The Billionaire Op - Lori Ryan Page 0,33

distracted by one of the other guests, Jennie slipped through the door and walked down the hall of the private area.

There were offices on each side of the hallway, but they were all quiet and empty. Except for the office at the end. Jennie heard voices coming from that one and she recognized the speakers immediately. The Masters brothers.

She walked quietly down the carpeted hall ’till she stood close enough to hear the conversation. She didn’t know the voices well enough to tell right off which one was Matt Masters and which one was Alan Masters, so she listened as the conversation developed.

“Shit! There has to be ten thousand in here this time,” one voice said.

“So wh-wh-what?” came the reply. That must be Alan.

He had a stutter that was so mild most of the time, it was barely noticeable, but something was making it more pronounced now. Nerves, maybe?

“We can’t keep running these large amounts through here. Someone will notice if we don’t stick to smaller numbers,” said the other voice, which Jennie now surmised must be Matt.

“We have to run through whatever Rick tells us to. He w-won’t let us stop now,” said Alan.

“He has to let us stop. We didn’t agree to this much. And, I’ll tell you one thing, brother. There’s no way all of this is for him anymore. No way he’s taking in ten thou a week. I’m telling you, he’s got us cleaning money for other people now. If we’re gonna take that kind of risk, I want a bigger cut.”

Jennie bit her cheeks to keep from gasping and backpedaled down the hallway. She and Chad had gotten into something a lot more dangerous than they were used to.

Well, at least than she was used to. Chad dealt with this kind of thing all the time when he was in the military, but she sure as hell didn’t have this kind of experience.

Jennie’s breathing suddenly sounded too loud in her ears—as if it would fill the hallway and alert the brothers to her presence any minute now.

In her rush to get away from a conversation she shouldn’t be listening to, she tripped over a decorative table, knocking over the vase of flowers that sat at its center. The clunk of the thick glass hitting the hard wood seemed to echo around her.

“What was that?” she heard from the room down the hall.

She panicked, looking around her frantically, for a way to get away. A place to hide. She was too far from the door that led to the lobby to make it down the hallway safely. She ducked into another open doorway. An office.

There was nowhere to hide in the room she’d entered. The desk was open at the bottom on both sides, so she couldn’t crouch down there. The door opened out into the hallway so there was no way hide behind it. She was trapped.

Jennie looked down and saw her hands were shaking. She focused on slowing her breathing, listening for any sound from the hallway. She didn’t have her cell phone with her and she couldn’t remember Chad’s number to use the office phone on the desk to call him.

The hallway was quiet and still for a minute but then the telltale cadence of shoes sounded on the tile floor. Jennie knew they’d find her any second.

With a small curse, she pulled off her favorite sandals. She quickly snapped the heel off one of them. In reality, they only had a one-and-a-half-inch heel so a heel would be unlikely to snap as she was walking in them, but she was banking on the brothers not knowing that.

She braced herself with one hand on the wall in the small office and waited.

“Oh, help. Can you guys help me?” She took a couple of little hopping steps toward them. Not the direction she really wanted to go, but at this point, she needed to go toward them before she could get away from them.

“What are you doing back here? This area is off limits,” barked Alan.

“It is?” Jennie batted her eyelashes. “I’m sorry. I twisted my ankle and I thought the infirmary was back here. Can you guys help me?” She held up the broken sandal as evidence of her plight and held her breath.

The men walked toward her slowly and she couldn’t tell if they were buying her story or not. Nerves settled firmly in her stomach as she began to wish she hadn’t tried to dig so deep for information this