Arranged: A Clean Billionaire Romance (Mixing Love and Business)
Page 22
If Leanne could have gagged, she would have. She wanted to scream at Ted Shears to get his face out of her sight. She wanted to knock her head against his and watch him bleed. Ahh! She tried moving again, but she couldn’t.
“I’ve learned a few things in prison. This is the most useful skill I’ve picked up.” He stepped back and to the side and skimmed his hand down the edge of the silver table. He studied the tray of syringes like they were his baby. “Run. Go if you can. You love to run, don’t you?”
Leanne’s eyes took in what they could.
“I don’t even have you tied up. Go on.” Ted Shears walked around to the back of her chair. “Get up from the chair and run.”
She looked at the surroundings. The narrow room with corrugated metal walls. The heavy stale air.
Ted Shears had brought her back to his underground bunker. The same underground bunker the police hadn’t been able to locate.
This was why she had a natural distrust of those doomsday survivors she saw on National Geographic. She wondered how many psychotic killers had used that as an excuse to build their own underground slaughter chamber in the guise of a survival bunker.
Leanne shut her eyes as a sombre thought came to her: she had to find a way out or no one would be able to find her.
When Leanne and Hayley had escaped, they ran without any sense of direction. They just kept running and running, knowing that the further they ran, the further they were from Ted Shears and the bunker. So they weren’t much help to the police in locating the bunker.
They were, however, more than able to describe Ted Shears. Once his sketch was up on the news, people recognized him immediately. The friendly neighbor next door. The nice teacher who was always kind and encouraging to his students.
The police had arrested Ted Shears just as he was about to make a run for it.
Now, here she was again.
Leanne closed her eyes. Lord, seriously, I really don’t want to do this again. Unlike Hayley, Leanne never suffered much from the nightmares. The last time she was here, Ted Shears had dumped her in another room and left her there to rot. So she had plenty of time to wriggle out of her cable ties, then find and help Hayley.
When they were running, Hayley had kept looking up to the sky as they ran, probably praying for their safe escape. Maybe that was the real reason why they were the only ones to escape Ted Shears.
Lord, save me. Leanne wasn’t bound now, but it was so much worse. Lord, help!
“Imagine my surprise when I saw you going into her new place. I couldn’t believe the rush of anger that overcame me. I thought I’d let it all go, but at the sight of you …”
Was Ted Shears trying to talk her to death?
She opened her eyes at the rough jerk on her chin.
“I wanted to tear you apart. I wanted to make you pay for what you robbed me of.” His lips twisted in disgust. Gone was the mask of affability he used to conceal the evil lurking within. The dark, empty look in his eyes spoke volumes of the emptiness in his soul.
Leanne couldn’t speak. She couldn’t get her lips to reflect the same disgust she felt from him, so she poured all of that into her glare.
“Still stubborn, I see.” He grabbed a phone off the table with the syringes.
She recognized the case. The new dark walnut case Hayley had gotten her maid to send over to her place. It seemed Julian was smart enough to know he had to win her family over if he wanted to win Hayley over.
“Look here. Smile.”
She frowned, then glowered at Ted Shears as he grinned.
“I’m sure Hayley would love to know what you’re up to. She seems worried. She’s been texting you, and it seems she’s called you quite a few times.” He shrugged. “But the connection here isn’t good, surrounded by metal containers and all. I miss her voice. Let me give her a call. I’ll be right back.”
He took two steps away from her, then stopped and turned back to her with a sinister smirk. “Run if you can.” He winked and turned.
Ahh! Leanne hated being this helpless. At least when she’d been bound, she could focus on releasing her bindings. Now, she couldn’t do a thing. She was stuck in her mind. Jesus!
Hayley stepped off the treadmill and pulled her face towel off the handle. Though she’d lived in the penthouse for nearly six months, this was the first time she’d used the gym. After getting a warning from Julian about not entering his office or touching his things, she decided it was better for her to exercise elsewhere. She did have a gym membership.
She glanced at the workout bench when her phone started ringing. Leanne. She grabbed the phone and answered the call. “Finally,” she said. “I’ve been texting and calling you. I was going to file a missing persons report if you didn’t get back to me by noon.”
“How I’ve missed your voice.”
Hayley froze. She checked the name on her screen, then pressed the phone back to her ear. “What are you doing with Leanne’s phone? What have you done to her?”
Ted Shears laughed on the other end. “Your voice sounds so much better when it has a slight tremor in it.”
“If you dare hurt her—”
“She robbed me of my time with you, angel.”
Hayley shook her head. “This is a trick.” Leanne could take care of herself. There was no way Ted Shears had been able to take her. “You don’t have her.”
He laughed again. “I’ll be seeing you soon, my angel.” Then the call ended.
Hayley stared blankly at her phone. She was still in a state of shock when a message from Leanne came in. She tapped into the message and a photo of Leanne popped up on the screen. She recognized where Leanne was immediately. The underground bunker.
So Ted Shears really did have Leanne.
She ran her hand through her hair. What should she do? Her thumb moved without her command. Before she knew it, her phone was back against her ear.
“Miss me already?”
“Julian, he took Leanne. He took her back to the underground bunker.”
“What? Hayley—”
“Ted Shears! He took Leanne!” She must have been louder than she thought because a guard popped his head into the room and eyed her curiously.
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“Stay there. I’m coming home.”
“What about Leanne? We have to do something. He’ll kill her. He’ll …” She couldn’t even say what he would do to her. The horrid things he’d described in detail.
Hayley pressed a hand to her face.
“Ted Shears has Leanne. Call Detective Miller and Carter.” Julian’s voice appeared softer, as if he was speaking to someone else.
“I’m coming with you,” someone in the background said.
Colin. She closed her eyes. If only she could remember the way back to the underground bunker. She could remember Ted Shears’ face as if she’d seen him just a moment ago. She could remember the way it felt when he breathed against her neck. She could remember every single horrid thing he’d said to her, yet she couldn’t remember the way back to his bunker.
She sighed. Why was she so useless?
“Have you told the guards what happened?” Julian asked.
“No.” She looked up at the guard still staring at her. “Ted Shears took my friend,” she said. “He just called me.”
The guard nodded. He closed the door behind him, and Hayley wondered if he had just locked her in.
“Hayley, I need to call Frank and let him know. Promise you won’t step out of the house. Promise you won’t let anyone up.”
Frank and Paula. Why didn’t she think about that? “No, you can’t call Frank.” She licked her lips. “His heart. He suffered a heart attack not too long ago. You can’t tell him.”
“Okay, then stay on the phone with me.”
Colin said something in the background, but it was too muffled for Hayley to catch.
“Baby, are you sure it isn’t a trick? Maybe it’s a spoof call.”
There was a pause before he asked, “And Leanne? Was she alive in the photo?”
“Yes.” She sighed at that. “I think so.” For now at least. “Lord, you have to keep her safe.” She licked her lips. She should tell Paula. She should let everyone know so they could pray for Leanne too. “I need to call Paula.”
“I can do that.”
“No, I’ll call her.” She pursed her lips and walked into the living room. Doreen was already waiting there for here with a glass of water. Even Anita came out of the kitchen and was watching her as she spoke with Julian. “I need to go.”
“Hayley.”
“I’m safe here. Just … hurry back, okay?” She ended the call and called Paula.
“Hey, darling, is everything all right?”
“Paula, I need you to move away from Frank. I need to talk to you, and you don’t want him to know what’s going on.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
“Okay,” she dragged out the last syllable. “Girl talk. Hang on.”
Hayley swallowed her impatience as the seconds ticked away.
“Okay. We’re safe. Go ahead. You slept with him, didn’t you?”
“What? No. I mean—” Hayley shook her head and took a deep breath. “Paula, Ted Shears has Leanne.”
Silence.
“Paula?”
“How’s that possible? She came by yesterday. She was going out with her staff to celebrate their new launch. She was … Didn’t she join you for the fundraiser?”
“No. Julian texted her and she didn’t reply. I should’ve checked. I should’ve dropped by her place to see if everything was okay.”
“We need to call the police.”
“Julian got Colin to do that.”
“Where are you now?”
“At home.”
“And you’re safe?”
She wanted to cry. How could Paula still be worried about her when Leanne had been taken? “Yes. I am.”
“Don’t do anything rash. Do you understand me, Hayley?” Paula said. “Hayley, do you hear me?” she asked when Hayley didn’t immediately reply.
“Yes.”
“I need to pray. I’ll call you back.” The call ended, and Hayley dropped onto the couch.
No. She couldn’t sit here and do nothing. If it hadn’t been for Leanne, she would be dead. She couldn’t allow Leanne to go through this ordeal on her own.
Hayley stood again when the elevator door opened. She sighed when Jeffrey Marsh, leader of the security team, strode out. Of course it wouldn’t be Julian. He would have to teleport to get back so quickly.
“Mrs. Nicholson, I heard we have a situation.” His large commanding frame came to a stop right in front of her. Something about the calm way he held himself in spite of the situation calmed her.
Hayley explained what happened.
“He sent a photo to your phone?”
She nodded.
“Can I take a look at it?”
Hayley handed her phone over.
Jeffrey Marsh took a look at her phone and looked away for a moment. “Is Miss Casa one of those who values her privacy much?”
“I don’t … I don’t think so. She loves posting things on Instagram. Why?”
“Good. Then the photo could be geo-tagged.”
“What?”
“Do I have permission to send this to our tech analyst?”
“Yeah. Do whatever you think will help.”
Jeffrey Marsh tapped on the phone. “Is she using the same phone as you? Any chance her ‘Find my friend’ is on?”
“We’ve never used that before.” Hayley wasn’t sure if she even had that application on her phone.
“Find my iPhone?”
“I don’t know her password.” Hayley licked her lips. “But her watch tracks her location.” It was the typical smart watch that kept track of everything from her heart rate to her sleeping patterns.
“And you know her password to that?”
Hayley shook her head again. “But I know the password to her laptop, and I’m sure she syncs everything to her laptop. She takes her laptop everywhere with her. If you can find her car, we can get her laptop. I know her car has a built-in GPS too.”
“Good. That’s very good.” Jeffrey Marsh stood. “My men will stay with you. I’ll let you know once I find something.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“You stay safe so we can get her laptop to you.”
Hayley sighed.
Jeffrey didn’t bother to waste time comforting her, which Hayley was glad for. All that mattered now was finding Leanne.
Chapter Twenty-Five
JULIAN SIGHED THE moment he laid eyes on Hayley. He knew she was safe. He’d called the guards to make sure they had their eyes on her, and she’d promised she wouldn’t leave the house. Still, he couldn’t help but worry.
She ran into his arms, burying her face in his chest. She didn’t say a word. She just held on to him as he wrapped his arms around her.
“It’ll be okay. We’ll get her back.” He wanted to continue holding her, but he was sure she wanted to know the update Jeffrey had given him. “The police tracked her car. Jeffrey’s on the way to retrieve it.”
“Won’t the police want it? I can make a trip down to the police station. We can go now.” She was in a black T-shirt and her skinny jeans and white sneakers, clearly ready to leave when she had to.
“He’s bringing it here. He’ll get there before the police. He’ll get the laptop.”
She frowned. “How can you be sure?”
“Plausible deniability, Hayley,” Colin said. “We don’t ask what we don’t want to know.”
“I can live with that.” She rubbed her hands together. “How long will it take?”
“He’ll let us know once he has his hands on her laptop.” Julian led Hayley back to the couch. “Detective Miller will trace her phone and get the last location of where it pinged off. And Carter is talking to her staff. He’ll trace her movements and see if he can find anything.”
“Who’s Carter?”
“The private investigator Colin hired,” Julian said.
Hayley shook her head. “That’s too slow. We’ll be too late.” She wrung her hands. “We can go down to the farmhouse. This elderly woman brought us into her house and called the cops. The police will know where that is.”
Julian understood Hayley’s concern, but he didn’t want her near the place. “No.”
“I have to do something.”
“What if it’s a trap?”
“I don’t care, Julian!”
“I know she saved your life. I—”
“Please, Julian.” She leaned into him. “Bring the guards with us. I promise I won’t leave your side. But we have to do something.” She looked up at him with her wet lashes. “Please.”
He tipped his head back and groaned. He couldn’t let her do this, but he couldn’t deny her request either. Not when she was staring at him like that. “You do not leave my side, and you remain in the sight of one of them at all times.”
She nodded quickly. “I promise.”
“Here.” Anita came over, unhooking something from her keyring. “Keep this with you.”
Hayley took the small tile-like object.
“What’s that?” Julian asked.
“It’s a Bluetooth GPS tracker.” Hayley stuffed the tracker into her back pocket.
“I kept forgetting to take my keys with me after locking my door.” Anita showed Julian an application on her phone. “Mrs. Nicholson got me this after she heard me complaining that I couldn’t find my key. It’ll send an alert to the phone if the tracker isn’t within five feet, I think. It can be tracked up to two hundred feet. Just in case you and Mrs. Nicholson get separated.”
Julian immediately downloaded the application and let Ani
ta log into the account. “Thank you,” he said.
Anita nodded and turned to Hayley. “A boy in Africa once scared a lion away by putting a stick above him to pretend he was bigger.”
Julian frowned at that. He appreciated all that Anita had done, but he didn’t like what she was saying though he couldn’t quite understand her point. But before he had to put a stop to it, Paula came running out of the elevator.
She embraced Hayley, then asked about a hundred questions in under a minute.
“We’re going to the farmhouse.”
Paula’s eyes widened. “Why?”
“I may have a way to track Leanne. I don’t want to wait here. We couldn’t have run that far. The underground bunker must be somewhere near the farmhouse.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
Hayley grabbed her purse and looked back at Julian. “Let’s go.”
Colin glanced over at him. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Does it look as if I can stop her?”
Five police cars were already parked in front of the farmhouse.
“This isn’t good,” Hayley said.
Jeffrey Marsh had instructed one of his men and Desmond to drop them off and drive away. He didn’t want to alert Ted Shears to their presence, but it seemed it didn’t matter now. The police had made it obvious enough.
When they got out of the car, Detective Miller came out of the house.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Hayley ignored the detective. She hadn’t been back to the farmhouse since the police picked her and Leanne up. She’d spent the next few years trying to forget all that had happened that she hadn’t even thanked the elderly woman who helped them.
Paula hopped out and walked ahead of her, embracing the old lady standing at the door. From the way they chatted, it was clear they knew each other. Turning to Hayley, Paula waved her over.
Hayley let go of Julian’s hand and moved over.
“Hayley,” Paula said. “I’m sure you remember Debra.”
“Yes.” Hayley reached out and took Debra’s hand. “Thank you for what you did for us. I’m sorry I never came by.”