Blush(108)

“Sir, you can’t—”

“What the fuck floor is she on?”

“Forty, but you can’t—” The rest of his words were lost as Cruz ran past him. A security turnstile was no deterrent. He vaulted over it, then hauled ass to the closest elevator—thank God for the express elevator. The doors closed as one of the security guys came barreling after him, yelling for him to stop. Cruz slammed his palm on the button for the fortieth floor.

The elevator rose smoothly as his heart pounded manically. A glance in the surrounding copper-framed mirrors showed a man who’d seen hell, and wasn’t sure he’d live to tell about it. His eyes looked wild. The entire front of his white dress shirt was stained red and clinging wetly to his skin.

“God, this is crazy, but let me be right.”

There was so much adrenaline surging through his body, Cruz’s head felt off-kilter. Dropping back, he leaned his shoulders into the corner, squeezing his eyes shut, his knees no better than melting wax.

Pleasepleaseplease.

• • •

Amelia stared in deep disgust as the police slapped the handcuffs on the man who had tried to kill her . . . multiple times. In multiple ways.

How could Miles have done this? How could he have betrayed her? How could he have betrayed her father? And the company he’d protected for more than thirty-five years?

She glanced at the others who’d been gathered in the conference room prior to Miles’s arrest. Local police and, interestingly, Interpol as well as several of Blush’s attorneys, Todd, her assistant Stephanie, and several key Blush executives.

There was a laundry list of charges against Miles Basson and Candice Wentworth, her stepmother.

“You deserved everything we dished out and then some,” Miles shouted, tugging at his cuffed wrists. One of the plainclothes detectives put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

Mia tugged down her short red jacket over her bold red sheath as she rose from her chair to circumvent the long conference table. She took long, even strides on her favorite bone-colored Louboutins to stand in front of the man who wanted her dead. She slapped him hard across the face. “You were more than a trusted employee to me and my family.” She kept her voice calm, her breathing steady. “My father respected you. Entrusted his family with you. He thought of you like a brother. I feel nothing but disgust for you. Not for what you did to me, but what you did to my father and everyone at Blush.”

“You’ll regret turning me in to the police, you self-entitled, fucking bitch.” His already florid face went dark red. “Your father’s rolling in his grave, knowing what you’ve done to me.”

My father would’ve emasculated you first, then killed you slowly with his bare hands if he’d ever discovered the man he trusted was sleeping with his wife, and paid to have his only child killed. “I haven’t even started, Miles.” Amelia gave him a cool look, then added, “Not yet. And when we find Candice—which we eventually will—she’ll be caged like the animal she is, too.”

Where in the hell was her stepmother? The fly in the ointment was that no one had seen Candice. The police had sent out an APB. Miles, her lover for freaking years, according to Black Raven’s investigators, claimed he had no idea where she was.

“If we hear from her,” she told the lead detective, who had Miles by the upper arm and was shoving him toward the door, “we’ll let you know immediate—”

“Mia.”

At the raw sound, Mia turned toward the door, knowing who it was before she saw him. She would always know his smooth, deep voice. It was the same voice that haunted her dreams and left her longing every night. It was the voice now that had her heart racing.

Cruz. He stood in the open doorway, his hand on the doorknob. White-faced, wild-eyed, white shirt rolled up on his muscular forearms, covered in . . . oh my God. It looked like blood. Jesus. Was that his blood? He stared at her as if he was seeing a ghost, his skin two shades paler than it should have been, his eyes haunted.

“Dear God—” Shoving her way between handcuffed Miles and one of the detectives, she ran to Cruz’s side and slid a supportive arm around his waist. His features were so drawn, so pale, she wedged her shoulder into his armpit to keep him upright in case he collapsed.

“Where are you hurt?” she demanded, running a frantic hand over the wet bloodstains on his shirtfront. “Cruz, where are you hurt?”

If he’d been shot or otherwise seriously injured, he would have needed a hospital. Anything else could be treated by Blush’s top-notch staff clinic on the fifth floor. But she didn’t know how serious it was.