“Thanks. Be safe.”
“You too. Especially you,” Alex answered as they stepped into the early morning air. “We’ll talk soon.”
His finger lingered on the end call button, but before he could press it, the call ended on Ava’s end. The click of the line and the disappearance of the active call sliced at him.
“We need to end this,” he said to Kyle.
“Let’s go pay a visit to your architect friend, then.”
Alex bobbed his head before he climbed behind the wheel of his vehicle. As he swung the car around, bouncing over the gravel drive leading away from the cabin, his insides twisted into a tight knot.
He hoped whatever conversation occurred with Chris did the trick. He couldn’t take much more of the separation from Ava. As the trees receded, giving way to the main road, his mind whirled.
Once they were over this hurdle and Ava returned to life, how could they move forward defeating The Board?
As the miles passed on their way back to the Hamptons, he grew more and more overwhelmed. Would Sebastian Bancroft actually be able to help them, or were they fighting a losing battle?
Images of having to disappear under false names to hideout in a new country haunted him. As they pulled into Chris’s hotel, his fingers tightened on the steering wheel with determination. They had to pull this off. They had to get Ava back.
He climbed from the car, meeting Kyle before they strode into the lobby. “Hotel records have him in suite two-oh-seven.”
“Time to pay our friendly neighborhood killer a visit,” Kyle said as he poked at the button to call the elevator.
Within a few seconds, they were following the signs to a block of suites numbering two hundred to two fifteen. Alex’s pulse quickened as he spotted the room number for the angry architect.
He cleared his throat and banged on the door.
It popped open a few minutes later. Chris, still in a bathrobe, raised his eyebrows. “Well, you’re not room service.”
Alex pushed past him into the room with Kyle following, not waiting for an invitation. “And you’re not the man I thought you were.”
“Uhhh, what’s that supposed to mean?” Chris let the door slam shut behind him.
Alex lunged at him, grabbing the lapels of the bathrobe and tugging him closer. “You killed Ava.”
“Whoa, what the hell, dude. Back off.” Chris shoved Alex away from him with a disgusted look on his face.
“He’s right,” Kyle answered as he pressed a hand against Alex’s chest, pretending to hold him back.
“Uhhh, no. Ava had some back luck with that plane blowing its engine but–”
“Blowing its engine?” Alex reached for him again, but Kyle kept a firm hold of him.
“Easy, Mav, easy. Death is too good for him.”
Alex wagged an angry finger in the air. “That plane didn’t blow an engine. It exploded. Someone planted a bomb. Someone from The Board based onyourinformation that Ava would be on that plane.” His voice broke as he made the last statement, easily able to recall the intense grief he’d faced when he’d thought Ava was dead.
Chris screwed up his face. “What? No.”
“Yes,” Alex shouted, his fingers curling into fists. “Are you trying to deny that you didn’t tell someone about Ava talking to the DHS?”
Chris stared at the patterned carpet for a moment, his lips parting. “No, but…no.”
He shook his head, his features disbelieving. “No, they didn’t bomb a plane.”
“Really?” Alex asked. “If you believe that, you’re more of an idiot than I thought.”
“Think about it. These people are criminals. Do you think they’d let someone feed information to the DHS?” Kyle poked a finger at him. “She trusted you. She came to you to tell you about the DHS so you wouldn’t get caught up in this web of trouble. And you went and tattled.”
