Chapter Thirty-Three
Bobbi
“You. Out. Now.”
Noah gives me a sad puppy face, but I refuse to be swayed, no matter how progressively more forlorn his expression grows. It’s been a week since the injury, and he’s still hovering like I’m some brittle sugar candy about to break.
He’s reacting out of love, but it’s just too weird. I’m taller than many men, with a sturdy frame and strong muscles. I throw guys around in judo and am trained in three or four other martial arts on top of that. I’m just not used to having somebody follow me around and act like I’m about to collapse every time I move my arm.
Plus, I’m a fast healer—and the cut is now fine. The doc was actually a little shocked.
“Don’t you need some help with the housework?” Noah asks, looking around my living room.
“Are you calling my house dirty?”
“Just offering my assistance. I’m good at chores.”
“Which is why your mom’s been calling you. But my toilets are fine. You need to go visit your brothers.”
“Why?”
“Because you like them? For male bonding? Family time?”
“They don’t need help.” His eyes fall on my arm again.
I’m going to scream. Then murder Reggie with my “bad” arm. Griffin had qualms about kicking her, but not me. “Noah, sometimes you need to stay away to get closer.”
He considers for a moment. “But—”
“Just one day.”
He bites his lip, a sign that there are more arguments he wants to make, but knows better.
“Come on. You’re driving me nuts here.”
He sighs. “Fine. But don’t do anything taxing. Especially the floor. I’m going to help you with it.” He glares at the boxes of tiles that arrived last Wednesday.
“Go. The tiles aren’t your enemy.”
He looks at Se?or Mittens for backup, but the cat merely gives him an aloof look and grooms himself.
“Traitor,” Noah mutters, then leaves.
When the door finally closes behind him, I half-sigh and half-laugh. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise when he ghosted me after the gunshot. If he’d been around, he would’ve driven me insane with overprotectiveness. And all this time I thought TJ was overzealous and overbearing.
I’m going to show Noah I’m perfectly fine,I think, looking at the ugly kitchen floor. Ripping up these disgusting tiles up should do the trick.
I rummage through the toolbox TJ brought a few weeks ago and find what I need. Se?or Mittens gives me a reproachful look. “Keep your opinions to yourself,” I say.
I don’t want to work in silence and under my cat’s disapproval, so I put on a Korean spy drama Yuna recommended. It apparently involves a lot of backstabbing. It’s dubbed, so I can work and listen to the dialogue.
The trim work around the kitchen floor is solid oak and very nice, so I take care removing it and stack it to the side to be reused. Then I grab a chisel and hammer to pry away the first tile. After a couple moments of gradually increasing pressure, the grout cracks and the tile comes off.
What the heck? I stare at the oak underneath. It’s in surprisingly good condition, despite dust from the grout and other gunk. A bit of buffing, staining and applying topcoat, and the kitchen will have gorgeous hardwood flooring. What was Dad thinking? He wasn’t the type to care about real estate appreciation, but it seems wild that he would’ve actively devalued his home.
The existing tiles are much sturdier than I expected. I pull out one of the newly delivered ones and compare. The old ones are at least three or four millimeters thicker. Wonder if that makes a difference. Should I have bought tiles that were equally thick? On the other hand, all the options basically had the same dimensions. Where did Dad get these ugly, thick things, anyway?
My phone rings. Is Noah checking up on me already? It hasn’t even been an hour.
I glance at the screen. Yuna and Ivy, requesting a video conference call. I hit the green button.
“Hello, ladies. Don’t worry, I’m fine,” I say, going back to chipping away at the grout. They texted me on Sunday after TJ, Josie and Cassie left, and I reassured them I was all right, although Yuna acted like the world was ending because I might get scarred. She told me to sue Reggie, then brought over some Korean ointment that’s supposed to prevent skin discoloration and pitting.
“Good to hear,” Yuna says. “But I just had a conversation with Eugene, that brother of mine.” Uh-ho. Whatever he said must’ve upset her to call him “Eugene, that brother of mine.” “How could you not have told us about your steakhouse lover boy?”
“Eugene told you?” I say, feeling slightly betrayed. He seemed like a stoic, silent fellow who wouldn’t gossip.
“It came up. I understand him not telling me when it happened because he’s a guy and guys tend to not recognize what’s important. But you?”
“We feel hurt and unwanted,” Ivy adds, laying it on thick. She’s been with Yuna for too long.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was kind of upset and distracted at the time.”
“Buildup but no payoff?” Ivy asks.
“So is that why you didn’t end up with your porterhouse passion? Eugene hinted you had a quickie with him at the restaurant.”
My face heats. Of course he knew. He isn’t blind, just too gentlemanly to show he noticed. I hammer the chisel with more force than necessary. “Um… I actually did end up with him.”
“What?” my friends say in unison.
“It was Noah.”
Ivy gasps. Yuna mutters something in Korean.
“Well, that explains why you didn’t tell us,” Ivy says.
“Yeah, it seemed like a one-off thing. I assumed he was just jealous of Eugene and acting like a savage.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have been. Jin isn’t getting married any time soon, although our parents keep sending him dossiers of info on possible merger wives.” Yuna went through the same thing. She actually fled Korea when her parents tried to pressure her into marrying some rich guy for some business merger, and Eugene tried to cut her off financially until she complied. “I’d laugh at the irony if it weren’t for the fact that this is Round Two for him.”
“Tell him I wish him luck. Look, this floor needs my undivided attention. Once I’m done, we’ll get some margaritas and you two can pry”—I wave the chisel in front of my phone’s screen—“to your hearts’ content.”
“Fine. I can take a hint,” Yuna says.
I place the chisel and give it a quick whack with the hammer. “Good.”
“Should you be doing that, though? Doesn’t your arm hurt?” Ivy asks.
“It’s fine. It was just some cuts, not a broken bone. Stop sounding like Noah.”
“He’s probably just worried. If I got cut like that, Tony wouldn’t have let the host drag the duo away.”
“Yes, but Tony is famously paranoid about your safety. And I understand why.” He almost lost her—twice. “But I can’t live like that.”
We say goodbye, and I go back to the floor. Four more tiles come off relatively easily. Then I get to the base of the counter and the first one there won’t budge. It also looks slightly newer, although the top is scratched and worn like the others.
I spend about five minutes of fruitless effort hunting for a good spot to pry it up. What is this stuff made of, adamantium?
No dice. I sit back and think. Maybe it would be better to break the tile in half and pry it up from the middle.
I place the chisel in the center of the tile and hit with a bit more power. Sure enough, it breaks cleanly in half. Success!
I pull off the bottom part and dump it into the box with the others. Then notice a black spot on the floor. Oh, no. Is that mold?
Shit, shit, shit.Holding my breath, I bend down and squint, but up close it doesn’t look like mold. In fact, it looks like…a microSD card?
Huh.No brand name or anything. It’s pristine, so it couldn’t have been that Dad dropped it while installing the floor. So where did it come from? I pick it up, then the discarded half-section of tile. On the bottom of the tile is a shallow gouge about an inch long. So… Did somebody hide the memory card under the tile? The slot looks deliberately created.
And just what’s on the card that this much effort went into hiding it?
Curiosity spurs me to get off the floor. I find the memory card adapter that came with the microSD card I bought for my phone a while back. Then I dust the card off, stick it into the adapter and plug it into the slot on my laptop.
A folder pops up. I click on it, see a pdf file named OttosFavoriteThings. Did this belong to Dad? Otto isn’t exactly a rare name, but it isn’t that common either.
When Dad died, there was no will, no last words. But then his death was abrupt and violent. I’m curious what he’d consider his favorite things and why he’d hide a file about it in the kitchen floor. He sometimes acted like he was starring in a Bond flick. Was this another example of that? Did he ever mean for me to find it?
I open the pdf. The first page shows a black-and-white photo of a woman and CLASSIFIED stamped in red.
I look away for a moment. This better not be porn…
The top line reads ASSET: LAURA BENNETT. Lots of blacked out lines in a document that looks like the CIA dossiers from The Bourne Identity, except the agency is nothing I’ve ever heard of, and I don’t recognize the olive-wreathe-over-a-shield-and-spear emblem.
What is this? Some kind of weird role-playing game he did with others? Except wasn’t he always too busy to fool with stuff like that?
Or maybe he never had any time because he spent so much of his energy on the game. There are people who get so into games they basically live online.
The rest of the pages about her are mostly blacked out, but dates and locations and targets can still be read. Wonder what the difference is between the blacked-out ones and not blacked-out ones.
I scroll down some more…and my heart jumps to my throat.
ASSET: NOAH LASKER. Lots of lines are redacted, but I see a hand-written note in the margin: Nora Blane’s son and favorite asset. The writing is blocky, with familiar overly looped a’s and e’s—Dad’s.
Noah’s mom introduced herself as Nora.And she wanted him to “unclog her toilet” in Dubai. Even flew all the way to SoCal to get him to do it. I thought she was just an eccentric wealthy woman—one thing money can’t buy is common sense. But what if she’s something else…?
Besides, if this was just a harmless game my dad played with her and Noah, wouldn’t they have said something? Noah knew who my father was. When he first visited me at this house, he saw a family photo pinned to the fridge and I told him they were my parents.
I scan the pages for clues that this is just a big prank. Words jump out. Outwardly unserious. Possible sociopath. Unpredictable. Difficult to control. Unmanageable. Highly trained and skilled. Prolific. Refers to his rifles as “cheetahs.”
I shoot cheetahs. Noah’s statement about what he does for a living fleets through my mind, icy apprehension slithering down my spine.
I close the pdf, unable to process what I’ve just seen. Of course this is a joke. Dad had basically zero sense of humor, so maybe he thought this would be funny… Noah? A possible sociopath? Come on! The man is tight with his brothers. Ellen adores him. Who puts stuff like this on a microSD card and hides it in a kitchen tile? There’s another explanation for all this. Has to be.
But…
Every innocent scenario I come up with to explain the document is ridiculously unbelievable.
Se?or Mittens meows, obviously bored with my stunned stillness. He hops down from the window sill, purposely knocking over the tablet on which the Korean drama is playing, chin held high in a disdain that demands I entertain him.
Not too interested in humoring you at the moment.I go over to pick up the tablet and check to make sure it didn’t get damaged.
The male lead on the screen stares at his girlfriend. “You saw?”
“I saw everything,” she spits out, the wind blowing her hair into her face. Her eyes are red with gathering tears. “You never loved me. You only cared about the secret you thought you could extract from me.” She throws papers at him. The red CLASSIFIED stamps flash as the documents swirl in the air.
The man’s jaw tightens, and he pulls a gun on her. She lets out a hollow chuckle. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
The man glares at her. She suddenly puts a hand behind her, as though reaching for a gun, and he fires. Red bursts on her chest, terrible against the white of her shirt. She falls on her side, and there’s nothing in her waistband.
The tablet suddenly goes black—out of battery.
I stare at the dead device, feeling like I’ve just seen a bad omen. You only cared about the secret you thought you could extract from me.
My eyes slide to my laptop. A chill slowly settles over me, swirling through my veins as the gears in my head start to turn. Noah and I met in Mexico right after my father died. Then he spent more time with me, came over to spend the night at this house—which I inherited from my father. He was here when I replaced some of the old furniture and mattresses. He helped me go through some of my father’s things and held my hand when I needed to get over the grief of losing him. And he helped with the weird guilt I had over the fact that I didn’t grieve as much as I should have because Dad and I just weren’t that close.
Then he disappeared for a while, and when he came back he said his near-death experience in the plane made him realize what was important. But what if there’s more to it than that?
What if he approached me because he was looking for the file Dad left behind? If I were a spy or mercenary, I wouldn’t want it lying around. After all, keeping your identity secret is part of the game. He didn’t think I had it, but maybe something happened to make him think it was hidden in the house. That would explain all the breaking in. And spending so much time here.
He”s trying to prove he’s the one for you, my heart argues. My brain feels like melting ice cream as I shove away the rebuttal.
As I try to sort my thoughts and emotions, I recall something TJ said when he came by with Josie and Cassie.
Maybe you aren’t a completely useless bastard after all.
He said it quietly, but I heard it and know he directed it at Noah. He said something else too that I didn’t catch, but didn’t think anything of it at the time. What does he know?
Instead of texting, I call. TJ picks up after two rings.
“Bobbi, you okay?” I don’t call unless it’s an emergency.
“I’m fine.” The response slips out automatically. I shake my head, grateful he can’t see my physical reaction. He can be shockingly perceptive. “Listen, I just have a quick question.”
“Okay.” His tone is uncertain. He’s probably wondering what’s wrong because I didn’t ask him if he was free to talk, either.
“Remember how you said that Noah might not be a completely useless bastard after all? You know, when you came to tell us about what happened to Reggie and Floyd?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What did you mean?” My heart races as I wait.
“Well, the timing and all seemed pretty convenient.”
“So you think he went after them?”
“Himself? No. Guys like that don’t dirty their hands. They have too much to lose. But he probably knows a guy who, you know…”
“You think he’s capable of something like that?” Clammy sweat slickens my palms. My cousin’s more objective than I am. His heart isn’t involved.
“In a heartbeat. You saw the look in his eyes, didn’t you? If he thought he could get away with it, he would’ve killed them, no hesitation.” TJ’s tone is full of approval. He is, as they say, heavily into revenge.
I’d like to think Noah is just a carefree billionaire adventurer who likes to take photos of wildlife, but my cousin’s radar for potential threats is much more fine-tuned than mine…which is why he enjoys his job, whereas I never really cared for my bodyguarding career. “I see. Okay.” There doesn’t seem to be anything more to say. “Thanks.”
“That it?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. It might not be him, you know,” TJ says. “Reggie likes to run her mouth, and she’s pissed off a lot of people. One of them might’ve decided to seize the moment. Or it could’ve been Floyd. He could’ve banged somebody he shouldn’t have.”
“Ew.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Doubt he has talent in that direction. But he could’ve owed money to a bookie or something.”
“It’s possible. Okay, thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Of course. Call if you need anything. And don’t go doing that floor on your own. You’ll open those cuts up again and have to go back to the hospital.”
I roll my eyes. “Buh-bye,” I say, and hang up.
As soon as I drop the phone on the sofa, my forced cheeriness evaporates. The call with TJ only stokes my uncertainty, fear and anxiety until I can’t sit still. I jump to my feet and start pacing.
If he thought he could get away with it, he would’ve killed them, no hesitation.
But Reggie and Floyd aren’t dead.
On the other hand, Noah was out late…way, way too late.
And the dossiers…
I look at the laptop. I wish I could say the dossiers were just pranks. But my father had a top-level security clearance. He coordinated a lot of projects with other departments and agencies, and he worked on things I’ll never find out about.
I shove my fingers into my hair, then bend down and grab the hammer. My knuckles turn white around the handle.
You only cared about the secret you thought you could extract from me.
Bang.