Chapter Twenty-Four
COOPER
Iwalked into the office Monday morning unaware of how desperately I'd needed to see Alice sitting behind the desk, her red lips quirked in a sardonic smile, a teasing look in her eyes. Hell, I’d be fine with frost. With rage. With anything but her absence.
Her chair was empty. Maybe I was just early. When the phone rang through to my desk an hour later, I knew Alice wasn't coming in.
I dealt with the call and forwarded the main line to an intern's desk, telling him Alice was out for the day. Then I tried to focus on work, telling myself she’d come back when she was ready.
I tried to resist the urge to track her down, but with every moment that passed, my reasons for giving her space fell apart.
When I realized I’d spent two hours on a job proposal that should have taken me forty-five minutes, I was ready to toss everything to the side and—
Do what? What did I think I was going to do? Find her and force her to come home?
Finding Alice and forcing her to come home was starting to sound like a good idea. I already had enough to apologize for. What was one more thing? I forced myself to stay at my desk, growing more restless with each minute that passed.
Not long after lunch, Evers strolled into my office, dropping into one of the chairs opposite my desk.
“Got a call from Agent Holley,” he said.
“Possible sighting of Dad in Texas. No word on Tsepov’s location, but things in Vegas seem to have shifted.
His guys have scattered, and it looks like a rival crew picked up the slack.
Still, I think Axel and Emma should stay here until we find Dad. ”
“Yeah, that's good,” I said, my eyes staring blindly at the proposal on my screen.
“Coop? Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, I heard you. Dad might be in Texas. Tsepov lost Vegas. Axel and Emma should stay. Got it. You can go now.”
Evers didn't go. He sat there, ankle propped on his knee, and leaned back into his chair, obviously prepared to hang out for a while. I waited, knowing he wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Between the two of us, I always won the quiet game.
“Where's Alice, Cooper?”
“Not here,” I answered.
“She upstairs? Is she sick?”
“No.”
I did not want to tell Evers what had happened. I love my brother. I love all my brothers, but the last thing I needed was to bring them into my fuck-up.
Unfortunately, Alice had a point about mixing work and our personal lives. Outsiders would see her as just the receptionist, but Alice was more than a cog in the wheel.
Alice was the linchpin. She facilitated communications from all the various teams, ordered supplies, handled the schedule. We could do without her for a day or two, longer if we’d planned for her absence, but every minute she wasn't here the entire office noticed.
I hadn't just fucked up my personal life, I'd fucked up everyone else's workflow. There was no way I could hide that. Especially not since Axel already knew what was going on.
He'd kept quiet through the weekend so he didn't spoil the celebration, but the wedding was over. The newlyweds were off on their honeymoon and everyone was back to normal.
Everyone except for me and Alice.
I pushed back from my desk and crossed the room to the wet bar in the corner. I used it mostly for coffee but kept a small working bar for the occasional client who needed extra fortification.
Clients came to us for all sorts of reasons, some of them under a lot of emotional stress.
Every now and then, a drink was exactly what they needed.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd had one myself during work hours.
When I poured a healthy slug of whiskey and sat back down, Evers knew the shit had hit the fan.
“What the fuck, Cooper? Where the hell is Alice? What did you do?”
“Why does everyone always assume it's me?”
“Because I've seen Alice show up to work when she's half-dead from the flu. When she has a migraine. The day after her grandfather’s funeral. You two disappeared before the cake was cut on Saturday night and didn’t show all day Sunday. So, what the fuck happened? Is she okay?”
“Not interested if I'm okay?” I asked, sardonically.
Evers eyed the amber liquid in my crystal highball glass. “No. You're clearly a fucking mess.”
Not waiting for my answer, Evers looked down at his phone and typed out a message.
“Who are you texting?” I demanded.
He didn't answer my question, just inclined his head toward my glass. “Am I going to need one of those?”
I ignored him, already knowing who'd been on the other end of that text. My guess was proved right when Axel and Knox walked in less than a minute later.
Axel took in my bleary eyes, the whiskey in my hand, and laughed. “Shit, man, she fucking destroyed you, didn't she? Still haven't found her?” He dropped into the chair beside Evers.
“Obviously not,” I said.
Knox closed the door behind him. “Cooper drinking during the day? Fuck, what happened? Is Alice okay?” He dragged a smaller chair over and angled it by the corner of my desk, dropping into it and waiting.
“I don't know,” I admitted. “She left the wedding Saturday night. Took my car, drove back here, ditched her purse and phone, and disappeared.”
“It must have been bad,” Evers added, talking to Knox and Axel and ignoring me, “because I could see Alice freezing him out, but to walk out on the office? She knows she keeps this place running. She wouldn't ditch us unless Coop here screwed the pooch big time. So, what did you do?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but Axel got there first. “Mom cornered her at the reception. Threw Dad's bullshit about them having an affair in her face. And Cooper told Alice that it was a long time ago and he forgives her.”
“That's not what I fucking said,” I protested, but Evers and Knox drowned me out.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Evers gave me a look of such disgust I sank back into my chair.
“What the fuck do you mean it was a long time ago and you forgive her?
Don't tell me you fucking believed that bullshit?
Dad told me once and I fucking shut it down.
I didn't even have to know Alice to know it was a lie.”
“I didn't know, okay?” The protest sounded weak, even to me. “He pulled me aside and told me they had a thing and she was hot, but her husband was jealous and I should keep my distance.”
“And you bought that?” Evers asked. I had to wonder what he'd seen that I hadn't.
“If I'd known you fell for his shit, I would've said something,” Knox said, gravely. “He lied, Coop.”
“He lied about fucking women all the time,” Evers tossed out.
“Yeah, he did, but this was different,” Knox said. He shook his head at me. “I'm sorry, Coop.”
“Are you saying this was more than his random bragging? He made it up for a reason?” Axel asked.
“It was a couple weeks after Alice started working for us. One of the guys—Jason, not with us anymore—he hit on her. Was a real asshole about it. When I pulled him aside and told him to can it or get out, he told me that if Dad was fucking her then he might as well make a run at her, too. I shut that shit down and went to Dad.”
“It's a good thing Jason's gone or I'd fucking kill him,” I muttered.
Knox shook his head at me. “Dad told me that you were getting all googley-eyed over the new receptionist. He didn't give a shit that she was married, but he said you were too young to settle down. He didn’t like the way you were looking at her, so he made up that bullshit story about sleeping with her to scare you off.”
“Why the fuck didn't you tell me?” I demanded, jerking forward, almost knocking over what was left of my whiskey.
Evers slid it out of my way before cocking his head to the side and parroting my question. “Yeah, why didn't you tell us that?”
Knox looked up at the ceiling for a moment.
“I wish I had. Cooper had to go out of town for something, I can't remember what, and I had a job that kept me out of the office.
By the time we were both back, everything seemed normal.
Alice had settled in, Dad dropped his bullshit story, and everything was fine.
There didn't seem to be much of a reason to bring it up.”
“You should have told me,” I said, sick at the idea that my father had seen through me so easily that he’d sought to poison my feelings for Alice by lying about her.
“It's not like you could have made a play for her anyway. She was fucking married, or am I the only one who remembers that?” Knox shot back.
“I remember,” I growled.
“Alice never cheated on that bastard of a husband,” Evers said, his voice as low and rough as my own. “Jesus, I can't believe you accused her of sleeping with Dad. No wonder she took off.”
“I didn’t accuse her of anything,” I ground out through gritted teeth. “That was Mom. I tried to tell her it didn’t matter.”
“Yeah, that went over well,” Evers muttered.
“She could have talked to me,” I protested.
“See it from her side,” Knox interrupted. “Not only does she find out that you think she committed adultery, twice over, and she slept with her boss, she probably thinks the rest of us think the same thing. I wouldn't want to walk into work today either.”
Fuck.
“She’s not going to come back, is she?” I asked the room, not needing an answer.
I’d been so focused on what was going on with Alice and me I hadn't thought about that part of it. I’d just about convinced myself to give her time, to let her come back on her own, but if she thought the entire office believed she'd been sleeping with my father, Alice might never come back.
“I have to find her,” I said. “She’s not using her cards, didn’t fly, take the train, or a bus. Didn’t rent a car as far as I can track. I ran into a wall.”
Closest to the phone on my desk, Axel leaned forward and grabbed the handset, flipping the base around to punch in a few numbers. A second later he said, “Jackson, Cooper's office.”
Evers asked, “No trackers? She left her car?”
I nodded. “Cameras show her walking out of the building at eleven-thirty Saturday night and turning right. Then she disappears. I thought about checking out her friends, her family, but going full-on stalker didn't seem like a good way to get her back.”
“Normally, I’d agree with you,” Axel said, “but after the way Mom's been treating her and Alice thinking everyone at the office believes she was fucking Dad, I think going full-on stalker is your only option. If you leave her to her own devices, there's a good chance she might not come back.”
Axel was right. Alice loved her job, but she didn't need it. She made a healthy salary and had low living expenses. She’d been smart enough to parlay that into a very robust investment account. She couldn't retire at thirty-three, but she wasn’t under any pressure to pick up her paycheck on Friday.
She wasn't alone in the world, either. Alice had friends. She had a sprawling family who adored her. If she wanted to walk away from her life and start new somewhere else, she could do it. If she wanted to hide out and avoid all of us for months, she could probably do that, too.
Time to stop being patient and bring in the big guns.
Lucas Jackson strolled through the door, his eyes falling on me. “Want me to find Alice for you?”
Fucking Lucas Jackson. He had his ear to the ground. Lucas knew everything that happened in the office. Fuck, he knew everything that happened in Atlanta. He ran what we jokingly called our Hacker Division. His title was Director of Information Technology.
Innocuous enough, it sounded like he worked on networks and fixed the printer.
Instead, Lucas was the guy who got us information.
He could get into any system, no matter how secure, and he had the skills to work in the field.
His team moved seamlessly between the worlds of zeros and ones and flesh and blood.
He could do almost anything with a keyboard and was equally able to handle any field work we threw at him.
Lucas was a little scary. If he wanted to know something about you, he knew it. And if anyone could find Alice, it was Lucas. I just had to hope she'd forgive me if I let him loose on her.
I'd find a way to make things right.
I’d grovel.
I’d beg.
If Lucas could tell me where Alice was, I’d do anything to get her back.