Chapter 22
Leena and Ben were taken to the airport. Saul manhandled Leena onto Rick’s Cessna, then gave her a hard shove into her seat. When he left her there alone for the first time since she’d stepped foot into Ben’s gallery, she hurriedly reached into her pocket for Maddie’s phone and turned it on, quickly reading through the texts Maddie had sent until she understood exactly what was going on.
Maddie thought Leena had gone to Stone Cay, and believing that, she’d raced after her to protect her. Because that’s what Maddie did, protect Leena. Only now, because of it, her life was in jeopardy.
And so was Leena’s.
There was only one thing to do. Besides panic, that is. She somehow needed to make sure Ed and Saul continued to believe she was Maddie. It was the only way. Otherwise, Rick would hear about it from Saul and Ed, and he might hurt the real Maddie.
Head spinning, Leena put the cell phone back in her pocket. Wave after wave of guilt crashed over her, but before she could drown in it, Ben received the same treatment she’d gotten and fell into the seat next to her.
Then they were alone in the back of the plane. Just outside, she could hear Ed and Saul talking amongst themselves, waiting for their pilot.
And though she didn’t want to-God, she so didn’t want to see his hatred-she glanced over at Ben.
Eyes narrowed, jaw tight, he was looking out the window. Even furious and slightly roughed up as he was, he was still the best-looking man she’d ever met.
And soon, thanks to her, he was going to be the best-looking dead man she’d ever met. “Ben.”
His gaze slid her way. His mouth was bleeding, and he already had a bruise forming alongside his jaw. He hadn’t come easily, and she wanted to cry. This was her fault. All her fault…“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “So damn sorry to get you into this mess.”
“What mess is it exactly?”
Oh, God. She’d wondered how long it would take him to ask. “It doesn’t matter. But I’ll get you out of it, I swear.”
His scathing look said he doubted that. “Why are they calling you Maddie?”
“Maddie’s my twin sister.”
“And they think you’re her?”
She looked at the opened door, but no one was paying them any attention. “Yes, and pretending to be her is very important, so you have to be sure not to call me Leena.”
He was quiet a moment, his eyes focused on her while he considered that. “Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
“Being Maddie right now is keeping me from being dead.”
“Why would they want you dead? You’re invaluable to their operation, to the swindling of their clients.”
Regret and sorrow for what she’d done to him nearly strangled her. She hated that he thought that of her. “They don’t want me dead, but my sister, who is pretending to be me.”
“Clear as mud.”
“I know. Ben, I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry. I was just trying to fix things, and I made it all worse.”
He just looked at her, so furious, so absolutely heartbreakingly gorgeous. “Seems easy enough to fix things,” he said, sounding very Irish. “You just change employers.”
“Yes. Except Rick…doesn’t like the idea of me leaving very much.”
He processed that a moment. “So what does Maddie have to do with this? Does she do what you do?”
“No. She left Stone Cay a long time ago and never looked back. Until…” Her throat tightened so that she could barely speak. “Until she thought I was in danger there, and then she came running.” God. “This is all my fault, and I have to fix it.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t going to go back there. Not ever again. I was going on the run, but I decided to make a stop first. To you,” she whispered when he just looked at her. “I had to try to make you understand. But now, Maddie…” Finishing the thought nearly killed her. “She’s in danger.”
“I still don’t get why you came to me.”
At that, she opened her eyes and looked into his quietly intelligent gaze. “I-”
“Hey!” Saul stuck his head in the plane and pointed at them. “You two! Shut up!”
Their pilot climbed in then and started the plane. Leena looked at Ben, but he’d turned back to the window, her answer not important.
Brody followed Maddie down the dark stairs of the big house. It was two in the morning and felt like it. After the long flight last night, their off-the-charts sex for several hours, then the stress of watching Maddie go through her own personal hell of being back here, he could hardly move.
Not Maddie. She’d dressed all in black-black jeans, black form-fitting, long-sleeved top, black boots with that knife in one of them.
His own kick-ass Bond girl.
She’d wanted him to stay in the room, and he’d told her over his dead body. He still couldn’t get over her trying to protect him.
He was protecting her. She just hadn’t gotten that part yet. He watched her turn a corner and followed, admitting to himself that she might never get it. Other than when she was naked, that is. Then she seemed to get him just fine.
In any case, she was certainly in no hurry to let him inside her head or to reveal any more of herself to him than she had to.
Which had always been his own MO when it came to women, so why the hell he was brooding about it was beyond him. He should be wanting to get back to that no touch policy, but actually, that was the furthest thing from his mind.
The hallway was completely dark, so much so that he had to stop because he couldn’t even see a hand in front of his face. Then suddenly, Maddie’s fingers wrapped around his wrist and tugged. He heard a door quietly shut, and then a flashlight came on, flickering over a huge room decorated in the same lavish over-the-top style as the rest of the house.
“Rick’s office,” she said. “I’ll make it quick.”
Yeah. And hopefully, they’d not run into any watchdogs in the form of six-foot men with no necks who’d taken too many steroids.
“Look.” She flicked her light around the room, pausing at the large desk, upon which sat a laptop. “Maybe that’s Leena’s.”
“Seems too easy.”
“Yeah, but-what the hell?”
Something in her voice told him it was bad, and when he looked, it was confirmed.
It was bad.
Behind him, on the far wall of Rick’s office, sat a bank of monitors. Security monitors, all in black and white. There were exterior shots, presumably showing all the entrances and exits of the compound, and then there were the interior monitors, some from downstairs reviewing various rooms such as the den and living room and along the hallway. There were the stairs, the upstairs hallway, and every room along it, including…ah, fuck…Leena’s bedroom.
And bathroom.
The shower was empty now, and off, but it’d been neither a little while ago, and even as he thought it, Maddie’s fingers started tapping on the computer beneath the bank of the monitors. “Ten years ago, there weren’t monitors in the bathrooms,” she said.
“That seems to have changed,” he said, sounding perfectly calm but actually perfectly pissed.
“Yeah.” Her voice was grim as her fingers worked, and then suddenly, the bathroom monitor flickered and changed.
