Page 92 of Shark’s Edge

“Start the car,” I said evenly to Joel as I strode past him and closer to Terryn. This entire situation was going to end, one way or another. I thought it would be as simple as going into the Find my Friends section of the system file of her phone and deleting my contact. But when I found the utility, no contacts were checked off. Icy fingers crawled up my spine as I raised my eyes to my assistant’s expectant ones.

I only held her gaze for a short second. I made the motion of deleting a few things—moving things around, pressing buttons, and so on, but really, there was nothing I could do.

“Abbigail, get in the car.”

“But I want to—”

Of course she had to argue.

“Now!” I barked. Much more forcefully than I wanted to. Dammit. Another apology was on the horizon. Three in one day? Hell was going to freeze over.

I waited for Abbi to be safely inside the car before I turned back to Terryn. “Do you have your car here?” I asked, my tone of voice giving nothing away.

“Yes. Of course. Do you need a ride somewhere? While Joel takes her home?”

I really didn’t care for the way her voice shifted every time she spoke to or about Abbi. This woman was unstable at best, a real danger to herself and everyone around her at worst.

I tapped on the front passenger window, and Joel lowered it. “When I give you the cue, I want you to drive forward about eighteen inches and then stop. Back up about eighteen inches and then repeat that about three times.”

“You got it, Mr. Shark,” Joel replied.

I bent down and placed Terryn’s cell phone right in front of the tire of the town car, and when I was clear, I gave Joel the signal to carry out my instructions. A satisfying crunch could be heard as he drove over the cell phone repeatedly.

Terryn’s gasp was even more satisfying. I spared her about five seconds more of my time before joining Abbigail in the back seat.

“Run along, Terryn. I hear this is a really bad neighborhood. We’ll wait and watch to make sure you get in your car safely and drive out of here. The freeway onramp is right there at that intersection.” Hands casually slung in my suit pants pockets, I pointed with my chin in the general direction to get on the 405.

From the back seat of the town car, we watched Terryn skulk back to her entry-level Toyota and speed off into the night. I let my head flop back into the curve of the seat before looking at Abbigail.

“I’m sorry I raised my voice.”

“I’m sorry I questioned your judgment,” she said at exactly the same time.

We both took deep breaths and sat quietly for a few minutes. I had no idea what to do with the mess that was unfolding in front of me.

Finally, Abbi spoke up. “What did you see on her phone? You stiffened like you’d seen a ghost.”

I rubbed my throbbing brow bone. “I don’t really know what to make of that woman right now.”

“It seems pretty obvious to me.”

“Explain.”

“Well, it seems like she’s carrying a torch for you, Sebastian.”

“This has moved into creepier territory than a harmless crush. When I looked on her phone, not only was my contact not checked in the Find my Friends app, but also there were no other apps like that on her phone. At all.”

Abbi nodded. “My brothers have warned me about people having cloaked apps on their phones that appear to be something innocuous like a calculator or a stock ticker but are actually a tracker or a booty call app. She must have had something like that.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too. Or something more sophisticated. Either way, that’s why destroying her phone completely seemed like the best option.”

“Aren’t you worried about owing her a new phone? Although”—she laughed in the middle of her thought—“like that matters to you, right?”

“I have a legal department filled with lawyers who live and breathe to pursue and prosecute idiots like Terryn Ramsey.”

“So why didn’t you just fire her? Right there on the spot?”

“You know the saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? I’m still trying to figure out which one she is. With all these other unanswered questions floating around right now . . . ” I ticked them off on my fingers while listing them. “Mysterious food poisoning, a dead woman, and a letter hinting at suicide not written by the supposed author. If Terryn is the one who can provide the answers, I want to keep her close at hand.”