GUN PLEASE, DARLING.”
Cameron was still smiling at Tracy. It was the same easy, warm smile she remembered, from Geneva, and New York, and Hawaii and Paris. The smile that had made her feel safe. That had brought her back to life after Nick’s death.
It was true Tracy had never felt the same deep passion for Cameron that she had with Jeff. But Cameron had given her something else in their short time together.
Contentment.
Kindness.
Hope.
Now Tracy felt all three slipping through her fingers like so many grains of sand.
“Your gun, Tracy. Put it on the table, please. Slowly.”
Cameron’s tone was calm, gentle even. But his pistol was still pointed firmly between Tracy’s eyes.
“Do as he asks,” Hunter said softly.
Cameron watched like a hawk as Tracy stood up and carefully placed her gun on the walnut coffee table next to the fireplace. With each step she struggled to adjust to the new reality.
Cameron Crewe wasn’t her protector.
He wasn’t her friend.
He hadn’t come here to “save” her from Hunter Drexel or anything else.
He was the one Tracy needed saving from.
“Thank you,” Cameron said. “Now sit. You too.”
He jerked his gun casually towards Hunter, who sat down next to Tracy on the couch. If Hunter was afraid he didn’t show it, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable, as if the three of them were old friends settling in for a fireside chat.
Cameron turned to Tracy. “I’m sorry it has come to this, darling. I really am. I’d hoped for a different ending. But when you ran out on me after Paris . . . when you insisted on going after Drexel alone . . . you really left me no choice.”
Tracy fought back an unhelpful urge to laugh. The entire situation suddenly seemed so ridiculous. The three of them here in this magnificent room, like characters in a play, acting out a scene. Except they’d all been given the wrong lines. Now Cameron was playing the evil terrorist, and Hunter the misunderstood hero.
And what does that make me? Tracy wondered. The damsel in distress?
I don’t think so.
When she looked up at Cameron, there was no fear in Tracy’s eyes. Only curiosity. Now, at long last, she was to learn the whole truth.
“So it was you?” she asked him. “You had Hunter kidnapped?”
“I did. A mistake in retrospect. I should have had him killed. But you live and learn.”
Tracy had never heard him speak like this before, so callously. It was as if a completely different person had somehow invaded Cameron’s body.
Was this the person Charlotte Crewe knew? The man that she tried to warn me about?
Was this why Charlotte had gone “missing”?
“So you were bankrolling Group 99? They worked for you?”
“Pond scum like Alexis Argyros will work for whoever writes them the biggest check. These people’s life blood is greed. Greed and envy, prettily packaged as social justice. Isn’t that right, Mr. Drexel?”
“It is. That’s what I found out, after I spoke to Prince Achileas at Sandhurst,” Hunter explained to Tracy. “Group 99 were taking bribes too. Even the so-called good guys were corrupt. Crewe Oil totally owned them, and Apollo and his cronies were making out like bandits from day one. They carefully targeted all Crewe’s competitors but left him untouched. They took out Henry Cranston specifically so that Crewe would wind up with the Greek shale gas, and at a bargain price too.”