"He’s gone missing," Conor repeated.
Unease filled me at the way he was looking at me. Like he expected me to understand what was happening.
I swallowed. "Aidan?"
Conor winked. "I reckon, don’t you?"
Jesus.
I turned to look at the screen, at Wintersen’s puckered up face, trying to think that the bastard was dead because of me, trying to reconcile that Aidan had protected me more than I even knew, and my mind tripped on it. Stalling on the thought that two men had died because of me.
I wasn’t sure why he would go to such lengths to protect me. Just as I couldn’t understand why I’d never been able to forget him.
Nothing about us made sense, but that didn’t stop the rightness that filled me at the thought of him. Never mind the inherent relief I’d felt at seeing him again.
Not just because he represented safety, but because it had been too long, and it made my heart happy to be in his presence once more.
Weird, for sure, but maybe I needed to start embracing that weirdness.
Weird kept me alive, after all.
"Did Thomas suffer?" I whispered, needing to know, needing to compound the guilt.
"Stab wound to the heart. The guy was a pro." Conor’s tone was wooden, emotionless. Somehow, I knew that the colder he sounded, the more he actually felt.
He’d called Thomas by his first name. Not just by his job description.
He’d cared.
"His poor family." I bit my lip and with a final glance at what had been the cherry on the sundae, a video that had gone viral, a video that had taken down a whole host of execs on the TVGM board, that had triggered the #MeToo movement in my old place of work and that had single-handedly destroyed my TV career, I stepped back and away without another word.
Dipping out of the room as quickly as I’d dipped in, leaving Conor to his investigations, I moved further down the hallway.
Guilt and remorse entwined, powerful enough to almost steal my breath.
"Poor Thomas," I whispered to myself, unable to believe that my actions had led to an innocent man being murdered.
Was it wicked to hope that the O’Donnellys had made the bastard pay? That they’d hurt him? Badly? It wouldn’t bring Thomas back, wouldn’t make up for his widow’s grief, wouldn’t change the fact his kids would be raised without their father, but there had to be some justice, didn’t there?
Some karmic, cosmic vengeance?
The need to see Aidan hit me harder than before.
There was no safety within these walls, not even within his embrace, but he made my brain stop overworking. If anything, I reverted to a giggling teenager when I was with him, and as bad as that was, as embarrassing, right now, with a man’s blood on my hands, I needed that.
As I padded down the hall, trying to seek out Aidan’s location, I had to admit the penthouse was massive. Big enough to make me jealous even though it was far too much real estate for one man.
Did Conor get lonely? Haunting these halls by himself?
He’d said that he was taken. By whom? I’d never heard anything in the gossip columns about him dating anyone, and the O’Donnellys were hot news in Manhattan.
On the hunt now, I opened a few doors, found some bedrooms, a really cool home theater that looked like it was never used with huge sofas planted in there, and another room that appeared to be some kind of aquarium. One wall of fish, that was pretty much all I saw.
Grimacing at the sight and wondering why he was obsessed with water, I ducked back into the hallway and carried on my way.
When I heard grunting, my body quickened. It really shouldn’t have. I wasn’t this dumb, wasn’t so overly hormonal that they had control over my brain, but damn, that sounded like sex.
Curious by nature—hell, that was one of the reasons I was damn good at what I did—I continued onward, unsure if I wanted to see a show or not. Bypassing a stuffed bear in mid-roar—God, who had taxidermy anymore?—I found a gym, and swiftly realized I was about to get a free show anyway.