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“And you didn’t, because?” I demanded. This was why I could notstandthis pretentious asshole. Who witnessed a man making threatening statements to a woman and just walked by like nothing had happened?

“They looked like a couple, and I don’t do relationship shit,” he droned in response. In typical Rook fashion, he looked incredibly bored by this conversation as a whole.

“Wow.”

He shrugged, removing his arm from the doors. “I wasn’t going to say anything to you either, but you seem all,” he gestured to me wordlessly, “this. So, I figured I’d relay it.”

“I’ll nominate you for the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” I drawled, doing the same and stepping back. “Anything else to add?”

He shrugged again before taking a few steps into the building foyer. “Good luck.” He paused, glancing over his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I hope she’s not with him.”

A fat lot of good that did either of us. “And I hope you getmiredin relationship shit, Rook,” I growled as the doors closed. “I hope you fucking drown in it.” The seam between the doors sealed, shutting out his mildly amused expression before the elevator started up. “Asshole,” I seethed. But his words started a mechanical kind of grinding in my mind, sparking ideas about what Ruth might be doing. If it had something to do with a friend’s job, then…

No. He couldn’t be that brazen.

When I reached the main entrance of Kiss-Met, I didn’t pause for chit-chat. “Gemma?” I asked Olivia.

She pointed down the hall to the left in the direction of Ruth’s office. “She’s with Janice at the moment. Could I get you anything while you wait?”

“No need.” I gave her a wave before heading straight for where I remembered Janice’s office to be. The hallways here were busier than usual, and I passed three harried-looking employees, one of whom was on the phone, and the other two who were in deep conversation. There was a whole vibe here, and itwas not a good one.

When I reached Janice’s office, I found Gemma inside, just as Olivia had indicated. Gemma’s thick, blond hair had been bunched into an untidy bun on her head, and she looked, in a word, frazzled. She had the hem of her loose, peach-colored blouse in her hands, fiddling with it, folding the fabric into a pleated fan before pulling it apart and starting all over again.

Janice stood calmly in front of an enormous panel of glass that overlooked the city, her gray-streaked brows furrowed and her features solemn. Despite that, she looked like a fucking dandelion in a bright yellow dress and accompanying sunshine-tinted shawl around her shoulders.

“… everywhere in town, and I’m telling you she’s not—” Gemma stopped talking as soon as she spotted me. Her back straightened, and she gave me a distrustful glower.

Janice angled away from the window to face me. “Dr. Reed. I wondered if that was you on the way.”

That was a weird way of saying “hello,” but alright. “Sorry to interrupt, but I was hoping to talk to Gemma.”

Gemma rounded on me. “Did you have something to do with this?” Gemma might as well have sprouted a pair of eight-foot wings and belched brimstone as she marched toward me with a draconic glare in her blue eyes.

I backed up half a step. “Whoa, shit, hang on.”

“Gemma,” Janice cautioned. “I must ask you again to calm down. I’m sure he is here for the same reasons you are.”

Gemma blew an angry breath from her nose, and I halfexpected to see an arrow-tipped tail lash out from behind her. She looked mad as hell, but I had a feeling I knew why. “She was with you, and now she’s withhim.What did you say to her?”

That little niggle of worry grew sharper. “You know that Ruth is with Vaughn?”

“And how doyouknow that?”Gemma snarled.

“She ditched me at the award ceremony,” I explained slowly. “I thought she might have told you what’s going on.”

“Hm,” Janice turned to look out the window again. “Interesting.”

Gemma wilted. “She didn’t tell me anything. She just disappeared. Then I got a call from her ex this morning.” She resumed the odd ritual of folding the hem of her shirt into a fan-like pattern. “He said he’d offered her a job, and that she’d actually taken it.” Gemma’s cartoonishly large eyes lifted from her shirt to my worried expression. “She would never do that. He was horrible to her.”

“I know,” I replied softly.

“And he said he would burn all her bridges.”

The gears in my brain slowed, winding down with a pneumatic hiss. Then they changed direction and went backward. Maybe hewasthat brazen. “I know she wouldn’t go with him. Not willingly… Unless he had threatened her with something. What else did he say on the phone?”

“She was there with him,” Gemma scowled. “But I barely even heard her voice. He asked aboutmyjob, which was really fucking weird, and then he said he’d made heran offer she couldn’t refuse. Like a mafia boss or something.”

Typical. Anyone with enough gall to kidnap a woman using blackmail likelywouldfeel obnoxiously smug with themselves. Or paranoid. Hopefully for me, a little of both. “He’s blackmailing her.”