Chapter Twelve

"Where the fuck could she be?" Ryan paced Evelyn's formal living area. He'd come over the moment Evelyn had called with the news that Jamie had been fired off the picture.

"Matthew and Carson went to her," she told him now. "She was upset but holding up when they left. That was about three hours ago."

"Shit." He sagged into an overstuffed armchair. "That fucking excuse of a human being did this to her."

"Oh, he definitely did," Evelyn said, taking a seat opposite him.

"No, I'm talking a long game."

Evelyn frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I've had my people poking around. That photo was sent to The Eye anonymously, but I've got a few strings to pull there, and we were able to nail down the source."

"Raine?"

"Might as well be. Annalise Vail."

Evelyn nodded. "His girlfriend. She asked me to rep her a few years ago. I turned her down. Didn't like the way she looked at people."

"You've got good instincts."

"Why would she have been at the clinic? Did she go there herself and just got lucky?"

Ryan shook his head. "My guess is that she's been tailing Jamie for a while. My wife's got a rep as a wild child. A valid rep, if a little outdated."

"You're a good influence."

"Yeah, well, she's still Jamie. But Annalise was probably hoping she'd hop on stage at a strip club. Or pick a fight over a sale rack. Something Raine could use to get her kicked off the set. Once Jamie was gone, Annalise would be in."

"She's a climber, that one. Wouldn't put it past either of them. For that matter, Raine may not know."

"He knows," Ryan said. "And right now, I don't care about either one of them. I just want to find my wife. She's not herself right now."

"Hormones."

"And the pregnancy is the whole reason she's lost the job."

Evelyn frowned. "You don't think she'd—"

He drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. "I don't know. I hope not. She swore she wouldn't do something like that without talking to me first."

"But?"

The dull headache he'd been fighting all day started pounding. "But Jamie's pissed off right now. She's scared for her career. And she's impulsive. She'll want to get back at Raine. And how better to do that than to wrangle her way back onto the movie."

"And she can only do that if she's not pregnant."

"Exactly."

"Are you thinking like a security agent or a husband?"

He sighed, then rubbed his temples. "I don't know. I believe she'd never hurt me on purpose. But I also know that she's jumped off many a cliff without looking."

"She has. But not since she married you."

He thought about it. Evelyn was right. There might have been a leap or two from a street curb, but from those she always landed straight.

But this?

Someone fucking with her career. Someone manipulating her like that?

That wasn't the kind of thing the woman he loved would ever put up with.

What he didn't know was how far she'd go to get her revenge. "I need to find her," he said, as Evelyn nodded. "But I don't have a goddamn clue where she is."

Evelyn snorted. "Don't try that shit on me, Ryan Hunter. You're the head of a world-renowned security company with an essentially unlimited supply of funding at your disposal. So quit whining and go find the girl."