Page 59 of Assassin's Heart
Windon’s regular driver. “Family emergency, sir. He sends his apologies.”
“Hmm.”
The man had good instincts. Something seemed off to him, I could tell. But he settled himself in the back seat nonetheless. Maybe desk duty had softened him a bit more than I’d realized.
I circled the car and got behind the wheel again. Windon was already pulling off his tuxedo jacket, seeming as anxious to get out of his monkey suit as I was to get out of this driver’s uniform. Both of us would be disappointed for a few more hours.
Following the route the driver would typically take, I watched for a tail. If we were right and the Fioris were watching Windon, they’d put a serious damper on any interrogation—and cause a lot more cleanup than we had planned. Only when I was certain no one was following us did I deviate from the route and head toward the outskirts of town.
“Where are we going?” Windon asked. Not anxious, not yet. This was a man used to tense situations, used to threats.
“We’re going to meet someone who needs to talk to you.”
“Someone? That doesn’t tell me anything. Who do you work for?”
A glance in my rearview showed the man’s brows screwed together, his eyes narrowed as he stared back at me. “I work for myself, Commissioner Windon. The question is, who do you work for?”
“What the hell are you talking about? I work for this city!”
“So did your son,” I pointed out. “That didn’t stop him from finding another boss.”
Windon went still, something like fear flickering in his expression. Not for him, I didn’t think; he didn’t appear to be that kind of man. For his son.
“Did? Didn’t?” Tension radiated from him now, and I was thankful for the security at the ball, ensuring he wasn’t armed at the moment. At least, we didn’t think so. “Where is my son? Who the hell are you?”
“That, I can’t tell you, not yet. But rest assured, it’s a story you want to hear.” I saw his mouth open, knew he was about to argue, and cut him off. “Sir, I’m not planning to hurt you. I’m not kidnapping you.”
He snorted.
“Okay”—I gave him a smile that more resembled a shark than a friendly overture—“I am a little.”
“Can you kidnap someone only a little?”
“Depends on how you look at it.” I turned down a nondescript street leading into a quiet warehouse district. “You want to go to this meeting. And when it’s over, I’ll take you right back to your empty mansion in your wealthy neighborhood where you can sit in the silence and think about what you’ve learned. Don’t make me force you. Just sit back and listen.” I glanced at the nearest road sign. “We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” He squinted out the window. “Meeting with whom?”
“You’ll see.”
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Chapter Twenty-Five
Leah—
I’d grown up in the DC area, and I still had no clue where we were. Some abandoned office building in a run-down part of town. I guess when you needed space for illicit meetings, it paid to know what was off the beaten path, so to speak.
Standing here in the dark did nothing to stop the shivers rippling through me. In just a few minutes my father would arrive, see me, putting part of his world back together—right before I ripped it apart again. I still couldn’t truly comprehend that my brother was gone. When I’d first run away, I’d find myself turning ten times a day to tell him or my dad something, share something that had happened, only to find they weren’t there. Ross would never be there again.
The little bit of light from a partially uncovered window showed me Remi’s brothers leaning casually against broken furniture, seeming completely content. Eli watched the window. Levi’s focus was on his phone, the tracking program there giving him Remi’s location in real time. I wanted to beg to see it. I wanted the shaking to stop. I wanted to stomp my foot and pace around to relieve the tension making it hard to draw a lungful of air, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was about to reveal myself to my father, who thought I’d run away, maybe even that I was dead, for seven years. Seven years. Longer than Brooke had been alive.
Having her snatched from me, I could now imagine all too well what my father had felt. My stomach bundled up in knots of agony just thinking about it.
“Relax, Leah,” Levi growled, not taking his eyes from the screen. “Just relax.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” I snapped. Then sighed. This wasn’t Levi’s fault. It was mine. “I’m sorry.”
He looked up then, the strange silver of his eyes glistening with the reflection from his phone. “For what? Being human. We are too. We get it.”
