"Tell him it"s Olivia Shade."
"Ms. Shade, it"s unlikely-"
I cut her off.
"He"ll want this call and he"ll know why he wants this call. What he won"t want is to find out an employee got this call and didn"t share the information with him the call was placed. He can call me back. But tell him Olivia Shade wants to speak to him. He has tonight to call me. I won"t answer any other time." I gave her my burner number and finished, "He has tonight."
I then hung up.
She clearly had a direct line to "Mr. Sebring," because in astonishingly little time, my burner rang.
The small display on the flip phone said, Unavailable Number.
Definitely Knight Sebring.
I answered with, "Mr. Sebring."
"Olivia, it"s-" Knight Sebring started.
I didn"t let him get any further.
"My sister is interested in your brother"s whereabouts. He knows that as I"ve told him before. He"s undoubtedly taken measures. Even so, he should know, she"s getting impatient."
"Oliv-" he started, sounding irked, urgent and impatient.
I flipped the phone closed.
Before it could ring again, I slid the back open and pulled the chip out. I took it to my sink, dropped it into my garbage disposal and turned it on.
I dug through my trash and buried the phone in it, tucked inside a used food container.
After that, I washed my hands, dried them and took a deep breath.
I"d done what I could do.
All I could do.
Now it was over.
All that was left was unfamiliar territory.
That being hope.
The only hope I allowed myself to have.
Hope that Nick stayed safe.
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Morning Light Olivia Four Days Later The hand closing over my mouth woke me with an agonizing rush of terror and panic.
"Be calm, Olivia," a deep voice came through the dark, right in my ear, and I could sense him hovering over me on my bed. "It"s Knight. I need you to come with me."
Knight?
Knight Sebring?
I turned my head on my pillow to look up at the shadow above me and the hand over my mouth came with me.
"I"m not here to hurt you," he told me. "I"m here to deliver a message. When I do that, what"s next is your choice."
I stared at his shadow.
"You gonna stay calm?" he asked.
It took a moment for what was happening to penetrate before I nodded.
He immediately moved his hand.
"Now I need you to come with me."
The shadow disappeared from the bed and moved toward the door. As I watched, I saw weak light coming down the hall. In that light, as the dark line of Knight Sebring"s body came into better focus, I saw a pet.i.te blonde woman standing out in the hall.
I knew her. Vaguely, but she was in our world. She"d been on Knight"s team back in the day as well as running her own PI business. She"d moved from Denver years ago. Now she was back.
Sylvie Bissennette.
What was going on?
Knight disappeared through the door, but Sylvie remained in the hall, eyes to me, face inscrutable.
Whatever was going on, I had no choice but to face it.
I figured it was likely, with my warning the other night, the Sebring brothers were closing ranks.
I was a source of information.
I"d bought that by calling him. I knew I shouldn"t do it, but I did.
Now I had to disabuse them of that notion.
On a sigh that I emitted to hide the hard beating of my heart I felt certain could actually be heard, I threw back the covers. With a glance at the clock, I saw it was nearly five in the morning. I was in a nightgown and I had company.
With this in mind, calmly, like I had all the time in the world, with Sylvie"s eyes on me, I went to my bathroom and grabbed my robe. Shrugging the taupe silk up my shoulders, I cinched the belt as I walked back through my bedroom toward the hall where Sylvie was still standing.
She said nothing and didn"t twitch, not even her expression, as I walked into the hall.
I saw light coming from the family room where my television was.
I headed that way.
It was good I made the trek bracing, even as my heart was racing, my skin tingling, my palms itching, for when I got to that room, it was filled with men.
Raid Miller, I knew.
Why he was there, I didn"t know, though I did know he was tight with the Sebrings.
To my shock, even if he"d disappeared from the world where I lived and had been gone for years, the hunter known as Ghost was also there.
As was, of course, Knight Sebring.
And one other man.
For my peace of mind (what there was of it), I was delighted (at the same time, I had to admit, crestfallen) that that man was not Nick.
He was a big bear of a man with blue eyes, brown hair and a frightening scar marring his otherwise overall masculine beauty. A scar that led into his hair causing a streak of white through the brown.
I entered the room feeling Sylvie move in behind me.
Two lamps were on, set dimmed. The curtains were closed, blocking even the little light from the lamps from shining out.
And my television was blue screen.
I stopped in the middle of the room, three feet behind the back of my couch, all eyes on me.
My attention was on Knight Sebring.
Handsome, very.
But not like Nick.
There was hard behind Knight"s eyes. Life lived that scarred him in a way that would never leave. He might give it to his girls, where it was safe to allow it to show, but right then there was no light in his eyes. Not like the pure blue light Nick could shine on me.
Light that, if it hadn"t been a lie, would have been beautiful.
"Can you explain what"s happening?" I asked Knight.
"Delivering a message," he repeated what he"d said earlier.
Before I could ask for more information, he lifted his hand toward the TV, a hand that had my remote in it.
"You get the message, what"s next is up to you," he finished just as music filled the room.
Chords on a piano playing over a ticking clock.
Something about that soothing sound, so contradictory to my current situation, made my eyes shift to the TV.
Playing on it was a video of someone driving down a road. The view was not of that someone, but out the car window.
It was a pretty road that had high, green gra.s.s swaying against the shoulder.
A voice I recognized started singing just as there was a cut in the tape and then we were still in a car but it was driving through a town. Obviously a small town. An old town. American flags waving on slants outside pretty little houses. Covered sidewalks in the town proper with hanging signs for storefront businesses. Window boxes. Tubs of flowers. Tended shrubs. Sparkling cars parked at slants leading to the sidewalks.
The tempo of the song changed and we were back on the road with the green gra.s.s undulating.
Hills in the background.
No.
Mountains.
Mountains.
I stopped breathing.
The tempo increased again and the car turned down a drive.
Unconsciously, I walked to the back of the couch.
I did this because I needed to.
I needed to curl my fingers on the back in order to stay standing.
The tempo changed again as the video cut and we were out of the car, walking. Walking up a path to a house.
A house...
A pretty little house, homey, rustic, lived-in, tucked amongst a forest of big green trees. A pretty little house painted barn red with white trim with big tubs of flowers, window boxes and tended shrubs at the front.
A house in the mountains.
The music built to a crescendo as we took a tour of the house. Its wood floors. Its kitchen with a big farm sink and lots of old appliances that needed to be updated (but I hoped they never were). Its bathroom with an old claw-footed tub.
My breath caught.
A cozy living room with an abstract painting over the fireplace, the predominant color of the painting an ocean of blue.
There were little bedrooms with not much in them.
And another bedroom with a big bed flanked by two nightstands that each held a lamp but only one had a picture frame.