Nick had said that even if she wasn't going to be staying there for now, he still wanted it to be as secure as possible, didn't want whoever it was watching and stalking them to gain access and disturb its sanctity.
Her heart fluttered at what he was doing for her, the tenderness and concern he'd been showing for her physical and mental well-being since dropping the bomb about his past. She knew he was determined that it wouldn’t ruin his future with her.
When he talked like that, it was difficult for her to believe he didn't love her.
Slany glanced at the clock on the far wall adjacent to Nick's desk and tried to ease out of his grasp, but he stopped her.
"Where do you think you're going?"
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"You know I do have an office of my own. One in which I should make at least a token appearance and do some work before I get fired."
"They wouldn't dare."
"Nick…"
"All right, all right." He leaned in and pecked her nose, and Slany couldn't decide which melted her insides more: when he was binding, spanking or fucking her with total abandon, or when he showed this boyish, tender, and playful side.
She admitted to herself that she loved every side, more than he would ever know.
"Remember what I said—"
"Make sure I don't go to any isolated areas when I'm away from you, and that, as much as possible, I don't find myself alone with any of the male staff, unless it's you, of course."
Nick nodded. "Good."
"Remind me again why we've narrowed it down to just the male staff."
"Despite how you feel about Yvette, I'm pretty sure it's not her. It just feels like a man.
That call, even though the voice was disguised, only a man could have made it. He was too possessive, too…"
"Men haven't cornered that market. I know plenty of possessive women." She pulled him closer and squeezed his firm ass for emphasis. "Me being one of them. Just make sure you're not alone with any female staff, since we're giving out orders."
Nick grinned. "I'm serious, Slany."
"I know, and we've gone over this." She peered at him. "What are you going to do about the Ashton situation?"
"I'm keeping my options open on that one. But if he makes a move on you—"
"I know, sheesh."
Nick leaned in to give her a deep soul kiss, then turned her toward the door and sent her on her way with a pat on the butt.
Slany rubbed the area, just barely wincing.
She was pretty sure she wouldn't be arguing with Nick on her security issues again.
Maybe she’d argue with him about something else, but not that.
"Slany?"
She turned to find him a step away from her, had a second to gasp as he pulled her into his arms again and held her against his chest.
"I love you," he murmured against her hair before releasing her and pushing her towards the door. "Now you can go, honey."
Slany staggered into the outer office, where Yvette was busy at her computer, hands flying across the keyboard with lightning speed.
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She wondered if that was all a show for her and how much of her and Nick's conversation she had eavesdropped. If Yvette had heard anything, she wondered if the girl was as floored as Slany was by Nick's unexpected declaration.
"You look done, Ms. Breeze. Rough meeting?"
Slany didn't miss the smirk, or the fact that she was the only director she knew of at
DMT
that Yvette addressed so formally. She called everyone else by their Christian name.
How obvious could she get?
Slany didn't care what Nick said. Yvette was still on her list of suspects. "Oh, yeah, very rough. Just the way I like it."
Yvette immediately turned red, coughed as if she'd swallowed her tongue, and fixed her attention to her computer screen as Slany switched towards her office, head high and heart pounding with depraved delight.
Slany got to her office, closed, and leaned back against the door, holding her hands against her chest, as if to keep back her heart, still incredulous.
He loved her!
This was so ridiculous. She was acting like a schoolgirl whose crush had just reciprocated her Valentine's Day invite. She felt high and rich and…
Like the luckiest woman in the world! Might as well get all the stupid clichés in, Slany.
Okay, enough of the maudlin stuff. She needed to get some work done.
Slany went to her desk raring to go, opened the top drawer on her right to put in her handbag, and froze when she saw what was lying on the bottom of the drawer.
* * * *
Nick tried it on for size, again and again, liked the way it rolled off his tongue, liked the way it had felt telling her.
It came out so easily, sounded so right once it was out there, especially once he had gotten over himself, that he couldn't imagine why he hadn't said it to her sooner.
Nick tried to push Slany's shocked face out of his mind, the memory of her dewy-eyed look firmly imprinted on his memory and making it difficult for him to concentrate on his computer screen, making it difficult to concentrate on any work at all.
He started to scan his email, automatically deleting several obvious spams—
Get
a larger
Penis!
a couple proclaimed. Not that he was bragging, but he wasn't a slouch in this area and really didn't need the services advertised. He zeroed in on one particular sender he didn't recognize. The subject line, however, caught his attention and stopped him from deleting it out of hand like the rest of the junk mail: Stalker Revealed?
What the fuck?
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Nick opened the email, heart in his throat as he scrolled down to see the beginnings of a newspaper clipping. He'd gotten as far as the headline—
Respected
and successful lawyer
missing
—before he heard the commotion outside his office door.
He thought Slany had come back to pick up where they had left off and quickly closed the mail program on the off chance she'd come in and see it. He didn't know what the rest of that clipping held, had only caught a quick look of a name, but was sure he didn't want Slany glimpsing it until he'd had time to read the entire thing himself.
He frowned as he got up from his desk and headed to the door. He opened it to see Slany and Yvette practically circling each other, like lioness and hyena around a recent kill. "What's going on?"
Each snapped to attention at the sound of his voice, glanced at him, and immediately began talking at the same time.
Nick caught something about a threatening message and Yvette's denials.
"What message?"
Slany held up a bouquet of dead, desiccated flowers and shoved a small envelope in his face. "I know she did it, so you don't have to try and defend her."
"I don't need Nick to defend me. I didn't
do
anything."
Nick opened the envelope and extracted the card to reveal the simple, one-line message in block print:
Stay away from Nick, or suffer the consequences.
He frowned at the sentence, couldn't imagine his secretary penning it, and glanced at Yvette, as if something in her expression would give her away, would give him some answers about the card and the email.
She hadn't been at her desk when he and Slany had come in this morning, but did that mean she'd been off slipping this into Slany's drawer? Who else had opportunity and motive?
Who else wanted what Slany had—namely, him?
"Nick, I know I'm just a secretary, and Ms. Breeze is…well…we all know what she is to you, and—"
"You see the snide attitude I have to deal with on a constant basis?"
"Snide is a long way from threatening messages. If I wanted to threaten you, I'd do it to your face."
"Oh, really? Is that why you left
this
in my desk?"
"I
didn't
."
"Lest we forget this
is
a place of business…" Nick caught them both by an arm, led them into his office, and closed the door. "Now, I want someone to tell me what the hell is going on, starting with you, Yvette."
He hadn't realized how harsh his tone and look had been until her bottom lip started to tremble, and her eyes quickly filled with tears.
She collapsed into one of the chairs in front of his desk and began to cry in earnest.
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Gracie C. McKeever
Hell, he didn't want to deal with this right now. He had enough on his plate trying to figure out who was behind that cryptic email.
Nick crouched down in front of her and took her hands in his. "Yvette, talk to me."
"Don't fall for it, Nick."
Yvette defiantly glared up at Slany, then looked at him. "I…I saw Jeremy coming out of Ms. Breeze's office. I was on my way in to drop off some papers on the Everwell account.
They're in your In-box. You can check."
"Jeremy? That note sounds like a woman to me," Slany said.
"Hel-
lo
. Jeremy is gay."
Nick didn't know why that hadn't occurred to him before, and he knew Slany thought the same thing when her eyes lit with realization.
He took Yvette by a hand, helped her to her feet, and led her to the door. "Thanks, Yvette. I'll handle it from here."
She started out of the office, but Nick stopped her. "I trust you not to mention this little incident to anyone."
Yvette quickly nodded, then left the office.
Nick closed and locked the door behind her, then turned to Slany. "I know what you're going to say, so don't."
"You couldn't possibly." She stepped closer and peered up at him. "You don't actually believe she's not going to say anything, especially that she won't mention this to Jeremy. They're cut-buddies, for chrissakes!"
"Not cut-buddies enough for her not to rat him out."
"Who knows if that wasn't just some ploy? Maybe they're in on this together. Maybe…"
She choked back a sob, and Nick took her in his arms, immediately felt her shaking against him and knew that finding those dead flowers and that note had shaken her as much as that email had shaken him, and he hadn't even gotten through the entire thing yet. "Do you know someone named Ron Wells?"
Slany jerked up her head, emerald eyes wide.
When he saw the look on her face, his heart stopped at the knowledge that she knew him.
Shit, this was getting more dicey and complicated by the minute.
"Baby, do me a favor. Lock the door when I leave, and don't open it for anyone until I come back." He headed for the door with Slany on his heels and turned back to grasp her shoulders. "Lock the door, Slany."
"I will, but where will you be?"
"I'm going to get some answers."
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Terms of Surrender
Nick didn't know how he was going to approach this kid, but thought he'd figure it out as he went along. He was good at improvising, had proven this in pitch meeting after pitch meeting, and knew how to work a room to make people see things his way.
Not that he was comparing interrogating a possible stalker and murderer to winning over a bunch of advertising executives, but if there was a way to do this, he'd find it.
He just needed to get down to Jeremy's cubicle before Yvette had a chance to warn him.
Granted, she had still been at her desk when Nick left his office, but there was always the phone, and Jeremy could be on his way out of the building already.
Nick made it down to the seventh floor, where the mailroom and the mailroom staff cubicles were located, formulating a plan as he went.
As an employee in the private sector and of a privately owned corporation, Jeremy had very limited rights as regarded his privacy, and Nick intended to step on each and every one of them if he had to. He didn't care if Keyes called the ACLU afterwards, but only worried about what he could find now.
When he made it to the mailroom area, he was lucky to find the staff scarce. In fact, no one was at his or her cubicle, either having coffee in a break room, or making pick-ups and drop-offs.
Nick went straight to Jeremy's cubicle located at the end of the hall by the windows.
He sat at the clerk's desk, a tremor riding down his spine at the idea that he might be in the domain of a psycho killer. He was more afraid for Slany than he was for himself. He was more afraid of what might have happened to Kate.
Nick cursorily glanced around the workstation, peeking in the overhead storage bins, scanning Jeremy's computer and desk, but didn't find anything immediately untoward.
Until he saw the red stain smearing the front of Jeremy's top desk drawer.
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He frowned, took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and reached for the drawer, surprised to find it unlocked. He took a deep breath and slowly pulled the handle, not knowing what he expected to find, but certainly unprepared for the sight of the blood-smeared St.
Christopher medal, its gold chain wrapped around a severed finger, both of which were resting on top of a folded newspaper clipping.
He didn't know about the finger, but the medal was Kate's. He knew it even without seeing the engraving on the back. And the newspaper clipping looked like a hard copy of the one that had been emailed to him.
Nick swallowed down the bile quickly rising to his throat.
He'd done his time overseas in the Marines and had seen his share of blood and gore—
had even spilled his share. But that was a different place and time. That had been the battlefield, a war zone, where the sight of death and mayhem was a common occurrence. Where blood and death were anticipated.
He didn't know what was more shocking: that he'd found evidence leading to Kate's disappearance here in this improbable, corporate setting, or that someone he worked with every day, at least, in passing, was capable of cutting off and keeping a human being's separated finger in his desk drawer.
Nick closed the drawer and glanced up when he heard footsteps approaching from the break room. He saw Jeremy first rounding the corner to the cubicle area. Kimber, the only female mail clerk, was right behind him.