Dare (34 page)

Harley

I must have fallen asleep. I rolled over and Xander was gone. I could hear the water in the shower running and the slight buzz of a cellphone vibrating. It took me a minute to realize the cellphone was in the pocket of my sweats. I leaned over the bed and grabbed them, freeing the cellphone just before the call would have been sent to voice mail.

“Hello?”

“I didn’t think you were going to answer!”

“Sorry. I got a little distracted.”

Philip cleared his throat, his imagination clearly supplying information I hadn’t. “Yes, well,” he mumbled as he cleared his throat again, “he’s agreed to meet with you today.”

“Good.”

“He’ll meet you at
Conti’s
. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Two o’clock.”

“Thank you, Philip.”

“Be careful, Harley. The last time you went to meet with this guy…”

“I know. I’ll be careful.”

I disconnected the call just as Xander appeared in the bathroom doorway, nothing but a towel around his waist.

“Who was that?”

“Philip.”

I climbed out of bed and went to him, kissing him gently, as I continued walking into the bathroom. I tugged at the boot on my leg, stumbling a little when it suddenly came loose. I couldn’t wait till I didn’t have to wear the damn thing anymore. Two days and it felt like a lifetime already. Somehow, the cast had been more comfortable.

I switched the water back on in the shower and sighed as the warm water cascaded down over me.

“What did Philip want?”

I ignored him for a minute. I needed to clear my head before I started focusing on the next step. We needed to finish this. I wanted to get on with my life, and I was pretty sure Xander did, too.

“Harley, you aren’t rushing into something on your own, are you? We have to do this together from this point on.”

“I can’t let you put your neck in a noose, Xander.”

He stuck his head in the shower, his eyes narrowed with that look he often got when he was annoyed with something I’d said.

“And I can’t let you put yourself in danger again. If your accident is related to what you were doing—”

“Xander…”

“—that means that someone knows what we’re up to, and they’ll do anything to stop us.”

“It means they know what I’m up to. Not you.”

“It’ll only take a small leap of logic for them to figure out I was in on it all along—especially once you contact that reporter guy again.”

“No. They still think I’ve lost my memory. They won’t even realize what I’m up to until the damage has been done.”

“Then there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go with you.”

I went to him; I had to touch him. He was so…how could I explain the emotions that were roiling through me? The first time I saw him, standing there in that gallery watching me labor in the heat and the dust, I was so annoyed with him. I thought he was one of those guys who got off watching women work and serve them. I thought he was a chauvinist. A douche bag. But I also thought he had the most incredible eyes I’d ever seen. And when he listened to me, when he brought me a thoughtful gift, I finally saw past the expensive clothes and the charming smile. And that was all I’d seen from that moment on.

Xander was a good man, a rare breed in this world of self-centered punks. I wanted him to stay that way.

“Your mom will likely get caught up in the middle of all this, Xander. I don’t want you to feel responsible for that.”

“My mom made her choices. She knew what Grant was up to, and she went along with it anyway out of some warped sense of loyalty or whatever. I don’t know what her relationship with Grant is; I don’t know what he’s said to her or promised her. But this, what Grant’s doing, it’s got to end before things get out of control. Before you get hurt again.” He kissed me gently. “You are my priority right now.”

I studied his face for a long moment. Then I nodded.

“Okay. We go together.”

Xander

“Mom.”

I wasn’t downstairs five minutes when the doorbell rang and my mom shoved past me.

“What are you doing, Xander? Why do you have that woman in this house again?”

“Hi, Mom. Glad to see you. Come on in.”

She whirled around and looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Answer my question. Margaret tells me she’s been here for weeks and you never bothered to tell anyone. She says you wouldn’t have told her if it weren’t for the fact that Harley was still working on that damn mural thing at the center.”

“Harley was in an accident. She cracked her skull and was in a coma for a little more than two weeks.”

“Months ago.”

“And she woke with amnesia.”

“So you say. But how do we know it’s true? After what she did…”

“She didn’t actually do anything.”

My mom glared at me as if I’d said that the sky was green. She shook her head, pacing the length of the room, pausing briefly at the back doors. When she lifted her hand to touch the cool glass, I could see that it was shaking.

“You’re worried.”

“Grant…he thinks it’s only a matter of time before all of this is dredged up again. When he saw Harley at the center’s opening party last night, he panicked.”

“Somehow I can’t imagine Grant panicking.”

“Well, he did. People have been making threats against him.”

“What kind of threats?”

The color drained from her face, and that made my stomach turn over. This was not good.

I went to her,  grabbed her shoulders, and shook her a little.

“I think it’s time you tell me everything.”

My mom just started to cry. I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my mom cry. A single mother, she always felt like she had to be strong for me. She rarely ever let me see the strain life placed on her; she never let me know how hard it was for her. But I knew things were not always easy. There were money issues despite the great job she had with Grant. There were relationship woes. I knew there were guys who broke up with her the moment they found out about me. And I knew there came a point when she stopped dating because of that. I also knew about the letters she sent to my biological father from time to time. I believed for a long time that he would one day stand up and do the right thing. I think she believed that, too. But he was a married lawyer who had a brief fling with a secretary. To him, that’s all it would ever be.

My mom made choices. Some of them she had control over, some of them she didn’t. And I’m grateful for most of those choices. But I also know she would have had a much different life without me.

And now? I wanted to protect her. But if she had anything to do with that car that ran Harley down…

“Tell me,” I repeated.

She cried against my shoulder a few moments more, and then she let me lead her to the couch.

“You know Grant has always skirted the line between morality and illegal for his clients.”

I nodded. “I know he likes to do business with men who make their money in questionable ways.”

“But he’s always been careful, always made sure he stayed firmly on the line.” She ran her fingers through her hair as a sob escaped her lips. “And then, a couple of years ago, he was approached by this group of businessmen from the Middle East. At first, it all seemed on the up and up. Grant did what he was supposed to do, contacted all the right people, and filed all the right paperwork. It seemed okay.”

“When did it stop being okay?”

She looked at me, her eyes widened a little. “I’m not a lawyer. I just shuffle the paperwork and make sure it’s all in the right place at the right time.”

“I know.”

“About two years ago, he started working closely with these two men, helping them conduct business all over the state. They were buying up buildings in Sacramento, San Francisco, and here in LA. And other things, small business dealings that seemed routine. But then this man came to the office and told Grant that his clients were under investigation for a connection to that terrorist group, ISIS. Grant laughed the man out of his office and told him to come back with a warrant. But he was shaken, I could tell.”

“What did he do?”

“He went to his clients and told them he couldn’t work with them anymore, but they told him he was already in too deep, and if he stopped helping them, they would make sure he went to prison. Grant felt like he had no other option.”

“And this was two years ago?”

My mom nodded. Tears were slowly running down her cheeks again. “I begged him to cooperate with the federal agent, to do whatever he could to get out of this mess. But he said if he did that, his clients would just kill him, and he wasn’t ready to go yet. He had things he needed to do…” She shook her head. “And then Harley stole those papers off my desk and the clients told Grant that the reporter she was going to speak to was really an undercover federal agent. They told him that he had to stop her at any cost.”

“Do you think…?”

My mom stood and began to pace. “I don’t know,” she said.

I sat back and crossed my leg over my knee, trying to reconcile what she was saying with what I already knew. It all seemed to add up pretty evenly, except for that part about the reporter.

“When you got to the party last night, did you walk the red carpet?”

My mom glanced at me, again that expression on her face that suggested I was worrying about all the wrong things.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Did you see a short, fat reporter wearing a black jacket and jeans?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Did Grant see him?”

“Do you want me to call him and ask? What does this have to do with anything?”

“Think about it, Mom,” I said, leaning forward a little. “Did Grant act funny last night when you were on the red carpet? Did he talk to someone, or seem unusually tense?”

She shook her head again. “I don’t know. I mean, he doesn’t like red carpets and he was grumbling about Margaret inviting too much press. You know how he is.”

“But he didn’t see anyone that upset him?”

She started to deny it again, but then she stopped. She stopped everything. She stopped pacing, stopped talking. She even stopped breathing for a second.

“There was something…”

I stood and went to her, taking her hands and drawing her back toward the couch with me. “I need to know exactly what happened.”

She got this far away look on her face for a long minute. Then she slowly began to form her words.

“We were almost to the door. The doormen were waving us in. Then someone called out to him and wanted to know about a deal he’d signed for a client a few days ago. It’s for a building not far from the center. The reporter—I assume it was a reporter—I never saw a face. But he asked about this place, spelling out the address almost exactly.”

“What was the address?”

My mom shook her head, the wheels in her head spinning. “I don’t know. Something on Third Street. Third and…I can’t quite remember. Third and Robert…something.”

“Third and Robertson?”

“That’s probably it.”

I started to shake my head, my stomach threatening to turn in on itself. This wasn’t happening.

“That reporter, it’s very important for you to tell me what he looked like.”

“I never saw him, Xander. It was just a voice. And it upset Grant enough that we almost didn’t go into the party. He pulled me aside and said he wasn’t feeling well, that he thought we should just go. But I insisted, and he calmed down after he saw Margaret catering to all her rich friends. Did you know she was there with Walter last night?”

I didn’t hear half of what she said. I just knew that Harley and I were about to walk into a trap. And I couldn’t be sure who’d set it up.

It wasn’t Grant, not if the reporter caught him off guard. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of what I’d been up to, that Harley was working against him on my behalf.

It could be Philip. He was the one who set up the meeting between Harley and the reporter. The same reporter who was at the party last night on the red carpet, the one who pretended he didn’t know about her accident or why she stood him up that day two months ago. But he had to know. Who else would have asked Grant about the address of the same block where Harley was run down if not him? It would be far too huge a coincidence for there to be two reporters there last night with some sort of interest in this whole ordeal.

And what about Harley’s mysterious visitor this morning? Could that person be involved in all of this? Could that person be the one spreading information around that no one should have had? Could that person be leaking information to Grant, or worse, his clients?

This whole thing was getting too complicated for my taste.

I couldn’t let Harley go that meeting.

“Xander? Do you know something about all of this? Has Harley said something?”

“Harley doesn’t remember the last three years of her life, Mom.”

“But then why did you want to know about that reporter? I didn’t even remember it until you said something.”

“Because that address? That’s where Harley was hit by a car.”

My mom started to shake her head so hard that she stumbled back a little. “Grant had nothing to do with that!”

“Are you sure?”

“He wouldn’t hurt anyone—no matter what he thought they were capable of doing to him.”

“But you expressed regret in not doing it yourself.”

We both turned to watch Harley walk into the room, graceful despite the boot on her leg.

“Harley, I—”

“Why don’t you tell him, Bonnie?” she asked, a little lilt to her eyebrow. “Tell him how you told Margaret last night that you would have mowed me down yourself if it meant protecting Grant from what I was planning on telling that reporter?”

“I was just talking,” my mom said, turning her face away so I couldn’t read her expression.

“What are you talking about, Harley?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, wrinkling the perfectly starched peasant blouse she was wearing. “I was in the bathroom at the party and heard them talking.”

“About your accident?”

“Your mom was upset that I was there with you.”

“Of course I was upset,” Mom said. “You never told me about her accident, never told me she was back in this house. You knew what she was going to do, knew that she was going to start a ball rolling that would end with Grant in jail, possibly me, too. Yet, you brought her back here—”

“She was my fiancée, Mom. Was I supposed to leave her in the hospital, not knowing anything about her life these past three years?”

“You were broken up! And she turned on us. Turned on
your
family. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

I wanted to tell her that Harley was my family now, but Harley shot me a cautious look, telling me that it was best to keep my tongue in my head. And I knew that. We’d talked about it and decided it was best if everyone continued under the assumption that she couldn’t remember anything about the last three years. But I so wanted this whole thing to be over now.

Right now.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked, my tone deliberately low and steady.

My mom glared at Harley before focusing on me again. “What?”

“Why would the address of the place where Harley was hit by a car upset Grant if he didn’t know anything about the accident?”

As the meaning behind my words sank in, color once again drained from my mother’s face.

“He didn’t have anything to do with it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she insisted.

I looked at Harley, and I saw something in her eyes. Something had just popped into place in her mind. And she wasn’t happy about it.

Neither was I. Because all of this pointed to just one person.

Margaret.