Until It's You, page 24
“Halsted and Grand. I’ll be outside in ten.”
The call ended and Kristina brought the comm away from her ear. She bit her lip and looked down at the ceramic cup that had held her latte. The inside had crusted over with the residue left over after she’d finished the drink. She studied its golden-brown hue, then looked over to her tablet at her notes on Brantley.
There had been something to that connection, she just knew it.
Shaking her head, she packed her stuff up and then stood up to get a glass of water to sip on while she waited for Landon. Absently, she wondered what he had in mind.
She barely had time to get her glass of water before he was outside. Her comm buzzed and she hurried out. It had been less than five minutes since the call.
She came out into the orange glow of the sun setting in the city, bathing everything in the kind of light she felt at the time she needed to appreciate. Landon's old, gray Audi waited for her, with him barely visible through the cars tinted windows as he leaned back in the driver’s seat like it was a rental he was trying to get comfortable in. After a last look at the setting sun, she rushed to the curb, opened the passenger door, and got in.
She gave him a quick once over to get an idea of his mental state as she settled into her seat.
The wrinkles around his eyes said it all. It wasn’t good. More than anything, it looked like shock, and a struggle to both contain that emotion and come to terms with its cause.
“You were fast,” she said, once she was in and had her seatbelt fastened. She just needed something to say. “I thought I’d be waiting a little longer.”
He appeared to force his face into a smile by sheer strength of will and flashed it at her quickly before returning his eyes to the road. “I can be quick,” he said. "Sometimes. Not here, obviously, but sometimes."
"What do you mean?"
He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to mope."
"I want to know."
His face scrunched up, then he shook his head. "With Ms. Bruman. It's just...incredible, really."
Of course. It was the answer she'd been expecting, but it was better if he said it.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It could happen to anyone."
"I'm not 'anyone.' I should have seen it. And I dragged you into this whole mess, too."
She clenched her fists and shook her head. "It turned out alright," she said. "Me being a part of this didn't hurt anyone."
His face resumed its previous scowl, and he shook his head. Kristina grasped for a different conversation topic, desperate to keep him from stewing. Then he would probably apologize, and the self-loathing cycle would continue. She knew that cycle well.
“So what are you going to do with this car?” she tried.
He tapped the steering wheel with a dumb expression. “This? I hadn’t thought about it yet. Do you want it?”
She squirmed in her seat. What was she going to do with her car, anyway? She'd have to go see if it was still at the beach now...probably impounded somewhere. “I...not really. Have to figure out my own situation when it comes to that.”
“Right. I guess I’ll take it to a dealer and sell it. May as well. Don’t know when I’ll get around to it though.”
“Can’t you have an assistant do it?”
A smile broke out on his face. “I’m still not quite sure how much of this story I’m going to be telling the world, to be honest. The meeting with my PR team tomorrow will be very interesting.”
“Not even an assistant?”
“Until just now, Bruman was my assistant. I will need to either promote one of her underlings or hire someone from the outside. Haven’t decided on that either.”
“I’m sorry, Landon.”
He turned his head. “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been blind to something right under my nose.”
“It's already a part of the past,” she said. “The important thing now is we have an answer to what the hell has been going on.”
He nodded. They drove in silence for a while longer. The weight of their experience together began its lift off her shoulders. It was Bruman the whole time. She could quit worrying, at least for a while . . .
“Where are we going?” she asked tentatively.
He looked over at her, his perfect thing lips parted slightly. The spark behind his coal black eyes flashed dangerously.
"I've been thinking about that myself, actually," he said.
The huskiness in his voice caught her off guard. It was like something between the two of them had been communicated without ever bubbling to the surface for either. Her entire body felt very warm.
Her mouth was so dry that she couldn't get any words out. So he took charge.
“Where would you like to go?” he asked.
In the back of her mind, roaring to the front like a train, she knew exactly where she wanted to be. She gaped at him, trying to figure out how to say what she felt. Think of a smooth line, like she had a few nights ago at The Velvet. Where had her brain gone?
“You can see the sunrise over Lake Michigan from my penthouse,” Landon said, one brow cocked up. “I would love to show it to you.”
CHAPTER 27
They made it to the elevator before they attacked each other, desperate to pour so much tangled energy out and into the other's body. By the time they got to the penthouse floor, she had unbuttoned his shirt while he had bared her shoulders.
Her nails dug into the sweat-slick skin of his bare chest as the door opened. His natural, musky scent filled her nostrils, the salt from their mixed-up sweat sat at the edge of her lips.
He lifted her up, his long-fingered hands on her butt as his back tensed. The only sound was of their heavy breathing and kissing lips. He carried her all the way from the foyer to his bedroom they fell down together onto the fine sheets of his perfectly made bed.
Then, a mess of quickly bare skin and raw, uninhibited sex. Time stopped moving in the need for the next second of swelling pleasure, followed by the release of a clenching orgasm that even then carried with it the promise of another. Landon was insatiable, his sheer endurance something she at first marveled at and then took to be a fact of the world.
The rest of the night glided by in an ecstatic sleepless blur. By the time the sun rose, the bed was a delicious disaster of tangled sheets and pillows. Bleary eyed and riding an adrenaline high over the pending collapse of exhaustion, she was as happy as she'd ever been.
***
So it was with a big, goofy smile on her face that she walked out onto the shady Gold Coast sidewalk the next morning. The trees towering overhead rustled lazy in a light breeze, and the sun shining down on her felt like a sprinkle of warmth.
It was impossible to come to terms with. Intellectually, she knew for all intents and purposes, that they were dating. Going on dates. He'd told her he was crazy about her and not for a second had her bullshit meter gone off. This, for now at the very least, was real.
But still, it didn’t quite sink in because it couldn’t. She was too jumbled, too off-center. There was no there, there. Nothing for information to sink into, because the part of her that could normally absorb information was offline at that moment. She was too busy in the present, being happy. So, so happy.
It was early enough that the sidewalk was still sparsely populated. It would be busier in maybe twenty minutes, she knew, but for now most people were still finishing their morning routine before they got on with the day.
Her plan was to pop into a coffee shop, have a cup along with a pastry or muffin, then get over to Michigan Avenue to find a place to buy some new clothes for work. It was going to be a crazy day debriefing everyone after what had happened, but that problem seemed so far away for now.
Her comm buzzed in her blazer. The jump in her pulse was almost embarrassing. Was it Landon?
She dug the device out of her pocket and checked the ID. It wasn't familiar. Tentative, she answered the call.
"Kristina?"
It was Tom. "Hi, Tom," she said cheerfully.
"I didn't want to bother you last night because Kevin said you were probably going home with Landon, but I need to tell you something."
An embarrassed shiver went down her back and she grimaced. Tom was always so blunt about sex. He was like a child who didn't realize people got embarrassed about things like that.
"Okay," she said, recovering. "What is it?"
"The pharm that you got hit with...when did you say you think you got it?"
"The one from The Velvet?" she asked.
"Is that where you think it was?"
"Pretty sure, yeah. I mean they can hit you with it a million ways without you knowing, right?"
"Yes. But you're sure it was that night?"
"Pretty sure, yeah. I drove to work because I was late so it wasn't on the train or anything...why?"
"Well, I just don't think that's possible."
"What do you mean?"
"When did you start hallucinating?"
She looked around at the morning scenery as she walked. This conversation was not going somewhere she found comforting.
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe twenty minutes after I got to work. Why?"
"No way."
"No way what?"
"That mechanism would have taken hold within ten or fifteen minutes max. There is no way it would wait all the way until the next morning. Even with a slow dissolve system."
"So . . ."
"You would have hallucinated at the club if it had happened at the club. There's no way it happened there."
"You're sure?"
"I'm positive," he said. "If you started hallucinating at the office, it had to have happened at the office."
"Oh my god."
"Yeah. So I thought I should let you know. I checked it a million times, Kris. Took every angle. It's right, I'm sure of it."
She stepped off the curb and crossed Oak Street on her way to the nearest Intelligentsia. A black luxury sedan with tinted windows turned in front of her, cutting it pretty close.
It stopped. Its blinkers went on, and the window in the back seat rolled down.
Dunn was in the window. “Good morning sunshine,” she said. “I hope you didn’t forget about me. Fun night?”
Kristina froze in the crosswalk.
"Kristina?" Tom asked.
"I'll call you back," she said shakily. "Thanks for the tip."
She ended the call and hit the alert button on the back of the device. Her head swiveled left and right. There were no cars in sight, nor any pedestrians that she could see.
“What are you doing here?” she asked Dunn, her voice still shaking.
Dunn pressed her lips together and said nothing.
Kristina's heart pounded. She needed to run. She turned and started tapping back toward Landon's building blindly.
A door opening behind her. Footsteps. A pain in the shoulder she knew was a dart.
The world narrowing down into a single pinpoint of light, just a shred of it hanging there in a huge abyss of a universe. All was dark and she was out.
***
Landon stepped out of his shower and toweled himself dry, then went to the sink to shave. As he lathered up his face he saw himself in the mirror. There was a grin there he couldn’t wipe off, even as he tried to turn his thoughts toward a grueling day of work. This PR situation was going to be awful.
And yet, images and sensations kept flashing through his mind, so real he could feel sensation at the edge of his skin.
As he moved the razor over his rough cheek, his thoughts went to Kristina. What was it about her? She had him practically panting after her every move, and yet he found his resistance minimal. The lack of alarm bells at being under this woman's thumb felt itself like it should be alarming, and when he thought about it, it was. But he wasn't thinking about that part. Not much at all.
Still smiling, he finished up shaving, rinsed the leftover lather off his face, then walked over to his closet to pick out his suit for the day. He went with a textured dark gray that he could pair with a white dress shirt. He'd pick out the tie once he was dressed.
With his morning drowsiness yet to burn off, he tossed his choices onto the bed. The lack of sleep would make it a long one, but the tradeoff was worth it.
He slipped into some underwear, then the fine fabric of his white dress shirt. He was buttoning up when he saw the burner comm he’d been using the last few days blinking with a message on his dresser.
His eyes narrowed into little slits. That was strange.
He picked it up, dark scenarios racing through his mind. There was a message from an ID he vaguely recognized. I’m gone. But if you want to protect yr own when something’s off check out the basement at Di Roma. Bad shit there.
He squinted hard at the device. Even knowing nobody would answer, he tried calling the ID anyway.
It rang. And rang.
Finally, it went to message. He ended the call.
What now? He took a deep breath, filling his lungs up to bursting and then exhaling slowly. This had to be Roy. He could confirm with a Recall since he'd seen the comm screen previously, but he already knew it. The question was this: why would Roy send a message like this to help him? Would it really be helping him? What did he know, anyway?
Not knowing who else to talk to about the message, he thumbed through his contacts until he found the ID for Kristina's burner. He hesitated only a few seconds before initiating the call.
He walked back over to his bed to put on his suit pants, holding the comm between his shoulder and ear as he did so. The comm continued to ring. He tried to picture where Kristina was right now. No way he could run out and catch her now, right?
The comm continued to ring.
Voicemail.
A cold dread sank into his stomach. After a moment’s hesitation, he went for his tablet and initiated a trace on Kristina’s comm. She was probably just on the train underground and it was loud. Or maybe she was walking and didn’t notice her comm ringing.
The trace came online. He studied the screen urgently. The small white dot that signified her comm was moving quickly west along Grand. Way too quickly for walking.
And it was in panic mode.
Shit.
He did a quick search for Di Roma. It wasn’t a restaurant he was familiar with, but as soon as he saw the address he felt sick.
Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe not, but if Kristina’s comm were on the way to Di Roma, that is what it would look like.
Landon stared at his comm for a moment. This thing could be a trap. Why did he have such an intuitive feeling, though, that Roy’s information was good?
He called the ID he’d used the previous day for Agent Carter. Another no answer, so he left a message. Then he quickly finished up getting dressed—not bothering with a tie—and hurried to the garage, hoping like hell that Kristina would call him any second and tell him everything was fine while knowing in his heart that call would not come.
CHAPTER 28
It was black when she opened her eyes. Lightless. Her lashes struggled against cloth.
She had a blindfold on.
Her heart pounded away in her chest like it wanted to escape. Her temples, too, were throbbing.
Both her shoulders ached, and her wrists. Her wrists were bunched together, skinny bone to skinny bone. She struggled to move them, but they were tied there. To the chair, it seemed.
She was seated, with hard concrete beneath her feet. She was trapped.
She flexed her mouth open and closed. They hadn’t gagged her, somehow.
So she screamed.
Immediately, a hand slapped her face. The blow shocked her into silence, the sting from it radiating out from her cheek so that her whole jaw ached.
“This room is sound-proofed, “a woman snapped.
That was Dunn’s voice. Dunn. Of course.
“The only thing you’re doing with that scream is upsetting me," she said. "You don’t want to do that, do you?”
“Why?” Kristina asked quietly, trying out her voice. It was flat, but seemed to work at least. “Why am I down here?”
The blindfold was ripped roughly from her eyes, up and over her hairline. It took some hair with it as it came off.
She closed them reflexively as the blindfold came off, then open them into tiny slits. A rush of light flooded her vision. Her eyes watered, but she refused to close them.
Gradually, she acclimated. It looked like she was in an unfinished basement. There were no windows, and the concrete floor was rough beneath her heels. The light gray walls might have actually been white at one point, but she couldn't tell. Either way, the chipping paint said it had been a while since they'd been touched up. Two rows of LED lights shone entirely too brightly above her, lined with stainless-steel aero vents.
There were no stairs in sight, but they might have been behind her.
Dunn tossed the blindfold to the side and then smiled wickedly, her thin brows pointed high to her hairline.
"I had Mario give us some privacy after he tied you up. It's time we have a little talk."
"About what?"
“I need a new puppet!” she cried. “Landon is quite the wizard with pharms, don’t you think?”
She shook her head. Puppet? No, no, no.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice thin.
“When Jenna told me about this Phobos project, I knew I had to have it. Then once I used it on her, she was such a good puppet for the cover up...always so professional. Poor thing got caught through no fault of her own, of course. I’m afraid I still have to arrange an accident for her.”
Kristina swallowed, her heart pounding. “Used it on her?”
Dunn frowned. "Yes. She was the perfect asset for getting close to Tatum. I couldn’t believe it when he wouldn’t trust even her.”
Kristina breathed in and out, trying to keep up.
Dunn’s frown became a bright smile. “But it will be okay. Because now I’ll have you!”
In a flash, Dunn's hand came up and Kristina felt a prick at her shoulder. Panic shimmered through her, all the way from her eyes to her toes. She became conscious of the fact her blood was streaming through her veins, infecting her with whatever Dunn had just injected her with.
