Chapter 2 #2
Then it hits me. I met this woman. Sort of.
That’s why she looks familiar. It was in a movie theater in London, where Nora was screening her documentary last year.
She kept sashaying in and out of the aisle in front of me while I was trying to watch the movie.
I had to physically move her out of my way.
I wasn’t rough about it. I just lifted her up out of the chairs and set her down in the aisle so she could leave me in goddamned peace.
Her indignant face had made me want to do it again.
It had also taken my breath away then.
“Nora’s friend,” I say.
“Yeah,” Jude says, speaking slowly like I’m a five-year-old.
Sweat springs to my palms. Sasha brings a hand to her mouth like she’s going to bite her nails, but instead she rests a couple of fingers on her lips for a second, causing me to stare at their pink plushness a moment too long. To my fucking horror, I feel my dick jump.
“What’s her deal?” I ask, looking at my brother to keep my shit in check.
“What do you mean?”
What do I mean? Am I wondering why she seems agitated under that bubbly demeanor?
Or am I asking if she has a boyfriend or husband or something?
I make the mistake of looking back right when she laughs.
Her loose waves bounce around her cheeks in a way that makes me wonder what they’d feel like between my fingers.
It takes me a second to realize I haven’t answered Jude’s question, and he’s staring at me, his lips curling. “Wow, Griffy, you like a girl!”
I grunt. “It’s not—I’m not—” Shit. I turn away, grabbing the water jug and refilling my glass. It splashes on my hand. “Fuck me.”
“That’s what she said,” Jude says.
“Jesus, would you stop?”
He ignores me, tossing his core in the trash. “I’ve never seen you stare at a woman like that. Makes me think you have real human urges or something.”
I glower at my brother.
Jude strides over to a mirror standing up on a tallboy table next to a few grooming supplies. He tucks his long hair behind his ears, smiling at himself in the mirror. “I’m going to set you up,” he says self-satisfactorily.
“The fuck you are.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not.”
“Where’s your open mind, Griff? She just moved back stateside, and she’s smart as fuck—has a degree in English boinking—”
“What?”
“Like, porn for proper English people in the olden days.”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“Erotica,” Eli says, looking up from his vows.
“I never want to hear you say that word again,” I say.
Jude snickers. “Yeah, something like that. Anyway”—he inspects his teeth in the mirror—“Cap loves her as much as Nora, so you know she’s awesome.”
Jude goes a little swoony-eyed just mentioning his girlfriend. Then he frowns. “Just don’t meet her family.”
“What’s wrong with her family?” Eli asks, suddenly invested.
“They’re rich and snobby, apparently. They think she’s the black sheep being all normal and not a society girl or whatever. Which is fucked, considering who her brother is.”
“Who’s her brother?” I ask, almost not wanting to know.
“That Wall Street dude who dates supermodels. He just got elected as a…senator I think?”
My stomach drops, but I keep my face a stock-still mask.
“He’s all over the news right now,” Jude continues. “Apparently someone even connected him with some gangster guy with a shady criminal record. Eel or Eel Man or something.”
“Creelman,” Eli says from the other side of the tent.
“Wait,” I say, my voice feeling like it’s detached from my brain, which is going at a hundred miles an hour. “Are you telling me that’s Sasha Macklin?”
“You do know her!” Jude says, grinning.
The dossier on Sam Macklin that Ford did up last year indicated the councillor had a sister living in London. She’s ten years Sam’s junior and apparently far removed from any of his dealings. Macklin has two siblings closer in age to him. We wrote her off as a person of interest.
“No,” I say. The lie that comes next is easy. “I’ve never heard of her.”
Jude’s about to say something else, but he’s cut off by the tent flap opening and the woman with the blazer popping her head inside.
“Gentlemen? It’s go time!”
I can tell just from the angles that the photographer darting around in front of us as the officiant drones into the mic is minimizing the number of photos I’m in, per my request. Still, I keep my face pointed down as much as possible.
That part is a literal pain in the neck, but at least it forces me to keep from looking up at the woman.
Creelman. Her brother’s mixed up in some serious shit. For all I know—facts-wise—she could be part of it, too. My instincts immediately revolt at that suggestion, and my instincts are rarely wrong. Still, I never rule anything out until I’m positive.
I’m so preoccupied with my thoughts I don’t notice the ceremony’s over until the crowd is cheering uproariously and I look up to see Eli bending his fiancée—shit, his wife—backward to kiss her for a full minute longer than necessary.
Shit. I’m an ass. I do my best to focus my attention on the wedding photos that come next.
After they’ve cleared the rows of chairs away and we’ve posed in a few photos for the family’s use only, I scan the crowd, now mingling around tallboy tables the staff have brought over from the hotel.
I spot Sasha Macklin standing with Reese and Eli. She’s fawning over Reese’s dress alongside Nora. I tell myself I’m being insane. Overly cautious. This is just a woman who was upset about being late for a VIP wedding.
I hear my name. “Griff!”
Jude’s waving me over. I could ignore him—in fact, my job here’s done. I already told Eli I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the reception.
So why haven’t I taken off?
Jude waves again.
Grimacing, I head over to the small group.
“Whatcha doing over there all by yourself?” Jude asks.
Near where I was standing a moment ago, a group of people are clicking together a floating floor. This whole operation is pretty smooth. It’s impressive. But I only just now noticed them doing that.
“Watching them set up the dance floor,” I lie. It’s a ridiculous answer to a ridiculous question.
Jude’s got his arm hooked around Nora’s shoulder, his thumb brushing over her bare skin in an easy stroke. “Is that right?”
Nora smiles. “Nice to see you, Griff. Have you met my friend Sasha M—”
“Sasha’s fine,” Sasha says.
For the first time, I square my gaze on the woman, noticing how she’s avoiding her last name.
But when I do, my breath falls away. Fuck.
She’s got an easy smile—bright and cheery, though there’s a twist of something sassy in there, too.
Or maybe that’s the twinkle in her bright blue eyes.
But she’s hiding something. It’s not just the nerves she’s been showing, either.
There’s something under that confident, dressed-up exterior.
And I’m suddenly desperate to know what it is.
Her plump, pillow-soft-looking lips curl up slightly, and I realize I haven’t even responded with my name.
All I manage is a grunt.
Fucking hell.
“My brother’s a big talker,” Jude jokes.
I fold my arms, ignoring Jude. It’s not hard to do. Plus…my ears have perked up. There’s something in the air, some new sound. I try to focus on it.
“I find it hard to believe you were watching them set up the dance floor,” Sasha says, distracting me.
The question surprises me. “Why?”
The single-word answer comes off as rude. I usually don’t care about my tone, but now I just feel like more of an ass.
But Sasha’s unbothered. “You don’t look like you dance.”
There’s that fucking twinkle again.
“You’re right. I don’t.”
“Not even when you’ve had a few too many?” Her nose has a tiny little crook in the middle. Maybe she fell off the swing as a kid or something.
“I never have too many.”
“That’s true,” Jude says, watching us like we’re a game of goddamned tennis.
I don’t know why I was worried about her. She seems perfectly capable of looking after herself.
“Hey, we were just talking about how you helped us when we were in Switzerland,” Nora says to me.
I raise a brow. “Did you find something new?”
Jude and Nora were in Switzerland last winter, following the story that got them together—and had Nora winning a documentary contest in London.
They were investigating a century-old murder mystery that took place in our family’s hotel, and I happened to give them a little boost with some information I found.
“No, we haven’t had time to look any further into it since I had to focus on classes again this term,” Nora says.
Jude kisses her on the temple. “It’s not the same doing it on my own.”
“I need to know who murdered Eleanor Cleary, though!” Sasha says. “And what happened to her baby.”
The way she says baby, with those doe eyes, makes something weird tick inside me. Like she cares deeply about a baby who probably got lost in the system a hundred years ago.
But I don’t have time to unpack that, because that sound I swore I heard grows louder now, and recognition kicks in.
“Fuck me. Everyone into the trees,” I bark at the group.
Three sets of eyes go wide.
“Why?” Sasha asks. But she’s not testing me. Real alarm skitters across her features.
I point up just as the chopper rises above the trees in the distance.
The alarm I feel is real, but it’s not the stark adrenaline I’d feel if I knew there was real danger. I can see someone leaning out the side of the bird holding what looks to be a telephoto lens.
Sasha utters words I’m surprised to hear come out of a mouth so proper and pretty. She lifts her arm up not to see into the sky, but to shield herself from view.
“Over there,” I bark, pointing to a wide-limbed tree.
She blinks for a moment, as if not wanting to jump when I tell her to, then thinks better of it, whirling around and sprinting surprisingly fast in those spiky heels.
“That one,” I call, pointing to a thickly leafed limb.
I wait until she’s concealed before turning to my brother.
Eli’s in the midst of the newly erupted chaos, his arm around Reese.
Her team is running toward them, but they’re not close enough to shield her from the wide-angle lens held by the person leaning out of the chopper.
Eli’s got his wife under his arm, looking livid as his eyes meet mine.
I point my chin toward the catering tent, which is his closest form of visual protection, and he nods, running both of them inside.
Someone rushing by them knocks a table over, sending a bottle of champagne crashing onto the dance floor, exploding like a bomb. Someone screams. I watch as half the crowd scatters, while half of them stay where they are. Some of them look happy. One guy raises his drink in the air in a salute.
“Fucking showboaters,” I curse, striding over to the tree Sasha’s standing under, clutching the limb like it’s a big arm holding on to her.
I have to fight the urge to try to trade places with the tree.
“You okay?” My voice is gruff.
“No.”
I inspect her face. It’s set hard, her jaw tight. “This was supposed to be a media-free event,” she says. “What happened?”
“Someone wanted the media here.”
Her eyes go wide. That’s fear.
Heat burns in my chest. Her piece-of-shit brother’s making her think irrationally. “Look at the crowd.”
She scans the people still standing in the clearing, taking in the ones raising their glasses and laughing.
“Someone leaked the location of a celebrity wedding. Nothing more.”
She meets my eye. “How can you be sure?”
On the one hand, it’s annoying that she’s challenging me. On the other, I like that she asks the right questions.
“It’s the most logical explanation, and the logical explanation is usually the right one.”
She breaks eye contact, looking up at the bird. But I don’t miss the tiny softening of the muscle at her jaw, the slight drop of her shoulders. I’ve made her feel better. I don’t know why this feels as good as knowing she’s safe.
A loud voice blares from the center of the crowd, keeping me from questioning this strange thought. The woman in the blazer from earlier is yelling through a bullhorn at the people in the helicopter, her face pinched in anger.
“This is a private event! You’ll be hearing from our lawyers!”
They can’t hear her, but they must have either gotten what they came for or decided there aren’t any more photos worth taking, because the person with the camera pulls back into the chopper. It angles around, and a moment later, it’s gone.
Around us, people buzz with shocked conversation, several people shouting for their friends.
After a careful listen tells me the helicopter’s not circling back, I turn to Sasha. “You have a ride out of here?”
Sasha nods. “I’m good.”
“You don’t look good.”
She gapes and actually looks down at her dress like I was criticizing her outfit choice.
“You’re wobbly,” I clarify.
She huffs and lifts her chin as she steps out from behind the tree. “I’m fine. Seriously.”
She doesn’t look fine. She’s trembling. Only slightly, but I can see it. But she doesn’t want my help.
This is not your problem.
“Fine,” I say. Then I do what feels like the hardest thing I’ve done in years. I give a quick nod goodbye and walk back to the path I came down on.
Once I’m in the trees, I pull out my phone, calling Ford and hammering out instructions to look into all connections between Creelman and Sam Macklin without even a hello.
“We’ve already done—”
“Do it again,” I bark.
“The fuck is into you?”
“Please,” I say begrudgingly.
Ford grumbles but acquiesces. He knows when I’m in a mood, there’s no point in insisting on civility.
He’ll do the same to me another time. It works.
I hang up the phone, watching Sam Macklin’s sister as she gets into a golf cart and heads to the hotel.
I get into the one I stashed behind a utility shed and trail behind hers at a safe distance.
I follow her all the way back, not letting her leave my sight until she goes through the door of my family’s resort.
Then I force myself to let it go. I tell myself this isn’t me being overly cautious. That it’s just an occupational hazard.
And I almost believe it.