Chapter Thirty-Five #2
Which would mean Evan defended himself. Maybe he’s out there tracking whoever came for him.
I don’t even know what I’m fucking hoping for anymore.
“His head of security is a woman named Alethea Stone,” Elise countered, her thumbs completing a rapid command sequence. “She’s top notch. And she’s heading to Firebrook Valley to help locate your brother.”
My jaw went slack. “Did you make that happen?”
Elise shook her head. “Dominic sent her.”
“Wait, do you have an association with the Corisis?”
“No. Your family does.”
“That’s news to me. We’re wealthy, but we’re not Corisi-knowing wealthy.”
She shrugged, her eyes fixed on the highway ahead. “Somehow you are.”
My thoughts were cycling, adrenaline pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. “Dominic Corisi’s head of security reached out to tell you that she’ll be helping to find Evan? Why would she contact you?”
“We’ve met.” After a beat, she added, “In Basin Ridge. She sought me out because . . .”
“Because?”
“She knew who I was and that I was hiding the truth about my identity from you. And she didn’t like it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It appears that your entire family is under Dominic Corisi’s protection.”
I rubbed a hand over my forehead, my skin cold with sweat. “Protection? From what?”
“Any possible threat.”
“And the head of his security reached out to you about not being honest with me?”
“Yes.”
“How would she have known that we were even interested in each other?” An image of the woman I’d met on the park bench flashed through my mind: the calm, predatory energy, the way she’d asked how my search was going. I’d opened up to her like an idiot. “Does this Alethea have red hair?”
“She does.”
My hand tightened on the wheel until the leather creaked. “She asked me one question and I told her everything. Even about my feelings for you.”
Elise reached across the console for my hand. “Your openness was one of the things she liked about you. It’s probably what earned you her loyalty.”
I shifted my hand away from her touch, gripping the steering wheel instead as I fought the sickening realization of how much I had missed by blissfully choosing optimism. “Because I can’t keep my mouth shut?”
“No, because people who go through life seeing the best in others are rare. Your faith in others is a strength, not a weakness.”
The validation felt hollow. The involvement of the Corisis didn’t clarify the timeline, it just made the situation infinitely larger and more dangerous. If they were supposed to be protecting my family, why was Evan missing?
Had someone taken Evan to get to Corisi?
Or was Evan running from a problem I couldn’t see? Evan did tend to vanish when the family walls closed in. But he had Nora now. He wouldn’t leave her.
“So, this Alethea woman told you to be honest with me and that’s all she did?” I met Elise’s gaze as we pulled up to the security gate of the airfield. “Or is there more? Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
“It’s probably better to focus on your brother right now and getting you home,” Elise said weakly.
I parked the car violently at the tarmac, the tires screeching against the hot asphalt as the sleek silver silhouette of the private jet loomed ahead.
I didn’t cut the engine. Instead, I shifted into park and slowly turned my entire body to face her.
“No, Elise,” I said, and for the very first time since I’d met her in the grease pit, my faith in her wavered.
“If you know something, say it now. Don’t wait for me to find out later and not be able to forgive you for it. ”
“It’s nothing that will help find your brother.”
Every muscle in my back tensed.
She winced, her shoulders hunching as she chewed her bottom lip, her eyes wide and suddenly defensive.
Acid churned in my stomach.
In a sudden gush of words, she said, “That abandoned house we went to? The one where you were able to bypass the security? Alethea disabled the programs that would have prevented you from being able to.”
The admission hit me like a physical blow to the solar plexus.
It was a sickening, hollow drop in my core.
I wasn’t entirely shocked; part of me had known the mechanical knot sequence had worked too easily.
But the confirmation slammed straight into my pride.
I felt completely exposed, foolish, and small.
It was the exact same burning disappointment I’d felt as a kid when my parents divorced and my father casually admitted that the presents under the tree had never been from Santa and since Mom was moving out, it was time for me to grow up and face the truth.
I’d been old enough to start to question the practice, but suspecting a beautiful lie doesn’t take the sting away when you’re forced to face the reality that you were a fool for believing it.
“Alethea disabled the security system,” I murmured as I processed what it meant. “Your security system.”
“Yes.”
“That you could have easily disabled yourself?”
“Correct.”
My hands began to shake. I’d thought I was earning her trust, that my hands-on horse-sense was breaking through her walls.
Instead, I’d been a setup. A dynamic test. “Why? What possible reason could you . . .” I thought of the storage unit next.
The bank statements. The eviction notices.
Was any of it real? “You were testing me.”
She nodded, her chin trembling.
“So, you knew what we’d find at the storage unit too.”
“No, I had no idea what was there. All I knew was that Alethea wouldn’t help you the second time.”
“Then why . . .?” It didn’t make any sense. “If I didn’t actually bypass the first system, why would you test me a second time?”
She winced again, pulling her arms tight across her chest like a shield. “I thought it was necessary.” Elise’s hand reached out, her fingers catching my arm with a desperate grip. “Then you did what only a handful of hackers in the world could, you solved it on your own.”
I looked from her distraught eyes down to her grip on my sleeve, then back up. The sweetness was gone from my tone. “I don’t need you to pet my pride. All I want is the truth.”
“That is the truth.” Her voice lowered, cracking with desperation. “You were supposed to fail. Alethea actually made the task harder to ensure it.”
My head was pounding in time with the turbine whine outside. “Stop. None of this makes any sense.”
Her eyes widened. “I didn’t want you to get hurt trying to hack into something when your confidence was based on her helping you. So we gave you something that guaranteed you’d fail. But you didn’t.”
I stared at her, the sheer velocity of the deception making the air inside the car feel entirely toxic. “What we found? All that paperwork? Was that real?”
“Yes, and I was just as surprised by it as you were.”
Behind her, through the windshield, the jet’s stairs were down.
The crew was waiting. Evan was missing. There was blood on the hay somewhere in a barn in Firebrook, my family was tearing the valley apart, and I was sitting in a parked car trying to determine if the woman I was falling for had ever given me a single unmanipulated moment.
I raised a hand, a silent plea for her to stop talking.
What did all of this mean for us? I didn’t know, but it also wasn’t my highest priority.
Evan came first. “I can’t do this right now,” I rasped, forcing the lid down on the fury building in my chest by sheer, painful force of will.
“I don’t want to. Thank you for setting up the flight for me. ”
With that, I threw open the door and stepped out into the roaring mechanical heat of the tarmac.
“Wait.” She was out of the passenger side in a flash, rounding the hood to stand directly in front of me on the concrete. “I’m sorry.”
The simple apology pulled at my heart despite the cold weight in my ribs. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t angry, that my “hope and try” could fix this too, but I honestly didn’t know how any of this would turn out.
And my faith in my ability to read a situation clearly was compromised.
My jaw tightened as I looked down at her.
Her chin was lifted, her dark eyes wide and distraught, but I couldn’t grant her an escape hatch.
Not when the vision of the barn floor was looping continuously through my mind and guilt was twisting under my skin.
The air between us was heavy with all the questions I didn’t yet have the strength to ask.
“I don’t know what you expect me to say. ”
“Nothing yet,” she said quietly.
We stood there, frozen on the concrete, neither of us sure of what move to execute next.
Another woman might have burst into tears or begged me for reassurances I couldn’t honestly give, but that wasn’t Elise.
Her chin rose higher as she held my gaze.
“But I still want to help you find your brother.”
I shook my head slowly. How could I bring her into the center of my family’s wreckage now? Could I ever trust her again?
She held my gaze, refusing to let me look away. Those beautiful dark eyes burned with an absolute, unyielding conviction. “I need to help you find him.”
This was the woman I’d allowed myself to start mapping a future with.
Were we still us?
Without trust, what were we?
I drew in a long, ragged breath of jet fuel and desert wind, my eyes flicking to the car. Was bringing her along to Firebrook Valley a catastrophic risk, or was leaving her behind worse?
My certainty about things working out was dissolving beneath me, but I reached into the backseat of the Chevy and grabbed her bag anyway.