“I’m going after her.” The red mist is fading, but I’m still wired enough to cause damage if anyone gets in my way.
“What are you going to do?” Bash raises his head. His eyes are moist, and there’s a faint flush crawling back into his pale face.
“I don’t know. Speak to her. Make sure she’s okay. Convince her that we’re not the fucking assholes she thinks we are.” I haven’t thought beyond that, but I can still see the fear in her eyes when she realized that we’re twins.
Remy Jones didn’t set out to conquer the Murray twins. She had no idea there were two of us until I walked into the room, and I’m not so fired up that I can’t see who’s to blame here. I never told her my name. I didn’t reach out to her after it happened. And I understand that it would’ve taken a truckload of courage for her to walk into the Rinse and announce that she’s pregnant.
The elevator reaches ground level in moments, but it still isn’t fast enough.
I’ve lost track of time since she left Bash’s office, and my heart lurches when she isn’t in the foyer. This is arguably the busiest city in the United States of America. If she doesn’t want to be found, we can throw all our money and resources at it and still draw a blank. That shit only works on people with a carbon footprint, and my guess is that Remy isn’t one of them.
“Where did she go?” I ask the concierge.
His eyes rake my loose tie and disheveled suit jacket, and I wish that for once I could drop appearances and lose my shit without anyone noticing and storing it up for the perfect occasion.
“She left, Mr. Murray.” He knows better than to ask who.
I push through the doors and stand on the sidewalk, scanning the street left and right. Too many fucking people. Why can’t they find someplace else to be, give a desperate guy a chance?
Choosing a direction is pointless. She’s gone. Bash generally handles the practical side of the business, but I’m clearly still capable of thinking under pressure when required. I go back inside and find Terry watching me from the foyer.
“Is anyone trailing Remy Jones?” I ask.
“She was upstairs in Bash’s office. He said he would handle it.”
Shit.
I’ve got too much adrenaline buzzing around my veins to go back upstairs and talk this through. If I don’t find a release, soon, I know I’ll do something I’ll regret.
“Who’s on Quinn-duty?”
“Rollo.” Terry doesn’t need to check. He knows where every member of his security team is at any given moment.
I don’t wait around. Outside, I locate Rollo’s number on my cell phone and hit the green button. “Where is he?”
Rollo gives me the address of a gym on West 54th.
I walk. Dodging pedestrians, head down, fixated on Remy’s ex. I don’t have a plan. I’m simply going to make it clear to him that if he doesn’t leave her alone, he’ll feel my wrath in all its ugly glory.
The receptionist’s expression morphs from a bright smile to confusion when I hold the door to the gym open and tell her toleave. “Now!” I growl when she raises the handset on the desk to her ear.
The usual Lycra crowd are using the equipment, earbuds in, sweat beading on bunched-up muscles. My target is at the rear of the gym on the running machine, almost as if he is hiding behind them like the slimy worm he is.
One glance at the weapon in my pocket, and everyone else vacates the building, leaving me alone with George Quinn.
He must sense the change in atmosphere. Either that, or the mass evacuation registers in his peripheral vision while he pounds the treadmill. His eyes dart around the room, searching for an escape route, and he instinctively pulls out his earbuds.
“What the fuck is going on?” he demands.
His engagement to Isabella Leone has obviously inflated his ego and given him delusions of grandeur. He must believe that he’s untouchable. No bodyguard. Or perhaps, his fiancée’s money doesn’t stretch as far as protecting her future husband.
It occurs to me then that he’s a bigger fucking idiot than I gave him credit for, stalking Remy when there’s every possibility that his fiancée will find out. Or she is the one pulling the strings. Either way, it ends now.
I cross the gym in three angry strides, drag him from the machine, and throw him across the room. He doesn’t cry out. He doesn’t try to stand up. He doesn’t find his cell phone to call the cops.
Instead, he lies there in a crumpled heap on the floor, watching me.
I pick him up by the scruff of his Nike vest, and shove him against the wall, pressing hard on his windpipe with my forearm. “Leave Remy alone.”
