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The flight from New York back to Chicago took just under two hours. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes. Every time I did, I saw Ray, that look in his eye as he attacked me, and a chill went up my spine. I knew without a doubt that if it weren’t for Noah, he wouldn’t have stopped.
Just as I had thought, Ray was squeaky-clean, which was more of a red flag than a deterrent. Ten hours into Sunday morning, Sheldon dug, searching for anything to pin to this son of a bitch, and he still found nothing. I c
ould feel the panic setting in.
Stay calm, Amelia, and think.
“Ms. London?” A flight attendant on the private jet I was on came up to me. “We’ve landed, ma’am.”
Snapping out of my trance, I glanced outside to see we had in fact landed. I grabbed my purse from the seat beside me.
“Thank you,” I said to the pilot as the door opened for me, the sun now high in the sky. An unfamiliar white Audi was parked waiting for me. Standing in front of me was six feet of muscle in a black suit.
“Ms. London?” he said, as if anyone would be coming out of the jet besides me.
“Who are you?”
“Just a driver. My employer would like to speak with you.”
“Then you your employer should go through my agent like everyone else,” I said¸ crossing my arms.
He smirked, moving over to the door. “We’ve already called your agent—Mr. Cole, or Ollie, he said you call him—don’t worry. You’ll get home safe and sound.”
Eyeing him carefully, I moved to the door, sliding in. When he opened it, to my shock, casually sitting in the other seat was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She wore a short white cocktail dress, her black hair pulled to the side, with red lipstick and a pair of silver Christian Louboutin pumps I was sure didn’t come out for another three months. There was a large diamond on her finger.
“Welcome to Chicago, Ms. London.” She looked up from her phone, her brown eyes more than amused. “I’m Melody Callahan.”
“I’m confused right now.”
“Then allow me clarify. I’m here to help.”
“To help?” I repeated.
She nodded, reaching beside her to retrieve an oversized yellow envelope. She handed it to me, and I stared at it for a moment before breaking the seal. Pictures and videos poured out of it like a piñata—all of them of Ray Mallory and some woman, and in none of them did she seem happy to be in his arms.
“Mr. Mallory has become a growing annoyance that I’ve tolerated for too long, and now his incompetence is creeping up to my door,” she said, her voice strong. She pointed at the envelope. “You can have that. In exchange, I need a name from you.”
My head was spinning again.
“A name?”
“The person you had breaking my firewalls for the last ten hours. And please, before you tell me you don’t know, remember I’m the one who just picked you up returning from New York…the same place I was able to track the server to. However, I need their name.”
I didn’t know who the hell she was. I wasn’t heartless enough to sell out my friend. Stuffing the photos and tapes back into the envelope, I handed it her.
“Yes. It was me, but I’m not giving up my friend to someone random woman in the back of an Audi.”
“Random,” she snickered to herself at that. “Amelia, what I’m offering you is a ‘get out of hell free’ card. I promise you I’m not going to hurt your friend. I just need their skills. When we reach the news station, my offer and this ride expire. In all honesty, you shouldn’t care who the hell you have to give up if means saving your lover. That is what you want to do, isn’t it?”
I stared at her. “If I start sacrificing people around me, what makes me better than the same people that hurt me?”
“Why do you need to be better than them? Smarter, I can understand, but better?” She relaxed, crossing her legs with ease. “If you want to be the better person, that’s fine, but you need to understand that you will always be someone one else’s bitch. A bitch with good morals, but a bitch nonetheless, Amelia. To kill a lion, you can’t be another lion, you’ve got to be the motherfucker with the gun. You can’t have it both ways. So I’ll ask you one more time: do you want save your lover and get revenge, or do you want be loyal to your friend?”
There was something about her that scared the shit out of me. Maybe it was how easily she told me give up my morals, or maybe it was the fact that she phrased it in such a way that I seemed crazy not to accept her offer.
“Just promise me that you won’t hurt him. He’s brilliant, and he doesn’t deserve it.” I wasn’t an idiot. You couldn’t dig up this much dirt on Mallory and still be a person who accepted ‘no’ for an answer.
She smiled. “I promise. I will not hurt him, or anything like that.”
