Chapter 6
6
T he two young men who got us settled in leave and Ace takes over on the couch. He plays with a remote control. There’s a small screen on the wall. A view of the shack from different angles flashes at regular intervals. Eyes on the monitor, he yawns and stretches his legs while I pace.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” he says, a hint of amusement in his voice.
I stop and turn to face him. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Then talk to me, Alicia. Help me understand what’s really going on.”
I hesitate. Can I trust him? Should I? What if, for once, I didn’t over-analyze everything and just jumped in? I will most likely curse myself later, but right now, something in his gaze compels me to open up. Okay, here I go.
“I didn’t steal the money. I was set up.”
Ace nods, encouraging me to continue.
I take a deep breath and sit down next to him.
“As far as I know, only three persons had access to the accounts from which the money was taken. Me, my boss, and his son. That’s it.” I sigh and shake my head. “I don’t think it’s Mr.Blackwell. The man’s a rule follower… And he doesn’t need the money.”
Ace laughs. “Don’t be too sure about that. For some people, enough is not a thing.”
“You’re right, but if he wanted to cheat Uncle Sam, he would have done it in a more clever way.”
“So the son?”
His question gives me hope. He’s actually the first one who seems ready to consider the possibility that I could be innocent. Even my attorney didn’t.
“Yeah, but I can’t wrap my head around him doing something like that,” I say.
Ace raises a questioning eyebrow.
“It’s not that David doesn’t want more money. He does. If you listen to him, Mr.Blackwell is not as generous as he should be considering how invested David is in the business.” I make air quote around the word invested. “What David’s invested in is his poker games with his buddies. He plays every single night. No one’s ever seen him at the office before noon. The truth is Blackwell Junior is a lazy ass. He’s also not the sharpest knife in the drawer. When he was in high school, he believed that some Nigerian prince on his death bed had picked him to be his heir…”
Ace rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, that’s how his college fund vanished.” I shake my head. “I don’t think he’s smart enough to…”
I stop mid sentence because now that I think about it, I’m wondering how hard it would be to open an account online in someone else’s name. Not that complicated if you have their personal data… to which he would have had access through my file at HR.
Ace brings me back to the present by asking, “What about you giving me facts instead of a hypothesis?”
“Facts…” I growl. “That’s easy: money was siphoned out of the corporation into an account that had been opened in my name, in a bank I had never heard about.”
“Okay.”
“I’m innocent…” I pause and rephrase. “I was innocent.”
Now Ace frowns.
“Well, since the account had been opened in my name, I did something to make sure it wouldn’t move again while I worked on clearing my name.”
“So you now have the money?” he asks.
“Let’s say that I know where it is.”
“Okay, now it makes more sense…”
Now I’m lost. “What makes more sense?”
“The guys chasing you.”
“Oh, right.” I sink next to him on the sofa and mull this over. “How did they find me?”
“The same way that I did.” Ace laughs. “Following the breadcrumbs you left on the net…”
“But… but…” My protest dies on my lips and now it’s my turn to laugh. “So much for me thinking I had covered my tracks.”
He reaches out and pats my hand. “Don’t feel bad; vanishing’s almost impossible these days.”
His touch sends a jolt of electricity through me.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, ask away,” he says.
“To be a bounty hunter, you need investigative skills, right?”
“Yep.” He nods and stretches his arm on the back of the couch.
“Can people hire you to find out stuff?”
He nods again and smiles. Gosh, that smile…
“Yeah, I’m real good at finding the shit people hide,” he observes, looking at the screen again.
“So could I hire you to help me…”
“To help you escape, nope.”
“I wasn’t gonna say that. I was going to ask if you could help me find out who framed me.”
“No need to hire me to do that,” he says, looking right into my eyes. “Figuring out this fucking mess is already part of my mission.”
I look into his eyes, and for the first time since this nightmare began, I feel a glimmer of hope. But there’s something else too, an incredible attraction that I can’t ignore.
“One way or another, we’re gonna get to the bottom of this,” he says, his voice filled with conviction. Ace leans closer, his breath warm on my skin. “You’re not alone in this, Alicia.”
My heart races. We’re so close. I know I should pull away, but I can’t seem to move. His hand comes up to cup my cheek, his thumb brushing over my lips.
“Ace,” I whisper, my voice barely audible.
He closes the distance between us, his lips brushing against mine in a soft, tentative kiss. I melt into him, my fingers tangling in his hair as the kiss deepens.
For an instant, everything else fades away. The fear, the uncertainty, the weight of the secrets I’m keeping. All that matters is the feel of his body against mine, the taste of his lips, the way he makes me feel alive.
But reality comes crashing back all too soon. I pull away, my breath coming in short gasps.
“Now that we’ve got this out of our system,let’s focus on clearing your name,” Ace says.
If he thinks one kiss got him out of my system, he couldn’t be more wrong!
That kiss made itworse.
I stand up, needing to put some distance between us.
“So what’s our next move?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
Ace’s brow furrows. “We need to find evidence that someone set you up. And we need to do it fast, before their goons find us again.”
Before I get a chance to ask him how we’re going to do that, a metallic voice blaststhroughthe room. “Alert, perimeter breach. Alert, perimeter breach…”