Page 86 of Reckless Devotion

I feel Chase turn to stone behind me, my own blood chilling. Evelyn Blackwood…as in, his COO, Evelyn Blackwood? I wish with everything in me that I could see Chase’s face, but even turning my head might cause me to brush against something and make a noise. I can’t risk it, but I feel a dark energy rolling off him, crackling the air.

The man waits for a few seconds, then speaks again. “The security guard is a no show.”

Silence.

“I did, all day, he’s gone.” The thick accent is totally unfamiliar to me. Perhaps it’s West Coast, with a hint of something else muddled in.

More silence.

“Ialsofind myself irritated with the little asshole,” the man grumbles, kicking a stone away from his shoe. “Okay, I’m coming now.” He lowers the phone, ends the call, and pulls open his car door.

I start to shift the moment the man gets inside and closes it, desperately trying to catch his license plate in the couple of seconds it takes for him to start the car and turn it the wrong way.

Strong hands clamp me in place, preventing me from getting into the right spot. “What are you doing? We need to follow him!”

“We’re not following him.” The voice is icy, icier than I’ve ever heard it, making me pause and try to turn.

He only lets me move so much, enough for me to catch a glimpse of a face that is utterly glacial.

“Chase, wehaveto follow him before he gets away.” Irritation boils up at the back of my throat, my urgency to act sharpening it into a pointed arrow and launching it his way. “What a waste of time this will have been otherwise!”

“I said no, Pepper,” he says with finality, gracing me with eye contact that shows glittering eyes of fury.

It stuns me enough that I wilt, my fight to follow the man waning and leaving behind a frustrated resignation that makes my scalp prickle.

Chapter 31

Sunny:I’ll be going to Jessica’s tomorrow at 7 PM.

Pepper:Roger that.

Chase:I wish it was a guy thing to have sleepovers.

Sunny:How come?

Chase:They just seem fun.

Pepper:The painting your nails part, or braiding each other’s hair?

Chase:All of the above.

CHASE

“It’s not her,” he grumbles, following me into a glass-walled boardroom on the top floor of the Dev Ops building.

“How can you be sure?” I throw over my shoulder, holding the door open for him to follow.

“I just can.”

He doesn’t want to talk about this, that much is obvious. He’s spent three days brooding, and he keeps coming back to the same thing. He doesn’t think Evelyn would do this to him. He“knows it in his bones,” apparently. I don’t share that conviction, and for that reason he’s stopped trying to explain it to me.

I sigh, turning and capping my hips with my hands. “Fine, so I say that we spend today brainstorming. There must be something we’ve missed.”

His attention drifts over my head to the row of cream-filled pies laid out neatly on the boardroom table.

“What’s with all the pies?” A crease appears between his eyebrows.

“Sarah in accounts is having a leaving party and the bakery messed up the order, so instead of three pies we have thirty three.” I feel myself grin, unable to help it, and he narrows his eyes when he sees.