In the Stars

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Looking for Trouble

"She wasn't on the plane."

A pregnant pause created a chasm in the static air of the Orion offices.

"I knew she was up to something," Damian Waincroft finally replied, leaning back in his desk chair. His elbows rested on the chair arms, fingertips pressed together in front of his fluorescent oxford shirt. Ethan watched as the skin around his boss' fingernails whitened under the pressure.

He looks like he could murder someone.

"I want you to find her. Find her and bring her to me."

"Yes, sir," Ethan replied, hanging his head in compliance. He gritted his teeth against the shot of shame that ran cold through his stomach.

"You are dismissed."

Turning, he left the sterility of Waincroft's office with a quick pace. None too soon, in his book. He was at the elevator doors in ten seconds. Henrietta barely inclined her head to acknowledge the Orion henchman.

Within the privacy of the elevator, he allowed a heavy sigh to vacate his lungs. His hands didn't know what to do, so he took out his sunglasses and slipped them on.

He'd been asked to make sure Charlotte really left for Boston. She'd purchased a ticket out of Heathrow for that morning, but she wasn't on the flight. The only movement at her home was St. Claire leaving out the back door to cut to the road behind. He hadn't followed him. The less he knew the better.

It seemed Charlotte's excuse to Claudia Parsons was a farce. Ethan had known Waincroft wouldn't take it well, which was why he kept certain things to himself.

When he signed on to Orion, he had no idea he'd be the bitch boy for someone like Damian. Alistair had painted a very different picture; Ethan's life's work in the limelight, his passion on display for the world to see. The money wasn't even a perk. It was all about leaving a legacy.

Alistair never said anything about being an archaeological mafia.

He nodded at the security guard as he walked through the sliding doors at the entrance to the Orion Foundation building. Canary Wharf greeted him with a blaze of sunlight. Overhead, seagulls circled. Their occasional caws harmonized with the scuff of his shoes against the cement.

He'd been hired to find a rock; a meteorite from a particular storm in 1947. When they approached him that summer, he was burnt from the Mediterranean sun, shattered from months of digging. He felt like they offered him a golden ticket to his dreams.

Now this. He knew now that it was all about the take. It was a power struggle and the person on the other end was everyone else.

Ethan didn't do violence. He had agreed to follow Damian's new target, but he promised himself he would never cross that line. It appeared he wasn't expected to- Damian liked to mete out his own rewards.

Charlotte.

To see his ex-girlfriend coming out of the house in Hampstead had been a punch to his gut. He wondered if he was being punished, or tested as a kind of initiation. When no one at Orion made a reference to her life in Boston, he started to suspect they didn't know about the connection.