“Commander” he did what he always did when I corrected him on the ‘stealing’ snickered and pouted at me.
We stepped through the door of our motel room hesitantly, eyes looking left and right before stepping out fully. As though the three kidnappers were just around every corner. Waiting for us to put one foot wrong, and then they would capture us again. We needed to work out what the hell we were going to do next.
That red Dodge Ram could be on any street, around any corner and there was every possibility that they could even change cars, just like us.
The air was fresh, the freshness that only came after rain and I couldn’t help the small smile that put on my lips. I loved the rain, it always felt like it was the earth giving us a fresh slate. Allie had always complained that when it rained, I was always too happy about, while she cowered under blankets with every clap of thunder.
“You snore, you know that?” Noah blurted out as we walked side by side, towards the taco restaurant.
Gasping in horror, I slapped him hard with one hand, my smile instantly dropping, “I do not.” Right?
“You definitely do Sneaks, kind of still turned me on, though. Should I be worried about that?”
“You should be worried that I am going to choke the life out of you if you don’t shut up and stop making false accusations”
“There you go with the kinky shit again. I like it”
“You would” rolling my eyes, I tried to hide a smile that was threatening to take over my face from his usual antics.
“So”
“So?” I huffed, expecting him to say some sort of sexual innuendo or something.
“We need to maybe think about finding a place for you to practice shooting.”
Knocking my foot against an invisible bump, I almost fell flat on my face, but Noah grabbed my arm, saving me mid-fall. “Absolutely not, Noah, I am not shooting a gun.”
“Well, you’re going to have to. What if it’s the only way to stop them hurting us, from killing us.” The look in his eyes shocked me.
“So, we just kill them instead?” There had to be a better way, right? No good could come from this idea. At all.
“We have to fight” lowering his voice as he pushed open the door to the restaurant as I grabbed a fistful of his hoodie, I whispered angrily back at him.
“I don’t know. Guns scare me, Noah, you’re more likely to be shot if you have one.”
“I just, I think you need to know how to defend yourself, just in case we get separated. You need to know how to fight, Sneaks.” Lowering his voice, I was almost unable to hear him as he whispered into my ear, “If they get near us again, I can’t…”
Fear filled me when he couldn’t finish that sentence.
What the hell would we do if we got separated?
He was the only person I had in the world right now and that should scare me, but in reality, now I was more scared of losing him. Knowing full well if I was alone that I would not survive, especially if they captured me again. If he hadn’t been there, I would already have been dead. If it hadn’t of been for him, I would never have been in this situation in the first place. My subconscious was all but screaming at me.
“We can’t. We need to stick together, Noah.” We could not be separated; it would be nothing but dangerous if that happened.
“It could happen.” He insisted passing me a plastic menu as soon as we sat in the booth. My eyes glanced around the restaurant, half-empty, which was a good sign. I think.
“We only have one gun anyway, so you will be the one with it, so I don’t need to learn how to shoot.”
“This is America Val, we can buy a gun pretty much on every street corner” My eyebrows rose not at what he said, but at the fact that he called me Val. It shocked me and I don’t think I liked it. Call me stupid, but Sneaks was growing on me. For fuck sake.
“What do we do if we get separated?” My voice quivered a little as we took a seat, “We can’t….” We had to come up with a plan, a place to meet. Anything would be better than nothing.
A look crossed his face I hadn’t seen before. After a moment, I realized that it was a look of pure concentration. It was a couple of minutes until he spoke again, my nerves multiplied the entire time, in anticipation of what he was going to say.
“We should get burner phones, that way we can call each other only. You can’t use it to do anything else. We do not call or text anyone from home. We don’t do any internet searches; no emails just save each other’s numbers and only call if we’re in trouble.”
“That may actually be the best idea you have ever had.”
“Don’t sound so surprised, I do work at Hartman Inc. you know.”
“You do?” How did I not know that?
“Yeah, we both do” clearing his throat, he added “Me and Jack,” his brother. The very brother who he had thought had been the one kidnapping us at first, as a joke.
“Wait, you work with your father?” How had he not brought this up before? It had been weeks now. Weeks, Jesus.
“Yeah? Well I guess technically I work for him, but I’m on the board as well”
“What do you do there?” My fingers were curling around the edges of the plastic-covered menu as I waited for his response.
Swallowing heavily, he answered “Marketing executive is technically my title but”
“But?”
“To be honest, Sneaks, I hardly ever fucking go in the office. I never get given anything to actually do apart from vote on the board, and that is only because I had my mom’s seat, my father” closing his eyes he finished his sentence “I’m not Jack, as far as he is concerned my brother will take over the company one day, and the only reason he gave me anything at all was to save face in front of everyone else”
Digesting what he had just told me, I didn’t know what to say. What kind of life did he really have back in New York?
When he finally opened those stormy gray eyes, I was able to speak, “Do you think that has something to do with what he has done to us?”
“I don’t see how… shit,” dropping his head down on to the table between us, he hit it three times before looking back up to me.
“What?”
“There was a board meeting a few months ago. He wanted to take over this publishing company and….”
“And?”
“I voted with the majority of the board, no.”
“You think he would do this because if that?”
“Anything is possible with that man” Well, he did ship his son off to another country at ten years old “He was so angry and two of the other board members…..” He hesitated a bit too long as someone passed us a little too closely.
“You better finish that sentence Diablo” picking at an invisible thread on my sleeve, I began to fidget.
“They left” fear hit me with the way he said that last word “I have always had these suspicions about him, my father I think he had a hand in that too” clearing his throat he then confessed something to me that made me feel physically sick “I remembered something from last year”
“What?” I asked when he stayed silent for a minute too long.
“That one with the green hair, he was in the office with the one with the ponytail”
As his words sunk in, I suddenly became very thirsty.
“They walked through the halls as if they owned the place, looking back Lucinda left the week after that” did they have a hand in that?
“And they voted no, as well?”
Nodding his head, he didn’t speak again. Clearly trying to digest his realization, “You really think we can’t just call someone…”
“Don’t, its…. we’ll work something out, Sneaks. I told you.” How could he sound so confident about this? As far as I could tell, we would be spending the rest of our life running, constantly looking over our shoulders.
“So, burner phones?” A safer topic than talking about his father, apparently.
“Yeah, we’ll get a car, dr
aw some cash out, get the phones and a gun. Look I know you don’t like the idea, but you need to be able to protect yourself. Please, just, it’s the one thing I ask of you, after the hair of course”
Staying silent, I continued to play with the edge of the menu. Suddenly I didn’t feel as hungry anymore. Although my stomach was churning away in need of substance.
As his eyes scanned the menu in his own hands, I couldn’t help but note that his eyebrows were raised, he was agitated, and it was likely due to me and my lack of wanting to hold a gun. Sighing and clearing my own throat, “And you’ll show me how to use it?”
Eyes wide in surprised he nodded his head a few too many times “Yeah”
“Fine, but if I shoot myself or you in the ass, don’t say I didn’t warn you that this was a mistake.” Because they were both possibilities with me, and it wouldn’t even be on purpose either.
“Fuck, maybe you’re right. I mean, you have threatened me in one way or another more times than I can count. Maybe giving you a firearm is not a good idea.”
“Too late now, Diablo.”
Rolling his eyes, he stood up and went to the counter to order our food without even asking what I wanted. And yet somehow, he came back with precisely that.
Who the hell was this guy?
Chapter Fourteen
Valentina
Racing through yet another night sky, two days later, through yet another town in our newly acquired black pick-up truck, we had a semi plan on what we were going to do.
Noah would go to the bank and get as much cash as possible, meaning that we wouldn’t be limited to the ATM amount. We would commander a new vehicle, well, that would be my job. We’d then ditch his cards and head North. We couldn’t go over the border to Canada, not with me being a missing person but we could get as far away as possible.
With any luck we would get away with it, but something in my gut kept twisting. Fear and worry churned with my stomach acid. Anything could go wrong with our plan.
What if when he went to the bank and they wouldn’t let him have any money?
What if they called the cops?
What if the three men we were running from found us?
There were too many what ifs, and it was making my head hurt from overthinking. That was not our only concern, though. Anyone could be looking for us, lurking around every corner we turned. We needed to get away from people, out of sight, out of mind. That’s the saying, right?
“We need to go to the woods or something.” Finding the words blurting out of my mouth before I even realized I was speaking.
“What?”
“What if your father has others out looking for us? We would never know who they could be, Noah.” We would never be able to trust anyone we came across, fear that they were on someone else’s side. The only people we could trust was one another. There was a time, not too long ago that would have scared me more than anything. That Noah Hartman, the Diablo, was the only person I had to trust in the world.
Scratching his face, running those long fingers through the stubble, which was now becoming almost a beard. He didn’t look like the asshole I had been unlucky enough to get into the elevator with. No, the man in front of me was somehow even hotter in his t-shirt, jeans, pitch-black hair, and pure ruggedness. Desire began to pool in me, and I was unable to take my eyes off of him, my legs began to gently press together.
“What the hell are you thinking about over there, Sneaks? You’re blushing”
Well, that did it. My eyes dropped to my lap in a flash, “I am not.”
What was wrong with me?
“Yeah, you are, you’re thinking about sex again, aren’t you? Sneaks, who would have guessed you would be such a horn dog.”
“Your assholness is showing again.”
“I’d rather see your whole ass.”
“Gross”
Chuckling he raised a single brow in my direction while turning the truck into a busy grocery store parking lot.
Both grabbing the few items we wanted to keep from the seat between us.
“Car, bank, gun, and then run.”
“To the woods.” It was not a question. I really thought that we needed to go somewhere less populated.
Sighing, I watched him survey the cars around us, waiting to see if anyone was suspicious, almost “Woods?”
“It will keep us hidden from people, Noah,” and not just the people we knew that were after us.
Slamming the truck door shut behind him, I had expected a groan but was surprised when he nodded his head agreeing far more quickly than I expected “Fine, but what are we going to do sleep in the car?”
“Just let me see what I can do with that, now you go to the bank, and we meet back here”
“You call me straight away if you need me,” the severeness in his voice shocked me, and I had to admit I was nervous about being separated from him. We had not spent any time apart really, not out in the open like this since we had been taken two weeks ago. God, it had been weeks now. How had it gone so fast but also felt like it had been even longer at the same time?
“I’ll text you as soon as I have a car,” or maybe something even better. My mind ran back over the RV’s I had seen when we drove towards this store parking lot. That would be the perfect thing for us, a place to sleep and drive simultaneously. We would never have to stop for longer than getting gas or food again. More time to put as much distance between them and us. How many of them were there?
“Okay, just be careful, Sneaks.” He gave me a lingering look, and at that moment in time, all I wanted to do was jump into his arms and never let go. Wait, what? He is still an asshole Valentina, the Diablo. Do not forget that.
“Careful there, Diablo, that heart you claim not to have is showing” swallowing nervously, finding our eye contact uncomfortable.
“I never said I didn’t have one.” My eyes dropped to where the patch of untattooed skin was, just where that heart would be, came to mind. I should have questioned him on it before. What did it mean? “It’s there Sneaks, it’s just dead”
One last look up into his eyes and clutching a plastic bag of some toiletries, clothes and the tools I would need to commander us another vehicle and walked away from him.
As my feet pounded the sidewalk, I felt like every pair of eyes were on me. In reality, I am pretty sure they weren’t, but when you are running from people, you feel like everyone is looking at you. As if they know. As if they are the very ones after you.
I was slowing my pace, nearing a lot filled with RV’s. Many of them looked to be the newest ones, with way too much security for me to be able to steal without giving me away or even worse with a tracking system that they would be able to follow us with. That was all we needed, the cops coming after us using that. May as well post our road trip on Facebook.
How was I going to do this in broad daylight? There was no way, they would catch me in a hot minute. That was for sure. It’s not like we could even buy a car with Noah’s money, that would be a mistake we couldn’t make. If they were watching his accounts, they would see that purchase and know what vehicle we had.
Maybe I should go to a parking lot and use my skills to take one from there? Only without Noah to keep watch, the owner could come out of a store at any moment and catch me in the act. Damn it. I needed to pick a car or something now and make my move. We didn’t have a lot of time.
Moving to take a single step away from the empty street opposite the dealership, a large and heavy hand grabbed my shoulder, spinning my entire body around. A scream stuck in my throat in shock.
Apart of me had expected to see Noah, but all of the blood drained from my already pale face as I stared into the eyes of someone I did not want to see right now. Or ever again for the matter.
“Got ya’ bitch” he dragged me flush against him, circling his arms around me lifting my feet off the ground a fraction. All I could see was his neon green hair and skin so pale he looked like he was on the verge of death, “Annoyi
ng little bitch. You’re dead.”
“Get off me!” I screamed louder than ever before in my life. People turned their heads in our direction, but this did little to deter the giant dick who held me so tightly that I knew bruises would be forming in no time across my skin.
A large middle-aged man came running over, shouting at us as he kept pushing these thick black-rimmed glasses up his nose, “Hey, get off her, miss, are you okay?”
Devil In The Elevator: A Hartman Romance Page 13