Chapter 52
chapter
fifty-two
CALDER
Promise me you won’t give up today, because tomorrow might not come.
I drove to work the next day, mind spinning around ways to get a tomorrow with Shay. I wanted all her tomorrows.
I pulled into the empty lot of the monochrome office building. Outside, February was giving way to March. The breeze, while still cold, was not fragile and bitter like early winter. It was a downy chill, reserved for a lemon sun and trees fresh with blossoms.
I half expected Andrew to be waiting for me. The last time I saw him he was unhinged. But I didn’t even see his car.
My mind drifted once more to Shay.
The truth was, I had no idea how this was going to work. Shay and I existed only in a fucking fairy tale, but I also knew I couldn’t let her go. And the fact that in the few days I didn’t see her, she got hurt, and that asshole was still out there? Further solidified it—
“Hey, hero.”
God fucking damn it.
I turned to find Butcher leaning against the wall next to the building’s entrance.
“What the fuck do you want?” I asked.
He kicked off the wall, shrugging. “I have a feeling you’re going to take my deal today.”
I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off, then paused.
Could I get out the same way I got in, with a deal?
“I’ll give you what you want,” I said, “if you get me out.”
His only reaction was a slight smile. Dead grass and old leaves, recently thawed and unearthed, scuttled across the pavement between us.
“You really aren’t in a place to bargain,” Butcher said at last.
I tilted my head, because yeah, I was. I definitely was. But the casual and confident way Butcher spoke had me holding back. So I said nothing. Butcher leaned against the wall, taking out a cigarette.
The office was quiet. Empty. Andrew was apparently gone, and since this building was a shell, housing only Andrew’s office and a conference room filled with boxes, the only sound was my bag hitting the table.
I sat down, looking at the rows and rows of boxes.
The obvious clusterfuck Andrew was in.
How the fuck had he set up a billion-dollar crypto scheme with what appeared to be no computers, no help, nothing? I dragged a hand down my jaw.
If Butcher wouldn’t help, maybe I could find something to leverage. It was a long shot, but whatever Andrew had fucked up, if I could find a way to unfuck it, I might just get out.
I sat up, walking the short distance down to Andrew’s office. It was starkly empty, too, with just one single L-shaped desk and a cheap office chair.
I tugged open the top drawer—nothing.
I did that with the middle and bottom—still nothing.
Fuck.
I moved to the last drawer and nearly closed it, assuming it was also empty, when I noticed something small and crumpled in the back.
A photo.
I grabbed it, ironing out the wrinkles and—
It was a photo of Andrew on a beach in Mexico. Andrew with a woman wearing a small polka-dot bikini. She smiled and flashed a ring at the camera.
My heart stopped beating in my chest.
Somewhere a river roared—oh, no, that was my blood rushing in my ears.
It didn’t compute. I stared at the wrinkled, plastic photo. At honey hair I’d just recently had wrapped around my fist. At the moles I’d already mapped with my tongue.
Shay, standing next to the head of the Rocky Mountain division.
Andrew was high enough in the organization that whoever he dated had to be run through the chain. He couldn’t get married unless given the green light. The Mafia handled disobedience as one would expect, with a lot of fucking blood.
I wasn’t wondering why he would risk that for Shay.
That made sense.
Who wouldn’t risk blood for someone like her?
But from everything Shay had said about him, it didn’t make sense.
It’s not like there’s anything of value on it—well, value to someone other than an astrophysicist.
Her words echoed in my mind as I looked out of the office and down the hall where boxes and boxes of Andrew’s failing operation took place. I slammed the drawer shut and sprinted back down the hallway. I ripped open the boxes, searching for the date stamps.
Then I found it, the earliest paper, just a few months old. Like around when Shay ended things with her fiancé.
“Fuck,” I said out loud.
Graham had targeted Shay because of her computer.
I was annoyed to say it was brilliant. She was in academia, which was a clusterfuck of bureaucracy with very little security. Because, as Shay had said, the only apparent value was to another astrophysicist.
He’d probably planned to use her until he could ensure the operation, then leave.
And instead Shay broke up with him before he could.
This was why he’d broken into her office, why he was coming unhinged.
Why Shay was in very real fucking danger.
“Fuck.”
I pulled out my phone, dialing.
“Hey!” Shay answered on the second ring. “I was just thinking about you—”
“What’s your ex-fiancé’s name?”
“I told you…Graham. Why?”
“His full name.”
There was still a small part of me that thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe that wasn’t Shay in the photo.
“Graham Andrew Hayes,” she answered.
My blood turned to ice. “Shay, listen, you have to—”
“Oh, sorry, hold on, someone’s at the door,” she said.
“Don’t open the fucking door,” I said, but the sounds on the other side of the phone were muted now, softer, as if she had it at her side.
Fuck.
I gripped my phone in a vise, listening to the clicking sound of a lock unlatching, the creak of a door.
“Graham?” Shay asked.
“Shay!” I yelled, just as the line went dead.