Taken. Tori Carrington
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Ryder chuckled. “Reverse psychology. But you’re leaving out that I would have seen through such a ruse. Besides, you could never have done it. It goes against everything you are. Everything you taught me to be.”
“But you’re still not married.”
“Why don’t you travel, Pops? You and mom always talked about wanting to travel.”
In fact, he’d arranged a month-long tour of England, Scotland and Ireland while his mother was still well enough to travel.
“I’m too old for the hassle. Besides, that was your mom’s and my dream. Without her…well, without her it wouldn’t be the same.”
And one day, perhaps soon, Ryder would be faced with life without his father in it. And for the first time he accepted that it wouldn’t be the same, either.
5
THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY everyone around Ryder had officially admitted defeat. But Ryder refused to raise the white flag.
He stood at the windows of his office staring out from his elevated spot at the buildings of Manhattan spread out before him like a giant’s handful of mismatched dice. Somewhere out there was the woman who had set his sheets on fire, then outwitted him. And he intended to find her. Whatever it took.
He turned back to his desk and the telephone book he had opened to with the listing of detective agencies in the tri-borough area. Being in Brooklyn with his father last weekend had given him a couple of ideas by reminding him that he hadn’t always been standing at the top of the mountain. He’d gotten a raw view from the gutters looking up, as well. After a four-year stint in the marines, he’d received his degree from Columbia, then had emerged onto the social scene using his family name as his passport with which to rebuild the Blackwell empire. Within six years, he’d sat at the helm of the first company at which he’d worked. Two years after that, he’d bought the company and taken it private and had been expanding the business ever since.
And he hadn’t gotten where he was now without getting his hands dirty from time to time. And the mystery woman made him want to thrust both hands directly into the black dirt.
Ryder noted the name and address of a Brooklyn detective agency then picked up the phone. Sometimes it took a fellow gutter rat to find another one in the maze that was the criminal underworld. He picked up the phone and placed the call.
THE BROOKLYN detective agency was little more than a small storefront that could have easily have been a travel agency or a take-out restaurant, not unlike the other businesses around it. The furniture was old, but the place was clean. And P.I. Kylie Capshaw had the tough exterior of someone who’d spent more than a few years foraging around in the gutters, both as a result of the hand life had dealt her, as well as to succeed as a woman in her chosen profession.
“Mr. Blackwell. A pleasure.” She said, extended her hand.
“Ryder, please,” he said, returning her firm shake. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and well-worn cowboy boots he suspected were steel-toed and capable of doing a fair amount of damage should anyone cross her. And she looked like the type who wouldn’t hesitate to do that damage.
“Slumming it, huh?” she questioned, taking two mugs out of a metal desk drawer then crossing to a coffeemaker.
Ryder glanced at his Lagerfeld suit. He hadn’t thought about changing his clothes to take the late-afternoon meeting. “In a manner of speaking.”
“So tell me,” she said, sitting down behind the old metal desk covered with paperwork. She took a bottle of Bailey’s from a different drawer then poured the Irish cream into the coffee and handed him a cup. Ryder took it then watched as she sipped hers. “How do you think I’ll be able to help you where others haven’t been able to? Because I get the feeling that you’re not here for a personal matter you don’t want others to know about. Am I right?”
“Spot on.”
“Who’ve you been to?”
He told her.
“Ah. The Big Three.” She raised her brows. “And they haven’t been able to get what you want?”
“No. While this is a white-collar crime, a blue-collar criminal committed it.”
“And your reasoning is that it takes a blue-collar gal to find a blue-collar criminal.”
Her words weren’t so much as a question as they were a statement. “Yes,” Ryder answered simply.
Kylie grinned. “Then it looks like you’ve come to the right place….”
BETWEEN Seline’s legs vibrated one of the most powerful machines built by man, and something she’d been craving ever since sneaking out of Ryder Blackwell’s bed the week before. The custom black Ducati 999R Xerox motorcycle with a Testastretta 143-hp engine gave her a sense of freedom not even a car could afford her. And as she ran it down the empty roads in rural southwest Wisconsin, the roar drowning out all other sounds, the air whipping around her black leather-clad body, she felt like a hellcat demon on a mission.
That is, if she ignored that there was no real mission, to rid the brand of Ryder’s touch from her skin.
It had been nine days since she’d pulled one of the biggest cons of her career. Yet a sense of a job incomplete tailed her like a state trooper with his siren blaring. Returning home usually calmed her, allowed her distance from her last job in order to concentrate on what needed to be done to ensure her security and to focus on the next con. But not this time. This time, her mind ceaselessly returned to Blackwell & Blackwell. Or more specifically to the man who sat at the helm.
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