Cara pulled her phone from the pocket of her hoodie and placed it on the table between them. Wyatt glanced down at the blank screen then up at her, a question in his eyes. “You want me to listen in?”
A lump rose in her throat. Unable to trust her voice, Cara simply nodded.
He eyed the phone askance. “Do they know where you are?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.” When his brows drew down, she knew the time had finally come to explain how complicated her dealings with her business partners had become. “My relationship with Chris and Tom has grown...distant over the past year or so.”
“Distant as in contentious?”
She shook her head, dismissing the notion a smidge too quickly. “No, I wouldn’t say so,” she hedged. Wyatt lowered his arms and crossed them over his chest. He didn’t speak. A tactic which proved more compelling than she cared to admit. “We’ve grown up. Grown apart. There hasn’t been a fight or anything.”
What she didn’t tell him was she was almost one hundred percent certain the lack of friction could be attributed to her unwillingness to engage. The truth of the matter was, she wasn’t as involved in the day-to-day running of LYYF as either Chris or Tom. Until this latest onslaught of abuse, she’d simply considered their arrangement a convenient division of labor. She handled the content. Chris kept them in capital and worked publicity like a pro. And the whole house of cards was built on a platform Tom created. The collaborative efforts of the company’s early days were long gone. Now, instead of pizza, beers and brainstorms, they had conference calls.
“Tell me about them,” he prompted.
She raised a shoulder and let it fall. “You’ve probably already read most of it.”
“Give it to me from your perspective.”
“Chris handles the money matters. Always has. He likes wheeling and dealing. Being in the middle of the action. He bought a place in Palo Alto the minute money started coming in and moved up there to be in the center of it all. Tom stayed down in LA for a while longer, but he hated the congestion. The only things he needs to be happy are surfing, solitude and a keyboard, so he bought himself a multimillion-dollar shack near Big Sur. I stayed put.”
“You never wanted to live anywhere else?”
She gave him a rueful smile. “I was still chasing fame in Hollywood, remember?”
“Then it found you on the web,” Wyatt concluded. “So the three of you live and work in completely separate areas?”
She nodded. “Yes. In both the company and geographically. Which isn’t an issue. We’re a digital company. There’s no need for us to share office space.” She shrugged. “We have operations offices for the tech side of things in Mountain View, and my content team has a small production studio near me in Silver Lake.”
Wyatt took a moment to process the information. His gaze dropped to the phone again, then he asked, “Do you like your partners?”
She should have been startled by his bluntness, but Cara was becoming adept at cop speak. He was trying to catch her off guard. He didn’t realize she had no reason to have her guard up. Not here. And not with him.
“I do.”
The answer was simple and mostly true. Chris had grown more than a little pompous, but he’d never been lacking in the self-esteem department. Tom was surlier and more reticent with her these days, but she’d chalked it up to a natural drift. Plus, the run-up to the stock offering was forcing him out of his happy place behind a keyboard and into the spotlight. A part of her hoped they’d both revert to the easygoing guys she’d met on dormitory move-in day, but she knew it wasn’t likely. She wasn’t the same starry-eyed young dreamer she’d been then, either.
“Have you ever...?” he started, then stopped. She looked up at him, all too aware of what his next question would be. She’d been asked dozens of times. Still, for some reason, it nettled to know it would be coming from Wyatt. But when he spoke, his surety surprised her. “You’ve never been romantically involved with either of them.”
She shook her head. “No. I mean, Chris hit on me once. He’d come home from a party drunk our freshman year. I didn’t take it personally, though. The minute I said no, he turned his attention to another girl on our floor.” She gave him a weak smile. “As far as I know, he hasn’t changed much. Chris’s focus has always been money. The business. Women come and they go,” she explained with a dismissive wave. “I’ve never known him to be serious about anyone.”
“And Tom?”
“Tom was as focused as Chris, but more on the nuts and bolts. We, uh, he liked what I was doing with the meditation stuff. Tom was the one who convinced Chris to put it out there. They were light on content, and as I told you before, I was working for takeout in the early days.”
“And your relationship with him never...crossed any lines?”
Her cheeks heated, but she held his gaze as she dismissed the notion. “No. I think... There was a time when I thought maybe he had feelings for me,” she admitted. Gritting her teeth to ward off the blush threatening, she pushed through. “But I didn’t, um, encourage him, and he never...pushed.” She looked down at her hands, then chanced a peek at him from under her lashes. “I think his feelings sort of...fizzled. You know how it is. Nothing more than a crush.”
“Who do you want to call first?” he prompted.
“Tom,” she answered without hesitation.
Wyatt made a sort of there-it-is motion to the phone, and Cara couldn’t help feeling she’d given her growing discomfiture away. Curling her lips in, she bit down gently as she took up the phone and dialed the number she’d jotted in her spiral-bound notebook. The call went directly to voicemail. When the tone sounded, she swallowed hard and did her best to keep her tone chipper. Upbeat.
“Hey, Tom. It’s me. I guess Zarah has been keeping you guys up to date with what’s happening with me. I, um, well, I was only checking in. Give me a call when you can,” she finished, then jabbed at the red button to end the call.
“Well. Okay. Strange,” she muttered under her breath.
Wyatt tapped a finger on the table to prompt her to look up at him. “Why strange?”
She exhaled long and low, her lips curving in a sad smile. “I can’t remember the last time he didn’t take my call.”
“It’s an unknown number.”
She allowed her smile to grow and the blush to come. “Right. Makes sense. Logically. Feels strange though.”
“Do you want to try Chris, or wait until after Tom calls you back?”
Cara caught the corner of her lip between her teeth. Staring down at the phone with its generic background and out-of-the-box ringtone, she tried to smother the unease she felt with Wyatt’s confidence the call would be returned.
“I’ll call him now,” she said, grabbing the phone before she lost her nerve.
Once again, her call went to voicemail. She could feel Wyatt’s all-consuming stare taking in every word and each morsel of nuance as she spoke. Drawing on all her years of training, Cara left the same chipper message for him, careful to say nothing more or less than she had to Tom.
When she hung up, a heavy blanket of silence fell over the room. Unable to sit still and wait, she pushed out of her chair. “More coffee?”
Wyatt declined with a shake of his head. “Your eyeballs are going to start spinning.”
“I’m going to grab some water.”
When she returned with two glasses filled with tinkling ice cubes, he was speaking into his own phone.
“No, I appreciate you calling me back, man,” he said to the mystery caller. Mouthing an apology, he got up from the table as she reclaimed her seat, motioning his intention to take the call outside.
Cara sat at the dining table, studying the porcelain figurines her grandmother had collected for as long as Cara could remember. Her mother had helped Cara pick a new one for every birthday and Christmas Grandma June had celebrated. She’d displayed them on nearly every open surface at the old house. Now they stayed locked in a glass case, waiting for someone to take notice of them.
At times she felt like one of those Precious Moments dolls. There were days she felt her contributions to LYYF captured something innately human and essential. Other days, she wondered if she was purely decorative. She picked up her silent phone and scowled at it. The dark screen of her phone bounced her reflection back at her and she quickly altered her expression. There had been a time when she’d spent hours looking into mirrors, trying to nail the emotions with a simple shift in facial features. She could, when necessary, inject deep feeling into her tone.
Tom and Chris used to love it when she drew on her theatrical training to place their delivery or drive-through orders. “Tacos!” she’d exclaim into the speaker, breathless with desperation. “I need six tacos and a bean burrito or they’ll kill me!” But LA servers were often actors or wannabe actors themselves. They rarely rose to the bait, even when she gave a performance her best friends declared Oscar-worthy.
“I called a guy I knew from the academy,” Wyatt said as he strode back into the room, jolting her from her memories.
“Yeah?” she managed.
“Ryan Hastings,” he said with a nod. “Worked for years on protection duty. He left the force last year to start his own security and protection firm up in Bentonville.”
“Ryan Hastings,” she repeated. “Why does his name sound familiar?”
“He was involved in a pretty high-profile case last year. Some big-shot attorney and his son were killed. Ryan was assigned to protect the widow. Turns out the guy’s brother, a US senator, was involved.”
“Yes, I remember hearing about it.” She mustered a self-effacing smile. “Probably from my mother. I’m not big on absorbing the news of the world.”
“It can do a number on you.” Wyatt nodded. “I limit how much I take in too and try to get information from a cross section of sources.”
“Wise,” she affirmed.
The default ringtone on the mobile phone in front of her rang out. Cara glanced at the screen and drew in a deep breath. “It’s Tom.” Without looking to him for direction, she swiped to accept the call, then activated the speaker. When Wyatt sank back in his seat, she understood he meant to listen in unnoticed.
“Tom.” She exhaled her old friend’s name.
“Cara, are you okay? I heard about your house,” he told her, sounding genuinely upset.
“Wow. It made regional coverage?” She shot Wyatt raised eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have figured more than a mention on LA Today .”
There was a moment of hesitation on Tom’s end. “Zarah sent me a link.”
“Ah. Okay. Makes sense.”
“She said you weren’t home?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Any word on the damages?”
“I haven’t made it back to see for myself yet, but I’m told it’s all fixable.”
“Thank goodness.” Tom released a gusty sigh. “Where are you? Are you coming back before New York?”
When she met Wyatt’s gaze, he gave an imperceptible shake of his head, but shrugged as if to say it was her call as to what to tell him.
“Zarah has booked me a flight home.” Her tongue tangled on the last word. LA had been her home for years, but now it may as well have been a million miles away. An awkward beat passed in which no one spoke.
“Yeah, uh, I think she said something about you coming back when she sent the news. Sorry. You know how distracted I get.”
“I do. Anyway, I should get in late tonight.” Feeling disheartened by the ever-widening distance between them, she grasped for conversational straws. “When are you heading east?”
“Day after tomorrow.” The dullness in his tone told her he wasn’t looking forward to making the trip, even if it meant he returned to the West Coast a billionaire. “I got the files you sent for the bedtime meditation series. Good stuff.”
This was about as effusive as Tom ever was about the content she provided. Usually his persona of a disengaged, flighty genius amused her, but she found she was not in the mood to be dismissed. “Should be good for another ten million or so downloads,” she said, affecting the same offhanded tone.
“What?” Tom coughed, then chuckled. “Oh, yeah. At least.”
Irked by the stilted conversation, she decided to introduce a whole new topic. “Hey, did you also hear some guy tried to kidnap me at gunpoint?” she asked in a mockingly bright tone. “With a real gun and everything. Guess you can believe some of the stuff you read on the forums after all.”
“Cara, I’m so sorry about what happened,” he said in a rush of words. “I mean, you know I’m happy you’re okay. I’d hate for you to get hurt—”
His verbal stumbling and bumbling only angered her more. He’d never been the most socially adroit guy, but this was beyond ridiculous.
“Can’t kill the cash cow.” She smiled as she said it, but a cold knot formed in her belly. Needing to end this torture, she leaned in, her face close to the phone. “I’ll see you in New York, Tom. Safe travels.” She ended the call with an angry jab of her forefinger.
When she looked up, she found Wyatt staring at her, brows raised. “And he’s the one you’re closer to?”
“He’s...Tom. His mind is always miles down the road, you know?” She took a steadying breath. “I’m mostly used to it, but sometimes it would be nice if he could at least try living in the present.”
Wyatt nodded. “There’s this great meditation app I use...”
She gave an appreciative chuckle. “When he said the files I sent for the new series are good, I can guarantee he was talking about the audio quality, not the content.” The corner of her mouth kicked up in a smirk. “Tom considers sleep a waste of productive hours.”
“But Chris has to know content is king,” Wyatt argued. “I mean, he’s the guy out there pushing for investors and users, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Chris likes to say I’m the best impulse buy he’s ever made.”
“Whoa.” Wyatt blinked and fell back in his chair. “Please tell me he’s joking.”
“I’d say it’s about eighty-five percent joke,” she conceded.
His brows drew down. “Do you ever think about leaving? Selling out and going off to do whatever you want to do?”
“Sure, I think about it.” She shrugged. “The question is, what would I do? Actresses have a much narrower window when it comes to breaking into the business. Mine’s pretty much closed. There’s off-screen work, but there my success with LYYF may work against me.”
“How?”
“Well, my voice is fairly recognizable now.” She gave him a wan smile. “Having a familiar voice can be an advantage for men—look at Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones. But women doing voice-over work? Sure, you get the occasional celebrities pushing perfume at Christmastime, or splash-washing their fully made-up faces for some beauty brand, but they’re mainly hired for the on-camera work, not to be the voice of the product.”
“And you’re already inherently entwined with another brand,” he said with grim understanding.
“Exactly.”
She was saved from further discussion of her personal and professional choices by the buzzing of her phone. A peek at the display showed Chris’s number. She smiled grimly and stretched a hand out to accept the call. “And now contestant number two.”
She swiped the screen and called out, “Hey, Chris,” before Wyatt even straightened in his chair.
“Cara, holy cripes,” her longtime business partner gushed. “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been worried sick ever since Zarah told me what happened.”
“What happened a couple days ago, or what happened last night?” Cara prodded.
“Last night? What happened last night?”
She looked up and met Wyatt’s eyes. Chris sounded truly perplexed.
“Someone set my house on fire.”
“The house where you’re staying in Alabama?” he asked, sounding genuinely aghast.
She and Wyatt shared an amused smirk. “Arkansas. And no. I meant my house in LA,” she corrected.
“No way! The little place in Los Feliz?”
“Yes.” She leaned in closer. “You hadn’t heard? I thought maybe Zarah—”
“Oh, she may have,” he interrupted. “I’ve been running all over New York taking meeting after meeting,” he said in a rush. “But you weren’t there, right? You’re in, uh, Arkansas?”
“Zarah booked me on a flight to LAX this evening.” She held Wyatt’s stare but said no more.
“Hey, Cara, you think you might consider hiring some security,” Chris suggested. “At least until all this stuff blows over. I think we may have been a bit...”
In her mind, Cara filled the empty air space with a few choice adjectives: condescending ... dismissive ?
“I mean, you never know when to take the trolls seriously. Am I right?”
“Right,” she replied flatly.
She stared at the phone screen, wishing they were on a video call. It was hard to get a read on this version of Chris. She’d grown so used to thinking of him as little more than her business partner. She’d almost forgotten they were once good friends.
“So, yeah, maybe it’s time for us to be more proactive about security. For you, and maybe all three of us?”
Cara couldn’t remember the last time Chris’s innate confidence had seemed so shaken. Now she wished she could have her old cavalier Chris back. His obvious worry made her feel all the more exposed. Picking up the pen Wyatt abandoned, she twirled it through her fingers like a baton.
“Maybe. I’ll look into it,” she promised, her gaze darting back up to Wyatt.
“Let me know how things are when you get back to LA,” Chris insisted. “When are you coming east?”
Not wanting to be pinned down to anything resembling a schedule, she kept her answer as vague as possible. “I’ll be there a day or two before to do any media you want me to handle and will probably beat a path out of there right after. You know I’m not a New York girl.”
“Some actor you are,” he teased, echoing an old refrain. “Aren’t you all supposed to claim to want to have a serious stage career?”
“Not me,” she answered, trying to muster some of her old bravado as she tossed out the line he expected from her. “I never said I wanted to be an actress. I want to be a star.”
“You are a star,” Chris replied. “The investors love you. We all do. Be careful and I’ll see you next week.”
Three long beeps sounded to indicate the end of the call. She pressed her lips together to stave off an unexpected rush of emotion. Dropping the pen to the table with a clatter, she pushed back and escaped the dining room before Wyatt could get a word out. She didn’t know what to say anymore. Everything seemed to be the opposite of what it should be.
Roscoe lifted his big, square head and let out a soft woof when she pushed through the screen door onto the porch. She stood at the rail, her arms crossed tight across her chest, staring out at the spot where the old house once stood. Her jaw clenched tight, she shivered when the crisp autumn breeze cut through the cotton sweatshirt she wore. Tugging the sleeves down over her hands, she scowled down at the discount store athletic wear. Why hadn’t Zarah included some regular clothes? Did she think Cara would be practicing sun salutations and Savasana while on the run from her tormentors?
Cara clamped down on her uncharitable thoughts, her fingers biting into the thin cotton fabric as she hugged herself again. Zarah had done her best. She’d found clothing and other necessities at a store with delivery while sitting in her snug home office over a thousand miles away. She should be grateful for the ease and comfort of the clothing. For her safety. She should be happy there were other people who were glad she was alive. And she was.
“Cara?”
The quiet, husky timbre of Wyatt’s voice sent a different sort of shiver through her. Roscoe, who’d settled back in his customary repose, did little more than open an eye. Her cheeks flamed as she heard the hinges on the screen door squeak. She didn’t dare turn to look at him.
“You want me to grab one of your mom’s jackets?”
“I’m okay.”
She clearly wasn’t. Cara could almost feel him struggling to suppress the urge to argue the point. But to his credit, he retreated, the hinges creaking again. “How about I put on a fresh pot of coffee?”
A sob rose in her throat. Cara bludgeoned the knot of emotion with a short, sharp laugh. “I thought you were worried about spinning eyeballs.”
“I’m a cop. I’m trained to withstand torturous levels of overcaffeination. I was worried about your eyeballs.”
She turned to look at him, hoping he’d assume the color in her cheeks came courtesy of the wind. “Thank you. I wasn’t quite up to my eyeballs yet, but didn’t want you to feel emasculated.”
“I appreciate your concern,” he intoned gravely. He reached out to the side, pulled a fleece-lined denim jacket from the hall tree and popped the screen door open wide enough to thrust it at her. “I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re ready to talk.”
She gave herself no more than five minutes to stew, sulk and otherwise sort through the swirl of conflicting emotions before she headed back into the house. Roscoe opted to relinquish his sunny spot in favor of shelter as well. She shrugged out of the jacket and hung it on its customary hook before following the old dog to the kitchen.
Wyatt was measuring grounds into the basket when she entered the room. Rather than jumping in to help him, Cara stopped at the table and watched. His movements were economical, but fluid. Almost graceful. He was comfortable moving around her parents’ kitchen. She’d never pictured herself bringing a man home. Not that she’d brought him there in any sort of romantic way. But she’d never pictured it at all.
She’d never invited Chris or Tom to accompany her on trips home. Like most people from the coast, they considered anyplace west of Philadelphia akin to traveling to the outback. Tom had been offered an obscene amount of money to speak at a prestigious convention in Chicago and refused. To her partners, the middle of the country was an unappealing wilderness filled with dangerous creatures and backward people.
As Wyatt poured water into the coffee maker’s reservoir, she felt an unexpected twist of sympathy for them. They would never know the pleasure of waking to the scent of strong black coffee and fresh-baked biscuits. They’d never know what a relief it was to have conversations with people who spoke slowly, choosing their words with thought and ending their sentences declaratively, rather than as questions. And there was no doubt in her mind which rock they needed to kick over next.
She gripped the back of her father’s chair. “I think you’re right. We need to take a closer look at Chris and Tom.”
Wyatt stilled for a moment, then reached for the dishcloth hanging beside the sink to wipe his hands. When he turned to face her, his eyes were full of sympathy and a familiar resolve. “Ryan Hastings said the same thing. He says the threat almost always stems from a source close to the vic—uh, person of interest.”
She gave him a wan smirk. “Thanks for not calling me a victim.”
“You aren’t one.” He pulled a coffee mug closer. “Maybe we need to look at Zarah too.”
Cara shrugged. “She doesn’t have anything to gain from getting rid of me, though.”
“True.” He hit the button to start the coffee brewing, then gestured to the kitchen table. “But she seems to be in the middle of everything.”
Cara conceded the point. It seemed more and more of her communication with her partners ran through Zarah these days.
Wyatt nodded. “We’ll start with a brain dump of everything you can come up with concerning your partners.” He hung the towel back on the hook, then fixed her with a look. “I asked Emma to rebook your flight for morning. If anyone asks, you can say you couldn’t make the drive to Little Rock on time. Either way, it’ll buy us a little more time on the going-to-California story.”
“Good call.” She nodded, impressed.
“I’d have handled it myself, but I couldn’t be sure the connection would be there. I’ve crashed and burned more since we’ve been here than any time since I was in high school,” he said with a grimace.
Cara laughed. “I’m sorry. And I have to say, I doubt you crashed and burned much in high school or since.”
“Thanks, but either way, tomorrow we’re driving into town to get a 5G gateway. I can’t rough it with this faulty connection any longer.”
Cara hid her smile as she moved to pull a fresh mug from the cupboard. Apparently, even the most down-to-earth men needed their creature comforts. “Sounds good.” And it did. As good as it was to feel safe and secure on the ranch, she was starting to feel restless. It would be good to get out for a little while.