* * * * *

11:13 – That Night

I stood in my great room, staring out the front windows, the old burner phone I used to use when I called the club in my hand.

I’d looked up the number in the phonebook. That way, no one could trace the search.

I’d memorized it.

I shouldn’t do what I was thinking of doing.

I couldn’t not do it.

I looked down at the phone, punched in the numbers and put it to my ear.

It rang four times before I heard a woman answer, “Slade.”

There was dance music in the background—not loud, muted. She was in an office at a nightclub.

Knight Sebring’s nightclub, Slade.

“I’d like to speak to Knight Sebring,” I stated.

“Mr. Sebring doesn’t take calls through this line. You have to talk to his PA, Kathleen, during normal business hours. I’m sorry, but if you don’t have her number, it’s difficult to get to him.”

This meant she wasn’t giving me Kathleen’s number.

“Tell him it’s Olivia Shade.”

“Ms. Shade, it’s unlikely—”

I cut her off.

“He’ll want this call and he’ll know why he wants this call. What he won’t want is to find out an employee got this call and didn’t share the information with him the call was placed. He can call me back. But tell him Olivia Shade wants to speak to him. He has tonight to call me. I won’t answer any other time.” I gave her my burner number and finished, “He has tonight.”

I then hung up.

She clearly had a direct line to “Mr. Sebring,” because in astonishingly little time, my burner rang.

The small display on the flip phone said, Unavailable Number.

Definitely Knight Sebring.

I answered with, “Mr. Sebring.”

“Olivia, it’s—” Knight Sebring started.

I didn’t let him get any further.

“My sister is interested in your brother’s whereabouts. He knows that as I’ve told him before. He’s undoubtedly taken measures. Even so, he should know, she’s getting impatient.”

“Oliv—” he started, sounding irked, urgent and impatient.

I flipped the phone closed.

Before it could ring again, I slid the back open and pulled the chip out. I took it to my sink, dropped it into my garbage disposal and turned it on.

I dug through my trash and buried the phone in it, tucked inside a used food container.

After that, I washed my hands, dried them and took a deep breath.

I’d done what I could do.

All I could do.

Now it was over.

All that was left was unfamiliar territory.

That being hope.

The only hope I allowed myself to have.

Hope that Nick stayed safe.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Morning Light

Olivia

Four Days Later

The hand closing over my mouth woke me with an agonizing rush of terror and panic.

“Be calm, Olivia,” a deep voice came through the dark, right in my ear, and I could sense him hovering over me on my bed. “It’s Knight. I need you to come with me.”

Knight?

Knight Sebring?

I turned my head on my pillow to look up at the shadow above me and the hand over my mouth came with me.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he told me. “I’m here to deliver a message. When I do that, what’s next is your choice.”

I stared at his shadow.

“You gonna stay calm?” he asked.

It took a moment for what was happening to penetrate before I nodded.

He immediately moved his hand.

“Now I need you to come with me.”

The shadow disappeared from the bed and moved toward the door. As I watched, I saw weak light coming down the hall. In that light, as the dark line of Knight Sebring’s body came into better focus, I saw a petite blonde woman standing out in the hall.

I knew her. Vaguely, but she was in our world. She’d been on Knight’s team back in the day as well as running her own PI business. She’d moved from Denver years ago. Now she was back.

Sylvie Bissennette.

What was going on?

Knight disappeared through the door, but Sylvie remained in the hall, eyes to me, face inscrutable.

Whatever was going on, I had no choice but to face it.

I figured it was likely, with my warning the other night, the Sebring brothers were closing ranks.

I was a source of information.

I’d bought that by calling him. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I did.

Now I had to disabuse them of that notion.

On a sigh that I emitted to hide the hard beating of my heart I felt certain could actually be heard, I threw back the covers. With a glance at the clock, I saw it was nearly five in the morning. I was in a nightgown and I had company.

With this in mind, calmly, like I had all the time in the world, with Sylvie’s eyes on me, I went to my bathroom and grabbed my robe. Shrugging the taupe silk up my shoulders, I cinched the belt as I walked back through my bedroom toward the hall where Sylvie was still standing.

She said nothing and didn’t twitch, not even her expression, as I walked into the hall.

I saw light coming from the family room where my television was.

I headed that way.

It was good I made the trek bracing, even as my heart was racing, my skin tingling, my palms itching, for when I got to that room, it was filled with men.

Raid Miller, I knew.

Why he was there, I didn’t know, though I did know he was tight with the Sebrings.