Chapter Twenty-Five
B irch dialed Jocelyn’s number again, his throat tight as it went to voice mail for the fifth time.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Grey said, pulling into a back alley and parking next to a fence to avoid the roadblocks set up around the hotel. “My phone dies on me all the time.”
Nodding, Birch exhaled and jumped out of the car, scanning the tall building in the distance for any sign of what happened and where she could be. With Grey hot on his heels, he broke into a jog toward the flashing lights, stopping only when he was met with the strong arm of Sheriff Fogerty across his chest.
“Whoa there, Birch. No one’s going inside.”
Running a hand through his hair, he strained to see through the sliding glass doors of the entrance. “I have a friend in there and I can’t get ahold of her.”
Fogerty motioned to the large crowd gathered across the street. “Everyone in the hotel was evacuated and sent over there. Why don’t you check and see if she’s there and if she isn’t, come back here.”
He nodded, already on the road when the sheriff’s voice cut through his whirling thoughts.
“Wait up, Birch. Your friend, is that Jocelyn Carter?”
Coming to a halt, he turned. “Yeah. Have you seen her?”
“I was hoping you had,” Fogerty replied, catching up to him and Grey on the street. “Her name hasn’t appeared on any of the roll calls yet, but I know she was staying here. Before I go calling her parents and worrying them, I want to make sure she’s actually unaccounted for.”
The words hit Birch in the gut, and he swallowed the lump in his throat. “Is there a fire or something? Why was everyone evacuated?”
Glancing around, Fogerty stepped in tight and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Bomb threat. Someone called it in. But I’d appreciate it if you kept that between us until we receive the all clear.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, scanning the crowd of hotel guests. “Yeah, of course. Where did they say it was?”
“Room 435.”
*
Jocelyn walked through the gates of the Newark airport, inhaling the heavy east coast air as she powered her phone on. Primed to call Angelo, she froze as her missed calls lit up her screen, a wall of texts interspersed amongst Birch’s repeated calls.
She dialed his number as she hopped into a waiting taxi, giving her address while Birch answered, the fear in his voice palpable.
“Hey, yes, I’m here. It’s me,” she said, cutting off his rambled words. “What’s going on?”
She could hear him speaking to someone else for a moment before returning, his voice tight and gruff. “Fuck, Jocelyn. I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour. Where are you?”
“Newark. Now what’s going on? Are my parents okay? You?”
“Newark,” he echoed, the commotion in the background sounding suspiciously like sirens. “Yeah, we’re all good. There was a bomb threat at your hotel here and no one could get ahold of you. I…holy fuck, you’re okay.”
Sitting back in her seat, she stared at the New York skyline in the distance. “A bomb threat? Was anyone hurt?”
“It was a false alarm. But you were missing and Fogerty and I were trying to track you down before he had to call your parents.” There was another voice in the background. “Yeah, she’s safe. Jocelyn? Grey says hi.”
She let out a small laugh, her mind spinning. “Tell him hi back. And my parents know I’m here, so no worries, okay?”
The din died down and she could hear the steady pace of his footsteps. “I’ll level with you, I’m a bit of a wreck right now and I need to get my head on straight. Can I call you back once Grey and I get home?”
“You have forty-five minutes. And not a second more.”
*
Birch pressed his palm against his forehead with a curse before slamming his hand onto the kitchen table, sending coffee over the lip of his mug and making Grey jump. “Sorry.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “What time is it?”
“Two minutes later than last time,” Grey replied, standing up and emptying his cup into the sink. “Count to sixty twice and call her.” Heading toward the stairs, he stopped. “You two broke up last week, didn’t you?”
Nodding, he hunched over his drink and took another sip.
“That sucks, man,” his brother replied. “What happened?”
“Life. Get to bed. You have that online meeting about next year’s course selection at eight tomorrow.”
Grumbling, Grey left him alone in the kitchen to count down until the time he could hear Jocelyn’s voice again and reassure his mind she was safe and sound.
Logically, he knew she was fine. Newark was as far from a bomb threat at an Epson, Nebraska hotel as she could get in an evening.
She’d called him.
He’d spoken to her.
So why was he pacing the kitchen floor, counting to sixty for the second time, every muscle knotted and his mind on a murderous loop he hadn’t experienced since he’d seen River’s fractured arm during one of their father’s last days alive?
Fifty-nine. Sixty.
Swiping his phone to life, he tapped on Jocelyn’s number, his breath caught in his chest until she answered.
“Hey, Birch Baker.”
The lump he was trying to swallow for hours tightened in his throat. “Jocelyn Fucking Carter.”
She laughed and he slumped into the kitchen chair, closing his eyes as she tsk’d him. “Now, now. There’s no need for that kind of language.”
“I think tonight calls for it. Tell me you’re okay one more time.”
“I’m okay,” she replied, her voice softening. “Are you?”
Chuckling humorlessly, he shook his head. “Nope.”
“How are your plans coming along?”
Opening one eye to ensure Grey hadn’t crept back downstairs, he sighed. “They were coming along all right until someone called a bomb threat to your room.”
“My room,” she echoed. “435?”
“That’s the one.”
He could hear her moving around her apartment and for a moment he wondered what it looked like, what color her couch was, what artwork she had on her walls. “I assume the police found nothing?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said as he sat up and rested his elbows on his knees. “It was a targeted threat.”
“It was big words from someone trying to scare me. Unsuccessfully, I should add.”
All the tension coiled in his body unleashed and he jumped to his feet, snarling into the phone. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he yelled, pacing the floor. “It’s gotta be Ryder or Trevor and they’re after you, Jocelyn. This isn’t a fucking game. What if one of them tracks you down in New Jersey? I wouldn’t know if something happened to y—” He stopped short, his mind connecting the dots. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been threatened like this, is it?”
A microwave dinged in the background. “It’s the first time this year. And Ryder Drayson is so amateur, he barely counts.”
Leaning against the counter, he tried to take a deep breath, his lungs shuddering as he inhaled. “Jocelyn.”
“Put me on speaker, open the web browser on your phone, and search my name,” she said quietly, remaining silent until he muttered out a curse. “You know, it’s funny. Out here, we’re looking each other up online within the first ten minutes of a date. Sooner if we manage to pry a last name out of the person before meeting up. The Epson dating scene isn’t quite as suspicious, I guess.”
He scanned the headlines of the articles popping up under her name. “Funny, yeah.” Sinking to the floor, he opened the most recent one from last December. “Town gossipers have nothing on these coastal reporters, do they?”
Jocelyn Carter wasn’t some forensic accountant. She was the forensic accountant. The firm she worked for was responsible for taking down business empires across seven states, her work bringing casino owners and moguls to their knees. Pictures of her walking out of courthouses accompanied stories of her testimonies, a man with grey-streaked hair at her side in almost every single one.
Almost every single one except the pictures of a much younger Jocelyn on the arm of some slicked-back-hair. trust-fund asshole wearing suits that probably cost more than Birch made in a year.
With his masochistic tendencies in peak form, he scanned through the images of her with this Cameron Durante shithead. Most of the photos looked to be from different fancy-ass parties, Jocelyn dressed to kill in every one and that Cameron dick’s arm wrapped possessively around her waist like he was angling her toward the camera. In those images, he could almost erase the guy at her side and appreciate how stunning she looked, her steel eyes happy and that sexy smirk of hers making promises he knew from experience would rock any man’s world.
And then he scrolled further, the hit to his gut as hard as if River had thrown the punch.
“Sleeping With the Enemy: Top Prosecution Forensic Expert in McGillroy Case Photographed in Compromising Position with Defense Witness”
His mouth was dry, his chest feeling like it was caught in a vise as he tried unsuccessfully to look away from the photos accompanying the article. Despite the pixelation used to ensure the pictures could be printed, there was no mistaking what she and that Cameron fuckup were doing on what looked to be the deck of a yacht.
With a deep breath he read through the article, the words blurring together into a confusing jumble while his mind remained locked on the photos. Words like ‘conspiring,’ ‘coercion,’ and ‘solicitation’ stood out and he pressed his palm to his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut to block the barrage as her voice cut through the steady thumping of his blood pounding in his veins.
“I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I didn’t know Cameron was Jerry McGillroy’s nephew. Or that Cam was overseeing the eastern shipments. All I knew was that this handsome, sophisticated man was completely enamored with me and doing his damnedest to be my escape when the rest of my world was going haywire. I was fresh out of school, tasked with unearthing the finances of the biggest court case of the year, and choking on the fear of failing. And then I met Cam.”
Cam.
Hating the familiarity of his name, he closed out the article and stared at the floor.
“I was head over heels in puppy love with him. I would’ve done anything for him,” she continued, like the knife wasn’t already deep enough in his chest. “Except the one thing he wanted from me.”
Her sharp inhale sliced at him and he squeezed his eyes shut, the adrenaline in his veins doing little to stop the chill in his bones.
“I would find him going through my phone, through my papers, trying to unlock my computer. But I was too lovestruck to piece it together, too starry-eyed to think about the weak excuses he gave. The night I uncovered his name in a stack of documents, he was on his knees begging for forgiveness, promising he’d changed.” She chuckled wryly and he could picture the look of disgust on her face. “When that didn’t work, he turned to bartering. For a little data manipulation here and a few accidental oversights there, he offered me the opportunity to become Mrs. Cameron Durante, complete with a prenup guaranteeing affair discretion and two penthouse suites to keep me tucked away safe and sound.” Her voice cracked and he winced. “I ended it then and there, but he was already a step ahead. By morning I was front-page news as a money-chasing sellout. My boss, Angelo, was the only reason I didn’t crawl into the gutters and let the rats do their thing. He essentially wrapped the team around me, dragged me in front of the cameras at his side for the rest of the case, and gave me the best advice he could summon: keep your wits about you.”
Taking her off the speaker, he held his phone to his ear. “You should have told me.”
There was the rustling of a blanket, and he could picture her crawling into her bed, wondering somewhere in the back of his head if it was a twin or a king. “I know. And I wanted to. But I was so afraid it would scare you off, knowing you were with the woman who shut down Jerry McGillroy and his weapons deals. Or Gator Steele’s drug ring. Then add in the whole ‘sleeping with the enemy’ rumors. And the guys who tried to pull off a more successful repeat when I was assigned to their cases.” Her phone crackled, a reminder of how far away she was. “It sends most men running.”
Most men.
Frustration and rage bubbled back to the surface, his grip on his phone threatening to shatter the glass as he snarled low into it. “I’m not most men.”
“I know you aren’t most men,” she replied quietly, her softness taking him down a notch. “But I couldn’t afford to be wrong. Not again. It’s the reason I freaked out about the deposits into your bank account. I saw myself reliving the hell I’d barely survived the first time around.”
Her words drained every violent urge and ounce of fight out of him, a new resolve pulsing through him as his swirling thoughts narrowed into a singular focus, a plan of attack forming. “I’m not one of them. And I don’t run.”
“No, you definitely don’t.”
He could hear the smile in her voice, and he pushed himself to his feet, scanning the kitchen for his wallet and keys. “Is there any chance Ryder or Trevor could find you there?”
“Not a chance. My apartment is under a pseudonym run through my firm, along with all my bills. We only used my real name in Epson because doing otherwise was pointless.”
Scribbling a quick note to Grey to remember his lunch in the morning, he slipped outside into the warm evening breeze. “Promise me you’re safe there.”
“Promise me that isn’t your engine I hear gunning up at midnight.” When he didn’t reply, she growled his name. “Birch. I’ll be in Epson again in three days. Don’t do anything reckless tonight that you’ll regret tomorrow.”
Backing his truck out of the driveway, he eased onto the street, his next move crystal clear. “The only reckless thing I’ve ever done is fall in love with you, and I don’t regret a single fucking second of it. Call me when you land.”
With that, he powered off his phone and turned his car toward Ryder Drayson’s house.