by Violet Howe
“Okay. All right. I’ll leave.”
“Good. Just drive north. I gotta go for now, but I’ll call you in an hour.”
“No. Don’t call me at all. I’ll go because you’ve put my life in danger, but I don’t ever want to talk you again.”
“Sweetness, I—”
I ended the call and turned the phone off as Seth exploded with questions.
Five
“What’s going on? Who was that? What do you mean your life is in danger?”
I pressed my fingers to my temples and tried to think. Victor had said I had no time to pack. He’d made it sound like the threat was imminent. Where was I to go? How long would I need to stay gone? How would I know my family was safe? Couldn’t I at least tell them that I was going somewhere without telling them why?
“Dani, talk to me.” Seth grabbed my arms and brought my focus back to him. “What’s going on? You’re white as a ghost and you’re shaking all over. Who was that?”
“I have to go.”
“Go where?”
I pulled myself from his grasp and turned left and right as I looked around my living room. What should I take with me? How much time did I have? Was someone outside the house now, watching and waiting for me to emerge? Would I be shot down as I pulled the car out of the driveway?
“Would you please just tell me what’s going on?” Seth asked, and the realization that he was in danger because of me dawned fast and hard.
“Oh, God, Seth! You have to go. You have to leave. You have to get out of here.”
“What? No. I’m not going anywhere. What’s going on? Why is your life in danger?”
“Because I’m an idiot who made bad choices and rushed into things. I can’t explain it right now. Hell, I don’t know that I can ever explain it, but believe me when I say you’ve got to go. You’ve got to get as far away from me as possible. Please, leave now before something happens to you because of me.”
“I’m not leaving you like this. Tell me what’s going on and I can help you. I’ll call for backup. I can have this house surrounded in minutes.”
“No. Then more people will get hurt, and it will be my fault. I have to leave. You have to leave, too.”
I grabbed my purse from the kitchen counter and shoved my phone inside it, and then I grabbed a photo of my family from the living room wall. It was impossible to know what else to take. I had no idea what might happen, what the outcome would be.
“Damn it, Dani. Talk to me. Let me help you.”
“You can’t, okay? I have to go. Now.”
“Go where?” He flung his arms out in frustration. “You’re in no shape to drive. You’ve been drinking all night, and that phone call obviously upset you. Where do you need to go? I’ll take you.”
“No!” I shouted, and he rocked back on his heels at the vehemence in my voice, his eyes wide with shock. “I’m sorry, Seth. I wish I could explain, but I can’t. Please just go. Get away from me so nothing happens to you.”
I tried to push past him to head toward the door, and he stopped me, placing his hands on my shoulders.
“I am not letting you drive like this. If you need to go somewhere, I’ll take you, but you have to tell me what’s going on. Let me help you.”
“No,” I whispered, my voice cracking under the weight of fear and panic. “You need to get as far away from me as possible.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not doing that. I’m not leaving your side until I know that you’re okay, and right now, you’re pretty freaking far from okay.”
“Seth, I don’t have time to argue with you. There may be someone waiting outside right now, and I can’t say for sure what will happen when we step out there.”
He looked toward the windows, and his hand went to his hip where his gun would normally be. “You think someone’s outside? Let me call it in.”
“No. There’s no time. I have to go now.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
I laid my hand on my chest in an attempt to ease the wild thumping of my heart.
“If you want to help me, then protect my family. Make sure they’re all right. Make sure no one harms them. Let them know I’ll contact them as soon as I can.”
“I’ll make a call and have someone watch over them, but there’s no way in hell you’re leaving here without me.”
I recognized the set of his jaw and the stubborn glint in his eyes, and I knew his mind was made up.
Tears began to stream down my face as I shook my head.
“Don’t do this. You can’t protect me, and I won’t get you killed because of my stupidity. Please, Seth, just go.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and squeezed him tighter than I ever had, and then I pressed my lips against his. The fear coursing through my veins didn’t stop the longing for what might have been, and I had to consider that this could be the last time I would ever see Seth. If I didn’t make it out alive, or if I couldn’t come back to Cedar Creek, I’d never have another chance to kiss him. To tell him what I needed him to know.
I held his face in my hands as I pulled back from the kiss and gazed into his eyes, dark with fear and confusion.
“I love you, Seth,” I whispered. “I’ve always loved you—always. And I always will. But I’m begging you, if you’ve ever cared for me at all, let me walk away. Don’t try to go with me. I need you here in Cedar Creek with my family, okay?”
“No. Let me call for help.” His voice rose as I shook my head and tried to pull away from his grasp. “Listen to me. Are you forgetting I’m a deputy sheriff? I have an entire team of people I can call. They can be here in minutes.”
“No!” I screamed. “For all I know, this house might have been rigged with explosives. We have to get out of here now.”
“Explosives?” He released my shoulders as his face registered the shock of my words. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“For God’s sake, would you listen to me? We have to go.”
“Okay,” he said, finally moving toward the door with a sense of urgency. “Let’s go to the station. It’s only a few blocks away.”
“No. We can’t do that.”
I didn’t doubt the capabilities of Cedar Creek’s local law enforcement, but this was the Mafia we were talking about. The Chicago Outfit. The Empire. One of the most dangerous and most powerful mob families in the country. A police presence wouldn’t exactly scare them off, and I shuddered to think what might happen if it came to a standoff. I didn’t want to be responsible for innocent lives lost.
Besides that, who knew what kind of contacts they might have working with them, even here? I’d learned from the federal prosecutors who questioned me in Chicago that there were members of law enforcement all over the place who were on the Mafia’s payroll, and they’d cautioned me to be wary of who I talked to and what information I gave about Victor.
It seemed farfetched that anyone in Cedar Creek’s force would be tainted, but I couldn’t know for sure, and I couldn’t risk Seth’s life or the lives of his fellow officers because of my naivety in trusting the wrong man to marry.
It was best for me to be the only target. That might be the only way I could save the people I loved.
I reached for the doorknob, but Seth grabbed it first, moving me behind him.
He bent to pull a pistol from his ankle holster, and then he looked over his shoulder at me. “Is your car unlocked?”
I pressed the unlock button on the key fob. “It is now.”
“Stay behind me. We’re going down the steps and to the car. You get in the driver’s seat and climb across, and I’m getting in behind you.”
I opened my mouth to protest him getting in the car with me, but fear at the thought of what we faced on the other side of the door overruled my objection, and I clamped my mouth shut. I took one look back at my peaceful little abode and hoped I’d see it again. My gaze landed on the whiskey bottles lined up on the coffee table, and I sprinted to grab the Jameson.
&nb
sp; “What are you doing?” Seth asked.
“Grabbing essentials. Okay, let’s go.”
He took the keys from me and crouched low as he opened the door leading out to the carport. I held my breath while we scurried down the steps and alongside the car, and then I dove inside while he held the driver’s door open. The shifter stick shoved into my ribs as I made my way to the passenger seat, and I bit down hard on my lip and tried not to cry out.
“Stay down,” Seth said as he slid into the driver’s seat, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror and side mirrors as he put the key in the ignition.
A terrifying thought came to me, and I grabbed his arm and pulled it back in a panic. “What if the car is rigged to explode? In the movies, they turn the key and the bomb goes off. How would we know?”
“Jesus! Who did you piss off, and what are you involved in?”
“I told you, it’s a long story. But is there a way to know if the car is safe?”
“I wish to hell I had my truck, and I wish I knew what I was up against.”
He put his hand back on the key and paused, his eyes meeting mine as he turned it slowly.
We both released held breaths as the engine roared to life, and then he instructed me to get down as low as possible as he began to back out of the carport.
“We’re supposed to go north,” I said without even considering why.
“We’re going to the station.”
“What? I told you we can’t do that.”
“Why not? That’s the safest place for us to be.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not, and if I go to the police now, and they see me do that, then my family is only going to be in more danger.”
“I’ll call ahead,” he said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “I’ll tell them to send patrolmen to your sister’s house and your parents’ house. But you have to tell me why. I have to know who we’re running from.”
I reached to take his phone from him. “You can’t involve law enforcement, okay? Trust me on this. I’ve been flying under the radar for the last two years by not doing anything to provoke either side. I can’t tell what I don’t know, and I can’t make it look like I’ve got anything to tell.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said, slamming his hand against the steering wheel. “For God’s sake, tell me something. I’m fighting blindfolded here.”
I took as deep of a breath as I could manage in my hunched over position and exhaled with a swear.
“All right, I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you have to promise me that you’ll keep driving. That you won’t go to the station.”
“That’s ridiculous! Why would I not go to the one place I know I can keep you safe?”
“Because we can’t risk getting your fellow officers killed because of me.”
He paused his constant surveillance of our surroundings to look down at me. “This threat is that big?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It is.”
“I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this,” he whispered as he went back to scanning for danger in all directions. “No one else on earth could make me go against every instinct I have.”
“I’m sorry. I never should have walked up to you in that bar tonight. I never should have asked you back to my place. I shouldn’t have involved you. I’m so sorry.”
He frowned as he reached over to rub his hand across my back. “It’s okay. I wouldn’t want you in danger alone. You said head north? Why? Where are we going?”
“I don’t know.” I replayed Victor’s words in my head. He’d wanted me to go north to meet up with him, something I wasn’t about to do. “Don’t go north. Go, um, west, I guess. Or maybe east?”
“You don’t know where we’re going? Geez. I thought you had some sort of plan.”
“For right now, just drive and let me think.” I laid my forehead against the dashboard and closed my eyes.
“As soon as we leave town, we’re more vulnerable. As you well know, there’s nothing but rural roads heading out of Cedar Creek.”
“The back roads are to our advantage here. You know these roads. They don’t. Just keep a lookout for anyone following us.” I sat up and looked out the rear window, relieved to see no one.
“Who’s they? Can you at least tell me who we’re running from?”
I ignored his question as my mind scrambled to think of a destination. Some place we could be safe long enough for me to catch my breath and think. I needed to think. I needed to calm my thoughts and figure out what to do next. I needed to process everything that had happened since my phone rang.
“Where could we go to lie low and be safe?” I asked, unable to come up with a good option.
“Um, the station would have been a great place, but we’re driving away from it because you insisted we had to. You said you’d tell me everything if I did that. So, start talking. Who are we running from?”
“The Mafia.”
“The—” He looked over at me, both eyebrows raised and his mouth gaping open. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. The Chicago Outfit. That Mafia.”
“Holy shit, D. How’d you get mixed up with them?”
“I’m not mixed up with them. My ex is.”
He shot a sideways glance toward me. “You married a guy in the Mafia?”
“I didn’t know he was in the Mafia when I married him, okay? Where are you going? Why are you turning here? We need to head out of town.”
“We also need to make a few detours so that if anyone is following us, I can see who they are.” His grip on the steering wheel tightened. “How did you find out he was in the Mafia?”
I laid my head against the passenger window, my mind resistant to the memories recalled by the question.
“He was making breakfast one Saturday morning, and a team of men dressed in black suddenly shattered my windows and burst through my doors. They handcuffed him and carried him away, and I called our attorney, certain that some horrific mistake had been made. But no. I had married a Mafia hitman.”
“That must have been terrifying for you,” Seth said, reaching over to take my hand. “I can’t imagine you going through that.”
I lifted my head to look at him, surprised at his reaction, though I shouldn’t have been. He’d thought of me and how the situation affected me. By contrast, the others closest to me whom I had told—my parents and my sister—had all expressed outrage first at what a monster Victor was and then condemnation for me at making such a horrible choice in a mate and rushing into such an important life decision.
“Yeah, it definitely wasn’t an experience I ever want to repeat. After that morning’s rude awakening, I lost myself, financially and emotionally. In the midst of that, I struggled to prove to the court that I didn’t know anything—and I honestly didn’t—and I struggled to accept everything I learned from them about the man I thought I loved.”
He squeezed my hand and released it to resume his grip on the steering wheel, and his sudden tension alerted me to the headlights behind us.
After detouring in a zigzag pattern out of town, we were on a remote stretch of winding rural road with no houses or streetlights visible either in front of or behind us. Towering trees formed a thick barrier on either side of the road, caging us in and leaving us vulnerable, exactly as Seth had predicted.
“Do you think that’s someone following us?” I asked Seth as I turned in my seat to look back.
“Hard to tell just yet.”
He hit the accelerator as he watched the headlights come closer in the rearview mirror.
I turned to look back again. “They’re gaining on us. Do you think we can outrun them?”
“Turn around and get low. Stay down, okay?”
Obeying his instruction, I crouched low and then turned my head so I could watch the lights grow larger in the side mirror.
My heart pounded, and my stomach churned with fear.
We were going so fast that the trees outside the window were a dark blur,
and if I hadn’t been so worried about the possibility of bullets flying, I might have fretted over the dangers of such high speeds on the curving, narrow road.
The headlights were close enough now to determine that it was a truck, and as it approached us, it began to ride in the middle of the road.
I turned to look at Seth, his face a mask of concentration as he watched the threat behind us while keeping focused on the road ahead as well. His pistol lay on the seat between his legs, and I hoped he wouldn’t need to take his hands off the wheel to grab it.
Suddenly, loud muffler pipes roared as the truck gunned the gas to pull alongside us in the left lane, and I held my breath as I watched it, terrified that at any minute, we’d be rammed off the road or gunned down and left to die.
“Hold on,” Seth said, and then he hit the brakes hard, screeching us to a halt as the truck kept going.
Despite the danger, I couldn’t help looking up and over the dash at the red taillights growing smaller as the distance between us grew.
Seth exhaled, and I gulped in air after holding my breath far too long.
His body was still tense, and his gaze still steely, and something told me not to relax.
“They weren’t after us, right?” I asked, looking for reassurance. “We’re safe for now, right?”
“That remains to be seen. They could have gotten ahead of us to block the road and fence us in from behind with another car.”
“Great. So, what do we do?”
He turned the car around in the middle of the road and accelerated us in the opposite direction.
“We proceed with caution, and we call and get someone to check on your family.”
Six
Something in his demeanor had changed with the knowledge it was likely the Chicago Outfit pursuing us, and it only served to make me even more scared.
“Where’s my phone?” he asked, and I was surprised to see it still in my hand. I’d forgotten I took it from him.
“Do you have a partner?” I asked as I handed it to him. “Someone you trust implicitly? The feds warned me that I have to be careful who I involve, and Victor told me outright these people would be watching to see if I went to the cops.”