And really, did it matter how wonderful Rurik had been to me if he truly was some kind of crime boss? If his whole family was crooked?
“We’re married. We’re staying married.”
Once again, those words echoed in my mind, as clear as if Rurik were at my side and repeating them.
“You okay?” the driver asked.
I wasn’t, I was freaking out. Barely hiding a full-on panic. He had pulled up to the curb at the front of the shopping mall, and I blinked at the people coming out. “Do you need me to wait? It’s almost closing time.”
“No,” I said, gripping the door handle and slinging it open as if the driver was the one I had to get away from. “No, I’ll be fine, thank you.”
I had about half an hour to figure out what to do, and I moved on autopilot, having played this game before. Making a beeline for the nearest cash machine, I used the company card to take out the maximum daily amount, grateful that we had so many expenses that Rurik had raised the limit exorbitantly. Then I used my own personal card to take out a lot fewer bills and tucked them away in my purse, knowing I’d never be able to use the cards again.
I had to disappear, and I had to do it right this time.
Chapter 34 - Rurik
It took some threatening and flinging my name around, but I was able to track down the car that had picked up Clem and bullied the company into giving me his information. Shocked to hear from what he perceived to be an irate undercover cop who very convincingly told him he’d be charged as an accessory if he didn’t tell me the last known location of my fugitive.
Making up stories like that to get information used to be amusing to me, but now I was wracked with a truckload of mixed emotions, and not a single one of them could be considered amused.
Damn it, why was she at a mall? Was this a rendezvous point to meet up with the guy in the pictures? Or did she just suddenly get an urge to shop? My wife had been complaining about the sprees she’d been forced to go on with Erina Koboyashi, so that didn’t seem likely.
No sooner did I wring the information out of the taxi driver, the guard who made the wrong call to go after our mystery man instead of following Clem, had fortunately headed in the direction she saw Clem leave after giving up the foot chase.
She informed me she was only a few minutes away from the mall and I sent her to start searching while I took off. To say I was on the verge of panic was an understatement. Who the hell was that guy who approached her, and why did it seem like she knew him? The fact that she was looking at something on his phone could have been as simple as him asking her for directions, but then why the hell was he on the security camera at my warehouse shortly before a massive raid?
And where was she now?
I still refused to fully believe she was colluding with this Jordan asshole. What we had was too real. Through the haze of my panic, I remembered the fortune teller outside one of the shrines we visited in Tokyo. Eager to get tourist money, he had told us we’d have a bright future full of love and four children. We knew not to take it seriously and laughed about it as we walked along the forest paths. But she had looked at me in such a way when he mentioned the children.
She wanted a future with me.
Or else she was a world-class actress.
Even if she was, that didn’t mean she wasn’t in danger. The very thought that she might be working against me, conspiring all this time, was a shot straight to the heart. She was smart enough to pull it off, but was she that callous? Could I blame her when I’d been on the devious side myself?
Seriously. What was I going to do if I was faced with the fact that Clem had been playing me all along? Was there a limit to how I felt about her?
“Fuck,” I shouted at the empty car. What the fuck was I going to do if she was my enemy?
Never. Couldn’t happen.
I was almost at the shopping center, and about to have the guard’s head for making the wrong call, impatiently glancing at my phone every ten seconds as I waited to hear that she’d been found.
Safe and sound. Then we could clear everything up. I’d take all her anger to know that she was all right.
My guard finally called me back, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the number flash on my phone screen. I pulled into a parking spot, fighting the urge to leave my damn car at thecurb, the urgency making me feel like I was drawn tighter than a bowstring, ready to snap.
The guard was pacing near a fountain, a few stragglers waiting in line at a pretzel stand before the mall closed.
“I actually rolled up as she was getting out of the car,” she said. “I wasn’t on the phone with you for a minute before I got here. She had to be moving like lightning because she’s nowhere to be found.”
There was no use taking out my anxiety and fury on the guard. The mall was huge, and one person had no chance of finding someone who didn’t want to be found. But why didn’t Clem want to be found?
“This could be nothing,” she said, trying to reassure me.
The look I gave her had her snapping back to attention. “Or it could be something.” I showed her the enhanced security camera footage of Jordan outside the warehouse, and she blanched.