Contingency Plan (Blackbridge Security #3) - Marie James Page 0,74

My new life is about finding myself, discovering the person I don’t mind being when I wake up in the morning, someone I can stand to see in the mirror before bed.

I don’t find that woman when I lock myself in the room, clicking the door lock and flipping the secondary latch after checking behind the shower curtain and under the beds. The fear I feel here all alone is another thing I can blame on Flynn. Several of his stupid horror movies started with single women staying at creepy places like this. But even though I stand in the shallow tub to get undressed with the curtain pulled, fearful that there’s a camera behind the small bathroom mirror or somewhere in the wall, I do it with my head held high, blaming the cheap shampoo for getting in my eyes as the tears fall down my cheeks.

Tomorrow will be a good day. Tomorrow will bring new beginnings and a true fresh start, one that doesn’t include Flynn Coleman.

I allow myself one final cry, the sobbing making the lumpy bed shake as I vow to move on from him.

Things get easier with time, that’s what I’ve always heard, anyway.

Chapter 29

Flynn

“Are you going to answer that?”

“Nope,” I tell Deacon after looking at the screen. I send the call straight to voicemail. If there was something important Wren needs, he’ll call Deacon. When my boss’s phone doesn’t ring, I know it’s probably just some bullshit that can wait until we’re back at the office. “Do you think this guy is leaving us waiting to assert power?”

“Who knows,” Deacon says, seemingly undisturbed that we’ve been sitting in the lobby of an office building waiting to be called back to meet a new client.

“What exactly is the job?”

“He needs added detail for an upcoming trip. The file said some people are upset with some business decisions he’s made, and he’s feeling unsafe traveling with only the two men on his payroll.”

“Translation, he’s a complete douche and doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of his actions?”

Deacon looks over at me, the easy smile he’s had all day falling from his mouth.

“Is this about Remington?”

When is it not about Remington? I look away from him. “No. Why would you ask that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, exasperation clear in his tone. “Maybe because you’ve been a growling asshole for weeks now.”

“I’m fine.”

He huffs a humorless laugh. “Been there, done that, man. You can’t fool me.”

“Not trying to, but I wish everyone would stay out of my personal life.”

“You got in my personal life months ago,” he reminds me.

“I was held captive,” I say, recalling the time I was stuck in his truck while he all but stalked his now wife, Anna.

His relationship and the way it came about gave me hope after Remington ripped me open and walked away. They came together in the end, and now they’re having a baby and are so in love it’s almost sickening to watch them when they’re within a hundred yards of each other.

But there’s been no news, no contact, nothing. Wren refuses to help me find her, and I’m pretty sure this tough love, asshole act is his way of punishing me for walking away from her in the first place. He won’t even tell me if she left St. Louis. All I got out of him was that her phone—the one with the number I forced myself to block before I got on the plane that day in New York—had been disconnected by her parents, so texting and calling her wasn’t an option.

“It’s going to work out,” he says as he looks down at his watch. “I’m giving this asshole three more minutes, and then we’re gone.”

I’ve been working behind the scenes for a while, uninterested in facing anyone besides the guys at the office. Deacon didn’t have a problem with it, probably because I spend two-thirds of the day at work, getting shit done. I can’t sleep, and I have to stay busy. The company has been benefiting from my misery, that’s for sure.

Today, however was different. He insisted I come along with him, and I know it has everything to do with Anna taking a weekend trip with her mother, and nothing to do with his desire to try to force me out from under the black cloud that settled over my entire life the minute Remington walked away from me.

My ego, that hint of narcissism every man has, whispered in my ear those