Chapter Thirty-Eight Audrey
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Audrey
I checked the time. T-minus ten minutes until Alejandro would be on a call with his evil ex, and he wanted to do it alone, so I’d have to sit here and wait.
Wonder. Continue wallowing in sadness, replaying that call with Trevor.
He’d ended the call before I could protest and beg him not to intervene and seek retribution.
But when that man’s mind was made up, it was up. Alllll the way up.
“Do me a favor and distract me.” I gave Reed my best prayer hands, sitting on the couch in the living room in front of the fire.
“Me?” Reed looked up from his phone. “You want me to distract you?” He frowned. “I’ll go find Alex, how about that?”
No, I needed a distraction from him, too. “Ryder asked you to watch over me while the two of them prep for the call, so please, help me get my mind off all the heaviness.”
He sat upright, his spine going stiff, eyes lifting to the ceiling as if I’d just asked him to solve world hunger in sixty seconds.
“You could let me talk to Hollis.” I held open my hand, hoping he’d hand over the phone he’d been using to contact her.
He grimaced. “She’s become a pain in my ass.”
“I feel like that’s not hard to do.” I chewed on my lip, resisting a small smile at the little tease there. And look at that, he was already distracting me from the weight of the world pressing down on us.
“Fair enough.” He typed in his passcode, then handed me his phone. “Please tell her it’s you texting and not me.”
“Worried she’ll think you’re being nice?” I smirked, opening up his messages.
“Doubt she’d believe it anyway. She’s . . .”
I lifted my brows, focusing on him, thankful he was temporarily lifting the stress about the call with Trevor and Alex’s soon-to-be call with Beth off my chest. “She’s what?”
“Nothing,” he grumbled, picking up his laptop from the coffee table.
“Fine.” I opened his messages, tempted to scroll through and invade their privacy and read their exchanges. Before I had a chance to do that, a new text popped up from her.
Hollis: I’m helping whether you want me to or not. She needs me. My mind is made up. I’ll pick you up in Colorado. We’ll take my plane and fly to NZ together.
“Wait, what?” And aren’t you in Bali, then heading somewhere new? I held the phone up, waiting for Reed to give me his attention. “What is she talking about?” I knew Hollis’s parents had money and a jet, and I’d always declined her offer to ride in it, given my disdain for the things, but . . .
His forehead tightened. “How much do you know about your best friend?”
“How much do you know about my best friend?”
He set down his laptop and twisted around on the couch, swiping the back of his hand over his cheek twice as if lost in thought. “I had to look into her to ensure she wasn’t working behind your back with Mitch as some type of plant.”
“What secrets is she keeping from me?” I rushed out, my body tensing up in preparation for the hit of betrayal.
“I had no choice but to confront her, given some weird patterns and inconsistencies Gwen and I picked up on when we both checked into her.”
He took the phone from me and set it on the table, letting me know I wouldn’t be texting her. At least not yet.
“Ryder told me not to say anything yet, that you had enough on your plate.” He lifted his hand, patting the air. “And before you ask, Alex doesn’t know about this. Figured his plate’s full, too.”
I rewound everything he said and unscrambled it. “You’re not saying my friend has been working with Mitch, are you?”
“No. In fact, she seems to be beating herself up that she didn’t know Mitch was such a bastard.” He stood and faced me, locking his arms over his chest.
“Just tell me what you know; I can only handle so much.”
“I thought I was supposed to be distracting you?”
“You are.” Only I was now hanging by a thread and on the verge of spinning out thanks to this new distraction. “Please.”
His arms dropped, and he studied the phone on the table. “This relentless woman is going to find a way to involve herself in our mission no matter what, so when you see her—if you go to New Zealand with us—then she can tell you herself like she demanded we let her do.”
Sounds like a Hollis thing to say and do.
Then again, maybe everything I thought I knew about her is a lie, so what do I know?
“And how in the world would Hollis help on a mission? She doesn’t even work—and while I adore that woman, her biggest problems are which city to choose to visit and what designer handbag to buy. ”
A hollow laugh left his mouth. “That’s a front. Not real.”
“Who the heck in my life is real?” I spat out, fighting tears. “And does Trevor know the truth?”
“I asked Trevor if he knew the truth about her. He said when he went fishing into the background of all your friends, he accidentally kicked a hornet’s nest when it came to her family, forcing Hollis to tell him the truth.”
“And that means?”
“That yeah, he knows she’s been keeping secrets from you.”
Seriously? “Does no one trust me with the truth? Everyone just thinks I’m some fragile woman that can’t handle it.” I wanted to scream, but I somehow managed to keep it together.
“I don’t know what to tell you. Hollis convinced Trevor it was safer for you not to know.”
“I’m really getting tired of everyone deciding what is and is not safe for me without my input.
” I sank onto the couch, prepared to throw a few walls up again and be mad at the whole world.
At least Alejandro didn’t hide this from me.
“You let me look at your phone,” I murmured a beat later when it hit me.
“That was your way of letting me know without telling me. A loophole.”
He lifted one shoulder. “I fuckin’ hate being left in the dark, so . . .”
“For a non-people-y person, you’re not so bad at it.” I gave him a lopsided smile. “Thank you for being honest. Well, as honest-ish as you’re allowed to be.”
He sat next to me. “She’s not a threat. More like an asset. But don’t tell her I said that.” He tore a hand through his hair. “I guess the second she learned about the attack at the lodge, she began working the case herself.”
Working the case. How was any of this real?
“She’ll tell you, I promise. I’ll make sure she does.”
Something told me he would. Happily hold her down and force the truth from her. “Yeah, now that she has no choice.”
Before I could ask him another fifty questions, my brother joined us. “Alex is about to get on the call with Beth. He’s in the den.” He hung back by the fireplace, and as if picking up on the tension, cut right to it and asked, “Everything okay in here?”
“Hmm.” I pushed up to standing. “Where do I start? How my ex-husband wants to risk his soul to kill Mitch? Or the fact my best friend has been lying to me, and you and Trev chose to keep this from me?”
“Oh,” was all I got from my brother. More like, Oh, shit. I could hear it in his tone despite the lack of a curse.
“And Hollis is going to be a pain and demand she join the op. Just an FYI,” Reed added. “Not sure if there is anything we can do about it. She did offer us a ride, though. And we may have to meet Echo Team in Queenstown, so we can’t borrow their plane to get there.”
“You want to work with her?” Ryder asked, eyes narrowing on him. “I thought she drove you nuts.”
“She does,” Reed grunted. “And when Gwen floated the idea that Hollis be my plus-one at the auction ten minutes ago, I told her absolutely fucking not. But—”
“Y’all are talking like I know who the heck my best friend really is,” I said, cutting off their back-and-forth and about to lose it.
I couldn’t believe my innocent distraction request had turned into this. I really could use my mom right now. Someone who wouldn’t betray me.
Shit. She did, didn’t she? She lied to me my entire life. Thinking she was protecting me. Everyone keeps trying to protect me, and now it’s starting to feel like they’re only trying to protect me from the truth. I’m a magnet for liars. This is just . . . I’m spinning out. I need to calm down.
“Let’s just say your best friend is not who she says she is.” Did my brother really just throw those words at me so casually and add a shrug as well?
“Don’t do that.” My eyes burned, and my body was now wound so tight I thought I’d snap. “Don’t act like having another someone close to me lie is—”
“You’re right,” Ryder cut in without hesitation, stepping forward. “I’m sorry. I tend to see things through one lens and forget the other side.”
Reed went over to the armchair and picked up an M4 that’d been sitting there like it now belonged more in my world than a piano. “That’ll be my cue to leave.”
Ryder gave him a quick nod and redirected his focus to me. “Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you.”
“She asked you not to tell me, yes? So she could be the one?”
“She did.” Ryder cleared his throat. “Repeatedly.”
I huffed out a deep breath. “Fine, then I’ll wait for her to explain face-to-face and decide then how angry I am. For now, I have enough to deal with.” Time to shift gears and my energy elsewhere. “How’s Alejandro?”
“Alejandro?” he repeated like a question.
Oh, right. I used his full name. But he told me to. I didn’t need to tell my brother that right now, and no, that wasn’t me being dishonest. I hoped it didn’t count, at least. “Is he okay?” I deflected. “It can’t be easy what he’s about to do.”
“No easier than these last few days have been for you. Dealing with people who’ve hurt you.”
“We have to put an end to this. All of it.” I closed my eyes as I let my past play through my mind in dizzyingly slow motion.
From opening that box on Friday to the inscription in the wedding band to Alejandro comforting me on his knees back at the lodge before I confessed Mitch’s sins, to the hotness that happened by the piano.
Everything. All of it. Landing lastly on something Reed had said before he took off.
And the aha moment hit me like a bolt of lightning.
“I think I may have an idea,” I blurted out.
“Please tell me that your idea doesn’t include you demanding to come to New Zealand with us, come hell or high water, like your best friend has?”
“You’re the ones who told her about New Zealand, I take it. Should’ve left her in the dark like you did me.”
He winced, and so did I at that jab.
“Sorry, still a little upset about the lie,” I whispered.
“As you should be.” His brows pinched as he explained, “But no, it was her brother who found out about New Zealand, we didn’t tell her.”
“Her brother? What do you mean?”
“He’s apparently good with cyber stuff like Gwen.
He was able to unfuck the destroyed footage tying Mitch to that vault in New Zealand before Gwen could.
” He held out his hand. “Gwen’s a little upset that someone beat her to that, so maybe don’t bring it up to her.
Sensitive subject.” He gave me an innocent smile.
“I’m still reeling over the fact Hollis has a brother she never mentioned.” I took a moment to recalibrate before moving forward. “But if they haven’t found Mitch on any other CCTV footage aside from that one time, he must really be holed up somewhere and waiting until the auction, right?”
He nodded.
“But, um.” Shit, what idea did I have I never presented? When it slammed back to mind, I shared, “I think we should use Mitch’s obsession with me to our advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t just want to buy his freedom and safety. He wants me in his own sick and twisted way. Forever, right?”
“And you’re saying that we give him you?”
“Yes.” I shook my head. “No.” I closed the space between us, my mind racing. “We give him the illusion of something he can’t handle.” Here goes. “Gwen suggested Hollis be Reed’s plus-one. What if I go not only as Alejandro’s plus-one, but as his wife?”
Ryder took an immediate step back, a hand shooting over his mouth.
That was a deep-in-thought, considering-it look, right?
“No aliases. But the cover story is the ring on my finger,” I continued while he processed. “And Alejandro wears Mitch’s band. We don’t hide from him. We remain in plain sight. And we make him come right for us, because what choice will he have?”
“And he’ll snap seeing you, the woman he desperately wants, with Alex and his ring on Alex’s finger.” He slowly looked up at me, hand returning to his side. “We turn his sick jealousy and obsession into our advantage for the op.”
“Your team can grab Mitch at the auction, and you guys keep him alive so we can get to the vault and open it. Then Secretary Chandler can ensure the evidence never gets in the wrong hands. After, track down the rest of Stratos 2.0 and shut it down for good.”
Ryder’s brows tightened. “And what about Mitch?”
“Once the vault is open . . .” I swallowed. “We kill him.”