25. Cal
Chapter twenty-five
Cal
Cal
I t wasn’t stalking if I was worried about her, right?
You are one-hundred-percent stalking , my inner voice replied wryly. I ignored it, coming to a stop outside Ruth’s door again. I’d come here three times yesterday, and although there had been several people milling around outside the apartment complex, none of them had seen Ruth or a person fitting Vaughn’s description. I had knocked on her front door, her back door, and her windows, like an absolute creeper , but not so much as a shadow had shifted.
As I stood in front of her faded, scuffed-up front door again, I took a look around the building. It was fairly uninteresting as far as apartment buildings went, and it featured four units in cube-like configurations and continued down the property in long and short layouts. With her unit being on the ground floor, it was easy enough to, well… snoop. But even today, I saw no movement.
I checked my watch. Ten in the morning. It was late enough in the morning for pounding, so that’s what I did. I pounded my fist on the door so loud, there was no way she would have missed it. “Ruth!” I shouted.
Nothing.
“Shit,” I hissed, stepping away. She hadn’t gone somewhere with him permanently , had she? I would throttle her. I would absolutely, unabashedly, wring her gorgeous neck if I found out she’d gone somewhere with that piece of shit and left herself with no resources. “She wouldn’t,” I muttered to myself, peering up at the white siding and then back down again. “Come on, Ruth. You’re smarter than that.”
Reluctantly, I left the apartment complex. I had patients to see, but I couldn’t seem to keep my thoughts grounded where they belonged. It was like being on Mars where there was a third less gravity, and my thoughts bounced too high and too far from rationality before managing to touch down again.
I managed to keep my head on Earth while I helped a patient with MS and adjusted his prescription, and my thoughts wandered just a little when the older couple I was visiting went on a little too long about which arthritis creams they had tried and liked—they squabbled over the specific names of them, and ultimately didn’t end up naming any brand names I’d ever heard of anyway—and by lunch, I knew my agitation was taking over.
I checked my phone again as I parked outside the practice. Ruth still hadn’t even opened my message. I was starting to feel a little desperate and more than a bit unrealistically panicked. It wasn’t something I could take to the authorities—not if I wanted to remain even remotely respected by the community for my sound judgment. But something was so very wrong . I knew it. Deep in my being and right on the surface of my tongue where it tingled and tempted me to uselessly shout her name until I found her again, I knew it.
A cool wind shushed through the trees, slipping over my skin and drying the thin layer of perspiration that seemed to be ever-present on my body this time of year. I glanced up, watching with detached interest as the breeze picked up, rippling over verdant trees and filling the quiet street with a soothing susurrus that brought with it the promise of autumn. My eyes followed the wave in the leaves, traveling down the row of trees and to the crosswalk that separated our row of buildings from Ruth’s.
My eyes landed on the shaded walkway across the street. Ruth wouldn’t be at Kiss-Met, would she? No, that was too easy.
But Gemma.
I mentally face-palmed. Gemma. I’d been operating in a hazy, confused panic, but of course , Gemma would have a better idea of what Ruth was doing. I hadn’t thought to ask her because I didn’t have her number, but it was Monday. She’d be at work. Was it a little obsessive, a little manic to show up at my fake girlfriend’s best friend’s place of employment to ask if she knew anything about the fake girlfriend running away with another fake boyfriend ?
Yeah. That was weird as hell.
But was I doing it? Abso-fucking-lutely, I was. I jogged across the distance, looking left and right quickly to make sure I didn’t get my dumb ass ran over in the process, and in minutes, found myself in front of the historic office building smashed between an old-school barber and a gift shop. Wintry, air-conditioned air sighed over my shoulders as I entered, and I hooked right, past the sign with the businesses and their floor numbers, and to the elevator. When it opened, I found Rook standing there, looking down at his phone as usual.
He glanced up, swung a look from my face to my shoes, and back to my sweat-beaded face. “Reed. You look… unhinged.”
“Thank you,” I panted, coming to stand next to him and punching the third-floor button.
Rook gave me a wary eyebrow crinkle. “What screw came loose and who’s wielding the screwdriver? You looked like this Saturday night, too.”
“Kind of you to notice,” I bit out impatiently.
The doors began to close, but Rook shot out an arm and stopped them. “I have concerns.”
“Rook.” I rolled my eyes. “Not now. I also have concerns, but I’m in a hurry.”
“Does this have something to do with that girl from the other night?” he asked. The doors tried to close again, but Rook kept his arm braced, and it didn’t so much as budge.
My brow furrowed, mirroring his expression. “ You mean Ruth?”
“That was Ruth?” he asked, looking confused.
“She was my date on Saturday. Why are you asking?”
“I saw her Saturday night talking to another man in the foyer outside the ballroom,” Rook said evenly, like he was delivering the results of a basic metabolic panel. “Is that what this is about?”
“Yes,” I replied slowly. I reached out my arm to hold the other side of the open elevator doors, my focus fully on Rook now. “What did you see?”
“They didn’t look happy.” He looked away in thought like he was trying to remember the finer details. “I caught a few words. Do you have any idea why they might be talking about a friend’s resume?”
The line between my eyebrows deepened. “Not off the top of my head. But you said they looked unhappy?”
“She told him to leave,” Rook said matter-of-factly. “And he said he would burn all her bridges. Frankly, he seemed like a total asshole, and I thought about stepping in.”
“And you didn’t, because?” I demanded. This was why I could not stand this pretentious asshole. Who witnessed a man making threatening statements to a woman and just walked by like nothing had happened?
“They looked like a couple, and I don’t do relationship shit,” he droned in response. In typical Rook fashion, he looked incredibly bored by this conversation as a whole.
“Wow.”
He shrugged, removing his arm from the doors. “I wasn’ t going to say anything to you either, but you seem all,” he gestured to me wordlessly, “this. So, I figured I’d relay it.”
“I’ll nominate you for the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” I drawled, doing the same and stepping back. “Anything else to add?”
He shrugged again before taking a few steps into the building foyer. “Good luck.” He paused, glancing over his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I hope she’s not with him.”
A fat lot of good that did either of us. “And I hope you get mired in relationship shit, Rook,” I growled as the doors closed. “I hope you fucking drown in it.” The seam between the doors sealed, shutting out his mildly amused expression before the elevator started up. “Asshole,” I seethed. But his words started a mechanical kind of grinding in my mind, sparking ideas about what Ruth might be doing. If it had something to do with a friend’s job, then…
No. He couldn’t be that brazen.
When I reached the main entrance of Kiss-Met, I didn’t pause for chit-chat. “Gemma?” I asked Olivia.
She pointed down the hall to the left in the direction of Ruth’s office. “She’s with Janice at the moment. Could I get you anything while you wait?”
“No need.” I gave her a wave before heading straight for where I remembered Janice’s office to be. The hallways here were busier than usual, and I passed three harried-looking employees, one of whom was on the phone, and the other two who were in deep conversation. There was a whole vibe here, and it was not a good one.
When I reached Janice’s office, I found Gemma inside, just as Olivia had indicated. Gemma’s thick, blond hair had been bunched into an untidy bun on her head, and she looked, in a word, frazzled. She had the hem of her loose, peach-colored blouse in her hands, fiddling with it, folding the fabric into a pleated fan before pulling it apart and starting all over again.
Janice stood calmly in front of an enormous panel of glass that overlooked the city, her gray-streaked brows furrowed and her features solemn. Despite that, she looked like a fucking dandelion in a bright yellow dress and accompanying sunshine-tinted shawl around her shoulders.
“… everywhere in town, and I’m telling you she’s not—” Gemma stopped talking as soon as she spotted me. Her back straightened, and she gave me a distrustful glower.
Janice angled away from the window to face me. “Dr. Reed. I wondered if that was you on the way.”
That was a weird way of saying “hello,” but alright. “Sorry to interrupt, but I was hoping to talk to Gemma.”
Gemma rounded on me. “Did you have something to do with this?” Gemma might as well have sprouted a pair of eight-foot wings and belched brimstone as she marched toward me with a draconic glare in her blue eyes.
I backed up half a step. “Whoa, shit, hang on.”
“Gemma,” Janice cautioned. “I must ask you again to calm down. I’m sure he is here for the same reasons you are.”
Gemma blew an angry breath from her nose, and I half expected to see an arrow-tipped tail lash out from behind her. She looked mad as hell, but I had a feeling I knew why. “She was with you, and now she’s with him. What did you say to her?”
That little niggle of worry grew sharper. “You know that Ruth is with Vaughn?”
“And how do you know that? ” Gemma snarled.
“She ditched me at the award ceremony,” I explained slowly. “I thought she might have told you what’s going on.”
“Hm,” Janice turned to look out the window again. “Interesting.”
Gemma wilted. “She didn’t tell me anything. She just disappeared. Then I got a call from her ex this morning.” She resumed the odd ritual of folding the hem of her shirt into a fan-like pattern. “He said he’d offered her a job, and that she’d actually taken it.” Gemma’s cartoonishly large eyes lifted from her shirt to my worried expression. “She would never do that. He was horrible to her.”
“I know,” I replied softly.
“And he said he would burn all her bridges.”
The gears in my brain slowed, winding down with a pneumatic hiss. Then they changed direction and went backward. Maybe he was that brazen. “I know she wouldn’t go with him. Not willingly… Unless he had threatened her with something. What else did he say on the phone?”
“She was there with him,” Gemma scowled. “But I barely even heard her voice. He asked about my job, which was really fucking weird, and then he said he’d made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. Like a mafia boss or something.”
Typical. Anyone with enough gall to kidnap a woman using blackmail likely would feel obnoxiously smug with themselves. Or paranoid. Hopefully for me, a little of both. “He’s blackmailing her.”
Gemma’s dusty blond eyebrows shot up to her messy hairline. “With what?”
Janice nodded. “Oh dear. I believe I know what comes next.”
I gave her a pointed stare. “Do you? She told me some of it, but she was under the impression that you didn’t know.”
“Oh yes.” Janice smiled, deepening the lines around her eyes and mouth. How old was she, anyway? Her body looked soft and frail, but she had an odd kind of youthfulness in her voice that threw me off. “You’re about to tell me that he’s holding Gemma’s job over Ruth’s head.”
Did this woman know everything? “Rook said he overheard them talking about a friend’s resume Saturday night,” I confirmed with a nod. “And I think it has something to do with Gemma’s job and the lie she told to get Ruth hers.”
Gemma gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth. “Oh.” Realization dawned, and she pivoted a dismayed look toward Janice. “ Oh. ”
Janice nodded. “Gemma’s job, but Ruth’s resume. Quite a brave infraction to insinuate that your friend’s doctorate is in human relations, not humanities.” Janice lifted one brow with a gleam in her dark eyes. “Something a batty old lady could chalk up to a typo, nevertheless. ”
“Oh no,” Gemma moaned. She took a step toward Janice. “I’m so sorry. That was me—all me. Ruth didn’t know about it. I was worried you wouldn’t give her the job, so I maybe… fudged some of the details on her application. And we should have told you, I know that, but Ruth needed a job so badly, and I just knew she would be clever enough to figure this out even without the ‘right’ degree. I mean, she’s not me, but like, she’s the smartest person on the planet, and if anyone could go from carbon dating dusty old monk paper to pairing people together, I guess I figured it would be—”
“Gemma,” Janice puffed out a laugh.
Gemma hadn’t breathed once during her tirade, and she sucked in a lungful of air. “God, I’m so sorry. It was horrible. Inexcusable. I really wouldn’t blame you if you fired me.”
Janice held up a weathered hand, and the bangles around her wrists jingled. “Miss Daise, while I appreciate your, erm, ardent apology, it’s not necessary. I knew very well when I hired Ruth what her degree was in and what she was capable of.” Her eyes held an amused twinkle that sharpened in a way I’d never seen before. “I believe my intuition was right about her after all.”
“Wait, so you knew,” Gemma summarized, squinting her eyes, “and you didn’t fire either of us. Also… Ruth’s ex is blackmailing her into working with him? And he’s using this useless information to do it?”
“That would be my guess,” I said.
“Oh, I’m going to kill her.” Gemma’s mouth tightened into an angry line I was pretty sure I’d seen my old man use when he had spanked me as a kid. “She’s so dead. She let herself get fucking kidnapped to protect my job ?” She bobbed a fast look to Janice. “Not that my job isn’t… hyper-important.”
Janice waved that away. “Understood.” Her eyes strayed to the window, and she turned to face it again, bringing her hands together. “What brought you here, Callum? A thought? A song? An image that passed you by?”
“Uh, what?” I checked my phone restlessly, like Ruth might magically pop up with a text telling me she was back home and fully rational again. “I just figured Gemma would know where Ruth was.”
“Yes, but how did you think to come here?” Janice insisted quietly.
The wind. But don’t say that, it’s stupid. “Uh,” I cleared my throat, looking up again. Don’t. Just because her office looks like a fortune teller’s tent— “ It was the wind.”
Janice nodded thoughtfully. “Not all science is rooted in the empirical. Metaphysical energy is not yet quantifiable or measurable, but as with all scientific discoveries, that does not mean it lacks substance.”
I stared at her, blinking. Slowly, I said, “Right.”
Janice gave me a humor-filled glance over her shoulder. “Aeromancy goes back thousands of years. The divination of wind patterns often changes from viewer to viewer, but I have a strong inkling that if you were to leave this building right now, Ruth would appear before you.”
“Wow,” Gemma breathed, her blue eyes pulled open wide. “ You actually do tell fortunes.”
“I notice the little intricacies of life,” Janice replied evenly. “There is nothing fortunetelling about it.”
I wasn’t sure what “intricacy” was leading Janice to believe that Ruth would suddenly appear out of thin air, but what I knew for sure was that Ruth was with a dangerous manipulator that planned to do God only knew what with her, and if I didn’t find her soon, I was going to give myself a coronary. “As interesting as that… could be,” I hedged, trying not to outright dismiss the older woman, “I would like to examine where Vaughn would go with her.”
“Denver,” Gemma said immediately. “That’s where they were when he left last time, and that’s where he’ll need to—” she waved her hand around. “Whatever they do for research teams. Then it would be Italy after that. That is if what he said on the phone was true.”
Denver was a big city, but I pulled up the browser on my phone and typed in research facilities and humanities programs to see what it would pull up. “Thanks, Gemma. Try calling that number again and see if he answers. Maybe we can get through to them that way.”
“On it,” she nodded.
I started to leave, but I paused, catching Janice’s warm gaze. Her lips were turned up at the corners faintly, her body relaxed, but her expression pierced right through me. “Take time to breathe, Cal. You’ll find her.”
A peculiar tingle crackled in my chest, and I rubbed it absently, nodding. “Sure.”
Gemma had the phone to her ear, but I didn’t wait for her. As I fast-walked away, I pulled up the humanities division of UC Denver, and then sifted through non-profit organizations I thought could be connected. While I rode the elevator back down to the entrance, I looked up flights from here to Denver. The thought of Ruth silently suffering with a predatory person pulling her strings sent a wave of fury through me, sizzling the edges of my thoughts and fueling my fast pace out of the building.
It didn’t surprise me that Ruth would put her own happiness in jeopardy for her friend. It wasn’t even life or death, necessarily, but she wouldn’t, for one second, put her friend in a precarious position for her own comfort. It was so very Ruth, it physically pained me to think about it.
As I pushed through the thick glass doors, muggy heat enveloped me in a rush that stole my breath. Had it been this hot before? Sucking in the humid air, I paused to open a tab in my browser with airline ticket offers. Maybe they hadn’t left yet, and I could head them off. How long would they be in Denver before leaving for Italy?
A cool breeze sifted through my hair, caressing my heated skin. My fingers stalled on my screen, and I closed my eyes in relief as the autumn-tinted wind swept over me. Taking Janice’s unsettlingly esoteric advice, I let my hand fall to my side, lifted my chin, and filled my lungs with air from the breeze. It cooled my panic, swirling around the charred dread inside, and then I pushed it out with a slow exhale. I let my hands slide into my pockets as I stared ahead, unseeing.
“It’ll be fine,” I said to myself. It would. It had to be.
Cars slowed down on the two-lane street, passing by historic buildings and rows of bushy trees before coming to a stop at a red light. The wind shifted, tugging at my shoulders, and with a sigh of forced calm, I let my feet wander to the curb. If only what Janice had said held any granule of truth. Maybe if I stood here, the wind would drop Ruth into my arms, well and whole.
And then I could shake some fucking sense into her.
Or kiss her until she couldn’t breathe.
God help her—if I got my hands back on that little nerd, I wasn’t letting go again. I didn’t care how hypocritical that made me after she’d essentially been stolen by someone else. She was mine, and there was no chance in hell I would let her forget it.
In the right edge of my peripheral vision, the light at the intersection turned green, and traffic trundled forward. I watched it mindlessly, my thoughts suddenly sluggish and my senses caught up in the feel of the soothing breeze against my fevered skin.
Suddenly, one of the cars slowed down dramatically. A silver sedan that pinged in my memories swerved sharply to the right, its brake lights flashing as the passenger-side door flew open. Time slowed to a surreal blur of panicked realization when a woman’s profile came into view. Thick glasses, unruly, curly hair, and a determined set to her brow registered rapid-fire in my brain.
Ruth.
Then she jumped, and my heart stopped.