Wicked Shadows (Steele Security Book 5) Read online

  “Uh-huh.” She turned and began walking across the manicured lawn of the estate she shared with Noah, forcing Shadow to step quickly to keep up with her.

  When they reached the terrace close to the pool, Brianna pulled out a chair and took a seat. Shadow followed suit, his sunglasses shading his eyes from the bright Florida sun, but his long face expressed his inner turmoil. He inhaled a deep breath and waited for the questions to begin.

  “You know Elle Sinclair.”

  It wasn't a question. It was a direct statement, and she expected confirmation.

  “I know Elle Moore,” he corrected. “Sinclair is a stage name. But yes, I know her. I’ve known her most of her life, actually.”

  “Ah, finally. A look into the elusive Shadow’s life.” Brianna teased him to make it seem less formal and put him more at ease.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. I know her very well. We first started seeing each other about eight years ago, but it’s been very…” He paused to search for the right word. “…sporadic.”

  “What do you mean by that? Why do I feel like there’s more to the story?”

  “I mean, for the first several years, we saw each other as much as we could. Between our jobs getting in the way. Sometimes, it was weeks apart. Sometimes, it was months apart.”

  The outer corner of her eyebrow lifted, arching in a silent question. Shadow shrugged one shoulder and continued.

  “I’d show up out of the blue and surprise her. We’d spend a couple of weeks or more together, have the best time of my life, and then I’d leave again for the next job. I wouldn’t see her again until the next time I had a break in the case or between assignments.”

  She studied his face, analyzed his words, and considered what he wasn’t saying. “You’re in love with her. Aren’t you?”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny your assumption.”

  “You just confirmed it. Why not just give it an honest try, stay together and see what you can have?”

  “We already have too many strikes against us.” He shook his head and dropped his shielded gaze to the ground.

  “She’s a good bit younger than you, isn’t she?”

  The humorless scoff before he replied confirmed her suspicion. “Yeah, that’s actually the first strike against us.”

  “You’re what? Thirty-five, close to thirty-six?”

  Shadow nodded, and his full lips disappeared into a thin line.

  "I think I read she's around twenty-eight now. That's honestly not a big deal, Shadow."

  "Not now, no. But considering Elle's older brother was one of my best friends when we were growing up, the age gap doesn't help."

  "I see." Brianna nodded slowly, realization settling in her mind. "You knew her as a little kid."

  "When she was around seven, she developed a major crush on me. She'd follow Jeff and me around, spying on us from behind trees. It didn't matter what we were doing. She just wanted to be close to us. At the time, she was just my buddy's kid sister. You know? I never even considered…" His voice trailed off, leaving his thoughts unspoken, but there was no need to say it.

  “You never considered anything would be kindled between you two, many years later, now that you’re both adults,” Brianna surmised.

  With a heavy sigh, Shadow relented and decided to lay it all out for her, knowing she'd tell him the truth, regardless if he wanted to hear it or not. "Strike one, she's my buddy's little sister. That's just an unspoken rule every guy knows not to break."

  “Wrong.” Brianna shook her head vehemently and stopped his confession with her firm tone.

  “What?” Shadow recoiled, jerking his head back as he openly gaped at her. “What do you mean ‘wrong’?”

  "Chaise is Noah's little sister, and she's happily married to one of his best friends. Do you think Noah would want anything less for her? Bull is his brother by choice, but now, also by marriage. Noah wouldn't change that for anything, no matter how much he enjoys giving Bull a hard time about it."

  “Hmm,” Shadow reflected. “You may have a point there.”

  “Of course I do. Please continue.”

  "I'm kind of afraid to now. Strike two, we've already covered. Elle's so much younger than I am. Believe me when I say I see the beautiful woman she's grown into. But I can't help but think, sometimes, that it's just wrong because of that little girl I remember."

  His suspicion of Brianna’s reaction was unmasked as he waited for the tongue-lashing he knew would come. His argument was weak, even he knew that. But his self-induced illusion had adequately sustained him for the past eight years. Somehow, he knew, deep down, Brianna would obliterate his delusion and smack him in the face with a dose of reality.

  She tried to hide her mirth but failed magnificently. Her beautiful smile didn't last long, though, before it turned into a full belly laugh. Tears pooled in her eyes as she pointed at him, attempted to speak, but couldn't form the words over her outbursts of laughter. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back in the chair, forcefully blew out his breath, and refused to look at her.

  “Okay.” She finally managed to speak and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Let me catch my breath.”

  The thin line that formed his lips disappeared completely, and he attempted to project boredom with the entire conversation. It took all of Brianna's restraint not to start laughing again.

  "Shadow, this is me you're talking to here. You know better than to say something stupid like that to me. She's not that little girl anymore, and you're not that young teenager anymore. Eight years' difference in age is nothing after you're both legal adults. The only reason you even mentioned knowing her as a child is because you're still hung up on her being the ‘little’ sister of your friend. She's his younger sister, but she’s not little anymore. And you, my friend, are reaching, but you’re only fooling yourself.

  “Now, let’s hear strike three.”

  "Strike three is a little harder to get around. Even you won't be able to argue with it," Shadow replied with confidence.

  “Try me.”

  "She started modeling when she was twelve and moved to California with her parents after Jeff and I had already left home for college. When I first saw her in commercials, ads, and magazines, I was so proud of her. Kind of like a big brother would be. The older she got, the prettier she became. Then almost overnight, she was fucking drop-dead gorgeous. Even then, I only admired her from afar.

  "While I was with the CIA, I was on assignment here in Miami, and she was sent here by the modeling agency. She called me when she landed, and our first three-week escapade began. When she first called me, I thought it was nothing more than a rekindled friendship. Getting to know each other again after so many years apart, mostly catching up on her life since I couldn't very well share the majority of mine.

  "But the attraction was there from the beginning, and it was intense. Somehow, in those three weeks, I fell hard for her. The last night she was here, I knew I should just walk away and let it be her summer fling, but I couldn’t. We’d spent every night together up until then, and I wanted that last night with her. I drove her to the airport early the next morning for her flight, and she shocked the hell out of me. She asked me to move to LA with her."

  “What did you say?”

  He removed his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes, stalling for as long as possible. He lifted his gaze, and Brianna was surprised at the sadness she recognized in them. "I asked her to stay here with me. Of course, she couldn't. But what shocked me even more than when she asked me to go with her was I honestly meant it when I asked her to stay here with me."

  "But she couldn't. Her work was in LA, and she had to go back to it."

  “Right, she had to go back to the bright lights and camera flashes that lit up everything around her. My job, my whole world, is in the darkness. In the shadows. Covert operations and instantly recognizable supermodels aren’t exactly good bedfellows.”

  “Did you ever tell her you were with the CIA?”

&nb
sp; “No. I couldn’t tell her because I was still classified as an active covert agent.”

  Shadow turned to fully face Brianna before he continued. His expression became smug when he knew he had her dead to rights. She couldn't argue with his logic about their jobs. The odds of being a model who was also a household name were minuscule. The ability to conduct undercover governmental operations with invisibility was vital to national security and his very life. No way could she call him out on that.

  “Strike three is our chosen professions. Neither of us can give up what we’ve worked so hard to attain, what we’ve invested so many years in perfecting.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Huh?”

  “I. Call. Bullshit.” She emphasized each word and leaned toward him as she spoke. “That may have been true at first, but you’ve been out of the CIA for a while now. You’ve been with Steele Security for the last few years, not in some hostile, third-world country on a clandestine operation. If you hadn’t been so stubborn this whole time, you could’ve rekindled this relationship long ago.”

  “Rekindled? Who says we’ve burned out?”

  "Fine. You've had years to legitimize it, then. You've had plenty of opportunities to come out of the darkness and the shadows and walk with Elle in the light. But you haven't. Because you're scared."

  “You think I’m scared?”

  “I know you are.” She smirked.

  “Of what? I can’t wait to hear this.”

  “You’re a career bachelor, Shadow. You come and go as you please. Even in her life—you said you just show up out of the blue with no warning when it’s convenient for you. She drops everything for you every time you appear, doesn’t she? Gives up her plans without hesitation. Devotes every waking moment to you.”

  "Yeah." He drew out the one-syllable word, hesitant to hear the rest of Brianna's scolding.

  “Hmm.”

  He didn't like that sound. Nothing good ever came from that sound. "What?"

  "Just wondering. In the last eight years of this so-called relationship, what exactly have you given up for Elle?"

  Her words hit him like a sledgehammer to his stomach, stealing his breath and rendering him speechless. He was unable to argue with her logic, because she’d been correct in everything she'd said to that point. He'd only fooled himself into believing his pathetic excuses. There were some events from the past year he couldn’t bring himself to tell Brianna, though. Truths he had difficulties dealing with in his own mind, much less verbalizing. The most frightening unanswered questions popped into his mind without Brianna even addressing them first.

  How long ago did Elle figure me out?

  Are the rumors about her and Jax truths instead?

  Has she given up on me and moved on to him?

  "Yeah, that's what I thought. Shadow, only you can decide what you really want. You've been alone for a long time, and maybe you like it that way. But if she's the one you love, and you can't stand to think of her with someone else, you need to do something about this situation soon. That news about her and Jax could be complete hyperbole. But is that a chance you think you should take?"

  “Thanks for the talk, Sunny. As usual, you’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  Shadow strode into his twelfth-floor condo and walked straight out onto the balcony overlooking the ocean. His thoughts had stayed on Elle since he left Noah's house, but his conversation with Brianna struck a sensitive chord he didn’t even know he had. With his forearms resting on the railing, he stared off into the night, second-guessing his every decision and revisiting his every mistake.

  His mind soon drifted back to their first night together eight years earlier.

  He could still feel her quivering under his touch. She tried so hard to hide her apprehension, but he could be blind and deaf and still feel it rolling off her like the waves crashing on the shore. The rapid rise and fall of her chest, the pink tinge of her cheeks, and the dilation of her pupils were all telltale signs. Signs he was trained to identify.

  But he couldn’t deny her desire for him.

  The ringing of his personal cell phone pulled him from his ruminations, giving him a welcome reprieve.

  Until he saw the caller’s name.

  5

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Devon, I need your help.”

  Jeff’s frantic tone made the hair on the back of Shadow’s neck stand at attention and salute. There was only one reason why Jeff would react with such strong emotion.

  “Tell me.”

  “Elle is missing. She called me a couple of nights ago. It was late and she was scared. She said she thought someone was watching her. I should’ve listened to my gut and flew out there the minute we hung up. She convinced me she was just being paranoid. If anything has happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Jeff’s agitated state had him spewing information at Shadow in half thoughts and out of sequence events. Shadow couldn’t make sense of Jeff’s ramblings, though he understood why he reacted so forcefully. The mere mention that Elle was missing was enough to push Shadow over the edge. But his friend called for a reason—for his expertise in high-pressure situations. He’d need all his wits about him, and all the details he could uncover, to get through it himself.

  “Calm down and start over. This time, start from the beginning and walk me through everything. Every word she said. Don’t leave anything out, no matter how small you think it is.”

  Shadow listened intently as Jeff took a deep breath, released it slowly, then recounted the entire conversation. He told Shadow about Elle calling late Pacific Time when she’d returned home from the lot, about the missing girls and fake press stories, and how she felt so uncomfortable she was at the point where she wanted armed bodyguards with her at all times.

  “I’m kicking my own ass right now for staying here instead of flying out there to be with her. She said she’d call Mom, Dad, and Mark to alert them. Mark could’ve stayed with her until I got there.” The guilt infused in Jeff’s tone was palpable, thinking he’d let his little sister down when she needed him the most. “She never calls me that late, Devon. That should’ve been the first clue to slap me upside the head and make me see something was seriously wrong.”

  Shadow listened to his friend, soaked in every word and every detail, then tried to soothe him as best he could.

  “Hey. Quit beating yourself up. That’s my job. How long do you usually go without calling to check on her? Despite the number of times I’ve told you to stay close to her so you can protect her every second of every day.”

  “You’re not helping. And I talk to my sister every few days. Our schedules aren’t always conducive to multiple conversations per day. But this is different—she called me and she was scared. Now I can’t reach her or Beth. Mark is on his way down there now, but he runs the winery for our parents. He doesn’t have a clue where to start looking for her.

  “I need your help, Devon. Elle needs you. I feel it—something bad has happened to her.”

  “I’m on the next flight to LAX. I’ll find her no matter what it takes. You said you can’t reach Beth either. Do you know if they were together on the set?”

  “Yes, Elle said Beth is her makeup artist. They’ve been riding back and forth to work together, especially since they both work such long hours. It just makes sense since they live together. It’s not a good sign that they’re both missing, is it?”

  “Jeff, I know you’re on the verge of doing something really stupid. I can hear the panic in your voice. The more you obsess over what you should’ve, could’ve, would’ve done, the more likely you are to make a rash decision. Swear to me you’ll give me time to do some digging around before you go off half-cocked and make things worse.” Shadow’s request more closely resembled an order.

  “You have my word. I know you work for a security firm, but I didn’t know who else to call. I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

  “Don’t be. I wouldn’t have it any other way
. I’ll call you when I get to LA. But if you hear anything else before then, don’t wait to contact me.”

  Shadow and Jeff hung up with the promise to keep each other updated on any new developments. Shadow retrieved a phone from a hidden safe in the wall. He stared at it longer than necessary, hating the fact that he was forced to use it at all. But she was worth it. He would do whatever it took to ensure she was safe and sound, even if that meant he’d be indebted to the CIA again.

  With the phone powered on, he hit the send button and made the call. After two rings, the call connected and Shadow squeezed his eyes shut while he waited for the coded answer.

  “Luigi’s Pizza Delivery. What type of crust would you like?”

  “Deep dish, extra garlic, extra cheese.”

  “Shadow,” came the surprised response. “It’s been a long time, my man. Must be something important for you to call in. What can I do for you?”

  “Hey, Steadman. Good to hear your voice again. You know I need your help.”

  “Whatever you need. Lay it on me.”

  “What have you heard about actresses disappearing lately?”

  “You sure you want to go there, Shadow? You’re cleared to be read in, but once I do, there’s no turning back,” Steadman warned.

  With his thumb and index finger firmly pinching the bridge of his nose, Shadow considered his options.

  “If Elle Sinclair is involved, then read me in.”

  “Just remember you asked for it after you hear all the classified details. Don’t show up in my apartment in the middle of the night and kill me,” Steadman replied with a chuckle.

  “You don’t live in an apartment. Are you testing me, or did you really think you could hide from me?”

  With a nervous clearing of his throat, Steadman gave Shadow the case details. Every point relayed made Shadow’s heart move up into his throat a little bit more. By the time Steadman finished reading him in on the classified file, Shadow knew his involvement in the case was Elle’s only chance.

  “Create my new identity and backstory. Make it as bad as you can, then transfer the files to me. This won’t be easy, but I need inside as of yesterday,” Shadow commanded.