Page 40 of Digital Desire

“What do you need from me?” Will asked as he grabbed the handrail as Jace took a corner at speed.

“Aubrey is calm which is great, but Flowers will realise very soon that he’s trapped and try and use her as a shield or a bargaining chip. I need you to disable all the doors when we say. We don’t want him locking us out. Also, maintain camera access as he’ll try and lock us out of that as well. Oh, and I want ears in that room asap.”

“Fine, that I can do. Just get her out of there in one piece,” Will said his voice choked suddenly.

“We won’t let anything happen to her, Will, I promise you,” he vowed.

The call disconnected, and Will quickly did everything Alex had requested. He popped the comms unit in his ear as did Jace and then he could talk to Alex in real time and hear Aubrey. She began to speak, and he thought his heart would explode with pride as she calmly questioned him, still determined to get to the bottom of this even though she had a gun on her.

Jace parked the SUV in the street that ran parallel to the embassy. He could see the floor she was on from here, the window even but he couldn’t get to her, and he had never felt so impotent in his life. Not even when his dad had put him in the untenable position of breaking the law and getting his brother fired did he feel like he did now.

He had to put his complete faith in the men his brother had hired. He had read every single one of the Eidolon employees files and knew they were some of the best. Now he just had to wait.

* * *

Aubrey studied the man who had set Will up and tried to get his measure, but she couldn’t. There seemed to be so much more going on here than she could grasp.

“So how do you know Will?” she asked as she watched the gun he had produced from under the bench where they sat. He had been planning this all along. It was as if he had been pulling their strings the entire time.

“Will and I were cellmates,” he answered calmly as if they were just having a chat over coffee like friends.

“What did you do?” she asked wanting him to open up to her.

“Oh, come on, detective, a smart woman like you must already know that. Don’t waste my time,” he said a frown pulling his face into a cruel line.

“My mistake, yes I do know. So why the vendetta against Will? Why set him up?”

“I wouldn’t call it a vendetta, detective. Will just chose the wrong side, so he has to be eliminated.”

“But you killed Pierre?” she asked trying to unravel the complex web he had woven.

Flowers looked at his watch and then back at her. “I didn’t kill him. I just made it look like Will did. I have no stomach for death, not like Derek does. He is a mean motherfucker,” Flowers said with pride.

“Does he know you’re here?” she asked trying to find out if they could expect him to turn up.

“Tut tut, detective. There you go again thinking I’m stupid. I know what you’re doing, trying to feed info to your friends so that they can rescue you.”

“So, what’s the plan? Are you going to kill me? Kidnap me? What the fuck are we doing here?” she asked losing patience with him.

Flowers chuckled at her words, throwing his head back and Aubrey could see what an attractive man he could have been if he wasn’t completely barking mad. “I can see why Will likes you, you have a fire in your belly. The answer to your question is nothing. I just wanted to meet you.”

Aubrey cocked her head at his words, she didn’t believe that for a second. A man like him didn’t just do things, he always had a reason, she just needed to figure out what his was. Her brain was whirring with a million questions even as her nerves tried to break free every time she caught sight of the gun.

She watched as the women from the office were discreetly herded out of the room by Drew and knew Flowers had seen.

“And then there were two,” he said with a smile.

“I don’t get you. You’re risking everything for what? Money, power? Tell me because I really don’t understand.”

“Poor little orphan Aubrey, always needing the answers to every question. Don’t you realise yet that life isn’t neat and tidy? It can’t be tied up with a pretty ribbon. Life is all about those that can and those that cannot. I do this because I can, it’s that simple.”

“Bullshit, I don’t believe that.”

“So, you honestly believe that the boys that set fire to your parent’s home had a motive other than that they could?” he asked and Aubrey visibly winced as she sucked in a breath.

“How do you know about that?”

“You meet a lot of people in jail, detective, and Mickey was more than willing to tell me about his exploits. He did seem to have a certain amount of regret about your parents though. You were the one that got away from him. Who knows, if his gang hadn’t brutally killed your parents because they could, you two might have ended up happily making babies together.”