The Successor (11 page)

Christian gazed at the young woman as she stood next to her sports car sipping from the can. “Come on,” he urged. Maybe Quentin was right. Suddenly he was so tempted to go back into that store and get a beer for himself. “Let’s get out of here.”

The young woman waved as they rolled past, giving Christian a nice smile. He waved back, sad in a way that he’d been put off by the look the old lady behind the cash register had given him. It sounded crazy, but he felt that he might have made a connection with the young woman. There was something in the way she’d looked at him as he held the door for her that told him. He wished he’d at least found out her name.

“Jesus Christ! What the—”

Christian’s eyes snapped away from the young woman as Quentin shouted and slammed on the brakes. The shoulder strap restrained Christian, but instinctively he reached out and braced himself against the dashboard just as a black sedan roared in front of them, missing the Integra by inches. As it came to a grinding halt in a cloud of dust in front of the store, four men jumped out.

Out of the corner of his eye Christian saw a flash of orange and white rush past his door. It was the young woman and she was running scared. The men were after her for some reason, he knew that right away. He grabbed the buckle of the seat belt and wrenched it back, shoved the door open with his shoulder, scrambled out of the car, and sprinted after her.

“Christian, don’t!”

But he ignored Quentin’s warning shout. He glanced over his shoulder as the woman reached the tree line and disappeared into the forest. Two of the men were coming after him, the other two were headed toward the Integra, toward Quentin, who was climbing out of the driver’s side.

Christian hurtled into the brush after the young woman, holding his arms up as a shield against the low-hanging branches and thick sticker bushes. Following the sounds of her crashing over the dead, dry leaves covering the forest floor ahead of him. He caught glimpses of her through the trees as he ran. Bursts of the orange top and the white skirt, in between branches and new leaves ripping against his fingers and across his eyes as he tried to see where he was going.

Then he heard crashing sounds behind him. The two men from the black sedan who hadn’t gone after Quentin—had to be. He felt bad about leaving Quentin alone like that, but Quentin had a pretty good chance of winning a fight, even when it was two on one.

He was almost to her now, only a few feet behind her as he dodged trees like a slalom skier dodging gates. He could hear her breathing hard as she tried to sprint across the soft, leaf-covered ground. It was like trying to sprint across dry sand, and it was sucking the energy out of her fast. Him, too.

Finally, he got to her. He grabbed her wrist and spun her around. Her hair was covered with shredded leaves and her face was scratched from the branches. “Why are those men after you?” Christian demanded in a low voice. He could still hear the pursuers’ footsteps, but they were growing fainter, as if they’d lost the trail and were going off in a wrong direction.

“I don’t know,” she gasped. “I swear.”

“Tell me.”

She gazed up into his eyes. “I…I—”

“Tell me,” Christian hissed. “I’ll help you, but you have to tell me what’s going on.”

She put a hand to her chest, still trying to catch her breath. “All right, all right. I was having an affair with a guy in Washington. This morning his wife caught me in bed with him at the farm they own out here. She sent those guys after me.” The young woman waved back in the direction of the store. “I thought I lost them, but obviously I didn’t.”

“The guy’s wife must be pretty important if she can send four guys after you and you’re that scared of them.”

The young woman’s eyes opened wide. “You got that right.”

“Who is she?”

A frightened look spread across the young woman’s face. “I can’t tell you. I
really
can’t,” she repeated when she saw irritation in Christian’s expression. “I—”

“Charlie, over here!”

In unison, Christian’s and the young woman’s eyes darted toward the sound of the voice. It was so close.

Christian grabbed the girl’s wrist.
“Come on!”

“YOU KNOW,
Christian’s handing out the Laurel Energy bonuses tomorrow.”

Allison looked up from her computer. She’d been tapping out an e-mail to a lawyer she didn’t care for, so it was a good time to take a break. Her tone was starting to get confrontational, which was the sinister part of e-mail—sometimes you wrote things you wished you hadn’t because it was so much easier when you didn’t have to say it to someone’s face. So she always took Christian’s advice and reread her e-mails at least three times before sending them. “I do know, but how did you find out?” Actually, Allison hadn’t known that tomorrow was going to be the day. She knew it was going to be sometime soon, but she didn’t have specifics. Here was another example of how she and Christian weren’t as close as they used to be. Not too long ago she would have known that tomorrow was going to be the day before anyone else in the firm.

“Somebody found a copy of a memo in a trash can,” Sherry Demille explained.

Sherry was an associate at Everest who worked almost exclusively with Allison—Allison had hired her away from another Manhattan investment firm a year ago. Sherry was only twenty-five, but she and Allison had become good friends despite the eight-year age difference. Sherry was big-boned but always managed to use just the right amount of makeup and wore clothes that accentuated her long legs and downplayed her wide shoulders and high waist. She had long, dark hair and a round face she broke up by wearing glasses she didn’t really need.

“Somebody?”
Allison asked in a leading tone.

Sherry held her hands up. “It wasn’t me. I swear.”

“Who was it?” Allison could see Sherry struggling, wanting to keep her source confidential but not wanting to aggravate her mentor. “Fine, you don’t have to tell me. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“When did Chris tell you?”

Allison didn’t like the way Sherry referred to Christian so informally. She knew Sherry thought Christian was “dreamy”—she’d said it enough times, especially after a few drinks when they were out. It wasn’t as if Christian would ever encourage Sherry’s advances, Allison knew, but it seemed as though small things like that were bothering her a lot lately. “A couple of weeks ago.” Allison didn’t want Sherry thinking she and Christian weren’t as close as they used to be. She’d never told Sherry how much she cared about Christian—because Sherry had a big mouth—but she wanted Sherry to keep thinking she was as close to the top as it got.

Sherry dropped her notepad down on the front of Allison’s desk and clasped her hands together. “How much do you think he’ll give me? Did he talk to you about it?”

“No.” Sherry was as aggressive as a young associate came. Sometimes her attitude bordered on obnoxious, but she was also talented. Good at running numbers and doing due diligence. Fast and accurate with financial data and the other nuts-and-bolts stuff, which freed up Allison to think about the big picture. And Sherry was fun to be with outside of work. They’d been going out more and more together at night, to clubs in Manhattan. It took Allison’s mind off Christian. “He makes those decisions by himself.”

“He probably doesn’t even know my name,” Sherry fretted.

“Don’t worry, he knows your name.”

Sherry caught her breath.
“He does?”

“He knows
everyone’s
name,” Allison said quickly.

But Sherry wasn’t deterred. “Chris is so down-to-earth for being so famous and important, you know? Last week he held the door for me downstairs as I was leaving to go home, asked me if I needed a ride anywhere. I was meeting a couple of friends at a place right down Park Avenue, but I almost took him up on it just so I could get to know him better. It sure would have been nice to have the face time.”

Allison gazed at Sherry. “He offered you a ride?”

“Uh-huh.”

“In the limousine?”

“Uh-huh.”

Allison glanced back at her computer screen. The guy she was e-mailing was forty-seven and had just divorced his wife. The rumor at the law firm was that he was dating a twenty-six-year-old bond trader at an investment bank downtown. A Paris Hilton look-alike. What was wrong with men? “But you didn’t take him up on it?”

“I will next time.”

Christian was just being nice, Allison figured. That was all there was to it. He didn’t have designs on Sherry. He couldn’t. “Let’s go get something to drink at the deli downstairs,” she suggested, standing up and grabbing a key off her desk. It was a spare one to Christian’s office he kept on the molding above his door. Only she and Debbie knew about it. She had needed a file out of Christian’s office early this morning and hadn’t returned it yet. “My treat.”

“So what do you think he’ll give me?” Sherry asked, following Allison out of the office and toward Christian’s.

“I don’t know.” As they approached, Allison saw that Debbie wasn’t at her desk outside Christian’s office. Allison didn’t want to leave the key lying on Debbie’s desk, so she reached up and replaced it on the molding. When she had, she turned around and pointed at Sherry. “Don’t tell anyone,” she warned.

“Of course not,” Sherry said as they walked toward reception, rolling her eyes as if Allison really hadn’t needed to say that. “Now come on and guess what Chris is going to give me. Jesus, Allison, don’t be so uptight about this.”

Allison pursed her lips. This was what happened when you socialized with your subordinate, she realized, when you didn’t keep your distance. Maybe Christian was right after all. Maybe she couldn’t work with him and date him, too. She let out a frustrated breath. It was too late. She couldn’t turn off her feelings for him now. “You’ll just have to wait for tomorrow.”

Sherry scowled as they reached the elevators. “You know, someone told me they saw Christian out with a model last week at a restaurant on the Upper West Side.”

CHRISTIAN HELPED
the young woman along through the trees, at one point hauling her back to her feet when she tripped over a fallen tree. He had no idea where they were going—or where they were, for that matter—but he’d seen that terrified look on her face a moment ago and it told him they needed to run. Wherever, it didn’t matter, as long as it was away from these men. His first instinct when he’d jumped from the Integra had been to catch her, then let the two men catch up and call their bluff. Surely they wouldn’t do anything to her if he was there, especially if he told them who he was.

But that look of absolute dread had convinced him that a game of chicken was the wrong strategy. He’d spent a lifetime reading people’s faces, taking his cues from subtle expressions in terms of when to push and when to give during negotiations, and his track record spoke for itself. She couldn’t be
that
good an actress. He just wondered who in the hell could scare her so badly. The woman who’d caught her in bed with her husband had to be someone
very
powerful. He’d put Quentin on finding out who she was—if they saw each other again.

“This way.” He could hear their pursuers, like a pack of dogs, crashing across the dead leaves behind them. It was a sick feeling. “Come on!”

“I’m so tired,” she gasped.

“Don’t think about being tired, think about being scared. And
run.
”

Suddenly they were at the edge of a drop-off. At least two hundred feet down, Christian figured. At a sharp angle over big boulders, some jutting far out from the face of the hill. In the distance he thought he heard the sound of rushing water. “Damn it!” He made a snap decision. “We’ve got to go down there, we can’t go back. They’ll catch us if we do.”

“I can’t do it,” she said fearfully. “I’ll fall.”

“Hey, I’m wearing loafers,” he snapped, pointing at the hard soles, then her tennis shoes. “And I’m probably twice your age. If I can do it, you
definitely
can.”

“I’m telling you, I can’t do it.”

It was time to act like a chairman. “No choice.” He picked a route over and around the boulders, committing it to memory, then grabbed her hand and tugged her over the edge. “Come on.”

“Oh, Jesus!”

They made it down the hill faster than he’d hoped, almost slipping several times, but they made it. He glanced up as they reached the bottom, half-falling, half-running the last ten feet through a small stream to level, dry ground. The men had just reached the brink of the cliff and were starting to climb down the slope after them. It looked as if one of them had shoved a pistol in his belt before scrambling down the first few feet, but Christian couldn’t tell for sure.

He yanked her arm hard.
“Run, damn it.”

He pulled his cell phone out as they sprinted away. The LCD showed only one bar for an antenna, but he dialed 911 anyway—and got through. As he and Quentin had pulled into the store parking lot he’d noticed the name of the place—Grayson’s Market—and he shouted it as loudly as he could to the operator as he and the young woman ran, hoping the men chasing them would hear him and understand that he was on his phone. He yelled that they were in the woods south and east of the store, and that they needed help fast. That they were running for their lives. That his partner was at the store and needed help, too. The men chasing them might figure he was just pretending to talk to someone, but that was all right. As long as he planted a seed of doubt in their minds, they might turn around. More important, help was on the way. Hopefully, it wouldn’t get to them too late.

“What’s your name?” he asked as he stuffed the phone back in his pocket. They were jogging along a narrow, faint trail, probably made by deer. The center of it didn’t have leaves on it, so they weren’t making much noise. He was planning to cut back into the woods in a few moments.

“Beth Garrison. What’s yours?”

“Christian Gillette.” He stuck his arm in front of her and pointed. “That way.”

She put her hands in front of her face as they headed back into the heavy stuff. “Do you have any idea where you’re going?”