“There it is,” Damien says, his eyes dancing. “I knew it. You’re both terrible at this, you know. Pretending that you don’t care for the other.”
“Maybe I care about him,” I say. “But trust me. Vincent doesn’t give a fuck about me. Never has. You’re wasting your time. He’s not coming for me.”
And if he’s not coming, then what? Damien just sets us free? Two kidnapping victims who can identify him to the police?
“Odd that he’s worked so hard to hide you from me, to keep you safe, if you’re nothing to him,” Damien muses. “He even relocated your job to the west coast, as though that would stop me. Who knows what strings he had to pull to make that happen? But then, Vince was always good at pulling strings.”
He ends the sentence on a bitter note, violent promise in his eyes. Whoever this man is, he’s terrifying. And apparently he and Vincent have a history. I wonder what kind of history, what kind of reason Vincent would have for crossing paths with a man like this.
It seems like I didn’t know him at all. His past was never something he shared with me. He always had a knack for changing the subject, steering us away from topics he’d rather avoid so subtly that I never realized he had evaded my original question until much later.
“I’ve had my eye on you for a while,” he continues. “Never could get close though. You have no idea what surveilling you has cost me. Time. Money. Several lives, thanks to his men taking out my men.”
His men? Vincent has “men?”
“But I’ve got you now,” Damien continues, his handsome face pulling into a wicked smile. “Do you think it was a coincidence, being invited to this thing at the last minute?”
My stomach lurches.
“Not a coincidence at all,” he continues. “We had to do it this way. Vince and his inept watchdog were keeping tabs on you at all times. The morning you and your friend left for the airport, we had a body double pretend to leave your apartment and go to your work.”
“No,” I say. “That’s insane. I’d know if someone was stalking me for the last year, following me around all the time.”
“You’d think,” Damien replies. “Just like you’d think Vince’s men would notice that the brunette leaving your apartment that morning was two inches taller than you are, and that her backpack wasn’t the same shade of blue as yours. But people get used to routines. They see what they expect to see, their minds filling in the gaps and overlooking slight discrepancies.”
My stomach is in knots once again at his mention of my blue backpack, the one I carry on my commute to the office every day.
Is he telling the truth? He and Vincent were both following me for the better part of a year? Damien with harmful intent, Vincent with the goal of protecting me?
It’s dizzying to think about, but then again, I’m already dizzy from the altercation in the elevator. My head pounds, aching where it collided with the metal wall panel of the elevator. My vision blurs at the edges from time to time. I squeeze my eyes shut tight, then open them and focus once again on the door across from me, the one my best friend is behind.
The door across from me opens and a large, muscular man dressed in all black steps out.
“Boss, she keeps saying she needs the bathroom,” he says.
“I have to pee, like, really bad!” Kristen’s voice calls from behind him.
Unlike before, she’s using herI’m-just-a-helpless-girlvoice. The one she uses to get out of speeding tickets, score free drinks at bars, and - just last year - secure our business a loan at an impossibly low interest rate.
Damien narrows his eyes.
“She can piss in the corner,” he says. “I’m not taking any chances with that one. She’s smarter than she lets on. Stronger, too.”
He’s referring to the solid punch that Kristen managed to land on his face right before she kicked him, narrowly missing his balls, the pointed toe of her stiletto digging into his inner thigh.
“Boss,” the guard says. “Come on. There’s a bathroom back there, right behind the towels. I’ll go with her and make sure she doesn’t make a run for it.”
“I need to go now!” Kristen says. “Please? I can’t pee in the corner, are you serious? That’s, like,sogross.”
The man in black looks at Damien.
“No fucking way,” Damien says. “That one is stupid like a fox. I'm warning you. You can’t turn your back on her for a moment.”
“Oh my god,” Kristen groans from behind them. “I think I just started my period!”
The men look at each other, Damien with a dubious expression, the guard wrinkling his nose in disgust.
“Oh hell no,” the guard says. “I’m not staying in there with her while she gets period on everything. Let her take care of that woman shit. This isn’t part of my job, man.”
