Chapter 2
TWO
Ellen walked into the office warily. Her friend Kerry had had dealings with the R of RBK, Sam Reston. So this was the B. Harry Bolt.
Kerry had talked about Sam Reston and hadn’t said anything at all about the other two partners.
Maybe Ellen was making a big mistake. Maybe this Bolt would turn her in to Gerald.
Maybe she was signing her death warrant right now, she thought, as the door behind her slid silently closed, presenting a smooth expanse.
She turned for a second, alarmed that the door had no door knob and no hinges.
No way to get out.
It took her almost a full minute to realize that the button on the right hand wall was probably the door release mechanism.
Heart pounding, Ellen turned back just as this Harry Bolt stood up. And up. And up.
He was amazingly tall. Amazingly…big. Huge, strong, unsmiling.
A lot of Gerald’s operators had that look. Intent, focused, dangerous. Trained to hurt.
Ellen started to step back, but stopped herself. If there was one thing she’d learned in this past year, it was not to show fear. Her palms were sweating but she had no intention of shaking hands, so he didn’t have to know.
“Ms. Charles? Please come in. Make yourself comfortable.” Harry Bolt had a deep, calm voice. He watched her carefully, unmoving. Perhaps he realized that his size was unsettling and he did the only thing he could do to reassure her. Stay still.
Heart thudding, Ellen walked carefully across the large office and sat down in one of two chairs facing his desk.
Client chairs, clearly. If this was for real, if what Kerry had told her was true, and if this Harry Bolt did what Sam Reston did, then a lot of terrified women had sat in this very chair.
Were they all still alive? Had they been betrayed? Were they now rotting in some ditch or at the bottom of some lake, beaten to death?
Only one way to find out.
And yet she was so scared, it was hard to find enough oxygen to speak. She had to wait until she was certain that her voice would be strong and not shake.
This Harry Bolt didn’t seem to have any problems with waiting. He’d taken his seat after her and just sat there, watching her.
His eyes were an extraordinary color. A light brown that looked almost golden, like an eagle’s eyes. Ellen mentally shook herself. Come on, you’ve got more important things to think about than the color of this guy’s eyes. Like your life.
She breathed in and out a few times, gathering her courage. Harry Bolt simply sat and waited, showing no signs of impatience.
Start obliquely, she thought. It would be a little test. If he had no idea what she was talking about, she’d go back outside and wait for Sam Reston, even if it took days.
Though she probably didn’t have days. She might not live to see the sun set.
Deep breath. “The first thing I want to say is that Dove says hello. She says she’s doing fine and she wants to thank you.”
There. See what he made of that.
Harry Bolt watched her face intently, then nodded his head. “I’m glad,” he said quietly, sombrely. “Sam told me she’s a good kid.”
Right answer. Okay.
‘Dove’ was Kerry Robinson, and she was a good kid who’d had the bad luck to be married to a violent drunk who nearly killed her. Kerry Robinson wasn’t her real name, and she’d known Ellen as Irene Ball. It didn’t matter that their names weren’t genuine because the danger to them was.
A year ago, Ellen had entered a world where women changed their names because there were monsters out looking for them. Somehow, Ellen had also entered some kind of sisterhood, where not much had to be said to understand.
Some time back, Kerry had quietly told her that a man had been asking for her. It turned out he was only looking for a date, but Kelly had seen how scared Ellen was. And knew. So she’d given Ellen the special card with the special number on it that led to RBK.
“Are you in the same kind of trouble?” Harry Bolt asked quietly.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You’re going to need to disappear?”
Among other things. “Yes.”
He leaned forward slightly, resting his torso on muscled forearms. Ellen watched his hands carefully. They were large, scarred, powerful. He noted her glance and kept his hands very still.
She raised her eyes to his.
“I’m not the enemy,” he said quietly.
Maybe. Maybe not.
She couldn’t allow her vigilance to drop, not for one second. This man looked just as dangerous as any of Gerald’s minions. More dangerous, even. He was perfectly able to repress those macho mess-with-me-and-you’re-dead-meat vibes all of Gerald’s men had, including Gerald himself.
This man was just as big and strong as the biggest, baddest of Gerald’s men.
And he’d been a Special Forces soldier. Ellen had read the thumbnail bios of all three partners in RBK at an internet café, waiting for her appointment.
She was going to place her life in the company’s hands and she wanted to know what she was dealing with.
So this Harry Bolt had been a Special Forces soldier and was way on top of the toughness scale but his vibe was… calm. Serene.
Her intense anxiety went down half a notch.
They looked at each other, dead silence in the room.
Ellen was running possible openings through her mind when he said, voice still calm, “But you do have an enemy.”
She nodded her head jerkily.
Oh God, this was so hard.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” he suggested.
She drew in a deep breath. Beginning. Okay.
“I, um. I’m an accountant. A CPA.” She thought about it, about the smoking ruins of her existence. “Or was. In another life.”