand on her arm wasn’t unkind, but it wasn’t friendly. It told her to keep moving and not drag her heels.

She followed.

She wanted to be that brave girl in the action movies who managed to get free, pull out some impressive martial arts skills, and kick someone’s ass, or have stashed a bottle of pepper spray in her cleavage or something. But she didn’t know where she was, she didn’t have her phone or her wallet, and the voices she heard around her were not speaking English. At least here, she could be reasonably sure that she was being held to keep Alex compliant. She hated relying on him, but she felt reasonably sure that he would look out for her. He would find a way to save her.

She heard the beep and click of an electronic lock opening, and then a door closing behind her. The blindfold was pulled from her face, and even though the light in the room was dim, she found herself flinching away from it as her eyes adjusted. She hadn’t been blinded long enough for her eyes to tear up, but it was enough that she had to blink hard for a few moments.

When Zoey could see again, she saw that she was standing in a suite that had to be part of a hotel; it had that sense of industrial warmth that was only ever cultivated in the hospitalities industry that was luxurious. There was dark wood and a light colored carpet woven with pale pink cherry blossoms, and the walls were a mix of pale beige highlighted with the warm golden brown of bamboo. It was a beautiful room and nothing at all like the prison in which she’d almost expected to find herself.

There was a woman standing near a window, looking over a distant city. “Hello,” she said, her voice lightly accented. She turned and inclined her head towards Zoey for just a moment. Zoey returned the gesture after a bit of hesitation. “I am an associate of Mr. Tanaka. He has asked me to welcome you and see to your needs.”

The wooziness wasn’t entirely gone, and Zoey couldn’t contain the laughter that twisted her guts up. “I’d really like to go home.”

The woman’s expression didn’t shift from its polite, calm set point. “Alas, that is the only need I cannot meet. Not until Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Blankenship have concluded their business. But I can get you new clothes. Food. Make sure you are comfortable.”

“When can I see Alex?” Zoey could hear the hysteria creeping into her voice, and she hated it. She hated being the girl who panicked at the slightest inconvenience, but dammit, she’d been dragged halfway across the world, she was fairly sure, because her boyfriend was being accused of murdering her family—maybe—and she was starting to be more than a little scared that she wasn’t going to make it home. She’d gotten in touch with her mother in case she needed to say good-bye, but it hadn’t occurred to her as a real possibility.

She’d worn the facade of calm for so long that it was a little shocking when it cracked. It almost stung, feeling the torrent of tears slide down her face. She tried to choke back the emotions, but it was impossible. The best she could do was cover her face with her hands, and when her knees went weak, she forced herself to sit down on one of the opulent couches in the center of the room instead of slipping down to the floor. That was a level of humiliation she wasn’t willing to reach.

The woman spoke, not in English, her tone sharp and clipped. People in the room responded, moving in different directions, but no one was coming towards Zoey, to tie her down, throw her in a cold shower, or try to slap the hysterics out of her. She wondered if the woman would come and sit down next to her, to try to touch her and reassure her. She flinched away from a connection that never came.

It took her more than a few moments to collect herself. When she wiped away the wetness on her cheeks, she saw that the woman had turned back to the window and was gazing down at the city again. “They will bring you food,” she said without turning back to meet Zoey’s eyes. “And clean clothes. If there is anything else you require, you need only to ask. Mr. Blankenship is safe. He will join you shortly. The only thing I must ask is that you do not try to leave the suite.”

“Can I make a phone call?”

“No. I am sorry.” The woman glanced at her and inclined her head again. This time, Zoey didn’t feel the need to smile or return the gesture.

“I doubt that it’s actually your fault,” Zoey said. “Thank you. I think I’m going to shower. And then I’d like to be alone.”

The woman inclined her head again. “If there is anything you need, merely knock on the front door of the suite.” She had a small, careful smile. “I would not suggest that you open the door.”

When the door closed behind the woman, it occurred to Zoey that she’d never actually been this alone. She had no idea where she was, she didn’t know which language was being spoken, and she had no way to reach out to anyone. She had to sit, wait, and hope that she would be safe.

Somewhere, deep down inside, she found the core of herself and found that it was still made of steel. The woman had promised her fresh, clean clothes and some food. At least she could have a shower and eat something. It was better than nothing.