Vivian looked confused. “Brandon, is that your son?”
“Yes.”
“So you found him?”
“Only because your husband put Brandon in the same social circle as Lucien.” Charles Michaels seemed like a decent man. “Why did you knock him unconscious then?”
“Oh, that. I didn’t know it was him. I thought it was the blackmailer. He called me and told me to meet him here.”
Dread slithered down Darcy’s spine just as a voice spoke up from the shadows. “You shouldn’t have done that, Vivian, because now I’m going to have to kill her too.”
It was a completely inappropriate emotion to be feeling, but in that moment Darcy was furious. She turned her eyes on the man and asked, “And just who in the hell are you?”
“I’m a friend of the family.” He moved closer so that Darcy could see his hazel-green eyes. “I’m Todd.”
Lucien checked his watch for the sixth time. Darcy was almost an hour late.
“Where do you think she is?” Brandon asked.
“I don’t know. She would have called if she was going to be late.”
He reached for his phone and called her, but it went immediately to voice mail, so he called Allegro. Tara answered.
“Tara, have you seen you Darcy?”
“Hey, Lucien. Not for a while. She left here about two hours ago.”
“Did she mention where she was going?”
“Yeah, she said she was meeting up with you and your son. That’s really cool, boss, that you found him and you’re all together now.”
He didn’t mean to be curt, but with each minute that passed, he was getting more and more worried.
“Anywhere else?”
“Oh, wait. She did ask if I knew where that senator dude’s office was located. You know, the one who dropped out of the race?”
“Thanks.” Lucien hung up. “Do you know the number to Charles’s office?” he asked Brandon.
“No, but we could google it.”
Lucien called the number, but there was a busy signal. Who had busy signals anymore? He looked over at Brandon. “You know how to get to this office, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go.”
Darcy stood in what felt like a bad horror movie scene. She wanted the director to call cut and for them to reshoot the scene. She’d forgo being thoughtful and instead head directly to where she wanted to be.
Lucien and Brandon were waiting for her. Would he come looking for her or would he just get pissed and assume the worst because she was late again?
At the shock of seeing Todd, Vivian had dropped her gun, which was bad, but it was made worse when Darcy realized Todd was carrying.
Vivian was crying softly, but without tears, probably because it would ruin her perfectly applied makeup. Todd was pacing as if he hadn’t really thought through the rest of his plan.
“So what’s the plan, Todd? Have you thought past the entrance? I have to give you credit—that was well done.”
“Shut up.”
Darcy knew she must be in shock, because she was behaving irrationally; but even knowing it, she couldn’t get herself to stop taunting the man.
“How do you plan on taking all of us out of here? Or are you going to just kill us here in the same place you’ve been sweating profusely? I wouldn’t worry about DNA or anything.” She rolled her eyes.
And then she realized what she was saying; she was actually wishing she was with someone who knew exactly how to dispose of their bodies. Bad tactic, so she changed it.
“You haven’t done anything wrong. So you could just let us go.”
His laugh was just on the wrong side of crazy. “Didn’t do anything wrong. I fucking killed that bitch, Heidi.”
Gone was the ladylike demeanor as Vivian responded, sounding like a truck driver.
“What the fuck do you mean you killed her? You’ve been blackmailing me all this time, and you killed her?”
“She was blackmailing me, sucking me dry. I took money from work that I shouldn’t have taken and then lost it gambling. I was paying it back, but I made the mistake of mentioning it to Heidi.”
Darcy jumped on that. “How did you know her?”
“I met her through Dane.”
It was clear to Darcy that by knowing her, Todd meant in the biblical sense. “So a little pillow talk and you find yourself being blackmailed.”
“That’s pretty low, even for Heidi,” said Vivian. Darcy had to agree with Vivian on that point.
“She was a self-serving bitch. I was in way over my head, so badly that I ended up borrowing the money to pay back my company. Heidi still