Damien (Stark Trilogy 6)

“I’m good.” He met Ryan’s eyes, but his friend only shrugged.

“She’s well-trained.”

“The hell she is. I’ve met your wife.”

They both laughed, then quickly sobered as Quincy joined them, coming up from the first floor guest suite he’d claimed.

“So where are we?” Quincy asked.

“Unfortunately, Louisa Crenshaw says she knows nothing about who’s paying her bills, and I believe her. Also unfortunately, we don’t have their security archive. It’s maintained offsite and is technically owned by the umbrella corporation that operates a number of rehabs across the country.”

“Which means we’re buried in red tape,” Damien said.

“Which means we’re officially going through channels,” Ryan said.

“And unofficially?” Quincy asked, and Ryan nodded toward the two tech guys, who were already banging away at their laptops, heads bobbing to whatever music was pumping out of their headphones.

“My guys are on it. No guarantees, though. The facility uses actual video tape. Nothing digital. And it’s shipped to the central retention system. I don’t know if they archive it digitally. If not, we’re out of luck unless they let us copy the tapes. Of course, we could break in, but that may be taking things a little too far.” He met Damien’s eyes. “At least until we’re sure we’re all out of options.”

“You’re saying we have another option.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Ryan agreed, and Damien knew his friend well enough to know that Ryan was more than a little pleased with himself. “I figure the odds are good whoever is paying probably visited her at least once, right? So I got the visitor logs, which includes a designation of who they were seeing and a picture of the visitor’s ID. Those, thankfully, are kept on site. And the facility was kind enough to give me the files for the last three months.”

“Which means we look and see who was visiting Louisa Crenshaw,” Jamie said. “But so what? How do we know if the person we see on the log is our bad guy?”

“We’ll figure that out as we go along,” Quincy said. “First, let’s separate out her visitors and see what we’re left with.”

“Good,” Damien said. “I’ve got a few calls I need to make about The Domino and some other business, but I’ll be back up to see where you are in an hour or so.”

“No worries,” Ryan said. “Go run the universe.”

An hour later, his universe was humming along nicely, and he was heading back up from his desk on the mezzanine to check in with Ryan. He’d just stepped off the elevator when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, saw that it was from Nikki’s office, and answered. “Hey, baby. What’s up?”

“Mr. Stark? It’s Abby.”

“Call me Damien, Abby. We’ve been over this before.”

“Is Nikki still there?” Her voice held an edge of panic that shot through him like ice water.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, God.”

“Abby.”

“She didn’t make the meeting. I thought maybe she forgot. Or maybe you guys had a break in your investigation and she forgot to call.”

“She left just after eight.” He strode into the open area, snapping his fingers to get Ryan’s attention. “She should have been there by now.”

Ryan stood, his expression grim. Beside him, Jamie paled.

“She’s not,” Abby said. “Do you think something happened to her? Was she in an accident? Do you think—”

“I don’t know,” he snapped, then immediately regretted the outburst. “I’m sorry. Abby, thanks for calling. I’m going to see what I can find out. Call me if you hear anything.”

“Yes. Of course. You do the same.”

He promised he would, then ended the call, but continued tapping buttons on his phone.

“What’s going on?” Quincy asked, climbing up the stairs, in sweats and a T-shirt, his body damp with the exertion of a workout.

Damien held up his hand. And then, when he saw the notification on his phone’s screen, his blood ran cold.

“Her phone’s off. I can’t track her. Fuck.”

“What about Coop?” Jamie asked, and Damien almost kissed her.

“Brilliant. Yes. Of course.” He’d had a tracker installed in Coop before he’d given it to her. He had one in all his cars as an anti-theft device, though for Nikki it was all about keeping her safe.

Now he pulled up the app, found the entry for Coop, and pressed the button to locate the car.

For a moment, he watched a wheel spinning on his phone screen then it stopped—exactly where it was supposed to be.

“Her office.” He dragged his fingers through his hair, forcing himself not to panic. He never panicked. Panicking wasn’t part of his nature.

But God help him, he was panicking now.

“On it,” Ryan said, his voice sounding like it was in a tunnel. And then Ryan was there, standing in front of him, his hands on Damien’s shoulders. “We have to assume this is tied to Anne’s kidnapping. Probably the same perp.”

“Oh, fuck,” Quincy said, apparently catching up. “Bloody, buggered fuck.”

“I’ll second that,” Damien said grimly, pushing the panic down. Forcing himself to concentrate. Nikki needed him. Him. The man who’d been instrumental in getting their daughter back. The man who controlled billions and ran an empire. The man whose will was a goddamn force of nature.

She needed the man she married.

Damien Stark.

Someone thought they could take Nikki? Someone thought that they’d get away with it?

Someone was fucking wrong.

And, goddammit, he was finding his wife.

“We need to find out who’s funding Louisa Crenshaw,” he said to Ryan. “And we need to do it fast.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Ryan said.

Jamie hurried over. “I think I have an idea. Someone who must know.”

Damien turned to her. “Who?”

“Morey Dilliard.”

“Who?” Damien asked again, only this time Ryan echoed the question.

“The reporter who blindsided you outside the restaurant,” she explained. “Who else could have told him about Louisa? He won’t want to reveal his sources, but…” She trailed off with a shrug.

“You can convince him?” Quincy asked.

“My wife can be very persuasive,” Ryan said.

Jamie ro

lled her eyes. “No way will he tell me. But I think I know someone who can get him to share. Let me make some calls.” She hurried off, her phone in her hand.

Damien met Ryan’s eyes, but Ryan just shrugged.

“All right,” Damien said. “What else have we got?”

“I think we’re back to the clinic’s visitor logs,” Quincy said.

Ryan nodded. “Grunt work, but maybe it’ll pay off.”

“It has to,” Damien said fiercely.

With the file split between the three of them, they started poring through the clinic’s data, dumping all of Louisa’s visitors into a designated subfolder that was rapidly filling up. The girl had a lot of visitors—doctors, friends, social workers.

“Mr. Stark,” one of the techs—Jeff?—said right as Damien had finished a week’s worth of visitor logs. “I’ve just finished reviewing the feed from Mrs. Stark’s office parking garage. Her Mini-Cooper didn’t enter the garage this morning.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I checked twice.”

“But it’s tracking to that vicinity.”

“She must have parked on the street.” Quincy said. “Or possibly in the lot behind her building.”

“Christ.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m going to call Ollie. See if he can pull today’s feed from their surveillance cam.”

“Good idea,” Ryan said as Damien stood to make the call, cursing when he got Ollie’s voice mail. He left a message explaining what had happened and what he wanted, and hoped the other man would come through in time.

He returned to the workstation at the same time as Jamie, who held out her phone to Ryan. “Make it do the speaker thing,” she said, waving vaguely toward the ceiling and the hidden sound system.

Ryan smirked, but hooked her phone into the equipment. A moment later, Damien heard Evelyn say, “Hello? Jamie, where the hell did you go?”

“She’s here,” Damien said. “We all are. You’re on speaker.”

“Apparently. Damien, I’m so sorry.” There was no mistaking the grief and fear that colored her voice.

“I know,” he said gently. “And I appreciate it. But right now—”

“Yes, yes. And I’ve got something for you. Not much, but maybe it’ll help. Mr. Dilliard was reluctant, of course. But I convinced him to share a bit of info with us. Or rather, Matthew did.”