by Vivian Gray
Anton.
“Wait,” I said, realizing there was a crucial gap in our story, “you told me how you figured out where Brendan had taken me, but how did you find this hotel?”
“You used the debit card I gave you. I had almost forgotten I’d given it to you, but when I remembered, I figured it was worth checking out. After being kidnapped and attacked, I figured you might have been desperate enough to put away your pride long enough to use the card and find yourself a place to stay. So, I would able to just see where you’d swiped the card and I could follow your trail. Luckily, you used it.”
“So, you tracked me again?” I looked up at him from beneath my lashes, letting him grasp my full meaning. It felt like a petty thing to do after everything he’d gone through to find me, but the point remained. I couldn’t stand in front of him and forget everything that had happened that day. We needed to talk about it, and I was willing to indelicately bring up the topic.
He looked down at the floor and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have had you followed this morning.” He paused. “God, was it only this morning? It feels like that was a lifetime ago.”
I nodded in agreement. “It does. Time feels like it has slowed down. It feels like I’ve known you longer than a week.”
Anton stepped forward and grabbed my hand, squeezing it in his own. “Somehow, it feels like I’ve always known you.”
“It may feel that way, but it has only been a week. I can’t hold you to the promises you’ve made me, just like you can’t fully trust me yet. We don’t know one another.”
Anton’s eyes were wide with understanding. “No, Bailey. No. What I said today – throwing you out, ending things – it’s not what I want. I was upset, but I see now how wrong I was. I should have trusted you. Everything I’ve said to you, I mean it. I want you to come home with me.”
“You don’t have to say any of this,” I said, stepping away from him, turning towards the open curtains that looked out on the brick buildings across the road. “Just because you’ve now seen my options, seen what my life will look like without you, I don’t want your pity. I managed to figure things out before you, and I will figure things out after you.”
I felt him move behind him, his heat against my spine. His arm brushed against my side and then wrapped around me, pulling me towards him gently, giving me every opportunity to pull away.
“I don’t want there to be an after,” he whispered into my hair.
My breath hitched in my chest, and he took it as an invitation to spin me around and look down into my face.
“Please come home with me. My offer isn’t charity. It isn’t even for you; it’s for me. I want you there. Desperately. Please come with me.”
I tried to think of a reason to say no, to turn him down, but I couldn’t. I wanted it, too. As crazy as everything had been since I’d met him, I still wanted to be with him.
I nodded.
Chapter Nineteen
Anton
The car ride was quite awkward, but the nervousness and anxiety that had plagued me all afternoon was gone. With Bailey sitting next to me, everything else seemed inconsequential. Sure, things might be tense between us for a while, but they would thaw over time. We would find a good rhythm again. We would forget all about Brendan – after I sent a few men to rough him up, of course – and we would finally move forward.
No longer would Bailey be the woman who I won in a poker game; she would be with me by choice.
“Anton.”
I loved the way she said my name. She made it sound like a dirty word. My heart thudded each time.
“Anton,” she said again, more ferociously.
I turned to her in a kind of daze, exhaustion and contentment pouring off of me, filling the air around us.
“Yes?” I allowed myself to look at her.
I’d been avoiding it; afraid I would get carried away at the sight of her. I knew she wasn’t ready to forgive me yet, which meant I couldn’t reach out and touch her the way I wanted. I couldn’t push her hair away from her face and run a finger down her sun-freckled shoulder. The only way to be sure I wouldn’t slip up was to keep my eyes pointed towards my own window, watching the world pass by in a blur.
Bailey’s eyebrows were drawn together, creating a nervous line in the center of her forehead, and she was looking at me expectantly. A prickle of confusion ran through my chest.
“What’s going on?” I asked, staring at her, taking in the sweet roundness of her face, the spring green of her eyes.
She sighed, annoyed, and tapped a finger on the glass of her window. All at once, the world beyond us came into focus. We had pulled up in front of my apartment building, but police cruisers were parked all along the road. Two officers stood guard at the revolving doors, and a few more were stationed at each end of the block. They all seem trained on our car.
“Shit,” I said under my breath, not fully understanding what was happening, but realizing it was not good.
“What does this mean?” Bailey asked. “Are we in trouble?”
I bit my lip. It was hard to say. I took precautions to protect myself – never keeping my documentation in the same place for very long and using countless middlemen to put deals through. I made it so that even if the police came to raid my home or my business, they wouldn’t find everything they needed, and by the time they knew where to look, I would have already sent people to clean up after me. But still, the law being involved at all made things complicated.
“No,” I said, deciding I was only half-lying to Bailey. “I may be in trouble, but you will be fine.”
She reached out for me, wrapping her hands around my forearm. I closed my eyes for a second, soaking in her warmth. “What are we going to do?”
We. I knew I had more important things to focus on, but it felt like a good sign that she was visualizing us as a unit. The two of us against the world. It gave me hope, something to fight for.
“We are going to get out of this car and talk to the police,” I replied. “But Bailey, listen to me.”
Her eyes were wide and glassy. I could see the exhaustion in the hunch of her shoulders, but she was running on adrenaline now. She squeezed my arm, and I placed a hand on top of hers, patting it.
“Do not lie for me,” I said.
She gasped. “I won’t give you up, Anton. Never.”
I held up a hand to quiet her. “If they ask you a question and you have even the slightest hint that they may already know the answer, tell them. Don’t get caught lying for me. If you tell the truth, you’ll walk out of here a free woman. Don’t ruin your life because of me.”
She blinked a few times but didn’t say anything. Her mouth was set in a straight line, and for the first time since meeting her, I couldn’t read the expression behind her eyes. Finally, she nodded. Just once. A quick head jerk. And then she stepped out of the car.
I took a deep breath and followed her.
Immediately, officers were surrounding us. The world turned into a flurry of activity. One officer read me my rights while another wrapped my arms behind my back, slapping cold metal cuffs on my wrists. My face was pressed into the side of the car, but I got one last glimpse of Bailey as she was led into a waiting cop car. They hadn’t cuffed her, for which I was grateful. An officer placed his hand on her head, helping her duck down into the car, and then the door shut and she was gone.
I closed my eyes and prayed I’d see her again.
My apartment was being raided.
“We have drug-sniffing dogs in there right now,” Officer Johnson informed me, leaning back in his chair, hands crossed over his chest. “So it’s only a matter of time before we find something to keep you. Might as well tell us what we need to know. Make things easier on yourself.”
We’d been at this for half an hour already, and I hadn’t answered a single one of their questions beyond my own name.
“We are going through your filing cabinets,” he continued, flashing a yellow grin. “Finding all of
your hiding places, cracking your safes, and flipping your mattresses. We will find what you’re hiding.”
“Do people really hide things under their mattresses?” I asked, genuinely curious. It was a common hiding spot in movies, but I had never once stuffed something of value under my mattress. That was what innocuous looking flash drives were for.
“I don’t know,” Johnson replied, leaning forward, eyes narrowed at me. “Do they?”
I shrugged. “How would I know? I don’t have anything to hide, so it precludes me from having a vast knowledge of good hiding locations.”
He raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying my bullshit, but he didn’t say anything. I’d learned in the last half hour that a healthy chunk of an interrogation was silence. It was a trick I knew well. Silence created nervousness and nervousness led to loose lips. I had questioned enough double-crossers in my time to know that staying quiet was sometimes the best method of extracting information.
People would say anything to fill the silence. I, however, enjoyed the quiet. Plus, I took comfort in the knowledge that the officers were raiding my apartment, which had zero useful information. I didn’t keep anything work-related at home, so their time and money were being wasted. My only regret was that my time was being wasted as well; I would have much rather been with Bailey.
As they had many times over the past half hour, my thoughts turned to Bailey. She’d been led away, but after that, I had no knowledge of her whereabouts. Officer Johnson refused to tell me anything relating to her – probably another interrogation technique. If he could make me nervous enough, I’d say anything to get out and find her.
I could only hope she was able to stay strong. She’d had one of the most unimaginable days. It had been non-stop drama and chaos and horror, and I hated that my issues were compounding that. She deserved an evening of peace, but instead, she was most likely in an interrogation room down the hall, being grilled by sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated cops desperate to bring down my operation.
And unlike me, Bailey wasn’t used to this kind of thing. If she cracked and gave up information relating to the business office downtown, then the police could get a warrant to search there, as well, before I had a chance to clear out the evidence.
Officer Johnson stood up, adjusted his belt over his bulging stomach, then left the room without saying anything. A few minutes later, another officer came in. He had a wide, round face and a thick mustache that reminded me of the crossing guard who had worked at my elementary school when I was a kid. That was probably the point. He looked friendly. He would try to make me believe he was my friend, and then I’d spill all my secrets to him. Their tactics were too easy to decipher.
“No drugs,” he said, flopping down in the chair, running a red hand over his face.
“The dog didn’t find anything?” I asked, my lip pouted out in mock sympathy.
He laughed and shook his head. “No, you were right; there was nothing there to find. I told the guys it was a waste of time, but some of these other officers can get a little gung ho.”
He was trying to separate himself from his co-workers – make me believe he was on my side. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Did these people think I was an idiot?
“I’ve said it over and over again. There isn’t anything to find,” I said. “If you’d really like to nab a criminal, my girlfriend was kidnapped earlier today.”
The officer, whose name tag was missing, raised his eyebrows. “Oh, was she now?”
It was clear he didn’t believe me. He probably thought I was trying to distract him, which I guess I sort of was, but it was the truth.
I nodded. “Brendan Jacobs.”
Recognition registered behind his eyes. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“I’m sure you have. I would bet everything I have that he is the one who tipped you off about my ‘illegal business’ and wasted all of your time tonight.”
“What do you have?”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“You said you’d bet everything you had. What would that entail?”
I sighed. He didn’t care about Brendan or the kidnapping. He was still hoping I’d give them a list of my bank account numbers. I lowered my head to the table, thinking that if I were going to be locked in this room for an indefinite amount of time, the best thing that could come out of it would be a short nap.
I closed my eyes.
It was Officer Johnson who unlocked the interrogation room for me, throwing it wide, the metal doorknob banging off the limestone wall.
“You are free to go,” he barked out, agitation pouring off of him in waves.
“You mean I’m not going to be arrested?” I asked, standing up and straightening my shirt.
Johnson didn’t answer me. He simply glared and clenched his jaw. As much as I wanted to mock him further, I figured it wouldn’t be the best idea. I should leave while I had the chance.
The interrogation room didn’t have a clock, so it wasn’t until I got into the hallway that I realized it was after one in the morning.
“Where’s Bailey?” I asked.
Johnson grunted. “Hell if I know. I’m nobody’s babysitter.”
I walked through the precinct, expecting to be yanked back into a windowless room any second, sure my release was some kind of prank. However, by the time I made it to the lobby, I finally believed I was actually being let go. Apparently, Bailey had stayed true to her word. If she’d given up anything about me, even the slightest details, I would have been held indefinitely. However, if they were letting me go, it meant they had nothing.
I began running through a list of things I needed to do in my mind: call employees, delete unnecessary files, clean out the office, relocate gun transaction records. However, as I stepped out into the dewy air and looked out at the full darkness of the early morning, I saw a figure sitting on a bench along the sidewalk. They were wrapped in a white hotel towel, their red hair curly and frizzy from the humidity, and slippered feet tapping nervously on the cement.
“Bailey.”
I didn’t realize I’d said her name out loud until she turned around and beamed at me, relief washing over her face like a rainstorm.
“Anton,” she said, crossing the space between us in a few steps and lunging into my arms.
I pulled her into my chest and buried my face in her hair. Even with hotel shampoo in her hair, she still smelled like herself. Floral and fresh and bright. It was an unnamable scent that I’d come to associate with her. I breathed it in, allowing myself my first full breath in four hours.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, pulling her back so I could look into her face. “Have I said that yet? I am so so sorry you became involved in any of this.”
Her mouth turned up in a crooked smile. “Don’t apologize. This isn’t your fault.”
I laughed. “Yes, it is. Everything is my fault. I allowed Brendan to bet you at poker, I involved you in my business, and I brought you back to my apartment tonight. Without me, you would have—”
She poked a finger into my chest. “Without you, I would be back at Brendan’s house, sleeping in his dirty sheets, hating my life. Without you, I’d be in exactly the same position I’d been in for the last three years. I’d be miserable. Never apologize for getting me out of there.”
“You know what I mean though. Right?” I asked, pulling her back against me, thankful for her grounding presence. After the surreal last few hours, I needed the comfort she brought. I needed to be reminded what was truly important. She was safe. I was free. We were together.
“I do. I forgive you, though there isn’t anything to forgive.”
“Thanks for not telling on me,” I whispered.
She laughed. “What, are we in the third grade now? Were you afraid I was going to tattle on you?”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked, suddenly serious.
“Snitches get stitches,” she replied, running a finger across her neck. “Don’t you know that? It’s rule nu
mber one in the professional criminal handbook.”
I smiled at her, unable to help it. She was giddy. How on earth could she be so giddy after the day she’d had? Her resilience astounded me. Any normal person – myself included – would have been in a heap on the floor after the day she had, but she was joking and laughing. I knew there was trauma beneath it all, that sometime, maybe far in the future, or maybe in a few hours, she would have to deal with what had happened, but her ability to push it aside for even a minute and laugh with me was encouraging. She would be okay. Bailey would come through this trial all right. I just knew it.
“I’m serious,” I said, pressing the question. “You could have given me up and been released hours ago. Why didn’t you?”