By the time we’re at the vehicle, a big brute of a man meets us at the rear door and holds it open. “Savage,” Eric greets as I climb into the back of the vehicle. “Good to see you, man.” An easy greeting that speaks of trust, and right about now, trust is good.
The two men talk for a full minute, their voices muffled, before Eric joins me inside, and Savage shuts the door behind him. “We’re going straight to my apartment after all,” Eric announces.
“I thought we were going to the Walker offices?”
“They’re coming to us. It’s more secure that way.” Alarm bells go off in my head but before I can ask what exactly that means—aren’t we safe here?—he’s already moving on. “Grayson’s wife, Mia, took the liberty of grabbing you a few necessities. They’re stopping by as well.”
I forget about the security issues as they relate to me and focus on his friends. “Should they do that? I mean someone, three someones, attacked me tonight. Professionals even, you said. What if coming near me, and us, puts them in danger?”
“Before I heard my father was headed this direction I thought we were safe here. That’s why I was considering sending you to Grayson, to keep you safe.”
“And now?”
“Now, the jury’s out, but Grayson already knows what’s going on. He won’t stay away. If I’m in trouble, he’s in trouble. That’s how we operate.”
Friends. That word is hollow to me. I have no friends. My life has been this family and therefore it’s empty.
“The harder I push Grayson away,” Eric continues, “the closer he’ll step, which is why I need to see him now, today, and convince him all is well.”
“So he’ll step back.”
“Yes. So he’ll step back and we need him to step back.”
That reply snaps me to attention. “What does that mean?”
“Your mother went to see Gigi tonight,” he says. “She was bitching about me, scared of me and she wanted to know why Gigi would bring me here. Once she left, Adam overheard Gigi call my father, and while she didn’t talk to him, the message she left sounded pretty damning to Adam. Like they’ve been planning something together.”
“Maybe Gigi and your father are trying to save the company together,” I suggest, looking for a positive twist to this news, hoping this might be a bright spot. “She wants to save the company. She is his mother after all.”
Eric’s lips thin. “More like planning the end of us.”
That statement punches me in the chest. Would Eric’s own father plot to end him? No. Surely not. My hand comes down on his arm, my heart squeezing with what has to hurt him, but I never have a chance to speak. Savage jerks us into motion at the same moment that Eric’s phone rings. He snakes it from his pocket, glancing at the number and then me. “Adam.”
He answers the call and listens a few minutes, talking back and forth with the other man, but with so few words, I can’t read into what he’s saying. “Your mother is at home in bed asleep,” he says, when he disconnects, only to have his phone ring again. “Blake Walker,” he says this time and as they settle into what feels like a non-eventful conversation, I sink back into my seat, confused by this new development with Gigi. Something isn’t adding up. She told me his father had no idea she was asking Eric to come to Denver, or rather that I was asking Eric to come to Denver. Did she lie to me?
Eric disconnects his call and I jump on the chance to talk to him before he gets another. “Your father can’t know about the attack.”
“And you base this on what?”
“You’re his son. You were being set-up.”
“I’m his bastard son.”
“Your head always goes there, doesn’t it?”
“His sure does. That’s the point.”
“Okay. I don’t like to think that’s true, but assuming he does know, and I’m not convinced he does, make me understand why your father would come here and risk aligning himself with a murder plot.”
“He wouldn’t,” Eric says. “But he’s not here to help us, either. He’s here to serve himself. He’s here to protect himself.”
Or Isaac, I think. “And hurt us?” I ask.
Eric takes my hand. “Yes. And to hurt us.”
I’d argue with him but he knows his father better than I do. In six years, I’ve never even shared a cup of coffee with that man alone. “Coming here makes him look guilty. Maybe that’s the idea. Maybe someone else baited him into coming here.”
“You’re reaching. Why are you protecting him?”