Burned Hearts (Burned 3)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was all Vale. Every little bit.” Wayne gave me his criminal smile, the one he’d flashed while distracting me so that I’d climbed into the Venom F5 at the Lux, thinking it was Dane’s car when in actuality it’d been Vale behind the wheel. “And what trouble has there been since he became a stain on the front of a train? None.”

“Oh, let me refresh your memory,” I argued. And took a stab in the dark: “Tom Talbot?”

With a shake of his head, he said, “I have no idea who or what you’re talking about.”

Okay, this was going to be more difficult than I’d guessed. In my mind, I’d convinced myself that Wayne would want to take credit for his ploys, gloat over how ingenious he’d been. The Heisenberg Effect, I’d contended when I’d explained to Dane that bad guys oftentimes fucked up because of their own ego, their own need for glory. I’d be dumping Breaking Bad from my queue the second I returned home.

If I returned home.

“So Tom didn’t let you on to the estate grounds to plant two rattlers on my patio?” I demanded. I didn’t broach the subject of the watchtower guard pointing a gun at me—and Dane—in the event Tom hadn’t discussed with Wayne the way things had gone awry. I didn’t know what the follow-up had been on their end, so I played dumb for the moment and tried to engage him with a less hostile topic.

He slid his glasses off and tucked an arm into the neck of his T-shirt. “Let’s just say that your boyfriend’s security isn’t nearly as solid as he once believed.” A glint of mischief in his beady brown eyes chilled me.

But I latched on to a golden nugget. He didn’t know Dane and I were married?

Sure, we’d covered our tracks well. Apparently well enough that Wayne hadn’t learned the truth.

I did some quick mental calculations and determined that unless he’d been watching me closely in very recent months he wouldn’t have known I was pregnant, either. I hadn’t started showing until later on, and no one else knew, not even Tom. At least, not until the kitchen/shooting incident.

Was it possible Tom hadn’t told Wayne a single thing, assuming Wayne was the orchestrator of the latest events? Had Tom rallied to our cause in ultimate loyalty to Dane and Amano? And because Dane had gotten the FBI to find Tom’s wife and daughter? Could I consider Tom an ally as I tried to shake down Wayne?

My head spun a little, but I held tight to the possibility that this could all work seriously well in my favor.

This notion gave me a shot of courage—and adrenaline. If Wayne didn’t know about me and Dane marrying or that I’d had Amsel, then my son was safe. So I pushed the envelope.

“We discovered the chink in the security armor when you blew up the Lux,” I said.

He made a menacing tsking noise. “Such a shame. All that money invested, and the hotel never even opened.”

“Nor did the one in Vegas that you worked construction on, which is currently being dismantled.”

“Just a hotel.” He shrugged a shoulder.

“Sure. Like it was just a Web site you took offline, security wires you cut on Lux property, a bug you planted in my office, a rattler you put in the stairwell, scorpions you dropped from the terrace, onto me.” I thought back to that night and rage built within me as it had when I’d revisited the harrowing episode with Kyle. “Have you ever been stung by a scorpion? Fucking hurts, like a Mack truck has just run over that particular body part.”

“I’m not that careless.” There was cunning in his eyes. Was he on to me?

“Why the attacks on me, specifically?” I demanded in a quiet voice. “Even the fire you set in the media room—I was the only one in there at the time.”

“I heard the whole thing was caused by a leak.”

“Someone created that leak in the pipes. Then punched a hole in the wall above live outlets when I was inside and the door was stuck shut.”

“You really ought to pack up your toys and move along, Ari. You can’t play with the big dogs. You’ve been a vulnerability all this time. A liability. A weakness for Dane.”

I did another mental rewind. When had I last seen Wayne? Did he even know Dane was alive, or was he speculating? Speaking in general terms to see what he could glean from me?

I tried to recall what Tom had said that morning in the estate kitchen, but the fact was, I’d been so scared, I really wasn’t sure what specifics had been discussed, what pertinent information divulged.

So I took a wild guess, banking on Wayne not knowing Dane had survived the blast. “That’s not really a problem now, is it?”

“Don’t blame me that you ended up with nothing.”

“You lousy son of a bitch. You can’t really expect to just walk away from a reign of terror. You blew up a goddamn hotel. People died.”

“Boo-fucking-hoo.” He glared at me. “Do you really think I was going to be Vale’s bitch after everything I learned at the Lux, after all the shit I pulled off that no one could pin on me? Still can’t pin on me? I was able to bypass Vale after his massive fuckup. Go directly to his dad and tell him I’d finish the job. And I did. No more 10,000 Lux. No more Dane Bax. Boom.”

My jaw fell slack. The air rushed from my lungs. I couldn’t breathe.