Chapter Nine
Cal paced the hotel room while Alayah sat on the bed. He stopped in front of her with his hands on his hips. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“That someone needed help, and I should help him,” she answered with a long-suffering sigh. It was hard not to make it sound like a question, but she stood her ground and didn’t make excuses for her actions.
“Helping him would have been taking him to the ER or calling the police. What you did was reckless and dangerous!”
“Derek Benjamin was not and is not a threat to me, Cal,” she said, shaking her head.
“You didn’t know that!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. “Good God, you picked someone up off the side of the road like some victim in a slasher movie!”
Alayah couldn’t hold in her laughter. She was tired and worried about Derek, but sometimes Cal did get carried away without considering all angles.
“Cal, I’m a thirty-two-year-old woman who’s an excellent judge of character.
Growing up the way I did, it was a skill I honed early on to protect myself.
I could pick out the good and the bad, whether it was a doctor, teacher, or friend.
I am not gullible or too trusting. Besides, there was a gun in the car, and I knew how to use it. ”
“Which you then gave to said hitchhiker!”
“Let’s be so real right now, Cal. By the time I gave him that gun, he could have overpowered me thirty times and taken the car. All he wanted was the jump drive and a ride back to town.”
“And you thought it was a good idea to lie to your boss about what you were doing?” He paused. “Your boss’s boss, technically, but either way, what were you thinking?”
They’d been going through this same round of questioning for twenty minutes now, and she was tired.
All she wanted was an update on Derek and a bed.
There was no question that Cal had every right to be angry with her; she had lied to him, but he’d been the one to teach them to follow their gut instincts, and that’s what she’d done.
“I’m sorry I lied to you on the phone, but Derek was already in the cabin when you called.
We were heading back to town when he finished, so I thought it would be better to explain everything in person.
In hindsight, that was the wrong choice, and you’d be well within your rights to fire me.
I won’t argue or fight you on it. I’ll take my lumps for screwing up.
My gut said Derek needed help, and I thought if I could get him back here, he could deal with the police. ”
“Why didn’t you at least tell Kieran? He could have ridden back to Duluth with you. Been an extra set of hands.”
“Because Kieran would have called you, and then it would have been a whole thing. I didn’t want to spook Derek and have him run.
I was worried that if the police found out I’d had him in my car and didn’t take him to the police station, they’d arrest me or you or someone.
I don’t know!” She finally threw her hands up in frustration.
“I thought I hit him with the car, Cal. What was I supposed to do? Everything got away from me. I’m sorry. ”
There was a knock on the door and Cal walked to it, sticking his eye to the peephole. When he pulled it open, the woman on the other side of the door was a sight for sore eyes.
“Selina!” she exclaimed as Secure Inc.’s nurse walked in and sat beside her on the bed. “What are you doing here?”
“Checking on you,” she said, giving her a once-over. “Does anything hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said, her head tipped in curiosity. “Derek was the one who was hurt.”
“Not according to him,” Cal said, returning to stand by them. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed you limping on your left leg.”
“Walk me through it,” Selina said, kneeling on the floor and lifting her foot up. “It’s swollen here,” she said, pressing gently on the joint, which made Alayah hiss.
“Sorta got dumped out of the SUV and rolled on it when I fell. It stung for a minute, but then it was fine.”
“No, it isn’t fine.” Selina opened her medic bag and pulled out an ice pack.
She snapped it and then strapped it to Alayah’s ankle with an elastic bandage before carefully swinging her leg up onto the bed.
“You didn’t notice the pain in it because the adrenaline kept you moving.
It’s clearly sprained. Tonight is ice and ibuprofen, and I’ll reassess it tomorrow.
If you have less pain, we’ll brace it and keep you off your feet as much as possible.
If it’s more swollen or painful, we’ll take you in for an X-ray. ”
“It really only hurts if I walk on it.” Selina shook her head in exasperation as Alayah sighed. “You know what I mean. When did you get here?”
“We just rolled into town. Cal indicated my help was needed here more than at Secure Inc.” She glanced at Cal. “The package is on its way. It will arrive shortly.”
“What package?” she asked, glancing between them. “It’s almost two a.m. I’ve been up way too many hours, but even I know that no one is delivering packages at this time of night.”
Cal crossed his arms over his chest. “Ryland is bringing Derek to the hotel. He’s refusing to go to the ER, but he needs to be checked for a concussion and facial fractures.”
“Who’s Ryland, and why is he bringing Derek here?” she asked, her heart buoyed for the first time in hours. Once the police arrived, Cal had forced her to leave the cabin. She didn’t know what had happened to Derek after that.
“Ryland is Secure Inc.’s lawyer. I sent him to pick Derek up at the cabin and bring him back here. The police don’t have enough evidence to arrest him, but they are requiring him to stay in town as a person of interest.”
Most of the tension left Alayah’s shoulders to hear Derek wasn’t being arrested.
She had begged Cal to help him but didn’t think he would.
He probably shouldn’t have, but she was grateful all the same.
“Thank you, Cal,” she whispered. “I know I made all the wrong decisions tonight, but I appreciate you listening to me about Derek.”
“While I appreciate the apology, I don’t think Derek had anything to do with Hugo’s murder.
That doesn’t mean I agree with what you did,” he said, holding up his fancy metal-and-plastic finger.
“But until we can get to the bottom of this, we need him here, so we can ask questions and sort out what he knows.”
“Now we’re running our own investigation?” Selina asked, raising an eyebrow.
Cal crossed his arms again. “All I’m saying is, I don’t want to end up in a cell for touching a water bottle that killed a man. I’m certain Mr. Benjamin doesn’t either.”
“Unless he did it,” Selina said, to which Alayah shook her head.
“While anything is possible, I find it highly improbable that he’d put ethylene glycol in his boss’s water bottle and then go fishing less than twenty minutes from the murder scene.”
“How did the antifreeze get in the water bottle then?” Selina asked. “Someone had to do it.”
“That’s the $64,000 question,” he said, leaning against the television stand.
“We’ll poke around the security camera footage and our programs while the cops run down other leads.
I’m not saying we’re going to solve a tech billionaire’s murder.
I’m saying we’ll make sure none of us end up in front of a judge for it. ”
“Fine, but not until everyone gets some sleep. You most especially,” Selina said, turning to Alayah. “If you want that ankle to feel better, you must let your body rest.”
“After I see Derek,” she said, forcing as much conviction into her voice as possible.
“I’ll check him out, and if I think he needs to go to the hospital, we’ll get him there,” Selina promised. “There’s no need for you to worry about it. Sleep while you can. They’ll need you to comb through those videos tomorrow.”
“Not until I see Derek,” she said again as Cal’s phone beeped.
“He’s in his room,” Cal confirmed when he glanced up. “Alayah, get your walker, and I’ll give you five minutes with him while I talk to Selina. Then, you sleep for at least five hours.”
Well, great. The night just went from bad to worse. Not only had she picked up a stranger off the side of the road, but she broke another promise to boot. “I don’t have my walker.”
“What now?” Cal asked, hand on his hip. “Our agreement was that you took it with you everywhere, even if you don’t use it.”
“Cal, I had ten minutes from when I entered the doors of Secure Inc. until I left them again. My walker was in the back of the other car. I was so tired, I didn’t even think about it.”
“I did,” Selina said, standing and walking to the door. Alayah’s purple posterior walker sat in the hallway when she opened it. “We didn’t find it until we cleaned out the SUV to head down, or I would have sent it with Kieran.”
“Thanks, Selina,” she said as she unwrapped the ice pack from her ankle and slipped her shoe back on. She could admit it felt a little better, so she’d make sure to put some ice on it while she was sleeping. At least the hotel would have an endless supply of it.
She grabbed the walker handles and pulled it around behind her to appease them, but there was no way she’d let Derek see her using it.
She paused to ask herself why she cared if he saw her using the walker, but she already knew the answer.
She was embarrassed. Should she be? No. She’d used a mobility aid for years and was never embarrassed or humiliated about it, but when it came to Derek Benjamin, she was.
Later, she’d have to unpack the reason why, but that was a problem for another day when they didn’t have a murderer to find.
“What’s his room number?” she asked Cal.
“Selina will take you,” he said rather than answer the question. “She wants to put eyes on him immediately before he gets too comfortable.”
“I’ll wait here for a bit and give her time to do that.”
“As if,” Selina said, holding the door open. “You’d ditch that walker the moment I turned my back.”
They left her no choice, and as much as she hated to admit it, she was probably about to make her smartest move all night.
“Now that I’m standing again, I can see that I’m too tired to do anything more than take a shower and crawl into bed.”
Selina offered her a sweet smile, telling her she knew exactly what she was doing but wouldn’t say it in front of Cal. Alayah could be happy about that, at least.
Cal walked to the door before he stopped and looked at his watch. “We’ll convene in our conference room at 0900 hours. Breakfast will be waiting.”
That gave her six hours of sleep. Not ideal, but doable, so she nodded. “Wait, do we still have a room? Isn’t the conference over?”
“Only postponed as of right now,” Cal answered.
“The organizers are waiting for the police to give them the go-ahead. They want to be sure this was an isolated attack before they proceed. Last I heard, they were considering reopening the conference around noon. Of course, they’d be using a different area for the presentations, but the police still need to clear the scene before letting anyone back in. I should know more in the morning.”
“That’s going to stretch us thin if we have to run security for the conference and try to comb through yesterday’s situation.”
“I agree, which is why I brought in more people. They’ll run the conference if they restart it, while those of us who witnessed the murder will work in the background.”
“I’ll be there with bells on then,” she said with a smile, fatigue washing over her.
“We’ll let you get some sleep. Call me if you wake up with more pain in your ankle,” Selina said, and Alayah nodded in agreement.
“And for the record,” Cal said as he started closing the door. “I may not like what you did tonight, but I respect you for following your gut and helping someone who needed it. In the future, I’d just prefer if you didn’t lie to your only backup.”
“Heard and understood, and I’m sorry for worrying you.”
Once Cal and Selina left, she limped into the bathroom, leaving the walker by her bed out of defiance of the entire situation.
As she stripped off her dirty clothes and turned on the water, Derek’s face, all battered and bloodied, loomed in her vision.
As hard as it was, she would do whatever was needed to avoid the man the rest of the weekend.
He had been kind to her and ensured her safety to the best of his ability, but it would be too easy to fall for a guy like Derek.
Good thing she was here to do a job and nothing else.
She glanced down at her body, which had more bruises than it had last night, but for the first time in her life, she found pride in herself for what she’d done to help Derek.
She dried off and put on her pajamas, knowing that pride in her accomplishments would have to be enough for her.
Falling for Derek was just asking for a broken heart.