Great Exploitations(22)

Then the door clicked open and in walked a person who managed to give weight to all of my memories. They all fell back into place as he approached me with a worried expression. And that was when my last memory played out.

Me, reaching for a phone in a hotel hall, hurt and bloodied . . . and a voice calling my name. His voice, promising he’d stay with me.

And there he was.

“Henry.” I tried getting out more, but my throat felt as if it had been stuffed with a tower of cotton rounds.

“Hi, beautiful.” He put on an unconvincing smile and stopped at the foot of my bed.

His suit was rumpled, his face unshaven, and the hollows of his eyes were two shades darker than normal. I couldn’t decide who looked worse, Henry or me. I had yet to see myself in a mirror. As Henry carefully inspected me, the line between his brows went deeper and deeper. I guessed I won the worst-looking award. Noticing a container of water on the tray beside me, I propped up on my elbows and took a small drink from the straw. After another, the cotton feeling in my throat was gone.

“Beautiful? You always were a terrible liar,” I said, my voice hoarse.

Henry came around the side of my bed and sat beside me. He grabbed my hand with both of his. “That’s not a lie, Eve. After hearing what I did on that phone . . . after hearing you scream and cry and those hits . . .” Henry’s eyes closed as he leaned his head into our connected hands. “Seeing you alive and in one piece is a beautiful thing indeed.”

Given I was the one in a hospital bed, I should be the one who needed comforting. But the opposite appeared true. From the looks of it, Henry had been through more of a beating than I had. I lifted my free hand and combed it through his messy hair.

“What happened, Eve? Who did this to you? Why did they do this?”

The memories were back and meant something, so I searched for that one. It didn’t take long to remember what had happened or who’d done it: assault, hotel hall, threats, unconscious, Rob Tucker.

Followed promptly by: Errand, Target, wife beater, Mrs. Tucker, freedom, Eve.

Shit, the Tucker Errand wasn’t the only one I was working. The man warming my hand happened to be my Target too. What the hell was he doing there? In Tampa? He’d been in Seoul when I passed out with him still on the other end.

Had I managed, in one unfortunate instance, to compromise both Errands? They were both important to me—the Callahan one because of who was involved and the dollar signs tied to it, and the Tucker one because of the devil I was dealing with. If G knew Henry Callahan was sitting beside me in a hospital in Tampa when I looked as if I’d just gone toe-to-toe with a heavyweight boxing champ, she would probably breathe fire.

G . . . what was I going to tell her? Good thing she was taking a vacation in Mexico and threatened that unless it was a matter of life and death, not to bother her. Since I was still, technically, alive, I used that as my excuse to not call her right that second to let her know what had happened. But I’d have to tell her eventually, and just what was I going to say?

I had too many questions and no time or mental fortitude to work them out. It might have been the haze of the drugs or the haze of Henry, but something was definitely messing with my ability to think clearly and logically.

“Eve? Did you hear me?” Henry asked quietly. “Who did this to you?”

He looked at me, and the darkness that flashed through his eyes was staggering. Henry had always been a think first, hit second kind of person. Given the look on his face, if Rob Tucker were to appear and I pointed at him in answer, I had no doubts Henry would have a moment of hit first, think second. But Rob Tucker wasn’t there—thankfully—and Henry was waiting for my answer.

“I don’t remember,” I lied, needing to salvage whatever was left of keeping the Errands separate.

“You don’t remember what?”

I sighed. Henry was a natural problem solver. That was part of the reason he was the president of a Fortune 100 company, but that also carried over into his non-business life. Which was a pain in my ass given my compromising predicament.

“Anything, Henry. I don’t remember much of anything right now.”

“But—”

I shook my head. “Please, thinking about it is only giving me a headache. I’m sure when my head is less foggy and I have time to work stuff out, it’ll all come back to me.”

He looked ready to go one more round of rebuttal, but he closed his eyes and exhaled.

What is he doing here? How did he find me?

“What are you doing here, Henry? How did you find me?” Of all the questions I had, those were the ones I couldn’t stop repeating to myself.