Page 60 of Recruited By the Billionaire

“But you don’t have her address,” Jerry said.

“We have the addresses of everybody who works for the Admiral organization,” said the CIA agent as he and FBI jumped into their SUV.

Robert ran down the steps and jumped in his Porsche. But Frankie ran with him and jumped in, too, before he could object. And they took off behind the agents.

Jerry, who’d known and worked with Laine for years, and loved her, was floored. He did not see that one coming for a mile! And RJ? He could hardly contain himself.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

But as Robert’s Porsche followed the agents in their SUV, his look changed. Frankie noticed it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him as he drove.

“We’re headed west.”

“So?”

“She can get to her house this way. And Navigation will take you this way. But this is never the way she goes. She’s not headed home.”

“Then where is she headed if she’s not headed home?”

“To the place she wanted to be her home,” Robert said as he quickly stopped following the Feds, made a sharp U-turn, and then turned down a side street.

It didn’t take long for Frankie to realize where they were going. And when he turned onto the street he had taken her down five months prior, she was confused. When he pulled up to the house and they saw Laine’s familiar red Mustang parked out front, she was outright puzzled. “Isn’t this the house you wanted me to move into?” she asked him. It was the house she had called the miniature mansion.

“Yes,” Robert said as he pulled up behind her car.

“Why would she come here?” Frankie asked him. Then Frankie remembered that he said Laine had wanted it to beherhouse. “Laine’s in love with you?”

Robert exhaled as he drove. “Jerry seems to think so.”

“But why would she come here?”

“Because she was the one who picked it out for me when I first bought the team. I stayed here during the first season until I purchased the mansion. She would come over every day and decorate it and Jerry thought she wanted more from me. When I started dating you as the first serious relationship I’d had since my divorce, maybe her love turned to hate. And she wanted to destroy me. Jerry said she used to tell him we were an item before we went public, but he didn’t believe her.”

Before he got out of the car, he pulled out a loaded gun from his glove compartment. “Get behind the wheel and wait here,” he said to Frankie. “If you hear gunfire, you get the hell out of here and alert the Police,” he said to her. Then Robert frowned. Frankie could see the anguish in his eyes. “But hopefully it won’t come to that,” he added. He loved Laine. Not like she wanted, but he loved her.

But as he walked to the front door, Frankie was already calling 911. She wasn’t taking any chances.

Robert walked up to the door and pressed the code that opened the door. But an additional inside chain lock was on it and it would only open a few inches.

And when Laine showed her face from inside the house through those inches, Robert’s heart dropped. He had figured it right. He so had wanted to be wrong. “Open up, Laine,” he said to her.

He could see the distress all over her aging face. “It’s too late,” she said to him. “You didn’t want me and now it’s too late.”

“It’s not too late. Come out and let’s talk about it.”

“You chose her,” said Laine. “And even when I paid Cole Lindsey to kill her, hoping that would make you see me again, and he botched it, you swooped right in and claimed her publicly. It all backfired on me. It all keeps backfiring on me.”

“RJ said he called it off,” Robert said.

“But I didn’t!” Laine said forcefully. “You broke my heart, Robert. You had to pay. You had to!”

“Just open the door, Laine.” He could hear sirens in the distance. “Before the cops come open the door!”

“It’s too late,” she said with such resignation in her eyes that it scared Robert. “It’s any second now. It’s too late.” And then she slammed the door back shut.

Robert began shouldering it, trying to force it back open. And then he realized what she meant.Too late?Any second now? As if that house was on timer too?

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