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“Are you okay, Mom?”
My boy is always thinking of me. He’s little, and his fear is justified, but he never loses his protective instinct. Before that fateful night in New York, he’d never stopped talking about being a big brother, but it was just not meant to be.
“I’m fine, baby,” I reply. “You take care of yourself, okay? I’ll see you soon. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
Don’s bodyguard snatches the phone off me, and Don coos. “How lovely!”
He hasn’t mentioned anything about Clayton, but his forbidding gaze tells me he has a plan. He then hands me another nightgown with a dirty smile. “Wash up.”
There’s nothing I can do now. Clayton is a grown man. He’ll be able to handle Don if the Reaper decides to go after him. All I need right now is to get back to L.A. and be with my son.
8
CLAYTON
If you ask a Giraffe Manor guest about their highlight, it’s got to be the breakfast.
There was no Mrs. Mac accompanying me the next morning, but it was far from a lone experience. A pair of giraffes took turns to poke their heads through the windows, enjoying their share of fruits and other treats from my table.
Unfortunately, though, there was no sign of the woman in yellow, or Fletcher. So I was itching to go home that day, but air travel dramas seemed to follow me like a heat-seeking missile. The flight was canceled twice—leaving me wishing I had flown my private jet from Cali.
Three days after my intended return date, I finally land in L.A.—half awake, half jetlagged. Out of all souvenirs that I got from Kenya, the only one I care about is a bracelet. It’s of jade hearts with links made of sterling silver, which I found in my bed at the manor. It’s all I have to remember her by.
Knowing I’ll go stir-crazy staying in my house, after taking a long shower, I drive to Newport.
It’s not business as usual at the Hartley Marine HQ. As soon as I step in, I’m greeted by tense shoulders and tight jaws. This is not how I left the office before Kenya.
“Where’s Rob?” I ask his assistant.
“IT,” Kylie answers in her thick Irish accent. She’s been Rob’s right-hand woman since Hartley Marine started. She’s known for being an office clown, and I don’t know what tricks she’s been training my new assistant, but today, there’s no sign of her usual I’m-in-control face.
“What’s going on?”
“Cyberattacks.”
“Shit…” I rush to the IT quarter. Rob is standing next to the lead software engineer’s desk. “The fuck is going on?”
“First, DDOS, then injection attempts,” my brother answers. “We’ve quashed the attacks, though. At least for now.”
“Do we know who’s responsible?”
“Likely from China,” the lead software engineer voices his verdict. “From the code pattern, I bet they’re aiming at VesslScope.”
The statement hits my head like a baton.
Rob motions me to follow him to his room. Worries clutter his Captain America face. Although with his neatly-combed hair and impeccable suit, he still looks every part the boss of Hartley Marine.
He sinks inside his executive chair. “Anything you wanted to tell me?”
I take a seat in front of him. “You think this has got something to do with Nairobi?”
“You tell me.”
“She came to me,” I admit.
“Clay, all you had to do was to turn away.”
