Four
HARPER
Dane led me into an apartment, but I had no memory of getting there. He’d escorted me to his car and Leo had climbed into the back seat, holding my hand with his left and a gun with his right. That was it. I didn’t remember conversation, stop lights, where we were going, even the elevator ride, just looked at the gun in his lap. But I snapped out of my trance when I saw the view of the East River and New Jersey beyond from the floor to ceiling windows. The room was warm, but I rubbed my bare arms.
God. I’d seen a dead body. Not an older person who’d died peacefully in their sleep. No, this had been something else entirely. Murder. Up close and personal. And whoever killed him had the audacity to shove the guy into a freezer. I bit my lip, and couldn’t help but shudder as I thought of Mrs. O’Sullivan’s brightly colored bowls of packaged food stored beside a dead guy. When most husbands brought their work home with them, they didn’t stuff it in the garage freezer.
I sucked in a deep breath, my heart skipping a beat. “My leftovers!” I said to no one, remembering I’d dropped them onto the concrete floor when I’d found the dead guy.
“We gave them to your server, remember?” Leo asked, coming up to me and spinning me about, gripping my upper arms. He studied me with his piercing green eyes. Why hadn’t I noticed the color before? “Don’t
worry, there’s no trace of you in that garage.”
There might not be any trace of me, but I would never forget it. The sight I’d seen was forever burned onto my brain.
“Want a drink?” he asked, and I noticed he was no longer wearing his suit jacket, the crisp white dress shirt practically molded to his perfect physique. He was all hard muscle, not an ounce of fat anywhere on him.
“God, yes.”
“Whiskey?” Dane called from across the room.
It was then I broke Leo’s concerned stare and stepped back. I nodded, then took in my surroundings. The apartment was stunning. Besides the views, the apartment had twelve foot ceilings, dark mahogany floors, thick carpets and well-appointed furniture. It was masculine, but warm.
“This is your place?” I asked Dane.
He poured two glasses of whiskey from a decanter on a wheeled stand used as a mini-bar. When he turned to me, he gave a small smile, held out the drink. “Yes. You’re safe here.”
I took a small sip of the drink, let the liquid burn a path down my throat and warm me from the inside out.
“You don’t think this is my style, sugar?” Leo asked, a wicked grin on his face as he dropped his large frame onto the huge sectional. It faced a fireplace and a flat screen TV mounted above it. He tugged at the knot on his dark tie, loosening it enough so he could lift it over his head before tossing it onto the coffee table. Next, he undid two shirt buttons at his throat, then sighed.
“I...I don’t know you.”
And with that, I realized I was alone with two men, two strangers. In a high rise—probably penthouse—apartment I only had a general idea of where it was. No one knew my whereabouts. For all I knew, they could have killed the guy in the freezer.
I walked quickly to the little bar and set my glass down, the amber liquid sloshing onto my hand. Shit. I wiped it on my dress and saw my purse on the table by the door. “I should go,” I replied, my voice soft. “Thank you for being kind to me, but I—”
“Harper, we’re not going to hurt you,” Dane said. Although he came toward me, he didn’t get too close, as if sensing how skittish I was. “Call a friend. Or the server from the party. Tell her where you are”—He rattled off an address —“and that you’re with me. Dane Crawford. She can look me up online. I’ll get you my driver’s license too, if it’ll set you at ease.”
I stared at the door knob. Just one turn and I’d be out of there.
“You can’t go home,” Leo said. He must have moved from the couch because his voice came from a few feet behind me. “Not yet. Not like this. You’re too shaken up.”
“I’ve never seen...a, um...dead body before. Not like that. Not so...disrespected, like a piece of meat, not a human being. God, that was awful.”
The sound of my own voice made me cringe. This wasn’t like me. Weak. There was no time for weakness in my life. I’d learned that the hard way in the cutthroat world of business. This world was for the resilient. The survivors. For those of us who never gave up. I was like the military, doing more before 9:00 a.m. than most people did all day. I was a success, and there was no room for failure, even in this. I couldn’t let this bother me. I needed to figure out how to get it out of my head, or relegate it to just a small crisis on a job. Like the time I’d found the bride being fucked by the best man at her wedding reception. That was something I wasn’t supposed to see. I kept my clients’ secrets.
But this? This wasn’t adultery. This was murder.
A different beast altogether.
“I should go to the police,” I said.
“Come sit down, sugar,” Leo said in that soft tone. I’d heard it hard and commanding, but he seemed to save this one just for me. “When you’re feeling better, we’ll take you home. For now, take a minute. Drink your whiskey and we’ll talk this through.”
I had no idea why I was doing as he said, but I turned around, walked to the couch, settled into the plush comfort. Dane handed me my drink again as he came to sit beside me, taking off his suit jacket first and tossing it over a nearby chair back. Leo settled on my other side, and while I barely knew them, the feel of both their thighs pressed against mine was somewhat comforting.
“You said earlier you didn’t know who Mr. O’Sullivan is,” Leo continued.