Blue Room Confidentials: Vol. 4 Read online

  Blue Room Confidentials

  Blue Room Confidentials

  VOL. 4

  Kailin Gow

  Blue Room Confidentials (Blue Room Confidentials Vol 4)

  Published by Kailin Gow Books

  Copyright © 2016 Kailin Gow

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information, please contact:

  Kailingowbooks(at)aol(dot)com.

  First Edition.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Note

  If you haven’t read The Blue Room Series, this series may contain some spoilers.

  Although this series can be read separately from The Blue Room, it is highly recommended that you also read The Blue Room Series.

  DEDICATION

  To My Readers, Betas, and Kailin Krusaders, Thank You for All Your Love, Support, and Encouragement.

  Prologue

  Xander Blue

  It can’t be.

  My face flushes red. My heart starts beating faster. My pulse is racing. I feel like I’ve just been shot – straight through the heart. I want to fall to my knees, to splay out here on the floor, to simply surrender to the overwhelming feeling all around me.

  This can’t be real, I think to myself. I am dreaming. I must be dreaming. Maybe Ben hit me on the head when he arrived and threatened me with the gun and now I’m hallucinating: hallucinating all this, all of everything. There is no way that Skyla Strong, the woman that I have spent the past few days with, is the same woman that I spent whole hours of my life in bed with. I have seen Jaymie naked. I have taken her in my arms. I have inhaled the sweet intoxicating perfume of her skin against my face, breathed her in, gotten drunk off the smell and the taste and the sight of her. I have kissed Jayme’s pert, rosy, nipples. I have traced my lips up and down her smooth, creamy, lithe thighs. I have pinned her arms above her head and ravaged her slender, taut body with kisses and little bites that made her moan. I know every inch of her. How could her double, her twin, the same woman, be with me the whole time without my knowing?

  And yet – I think.

  How many times have the mysterious PIs of this organization changed their faces, their eyes, their whole identities and vanished without a trace? How many times have we been led down the merry garden path of aliases, whole assumed personae? Why, Ben, Rick, whoever he is now, he followed me through my entire life, every step of the way, and I never once had a clue, a notion, even the slightest inkling…

  He was a master of disguises, changing from a serious corporate businessman to a middle aged pastor to a laid back young bartender. Ben of many identities and faces. Each one at different stages of my adult life. Who was Ben? And who was Skyla?

  Why couldn’t Jaymie be Skyla? After all, it can hardly be more ridiculous, more preposterous, more conducive to me doubting my own sanity than anything else I’ve experienced in the past few months since returning to the Blue Room. Other people changed their face, their hair, their features – why couldn’t she have changed her coloring, too?

  And the whole time, standing so close to me, and with me never once realizing I’d once been in bed with her even in softness of dimmed lights, once embraced her, once smelled her skin and licked her shoulders and buried my face and lips and teeth in her taut, delectable softness?

  Once.

  Or more.

  Because then it hits me like a ton of bricks. If Jaymie shifted her identity so easily, if she was Skyla, then my suspicions about Marina – my beautiful wife, my beautiful, beloved wife, my beautiful beloved lying wife – are correct. She has been lying to me the whole time. About her identity. About everything. Jaymie is Marina. Marina is Jaymie.

  I’m not sure what to think. Pain and relief and joy and rage flood through me. Because the first thing I think, then, in the midst of all this confusion, still reeling from Ben’s words, is this:

  Marina is not dead. My beloved wife is not dead.

  And this makes me so happy that I don’t care about anything, anymore. Not Staci. Not Danny on the floor. Not the blood or the abduction or the Blue Room or any of it. Nothing else matters. Nothing matters except the fact that my wife is not dead.

  And yet:

  What hits me next turns my joy into poison.

  My wife has been lying to me for years. Maybe my wife was never not lying to me.

  If all these other people in my life – my old pastor, my old manager – infiltrated my world, getting close to me in order to trick me or keep tabs on me or manipulate me into doing their bidding or I don’t know what, who’s to say that Marina wasn’t a plant, too? Designed to trick me, to threaten my sanity, to drive me mad? Who’s to say that the same organization that sent Ben to become my bartender didn’t send Marina to become my wife. Who’s to say her name really is Marina, anyway – or if Marina, like Jaymie, like Skyla, like Rick and Ben, is just an alias, a name she uses to trick me into falling for her.

  And that’s where the pain starts. Because not only is Marina gone, now, but my memories are gone too. My love for her must be gone too, though right now my heart aches so terribly that I cannot imagine this feeling, this grasping and predatory feeling, ever letting me loose from its grasp. How can I think of Marina with kindness, how can I think of her with love and regret and adoration of a happiness never truly able to flourish or bear fruit, if this whole time, she was a plant to trick me?

  “This is crazy,” Terrence rolls his eyes. He seems utterly unaffected by these revelations, annoyed and exasperated, rather than trying to hold the fractured pieces of his world together. I envy him his levity. I envy him the fact that he knows the woman he loves has a name that is really hers. I almost hate him for it. He comes over to me and drops his voice. Ben is in the corner, stitching up Danny, who is moaning softly as his blood streaks across the floor.

  “What do you think?” he asks me in a low voice. “Do you believe him?”

  My voice is hollow. I turn away so Ben won’t see our lips moving. “I don’t know,” I admit dully. “I can’t trust him, that’s for sure. But it’s so ridiculous – it’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t make up. Everything out of his mouth is a lie – but somehow I wonder…”

  “You couldn’t make it up, that’s true.” Terrence sighs. “It’s not exactly the sort of thing you’d say and expect to be believed…”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I say angrily. Tears of rage are blinding my eyes. “Jaymie, Skyla, whoever she is – she’s full of secrets. And yet – I thought I could trust her. Why would she lie to us?”

  “Why would she do any of the things she does? This woman is a fucking enigma, I’m telling you. She’s up to something, but whatever game it is that she’s playing, it’s a hell of a lot bigger than anything else we’ve dealt with before.”

  “But if she was Skyla…” Terrence scrunches up his face, furrowing his brows. “She got us this far. She helped us find Ben. She delivered on her promise. But why? Why did she want us to find Ben in the first place? And why would she lie to us, tell us that Jaymie was here – because whether or not Skyla is Jaymie, I know Jaymie’s definitely gone.”

  “She’s devious,” I say through gritted teeth, trying not to remember how her face looked when in the throes of orgasmic ecstasy. “You can’t trust a single thing she says. She wanted to throw us off her track, I’m sure of it. Look at what she’s accomplished today. We’re all here. All the
Blues. Off to find Ben. And meanwhile…”

  “She’s alone in the Blue Room with minimal supervision and our trust. Able to get any answers she wants. To find whatever she’s looking for.” Terrence exhales slowly, his chest heaving with realization. “But my question is this. What exactly is she looking for?”

  “What…” I murmur, pondering. “Or who? What would cause her to come up with such an elaborate, crazy scheme like this? What could possibly be so important that she’d want to be left alone with…” And then it hits me. Terror tightens in my chest. I feel like I’m about to throw up. “Shit. Shit.”

  ‘What is it?” Terrence looks worried.

  “Staci.” The moment I say it I know that it’s true.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She wanted Staci to stay behind while us Blues went out looking for Ben. It’s Staci she wanted to get alone, one way or the other. But – but what I don’t understand is why.”

  “Well, there’s one person here who could help enlighten us to what exactly is going on.” Terrence turns around to face Ben. “All right, Ben, maybe you can answer a couple of our questions as to what the fuck…”

  “What the hell?” I whisper.

  Ben is gone.

  I don’t know how he did it. Vanished in the blink of an eye, just like he did in the hotel. Vanished so silently and swiftly we didn’t even hear the footsteps, feel the rustle of the wind on our clothes. He has vanished, and left Danny slumped over, lying prone, his lips half-parted and his eyes closed, as if he is…

  Terrence runs over to Danny. “No…” he whispers through trembling lips. “No, no, it can’t be! Shit, Xander, come help!”

  In an instant I’m at Danny’s side.

  “Shit. Shit. I can’t feel a pulse.”

  No. I think. No, this is crazy, this cannot be happening, it cannot be, Danny cannot be….

  “He’s not responding,” Terrence is shaking, “Shit, shit, he’s not responding. Shit, Xander, what do we do? If Ben did something…if Ben did something to him, I’ll fucking kill him, I’ll fucking tear him apart with my bare hands, I swear I will.”

  He’s shaking Danny, so violently, so furiously. “Coe on Danny,” he starts to cry out. “Come on, come on, come on, please!”

  But Danny remains immobile, pale, motionless.

  “Help!” Terrence starts calling out. But the warehouse only echoes his own voice back to him.

  “Help, somebody! Please! Help!”

  But we all know that nobody has any help to give.

  We’re in this alone now.

  “Listen,” Terrence says. “I don’t care anymore about silence, about secrecy. I don’t give a shit about any of it, do you hear me? Whatever happens, even if it ruins us, I don’t care. This is all that matters now: keeping Danny safe. Keeping my brother safe. I’m not going to choose money or power or fame over family. Not when it comes to the life of my own flesh and blood. I’m calling Dr. Sherman – our own personal physician, Staci’s and mine. I can trust him. I know she’ll be able to keep quiet about this place – she’s discreet. And even if she’s not – I just don’t care anymore.”

  “Do it now!” I cry. I start pumping against Danny’s chest, counting as I try to perform CPR on him. I worry his ribs will crack beneath my weight. I can feel his skin beneath me, so clammy, so cold. My eyes go wide with panic. I can barely see. I can barely think. All that floods through me is pain and fear.

  “Get the doctor here now, Terrence, or I’m taking him to the goddamn ER.”

  “She’s not picking up,” Terrence’s voice is shaking. “Shit, Danny, she’s not picking up, what do I do?”

  “Goddamn it,” I say. “We have to get him to the hospital, now. There’s no choice.”

  “You grab his arms, I grab his legs.”

  We’re covered in blood, Danny’s blood, as we hoist him up. We look like crazed criminals. But there’s no choice. We have to get Danny to an ER – now.

  We rush to the car. I practically kick the pedal. We whirl off at a hundred miles an hour into the night.

  Chapter 1

  Ben

  It’s not what it looks like.

  I know what you’re thinking. I’m a bad guy, a double agent, a trickster. I’m out to get Xander Blue and everyone he holds dear: his family, his beloved dead wife, his ex-girlfriend. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. In my profession, we often have to do things that make people think the worst of us. Being an asshole is part of the job, you might say. You do what you have to do in order to finish the job, to get it done.

  And the things I’ve done for this job aren’t things I’m proud of. I’ve sold myself. Not just my body, although I’m not going to deny I went deep undercover at the Blue Room. But my soul, too. My heart. I gave up my identity and became somebody, anybody, whoever I had to be. And it does a lot to a person, not having a name. Not having that single connection, that anchor to some world where somewhere someone is waiting for you with responsibilities and obligations and things you have to care about because they make you a better person. It isn’t easy. But it’s life.

  The truth is, I’m not Ben the Bartender, and I’m not Pastor Jim, and I’m not anybody else anybody ever knew me as. Nor am I a private investigator.

  I’m an FBI agent, part of a top secret division of undercover agents that the Federal Government doesn’t even want to acknowledge exists. And of course, we don’t exist. We’re just names on a sheet or a forged passport, false identities. We are made-up human beings working for a department the government will swear up and down is made up too. But of course, we’re real. We investigate the top-level crimes that the government can’t be seen to be investigating – pissing off the high and mighty and powerful that are supposed to be above reproach, above investigation. We investigate, secretly, the billionaires and the sheikhs, the human traffickers and the money launderers. And we do it all with names and faces that are not our own.

  As I drive down the freeway, speeding in my black sedan with the wind whipping my hair and giving me new strength, I reach out and punch in a number on my phone, attached to the dashboard by a sleek silver cradle.

  “So,” I hear her voice, so low and melodious. “They bought it?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It took some convincing, but they bought it.”

  Jaymie gives a little laugh. “And to think – something like that? A few months ago they’d all have kicked you out for being crazy. But now, I guess, they’re susceptible to anything.”

  That’s the thing about the Blue Room. You start falling for the truths, as strange as they are, and then you end up falling for the lies, too.

  “I mean, it sounds crazy. But me being able to change my identity was pretty crazy too, and nobody seemed to have much of a problem with that.”

  “What can I say?” Jaymie is shrugging. I don’t have to see her to be able to tell that much. “You’re a master of disguise. Me, I’m just a lowly PI, not an experienced FBI agent like you.” She gives a little laugh. “I have to admit, I’m surprised Xander bought it. He’s not normally a credulous guy. Smart. Logical. He’s the brains. It took a lot to break him, to make him doubt himself. Terrence, on the other hand…you know, he’s hot blooded, quick to jump to conclusions. But not Xander…I guess he’s been put through the wringer lately, huh? He seems like he’s on the brink of losing it half the time.”

  “Ever since Staci dumped him,” I nod along. “He’s always been a little off. Maybe it’s grief. Maybe he just really needs to get laid. I don’t know. In any case, what matters is that I bought you some time. Use it well. Did you get the thing you were looking for?”

  “Skyla’s with Staci,” Jaymie says. “I’m not sure how I feel about that. Maybe I should have gotten Skyla out of there somehow, concocted some excuse to make sure she was out of the Blue Room and wouldn’t get in the way. Maybe you can arrange something…”

  “Shit, Jaymie.” I roll my eyes. “I know you’re ruthless but – not Skyla. She’s a
good woman. And a good cop. When I was on the force I liked working with her. I don’t want any harm to come to her.”

  “I’m not talking about harming her Jeez!” Jaymie almost sounds offended. “I just mean you should get out of the way. Distract her, somehow, from all the Blue Room goings-on. The last thing we need on the case is another PI investigating. You know what they say about too many cooks.”

  “They should work together?’ I sigh. “Jaymie, I can’t help you if you don’t give me the intel. What exactly are you looking for?”

  “That’s my business,” says Jaymie, abruptly.

  “Not helpful.”

  I change tactic. “I can help you, Jaymie,” I say. “But you need to let me know how.”

  “You told me you could help me figure out my past,” Jaymie says. “Was that just a ploy to get me to corroborate?”

  “There was a plane crash,” I say. “Right around the time you were missing. Crashed near where you washed up ashore.”

  “Yeah, you told me that already. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “The main passenger on that plane, Jaymie? Marina Blue.”

  “Marina…Blue?”

  “Heiress. Wife of Xander. Famously went missing in a plane crash. Her body was never discovered.”

  I hear silence on the other end of the phone.

  Then: “Well, fuck.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever heard Jaymie sound surprised or overwhelmed before. But I guess there’s a first time for everything.

  “No, that’s crazy,” Jaymie says. “I mean – I’d have remembered something like that. Being married. Having a husband. And being a heiress – I mean! Not to mention I’d have felt something, seen something, noticed something when I was with Xander.”

  “He was the love of your life.”

  “He was the love of her life,” Jaymie says. “Not mine. I told you, I can’t be Marina. That’s crazy. I’ve been with Xander – hell, I’ve slept with Xander. One of us would have known, would have felt something, would have been able to tell. Maybe I was a flight attendant on that plane, or something. Who knows? But I’m not her. She must have died in the crash.”