Page 87 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
My office door is open.
It’s not wide open, but it’s not fully closed, either—and this time I know I closed it when I left for the restaurant yesterday. I haven’t been in there since.
The skin on the back of my neck crawls.
As if in a trance, I move slowly down the hallway. My heart can’t decide if it wants to burst or stall out, so it does something in between, a wild throbbing interspersed with seconds when it doesn’t seem to beat at all.
I push open the door and look inside.
Nothing’s out of place, except the faintest hint of Chanel No. Five lingering in the air.
Without touching anything, I walk around my office, visually scanning it all: the bookcases, the coffee table and chairs, the credenza with the flat-screen TV, and my desk, which I pay special attention to. I toggle the mouse and the computer screen lights up, asking for my password. The password is so long and convoluted it would take an expert hacker with a codebreaker program to get in, so I’m satisfied there. All my desk drawers lock and don’t appear to be tampered with. Everything’s perfect. I release the breath I’ve been holding, relieved.
Until I look at the Magritte.
To anyone else, it would be impossible to spot. It’s only half an inch off kilter, an inch at most. But to me, it might as well have a sign hanging on it that screams, “I’ve been touched!”
Behind that painting is my safe.
A frozen hand clamps around my throat. My heart chants no no no, but my mind, cold and clear, growls back an emphatic yes.
I can’t deny it, no matter how much I want to: Victoria has been inside my office. Victoria was searching for something in my office.
Why? And for what?
“Maybe she got lost on the way out,” I say aloud to the empty room. “She thought it was a bathroom.”
Right. Let’s conveniently forget that the last time she was here the office door was open, too. And why would she have touched the Magritte?
I stand still as a statue, thinking back over everything that’s happened between us so far, including everything that happened last night. When I recall our words, a chill runs down my spine.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because I know something you don’t.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“You, my friend, are about to get royally screwed.”
I thought she’d meant that in the obvious way—in light of what we were about to do—but maybe she’d meant something else altogether.
Whatever I’d been feeling before when I awoke—the tenderness and happiness, and that awful, blinding hope—turns to a sour sickness in my stomach.
I pick up the phone on my desk and dial a number I know by heart. When it’s answered on the other end—the same heavy silence as always, no greeting, only dead air—I say, “Connor. It’s Parker.”
The dead air comes alive with the rumble of a rich baritone. “Long time no talk, brother. What’s up?”
Looking at the Magritte, I reply, “I think I might need your help.”
* * *
The man who stands in my office an hour later with his bulging, tattooed biceps folded over his massive chest is what one could politely call big.
As in, holy fucking shit, that dude is so big he makes the Terminator look like a midget.
At six-foot-seven and two hundred forty pounds of solid, military-grade muscle, Connor “Hollywood” Hughes owns and operates Metrix, the private security firm I’ve employed for years. He’s half Samoan and half Irish, and gets his nickname from his sparkling-white movie-star smile. He’s a doppelganger for Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock, except Connor has hair.
“Connor, sit. You’re making the room look cramped.”
