“Yeah, sure. My boat’s at the dock. I was going to tell him about his mom and see if he needed anything, but since he’s not here I guess I can drop back another time.”
Andrea felt certain the girl would, with maybe even more ammunition than a tank top next time.
“Do you need to go back to the house to get anything?”
“No. I’m fine.” She reached in the pocket of her jacket, or rather Evan’s jacket, for the thin-tipped marker pen she knew was there and scribbled out a message to Evan on his own chair. It’d wash away in the rain—she wouldn’t leave any permanent damage, to his chair or anything else—and she didn’t want to take the time to leave him a note at the house.
“Hey, so what about the guy with the picture?”
“Oh that? I guess it must be somebody else.”
They walked back in silence to the dock. Andrea climbed into the speedboat, just managing to sit on one of the cushions against the side when the girl gunned the boat up and took off.
“I’m Cassie, by the way,” she shouted over her shoulder into the wind.
“Babs,” she responded spontaneously, figuring it sure as hell wouldn’t matter at this point what name she gave. She didn’t plan on seeing this girl, or this corner of the world, ever again.
The spray of the ocean on her face washed away the blood caused by biting through her lip at that thought.
* * * * *
A helicopter was such an ostentatious mode of transportation that Evan couldn’t recall ever having arranged to take one of his own free will before. But desperate times called for desperate measures. He needed to get into Manhattan to see Michael as soon as possible and he only thanked God that Miss Prentiss Jr. assured him that his oldest brother was in the office and could see him this morning. Since he had not wanted to spook the real Miss Prentiss, in a manner of speaking, with setting up a meeting in advance, he had just called from the mainland once he docked his boat. He was worried somehow Andrea might have been able to discover it if he had contacted Michael’s office while on the island. And overhearing him making the appointment wasn’t what he meant.
He was falling deeper and deeper into Andrea Prentiss, whatever the hell her real name was, and he didn’t know what inadvisable or uncharacteristic thing he might say or do next while she had her big blue eyes trained on him. He was liable to just blurt out that he was going to see Michael to get his take on this whole situation.
Who knew?
Colleen Grady stood at attention off to the side of the helipad on the Reynolds Industries headquarters building in Manhattan as the rotors slowed and Evan stepped out onto the roof. The pilot had radioed ahead as to the precise timing of their arrival and then assured him he would just wait until the meeting concluded. Normally Evan would have told the pilot, part of Michael’s fleet of ever-at-the-ready-for-extremely-high-compensation minions, to chill out and get a burger or something, but he was too preoccupied for his usual laid-back niceties. He wanted the pilot there and ready to take off and back to Maine as soon as he was done with Michael. This urgency to be back to Andrea now that he had let her out of his sight was unsettling.
He shook Michael’s new assistant’s hand.
“Mr. Reynolds would have come out himself to meet you, Mr., er, Reynolds, but his, I mean, Miss Donald was, I mean she—”
“That’s fine. No problem,” he cut her off.
Miss Grady had stepped into her predecessor’s shoes, but clearly uneasy is the head who wears the crown. The poor girl looked frazzled and about five years older than the last time Evan had seen her. The day Andrea disappeared, as a matter of fact. He hadn’t been back to Michael’s office since. The meeting he had attended with the private eye Michael hired to find Andrea had been held at Michael’s apartment.
“Right this way, Mr. Reynolds,” the secretary said unnecessarily, gesturing for Evan to precede her from the elevator out to the hallway of Michael’s floor. As if he was likely to forget this place. Deliberately, he averted his eyes from the office where he had made love to—fucked—Andrea that last time. It was still dark, though. He had not been able to shake the feeling all this time that his treatment of Andrea that day had something to do with her disappearance. He knew now that it clearly went far, far deeper, but he felt no more reassured by the fact.
Just the thought of the knife wound she had shown up bearing on his shores made him feel sick. Maybe if he hadn’t been so childishly petulant with her that day she might have confided in him then, not run away.
They’d no sooner made it into Andrea’s old office, the anteroom to Michael’s, than he could hear his brother through the door that stood ajar.