Taken. Tori Carrington
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print anywhere. But they think they got a couple of hair samples.”
“Security cameras?”
“The staff is going over Blackwell’s videos now. But routine dictates that they erase tapes after a twenty-four-hour period so all we’ll have is the footage from yesterday.”
Ryder looked at his watch. The woman had left his place just before six. Nine hours ago. Which meant she could be pretty much anywhere in the world by now. Probably collecting the cash she’d stolen from his company.
“I want to see the footage as soon as it comes in.”
“I don’t expect to get much,” Coleman said. “She always walked as if staring at something on her shoe. I thought it was because she was self-conscious, but now we know the real reason.”
Ryder also knew the real reason she’d originally rebuffed his advances yesterday after finding out he’d been the one she’d raced with. No doubt number one in the con artist’s handbook was “Fly under the radar.”
“Ryder?”
He blinked at Coleman.
“Are you okay?”
No. He was far from okay. Because he was all too aware that if he hadn’t taken the woman back to his place last night, he wouldn’t be obsessed with the situation right now. He’d have left everything in Coleman’s capable hands and gone on with his day full of meetings overseeing expansion plans, financial realignments and mergers. While the amount of money wasn’t anything to sneeze at by any means, it wasn’t enough to warrant the type of attention he was giving to it. The company lost that amount in a day if truck drivers went on strike in the Midwest.
Despite all that, he’d cancelled everything, mentally incapable of doing anything but concentrating on this one thing. This was personal.
“I want to talk to Johnstone,” he said, naming the head of security.
“I can do that. Don’t you have a meeting regarding Stanton?”
Ryder got up from his chair and put his suit jacket on. “I cancelled it.”
“But we’re in the final stages of closing the deal. Everything’s set to go into motion the instant the takeover papers are signed. Do you think that’s a good idea?”
No, it was a decidedly bad idea. The not-altogether-friendly leveraged buyout of his second-largest competitor would give him a marketing edge in the nation’s distribution system, one of the many areas in which Blackwell & Blackwell owned businesses. But Ryder couldn’t help himself. He was going to find this woman who’d impersonated Carol Lambert, the woman in the rented Audi, and he was going to find her now.
BY THE END of the week, Ryder had been forced to accept that his finding her wasn’t going to be easily checked off his agenda.
It was a Sunday and along with Blackwell & Blackwell’s own security team, he was paying three detective firms double their going rate to find her.
Only it was beginning to look like no amount of money was going to be able to uncover the true identity of the woman who’d screwed him… twice.
Coleman told him that perhaps it was time to admit defeat and move on. Besides, the company could write the loss off. There was the Stanton deal in limbo and very possibly in danger of unraveling altogether. But Ryder couldn’t seem to think of anything else.
“Are you all right, son?”
Ryder looked at his father, walking next to him along the Coney Island boardwalk. The place where he’d grown up, but now only visited when he saw his father every other Sunday.
“That’s the third time you’ve asked me,” Ryder said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his Lauren khakis.
Growing up, he’d heard countless times how much he and his father looked alike. Some of the family’s relatives had even taken to calling him Junior, though his father’s name was Alan. But time had erased those physical similarities. And while Ryder only lived across the river in Manhattan, it might as well have been across the Atlantic as far as their lifestyles went. His father would take the train into town every now and again for coffee and to go to a museum exhibit or an off-off-Broadway show, but otherwise their lives were separate. And had been since Ryder’s mother had died of breast cancer fifteen years ago.
Of course, it didn’t help that their differences extended to their own personal ideologies.
Being born a Blackwell, his father had once told him, was no different than being born under any other name, despite the historical and cultural significance it once held in New York. Ryder would always remember that conversation, held when he’d come home soaked on a rainy Tuesday in April. He was nine and he’d just learned that his ancestors had been instrumental in the building of Manhattan and that even his grandfather, his father’s father, had enjoyed great wealth, until the mid 1950s when the family had been bankrupted.
His father? His take was that it had probably happened for a good reason. While Alan Blackwell had been educated at Harvard and enjoyed a privileged upbringing, he’d adjusted amazingly well to his new station in life. In fact, it seemed to suit him better, his mother used to say. Rather than working as the CEO of the family company and attending Broadway openings and Lincoln Center charity events, he’d taught American Lit at NYU for most of his career, and had just recently retired, speaking here and there when invited.
Otherwise he lived a quiet life in Brooklyn, visiting his favorite bakery every morning, reading the newspaper, or with his nose in whatever obscure book he’d picked up from the used bookstore on the corner.
But whereas his father had experienced life on both sides of the fence, young Ryder had spent his youth with his fingers fused to the fence links, staring longingly at the skyline across the river. Driven not only to recover his family’s longstanding wealth and status, but to up the ante on both counts.
And at thirty-six he’d done all that and more.
“And that’s the third time you haven’t answered me.” His father chuckled quietly then put his arm around his son’s shoulders. “Ask the experienced, not the learned.”
Ryder offered a half grin. His life had been filled with quotes from one source or another. Mostly his father had been trying to convince him that it wasn’t how much he had in his pockets but the love he held in his heart that was the true measure of a good man.
Ryder had in turn spent most of his life ignoring that advice.
“Just some things going on at work,” he said.
“Anything you’d like to share?”
“No, no.”
“And here I thought the problem might be a woman.” The senior Blackwell drew to a stop near the edge of the boardwalk and squinted out at the sparkling Atlantic. “You know, one of your mother’s biggest regrets was that she never got to enjoy a grandchild.”
“If I remember correctly, you were the one to say that I probably would never have children.”
“That’s because you have to find a good woman first. And you move too fast to catch bad women, much less good ones.” He looked at him. “Up until recently I at least hoped you’d make an effort at continuing the Blackwell name if just for legacy’s sake.”
“I thought you didn’t buy into any of that.”
“I don’t. But you do. Me? I’d just like to have a grandson or granddaughter who I can teach to play chess. Or at least know that my son, my only child, will finally learn what it means to know love.”
“I know love. I had it with Mom. With you.”
“And when I’m gone?”
Ryder also stared out at the ocean. “Are you planning on a trip I don’t know about?”
“No. But it’s something that’s been on my