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Count Alice and I In For Pepperoni
GREYSON
Anxiety ate at my gut when the lights dimmed, and the auctioneer took his place at the podium.Where in the hell was Alice?
“If you’ll excuse me, I have to take this,” Royce said, kissing Miranda’s cheek as he held up his illuminated phone. I nodded as she smiled endearingly, clinging to his fingers for one extra beat before releasing him to answer. Their oblivious nonchalance didn’t ease my growing sense of unease. The dress was likely past redemption, and my only explanation was that our server knew where the hostess had spares, and they were looking for one. But that seemed awfully presumptuous for my wife and even more so for our waitress. Shifting in my seat, I glanced back toward the open double-door archway, hoping to spot long dark hair and that delectable gold dress.
Nothing. Just the security guards at their posts.God damn it.
Perhaps I’d grown paranoid in my years of service or in the short stretch since we’d startedThunderstrike.But I couldn’t shake it. This is why my phone lighting up where I’d discarded it on the table had me following in Royce’s wake without a preamble. Alice.
“Hey,” I breathed once I was in the hallway. “Are you okay?”
“Yes and no,” she answered breathlessly, a quiver in her tone sending me walking definitively down the hardwood floor past the ridiculous mounted torches.
“What does that mean?” Surveying the empty hall, I strained to hear anything that could lead me to her, coming up empty. “Where are you?”
“About that…”
“Baby, if your goal was to set me on pins and needles, you’ve been more than successful.”
“I, um…I think I found something. But I’m stuck.”
“Stuck?” Clearing my throat, I put some distance between myself and the security personnel. “You’re going to have to elaborate. Yourzipperis stuck?”
The sound of her swallow was audible over the line. “Are you alone?”
“About to be.”
“If you know who owns this monstrosity of a house, tell me I’ll be fine and order pizza.”
The Gilbert family was new money but no less known in our circle than my own. Neal and Odessa were the hosts of this evening’s auction. Where was she going with this, and why was my stomach plummeting like an elevator without a cable?
“That’s fine with me. Count Alice and I in for pepperoni.”
“Okay,” she panted, something like excitement in her tone. “Good. Have you ever suspected they were tied toObsidianor something similar? Tell me to make it two if you have or to hold the cheese if not.”
“Make that one dairy-free.” Now, my heart was hammering. Pinning my cell between my ear and shoulder, I lifted my wrist to type a message to Jax on my smartwatch. What in God’s name had she stumbled into? “But I’m going to need it to the house before we get there.”
“I’m hurrying,” she assured. “But I think I’m locked in here.”
“That’s not what I want to hear. Where were you going to order it to?”Please understand. Please, please understand.
“His office, I think?”That’s my girl.My air left in a rush of relief. “Maybe there’s more than one. But it’s down the hall, south of the staff bathroom at the back of the building.” Casually picking up my pace, I pushed for the end of the hallway, not liking a bit of this. What the hell was she thinking, snooping around a place like this? With security crawling around like ants. “Listen, Grey, I think it’s connected. I overheard two men talking about them being secure and someone not knowing anything and a wife as adiversion tacticand I don’t think it was coincidence.”
“Why?”
“Max called. He intercepted some kind of communication via the device he added to my phone.”
“Awhat?”
“Never mind that.Focus. If they get to me before I get out of here, you need to hear this.” Never in my life had my heart fallen out my ass as quickly as it did now. Taking fire from enemy combatants didn’t make me feel the kind of terror that Alice in harm’s way did. Only discipline kept me silent as I glanced over my shoulder to ensure I wasn’t followed. “There’s a code. A code on the server. Max has it, but something didn’t sit right. The men in the bathroom said Passcode—Trah. Trah. Like t-r-a-h. Simple enough to deduce, they just flipped our last name. Stupid to so easily confirm my suspicions. If we apply it as a keyword on a cipher code, maybe it will mean something, but Max isn’t through the numbers yet. He needed me to get closer to the computer, so I followed the second man down the long hallway, which is how I got locked in here.”
“I really, reallyhateanchovies,” I ground out, wanting to throttle her more than anything. What was she thinking? Worse.What if she was right?Were we sitting in the spider’s nest?
She huffed a nervous little laugh, and I clung to the sound as I looked back one last time before ducking down the long, shadowed corridor. The subtle sound of my shoes settling on the hardwood had my body bristling.