“Rigged it?” I said in alarm. “With what? A bomb?”
“They wouldn’t have had time,” Rue interjected, and I was inclined to agree with her. The chances of them having found us, and the car, and having the equipment needed to do it was slim to none, but still, I was cautious. We hadn’t been in the apartment for long, but it would be another explanation as to why no one had come after us. They were already here, just waiting for a car bomb to do their dirty work for them. It would be far safer on their side, after all. They were less likely to end up shot.
“I’ll start the car,” I offered. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s just a precaution, and we have to take them now.” Silly mistakes, such as catching the elevator when we should take the stairs, was enough to get us all killed.
“No, I’ll do it.” Ryan stepped in. “It’s my car.”
“I offered first,” I argued.
“You have more to lose. I’ve already lost parts of me.” His smile was self-depreciating, and I couldn’t help but smile back, despite the circumstances.
“Missing leg jokes now?” I threw at him.
He shrugged. “Why the hell not.”
Ryan had the keys in his hand, and I wasn’t about to wrestle him for them. He rounded the car, moving with that slightly lopsided gait that most people probably wouldn’t have noticed, but which I did, and so did the others. Ryan would have hated to think he looked any different on the outside than the rest of us. He was fiercely proud and hated to accept help in any circumstances. I loved him for that.
I put out my arm and pressed Rue back. There was about twenty yards between us and the car, and I hoped it would be enough. My stomach twisted, not liking where my thoughts were going. The car wasn’t rigged. There hadn’t been time, but still my thoughts went to the darkest place. I could see the bomb going off, of Ryan being killed instantly—not in a far-flung place, while shooting at a foreign enemy, but right here in New York. I could see the roof of the parking garage being damaged, and us running for our lives as it came down on our heads.
A hand slid into mine, and I looked down at Rue.
“It’ll be okay,” she told me.
I nodded and squeezed her slender fingers in return. I had to believe she was right. The possibility of things turning out any differently didn’t bear thinking about.
Ryan had climbed behind the steering wheel. I could make out the shape of him, illuminated by the overhead lighting in the garage, and the light inside the car, which had come on when he’d opened the door but was now fading. He paused, and I knew he was taking a breath, centering himself for what may be his last moment. My stomach was heavy with dread, and even though I knew it was highly unlikely, just the one percent possibility that we were correct was enough to make me sick. I glanced over quickly to Dillon, who was biting his lower lip, his gaze glued on the vehicle. My heart hammered as I turned my attention back to Ryan. He leaned forward slightly, and I knew he was about to turn the key. I sucked in a breath, my entire body rigid with anticipation.
The car engine started.
We all exhaled long breaths of relief.
“Come on,” I said, tugging Rue with me.
We ran toward the car. I climbed in the passenger side, Rue and Dillon sliding into the back. Doors slammed shut around us with bangs that made me jump. I hated feeling so antsy—it wasn’t in my nature.
Dillon gave his bike a longing stare as Ryan pulled out of the garage, up the ramp and out onto the street. The danger wasn’t over yet. We needed to get out of the city without being seen.
Would we ever come back to this place? I had no idea. I told myself it didn’t matter. We had each other, and we were all still alive. That was all that was important. We had enough money to keep us going for a while, at least.
We’d pulled into New York City traffic in the middle of the day. If we’d hoped for some high-speed getaway, it wasn’t going to happen.
“Shit, this is painful,” Ryan muttered.
I frowned at him. “You’re hurt? Is it your leg?”
He shot me a quizzical look. “No, I meant the fucking traffic.”
I laughed, and it felt good to do that again. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
I twisted around to check on Dillon and Rue in the back. He’d put his arm around her shoulder, and she huddled in against his chest. I experienced a brief pang of jealousy, wishing I’d been the one to take the rear seat with Rue, but then I looked back at Ryan, and I placed my hand on his thigh. “You were brave back there.”
He shook his head. “I knew there wasn’t going to be a bomb.”
I’d seen him hesitate, though. Just that fraction of a second where I’d thought there was a chance those were going to be his last moments, and yet he’d put the key in the ignition and started the car anyway.
Dillon leaned in from the back, in the gap between the seats. “Where the hell are we even going?”
I turned to him. “We need some help getting Rue’s passport together. I have a contact we can use. Once we have her ID set up, we can get out of the country.”
“And go where?”
I shrugged. “Wherever the hell we want. Europe. Southeast Asia. Australia, even. Just take your pick.”
Rue laughed. “I like the sound of all of those.”
I grinned at her laughter. “As much as I’d like to suggest we just keep moving, every time we do, our passports will come under scrutiny. They’re the best, but they’re still not real. We don’t want to risk getting caught going through passport control. It can take just the slightest thing for them to pull us up and start asking questions, and then we’re screwed.”
“So, we need to pick one place that we’re happy to stay at for the foreseeable future?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
Rue went quiet and huddled back against the seat. She was doing that thing where she seemed to curl into herself, as though she hoped she could somehow make herself vanish. It was understandable that she was upset after what she’d just been through. Sometimes, I didn’t think any of us really appreciated the kind of life she’d had. Being snatched off the streets and seeing men killed in front of her must have been incredibly triggering for her, but somehow, I sensed it was something else she was upset about.
“Rue, what’s wrong?”
She shrugged and shook her head but didn’t respond.
“Please, talk to us. We can’t help if you don’t tell us what’s going on in your head.”
Women were more complicated than us guys. It was one of the things I’d appreciated for the short time it had just been the three of us. If one of us was pissed off about something, we got it out by drinking or fucking, or, in Dillon’s case, fighting. Women were different. Men were relatively simple creatures, whereas they were far more introspective. Maybe I was overgeneralizing, but like I said, I was a simple creature.
“It’s just that I’ve never been on a plane. I’ve never even been to an airport. I’m a liability to you. I’m going to look guilty, and these passport control people are going to pull me over and ask me questions, and I know I’ll say the wrong thing. What if I’ve got to read something and I get it wrong? I’m going to make everyone look bad.”
She was worrying about us again.
“Rue, it’ll be fine,” I assured her.
“Your reading has come on a heap since we started,” Ryan said, taking his eyes off the road and the bumper to bumper traffic for a moment to glance back at her. “But don’t worry about that. We’ll be right there with you.”
She nodded and glanced down at her hands again. “I just hate that you’re having to go through all of this because of me.”
Ah, there it was again. She was feeling guilty.
“You need to stop that, Rue,” I told her. “None of this is your fault. If you want to blame anyone, blame Dillon for working for the Capellos in the first place.”
“Hey,” Dillon pouted.
“Not that we’d change anything about what happened
now,” I continued “We’re happy you came into our lives, Rue, despite everything. Imagine if you hadn’t? I can’t even begin to think about what you’d be going through now.”
“I’d probably be dead.”
The truth of her words settled over us. Yes, she was right. She probably would be dead. I couldn’t imagine our world without her in it. Had we been happy, the three of us, before Rue had come along? It had been more a kind of accepted existence. There was passion and tenderness between us—of course there was—but something harder, too. Ryan liked to be fucked rough because it helped with his pain, and I guessed it helped me as well. Dillon had lived through a hard upbringing, and maybe his fighting and fucking was a way for him to deal with that as well.
Like I said, simple creatures.
Rue had given us something to care about in a different way, though. She helped to fuse the slight crack that had always existed between Dillon and me and Ryan. Perhaps, in a way, she’d been best for Dillon out of all of us. But we were all in this together, and nothing was going to break us apart now. I wasn’t going to let it. Especially not Joe Nettie and the Capellos.
The traffic finally got moving. We were quiet inside the car. Each of us was alert for any signs that we were being followed, either by men on foot, ready to shoot at us from the sidewalk, or by similar men in a car, driving past us in the opposite direction, perhaps, ready to open fire as they swung by.
When we reached the outskirts of the city without any problems, the tension inside the car finally eased up.
“Where’s this contact you have?” Ryan asked.
“He’s located in Michigan, near Grand Rapids.”
Ryan frowned. “We’re not going to cover that distance in one day.”
He was probably thinking about his leg. The car had been modified for him, but that didn’t make it any easier for him to sit in one spot for too long. Even sitting in the car, not driving, was going to be harder than it was for any of us.
“We can alternate driving?” I offered, though my stomach churned, and my head swam at the thought. I didn’t want to be behind the wheel, but I didn’t know how much traveling we had ahead of us, and I couldn’t expect the work to fall on everyone else’s shoulders.
His face tightened. “I guess.”
“We can find a motel along the way,” Dillon said, leaning in from the back. “No one is following us.”
“Okay,” I agreed. That sounded like the most sensible option. “It’ll give me time to make some calls. I’m not sure how it’s going to go down, us all turning up unannounced, anyway.”
My contact owed me, but he didn’t know who I gotten involved with, or who was after us. No one in their right mind got involved with the Capello brothers if they didn’t have to. I guessed that meant Dillon hadn’t been in his right mind, but sometimes I did wonder that about him.
I sighed and sat back in my seat. Though I tried to relax, my fingers never strayed far from my gun.
Chapter Three
Rue
THE MORE DISTANCE WE put between us and the city, the more I was able to unwind. We were on the interstate now and had picked up speed as we’d left the worst of the traffic behind.
I’d never been out of the state before. The possibility that I might end up on an airplane and flying to a whole different country made me dizzy. I couldn’t even imagine how that would feel. The world suddenly seemed too big, and I pressed myself closer to Dillon’s side, trying to ground myself in his presence.
The thought of going through an airport was terrifying as well. We were still a long way from that point—I didn’t even have any official identification yet, real or forged—but the truth was that officials scared me. When I’d been growing up, my mother had always drummed into me how they were the enemy. Teachers, police officers, CPS agents... all had the power to take me away. Looking back, I could see now that being taken away would have been the best thing for me, but at the time, the thought of being without my mother was the most terrifying thing in the world. Even though she’d been drunk or high, and had probably only wanted me not to speak to people because she planned to use me as her paycheck, I’d still clung to her. I’d still trusted her. Then, in the life I’d been sold into, I’d been told the same thing. People who talked to the cops, or anyone in power, were people who ended up hurt or dead. I couldn’t even hear a police siren without my heart racing and being filled with an overwhelming sense that I’d done something wrong and I was going to be punished.
I’d carry that paranoia with me for the rest of my life.
Now the initial danger was over, I snoozed against Dillon’s shoulder. I hadn’t slept well the previous night because of the incident with Ryan, and even now, my throat still hurt from where he’d strangled me. I knew he hadn’t done it intentionally—in his sleep, he hadn’t even known it had been me he’d been hurting—but the memory of waking to choking still swirled uneasily inside me. I hated that I couldn’t trust being in the same room as Ryan if there was a chance either of us might fall asleep. The guys were big enough and strong enough to fight back if it ever happened to them, but Ryan could actually kill me and not even realize he’d done it. Maybe it was stupid of me, but it was the idea of Ryan waking up and discovering he’d killed me in his sleep more than the fact I’d be dead that bothered me the most. I knew he’d never forgive himself. He’d already been through so much, and that would tip him over the edge.
That had been part of my reason for walking out earlier that day. That, and the possibility I was breaking the three of them up. I cared about Ryan more than I cared about myself. He’d been someone important, had served our country and meant something. I was just some girl who’d only ever been good for what was between her legs.
“I’m going to have to take a break soon, guys,” Ryan said from up front.
“You want me to drive awhile?” Kodee offered.
I thought I detected a tremor in his voice, but I might be imagining things. He was probably still shaken up by what had happened outside Joe Nettie’s place.
I couldn’t even drive. How could I learn to drive when I couldn’t read the road signs or whatever paperwork was needed to get a license? I wished I could be of more help to them. As far as I could tell, all I’d done was bring trouble into their lives.
Ryan nodded. “Sure, but I need to stretch out first.”
“We’ll stop at the next gas station,” Kodee said.
“What about finding a motel?” Dillon asked. “Are we far enough from the city yet?”
Kodee pursed his lips. “I think we need to keep going a little longer. We don’t want for the majority of the drive to have to be tomorrow.”
“Do you think it’s safe for us to stop?” I asked.
He reached back for me, squeezing my knee in reassurance. “If we were going to be followed, one of us would have spotted something by now.”
I wasn’t so sure. I knew what kind of men were after us, and it made me nervous. “They could be waiting for us to stop and take us out then.”
Kodee looked between us both in the back seat. “Have you seen any vehicles that look like they might be following us?”
Dillon shook his head. “Nah, and I’ve been watching out. I think we’re good.”
“Well, we’re going to have to stop at some point,” Kodee said. “Ryan needs the break.”
Ryan gritted his teeth. “I can keep going, if we have to.”
The driving must be causing Ryan pain. I guessed it had something to do with sitting in the same position for the last couple of hours.
“We’ll stop at the next gas station,” Kodee said firmly. “No arguments.”
Ryan didn’t give him one. I guessed he was probably thankful for the excuse to stop. He was a proud man, and he was probably feeling terrible about what had happened. I was putting all the blame on my own shoulders, but if I hadn’t woken up to Ryan strangling me, I would never have walked out.
Ten minutes passed, and a sign appeared up ahead
, advertising a gas station.
Ryan signaled and took the exit.
The gas station was a small one, but Ryan drove around the back of the building, hiding the car from the road. He kept the engine running for a few minutes, and we all stayed inside, waiting and watching to see if any other cars pulled in after us. I hadn’t seen any sign that we were being followed, but it was better to be cautious.
“All clear.” Ryan finally switched off the engine.
The men were all still armed. I took comfort in that. Maybe I should get one of them to teach me how to shoot—Ryan, I guessed, since it seemed he was the expert. I would bring it up later.
We climbed out, everyone stretching out stiff backs and arms and legs. It felt good to have a little space around me.
“Bathrooms are inside,” Kodee said. “Let’s use them and get some snacks, then we’ll fill up on our way out.”
“Wait.” Ryan raised his fingers. “Is Rue going to go on her own?”
Dillon chuckled. “I think we’re going to get a few eyebrows raised if she goes in there with us trailing along behind.”
Kodee didn’t crack a smile. “I’d rather eyebrows are raised than her getting into any trouble.”
I lifted both my hands to stop them. “I’ll be fine. It’s only a bathroom. You can wait outside.”
“We don’t have much choice,” Kodee grumbled. “The attendant will probably call the cops on us if we’re spotted going into a women’s restroom.”
Together, the four of us entered the building. The bathrooms were located at the rear, and we headed straight to them.
I slipped into the ladies’ room to find it mercifully empty. I used the facilities, then washed my hands and splashed some water on my face.
Pushing the door open, I found all three guys standing there, looking as intimidating as hell, guarding the bathroom door.
I couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think anyone is going to want to come in here with you three standing there looking like that.”
“Good,” Kodee said. “That was exactly what we wanted.”
Guarded by Them (Dirty Twisted Love, #2) Page 2