Page 15 of Let It Burn (The Barrington Billionaires 4)
“It’s really important,” Helene pleaded softly.
Grudgingly the guard pressed a few buttons and called up the feed from that camera. He scanned backward from their arrival and stopped. “I think I found it.” He bent to study the video closer. “It looks like Dr. Stiles left with a box of something around seven.”
Helene leaned over the counter. He had to be mistaken. “Are you sure? Are you sure it’s my uncle?”
The guard gave her a look. “I would hope I can recognize the man who signs my paychecks.”
Shock mixed with confusion and Helene swayed on her feet. Andrew put his hand on Helene’s arm to pull her back from the guard’s station. “Don’t you hate when messages get confused? Helene, he probably told you that you don’t have to pick up those files. You need to pay better attention.”
“I guess,” she said slowly, still trying to absorb the fact that her uncle had been late to dinner because he’d been at the clinic removing old files. He hadn’t brought them with him into the house. Had he planned to? Was there a chance that he’d taken the files with the intention of showing them to Andrew?
Andrew began to lead her away and she stumbled. He placed his arm around her and said goodnight to the guard as they left the clinic.
My uncle took the files. Did he also wipe the computer? Why? What is he so afraid of?
She allowed Andrew to guide her back to his car and buckle her in. He didn’t start the engine, though. He simply waited, looking at her with a mix of pity and something else in his eyes.
“Where’s my phone?” she asked. He turned, found her purse in the backseat of his car, then handed it to her. She took out her phone and brought up her uncle’s number. “I need to talk to him. If he took the files it was for a good reason. You’ll see. We’ll sit down with him, talk it out.” She angrily used the back of her hands to brush the tears away from her cheeks. “He didn’t kill your brother. I know he didn’t. But he may be in some kind of trouble. If he is, will you help me help him?”
She hated that she had to ask anyone, never mind Andrew, for help, but her heart broke imagining her kind uncle alone and scared. No person, or creature, deserved that.
When Andrew didn’t answer her, she turned in her seat to face him. “Please.”
He started his car and ground the gears as he pulled out onto the road. She took his response as a yes and said, “I’m going to call him now, but head back to his house.”
Andrew drove without giving any indication that he’d heard her, but when they came to the turn that would lead them back to her uncle’s he took it.
With hands that were shaking so much she almost dropped her phone, Helene called her uncle and held her breath while it rang several times.
As they drove toward Stiles’s home, Andrew reflected on what he’d said to her when she’d asked to be taken to the clinic. He’d said that she was probably going to get them all killed but that she’d probably be doing them all a favor. He glanced at the woman beside him. His gut twisted painfully at the idea of losing her. She not only had the fight of a Marine, but the loyalty of one, too. She had to be afraid, but she wasn’t giving in to it. When he’d first met her he would have said it was because she was too innocent to comprehend the real danger they might be putting themselves in, but that wasn’t it. She genuinely loved her uncle, and she wasn’t leaving without him.
He wanted to grab the phone out of her hand, because he had a sinking feeling that when she spoke to her uncle her love for him would be tested in a whole new way. Stiles was an unknown risk Andrew wanted to forbid Helene to open herself up to, but there were some things in life that even a Marine couldn’t protect someone from. She could no more walk away from her uncle than Andrew could have walked away from a firefight.
Her dedication to her family brought Andrew’s emotions to the surface. He realized he might have a second chance at his life. Exercising had brought his body back into shape, but it hadn’t lifted the numbness that had made him indifferent toward his own survival. He hadn’t gotten as far as holding a gun to his head, but he’d understood how a man could, and it hadn’t scared him. He’d already felt mostly dead.
No matter what happened, he knew his life would forever be different because he’d met the woman beside him. She reminded him that true courage started in the heart; it was born in believing. She looked down at her phone; her uncle hadn’t answered her call.
Her eyes flew to his and her tears returned. “He might not be near his phone.”
Andrew reached out and took one of her hands in his, giving it a squeeze. For her, he would try to believe in possibilities. “Call again.”
She sniffed, nodded, and did. This time her uncle did answer. She put him on speakerphone. “Uncle Clarence, are you at the house? We’re driving back for you. You’re not alone. We’ll figure this out together.”
“Where is Andrew?” her uncle asked hurriedly.
“He’s beside me,” she said, squeezing Andrew’s hand. “He’s willing to help you, too.”
“Put him on the phone.”
“He can hear you,” Helene said.
“You should both be in the air by now. Why aren’t you?” Stiles asked in a tight voice.
Years of taking orders made Andrew pause before he answered, but there was no chain of command here. “Your niece isn’t quite as helpless as you seem to think she is. There was no way to take her without hurting her.”
Helene chimed in, “We just left the clinic. I know you took files from it. Is someone blackmailing you? What kind of trouble are you in?”
“The clinic?” Stiles asked, his voice rising as he spoke. “You were supposed to be gone. Oh, my God. I can’t go back now. Where are you?”
“We’re almost at your house,” Andrew answered. It was only then he noticed the street was blocked off and smoke was billowing up into the night sky.
“I’m not there,” Stiles said in a high pitch. “You can’t be there, either. Helene, all that matters now is your safety. Get out of Aruba. Now.”
Andrew pulled over to the side of the road and instantly regretted that he had because Helene bolted out of the car and rushed down the street toward the emergency vehicles and fire trucks. He heard her cry out, “Your house is on fire.”
“Andrew,” Stiles yelled, “get her out of there.”
“Who did this?” she asked from the middle of the road about one hundred yards away from the action.
“Your uncle set the fire. Didn’t you, Stiles?” Andrew barked the question. “You’re destroying the evidence against you.”
With huge eyes, Helene looked from the burning house, to the phone, to Andrew, and back at the house. “What did you do, Uncle Clarence? What did you do?”
Her uncle’s voice broke. “I was young, scared, and didn’t understand that when you make a deal with the devil it’s forever. You won’t hear from me after today, Helene. I have to disappear, or you’ll never be safe. Everything that’s burning in the fire had to disappear, too. Walk away from all of this. Go home. Tell no one about what you think happened here. Every single person you tell is someone you make a target. This is bigger tha
n you know. Don’t ask questions. Go home. Now.”
Helene shook her head vehemently. “You didn’t kill anyone. I won’t let you destroy the proof that could clear you.” She took a step toward the house, but Andrew grabbed her arm.
“Andrew, get her out of there. Helene, remember that I love you.” With that, he hung up.
Helene tried to rip her arm away from Andrew, but he held her. “We have to go in there. There might be something left that will help him.”
The woman beside him faded away, and for a moment Andrew was back in Iraq. Three of his Marines had just headed into a building to pick up a crate Colonel Ahearn had sent them for. One last mission before their tour ended and they headed home. Andrew was on watch on the street. He heard the explosion as if he were actually back in that horrifying moment. He was once again radioing in the incident, rushing into the building, coughing as the smoke burned at his throat. He fought to put out the flames that stood between him and the men he considered family. He hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of feeling anything when he realized all three of them had fallen because the crate had been booby-trapped. There was no need to check if they were alive, the damage to each was irreversible. He assessed the dispersed contents of the box as he mentally planned how many trips it would take to get all three bodies back to his vehicle before the fire overtook them. It appeared to be a pilot seat from a MiG, which he left for last. By the time he went back for it, the room had been engulfed in flames and all he could do was watch it burn. A part of him had known the truth that day but hadn’t been willing to accept it. He’d gone back to his Hummer, looked down at the tarp he’d covered the bodies of his friends with, and, on the inside at least, died along with them.
Helene’s struggling brought him partially back to the present.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
The past was just as much a part of that moment as her uncle’s burning house. His hand bit into her arm. She wasn’t going anywhere near that building. “No.”
“I have to know if there’s anything left of those files.” She pulled harder, twisting with her whole body in an attempt to free herself. “You can’t stop me.”
