Caught in the Billionaire’s Embrace(33)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Marcus lifted his glass to his mouth. But the warm, mellow port did little to soothe the tumultuous thoughts tumbling in his head. So the trouble Della had found herself in in New York was criminal, after all. But which was it with her? Was she helping the authorities or hiding from them?

Who the hell was she? In a lot of ways, she seemed like a stranger to him now. But in another way, she felt even closer than she had been before.

But why and how had she disappeared so completely, not once but twice now? Because she had disappeared again. Damien hadn’t been able to find a single clue that might indicate where she was living in Chicago, how long she had been here or when she was planning to leave. Another reason why the man had made the assumption he had in the note, Marcus was certain. Della herself had said she was in trouble. Whether she was helping or hiding, it must be something pretty bad for her to have made herself so invisible.

He closed the file and tipped his glass to his lips again but the glass was empty. He grimaced as he set both the file and the glass on the end table, then rose. He started to walk away, then stopped and went back. For the glass, he told himself. To put it in the dishwasher before he went to bed.

But he picked up the file, too, and opened it again. He took out the photo of Della that had been on her ID badge at Whitworth and Stone. She was the picture of businesslike gravity, unsmiling, wearing no makeup, her short, mannish hair combed back from her face. She looked nothing like she had during the time he’d spent with her. Even after she had washed off her makeup, she had still been beautiful. Even after the inconvenience of the snow, she had still been happy.

And so had he.

That was when Marcus began to understand his obsession with finding her. Not because she was a mysterious woman in red he couldn’t get out of his mind. But because the time he’d spent with her had marked the first time in his life he’d been truly happy. He wasn’t sure of the why or when or how of it. He only knew that, with Della, he’d felt different. The same way Charlotte had entered his life when he was a teenager and guided him toward finding contentment with himself, Della had entered his life when he was an adult and guided him toward finding contentment with someone else.

That was what had always been missing before—the sharing. He had shared his life with Charlotte while she was alive, and that had made living it so much better. With Della, he had shared himself. And that made himself so much better. He had been grieving since Charlotte’s death, not just for her, but for the emptiness in his life her absence had brought with it. Over the weekend he’d spent with Della, that emptiness had begun to fill again. The hole Charlotte’s vacancy had left in his life had begun to close. The wound had begun to heal. With Della, Marcus had begun to feel again. And the feelings he had…

He started to tuck the photograph into the file, but halted. Instead, after taking his glass to the kitchen, he carried everything into his bedroom. He placed the picture of Della on his dresser, propping it up in front of a lamp there. Even if the woman in the photo didn’t look much like the one he remembered, Marcus liked having her in his home. He liked that a lot.

Nine

Two nights after finding Marcus on the internet, Della was still feeling at loose ends about everything that had happened and everything left to come. The media frenzy she had feared would follow the announcement of the arrests at Whitworth and Stone had actually been fairly mild. Geoffrey had told her that wasn’t surprising at this point, that when people were that rich and that powerful, it was easy for their attorneys to keep a tight rein on how much information was made available to the press. It would only be after the grand jury arraignment, when evidence was presented to support the charges, thereby making any arguments on the defense’s part moot, that the media storm would break. Probably with the fury of a category five hurricane. Geoffrey had also assured her, though, that by the time that happened, Della would be safely ensconced in her new life elsewhere, hidden away from any repercussions.

Hidden away from everything.

But she was doing her best not to think about any of that yet. It was Friday night, the eve of her last weekend in Chicago. On Monday, she would be returning to New York. On Tuesday, she would make her first appearance before the grand jury. In a week, give or take, she would be ushered out of this life and into a new one.

One week. That was all Della Hannan had left. After that…

Oh, boy. She really needed a glass of wine.

She changed into her pajamas, poured herself a glass of pinot noir and grabbed a book that had arrived in that morning’s mail. She was settling into a chair in the den when the doorbell of the safe house rang. To say the sound startled her was a bit of an understatement, since she jumped so hard, she knocked over her wine, spilling it over both the book and the snowflake print of her pajama shirt, leaving a ruby-red stain at the center of her chest in its wake.

No one had ever rung the doorbell of the safe house. Not even Geoffrey on those few occasions when he had been here. He always called first to tell her he was coming and at what time, and he gave a couple of quick raps and called out his name once he arrived.

She had no idea who was on the other side of the door now. Not Geoffrey, that was certain. It could be another marshal, or someone from the FBI or SEC who needed to brief her about her grand jury appearance next week. But Geoffrey would have let her know about something like that before he sent anyone over. And no such meeting would ever take place after 10:00 p.m. on a Friday night.

She wasn’t sure whether she should sit tight and pretend no one was home, or go to the bedroom for her cell phone to call Geoffrey. Any movement she made might tip-off whoever was outside. Of course, it could just be someone who’d mistaken her address for another on the street. It could be someone delivering a pizza to the wrong house. It could be neighbor kids who thought it would be funny to play a joke on the weird neighbor lady who never left her house. It could be any of those things. It could.

But Della doubted it.

As silently as possible, she closed the book and set it and her half-empty wineglass on the side table, then rose carefully from the chair. The doorbell rang again as she was taking her first step toward the bedroom, setting off explosions of heat in her belly. She went as quickly as she could to the bedroom and grabbed her phone, punching the numbers to Geoffrey’s home phone into it but not pushing the send button yet. If it was the pizza guy making a mistaken delivery, she didn’t want to bother Geoffrey for nothing.

The doorbell rang a third time as she approached the living room, but this time, it was followed by a series of quick, rapid knocks. The front drapes were drawn, as they were every evening, and there were no lights turned on in that room. Della clasped her cell phone tightly in one hand as she came to a halt at the front door, then placed the other hand over the trio of light switches to the left of it. The one closest to her turned on an overly bright bug light on the porch, something that would temporarily blind whoever was out there if she flipped it on. For the moment, however, she only pressed her eye to the peephole to see who was on the other side