Part 14 (1/2)
”Don't you think I'd have sold it by now if I did?”
”I don't know. Would you?”
”Why do you care so much?”
”I have nothing and no one because I tried to protect it. You know this.” She sc.r.a.pes her teeth over her lips. ”Fine. Don't tell me. Just answer this. Did you mean it when you said you'd do anything for money? When you said you'd do anything for a price?”
”Why? Are you offering?”
”Don't keep playing word games with me. You said you'd do anything for money, but you also said you turned down five hundred million because this was bigger than the money.” Her voice is quavering, laced with some mix of emotions-anger? Fear? ”Which is it?” she demands.
Fear and anger. Yes. That's what I see in her, but there is pain, too, heartache, like what I'd seen in her face when we talked about children. Whatever is going on here is far more personal than she's letting on.
”Gia,” I murmur softly. ”Put down the gun.”
”Answer me, Chad!”
I close the distance between us and cover the gun with my hand, aiming it past my body. ”Gia.”
”d.a.m.n you. I just want an answer.”
”Tell me why this matters to you,” I order.
”I told you-”
”The real reason, Gia. The reason I see in your eyes, in the shaking of your hand. The reason that you gave up everything. The reason those men were after you.”
She releases the gun and sinks onto the bed. I go down on a knee in front of her, and set the gun on the ground, out of her reach. ”Talk to me,” I order softly.
”I'm not a secretary.”
”I knew that.”
”I was working on a top-secret project, which I destroyed before I helped you escape.”
”Re-creating the cylinder?”
”Yes.”
”How'd you get on that team?”
”I won awards and trained with some cutting-edge chemists in the field of clean energy. It was a topic that my father . . . lectured on frequently. It was his pa.s.sion. Now it's my pa.s.sion, and my way to stay connected to him. The idea that an oil company would want to change the world, to be a part of the change they usually stifle, however naive it obviously was, appealed to me.”
”How close was he to creating a new cylinder?”
”It could have been a year or decades, but I thought we had a seed of something that felt special. It wouldn't come together, though.”
My hand closes down on hers where it rests on her knee. ”Did you really burn your work, or did you take it with you?”
”I burned it.”
”Would you tell me if you had it?”
”You didn't even know about this when you said you'd sell me to the highest bidder-so no, I would not make myself sound more valuable to you or anyone. For what it's worth, though, I didn't keep it. There wasn't time. But anyone on that team has knowledge that Sheridan doesn't want shared with others. So this isn't just about me betraying him. It's about what he thinks I took, and can give to someone else. Ironically, if you give him what he wants, I won't matter anymore-but that defeats the entire reason I did this. It would make an evil man the most powerful person on this planet.”
”If I were going to do that, I would have done it six years ago.”
”Did he think you sold it to someone else? Is that why he killed your family?”
”I told him I couldn't find it, but he said that someone inside The Underground-the group of treasure hunters I worked with, men who were supposed to be like blood family-had betrayed me and told him I had it.”
”Do you?”
”You've asked that over and over, and each time, I don't answer. Let's break the perpetual cycle. Right now, we need to deal with your hand, and Jared has information on my sister that I need.”
”I can wrap my hand,” she insists, and I should let her, but I'm already leading her to the bathroom, and for reasons I can't explain, I need more from her. Something. Anything. Just . . . more.
We enter a room where steel sinks and a sunken tub are enclosed by brick. Everything about this place is a modern money tank that is part of a ma.s.sive portfolio I've stockpiled.
”Chad-”
I cut her off by turning her to face the counter, cranking the water and unwrapping my s.h.i.+rt from her hand to stick it under the flow. I'm aware of my body wrapped around hers, of how small and feminine she is. When our eyes meet in the mirror, the connection I feel jolts me beyond reason. I don't know what it is about this woman. Maybe it's timing, maybe it's some good in her that I sense when I'm simply so d.a.m.n bad, but she gets to me in every possible way.
”I need to know,” she whispers.
”You don't need to know,” I insist, turning off the water.
She grabs a washcloth and turns to face me, her uninjured hand branding my chest. ”I . . . do . . . I . . .”
Her objective is lost as somehow my wet hands settle on her waist and our mouths are far too close. The air thickens around her, the heat between us burning with demand. I want to kiss her, to strip her naked and escape this h.e.l.l, if only for a few minutes. But I fight the urge, trying not to muddy the waters that are already thick with sludge. This can't happen. We can't happen.
”No,” I say, to this, to us, and to her need for answers I won't give her.
”Just no? That's not a good enough answer.”
”It's the only one you're getting.” I step away from her, feeling the ache of not touching her far too deeply, and reach inside a steel cabinet, setting a medicine kit in front of her before moving to the sink beside her to clean up my bloodied chest.
Silent seconds tick by, and I am far too aware of the intimacy of our sharing the bathroom, quickly wiping down my skin and walking to the closet to grab one of the T-s.h.i.+rts I have hanging inside. I return to the bathroom, still pulling it over my head, to find Gia standing in my path, arms folded in front of her.
”We aren't staying here,” I announce. ”My sister's in New York.”
”That's good, right? She's safe?”
”Depends on how you define good. In the short time I've been away, she's managed to get engaged to some billionaire architect.”
”Do you think he's a setup by Sheridan?”