Two.
“Beau, stop the fucking el—” James breaks up again, as I frantically smack at the buttons.
One.
“Shit.” I try to hook my fingers around the locked service door to access the emergency buttons, but the damn stupid cast won’t allow me to bend my fingers.
Ding!
I shoot back against the wall as the doors slide open, and I come face to face with Goldie.
And behind her, Nath.
With a gun aimed at her temple.
I reach for the wall of the elevator to steady myself, my throat clogging with fear and dread. “What are you doing, Nath?” I whisper, my eyes bouncing between them.
“Come with me,” he says, looking stressed. Sweaty.
Guilty.
“Don’t go,” Goldie orders, her eyes daring me to defy her.
“Get out of the elevator, Beau.” Nath jerks the gun in Goldie’s temple, making her eyes shut, and I step out immediately, raising my hands in that pacifying way people do when there’s a gun be brandished around.
“I’m getting out, Nath,” I say calmly. “Think about what you’re doing.”
“What I’m doing?” He shoves Goldie away and grabs me, pulling me into his chest, backing out of the foyer. “This is fucking madness,” he mutters. “All of it.”
He’s a man on the edge. “Where are we going?” I look out the corner of my eye, seeing the gun still aimed at Goldie.
“Get in the elevator,” he says to Goldie, and I watch as she looks across to the floor where her gun lays on the ground, torn. We both know she won’t make it to her weapon before Nath has a chance to pull the trigger. She’s cornered. “Get in!”
She backs up, her expression cut with frustration.
“Press the button for the top floor.”
She slowly reaches to her right and the beep of a button being pressed sounds. Moments later, the doors start closing, and the last thing I see are her nostrils flaring.
“Let’s go,” Nath says, releasing my back from his chest and taking my arm. I turn and come face to face with the hood of his car, the doors into James’s building, or lack of, smashed to smithereens around us.
“What have you done?’ I ask, my feet crunching across the shattered glass as he guides me into the passenger seat, shutting the door and rounding the front, dropping into the driver’s seat. His gun is placed in his lap. The safety is engaged. Something’s amiss here. I stare at his profile, my mind turning in circles, and I’m jolted forward when he reverses fast, reaching up to wipe his brow.
He drives erratically, and half the journey is spent with me silent, trying to untangle the mindfuck going on, as well as ignoring my vibrating phone. “Nath, what’s going on?” I eventually ask, and he looks across the car at me like I might have just stepped out of a circus.
“You’re in danger, Beau.” He returns his attention to the road. “Why didn’t you answer my messages? Did you watch the footage I sent you?”
“Yes, I watched the footage.”
“Then why didn’t you answer me?”
“Because I was busy holding my boyfriend at gunpoint,” I mutter. And finding out I’m pregnant.
“He was there, Beau. You were right all along. Jaz’s death was covered up. Who the fuck is James Kelly, and why did he want your mom dead?”
I turn in my seat to face him, my head hurting. “Nath, James had nothing to do with Mom’s death.”
“Yes!” he yells, smacking the steering wheel. “You saw, Beau. He was there, and to cover his ass, he’s trying to convince you I had something to do with it.”
My head finds my hands. Things aren’t adding up. None of it. “Are you telling me you had nothing to do with Mom’s death?”
He laughs, and it gets right under my skin. “I don’t believe this. You have the nerve to ask me that? Me, your friend, your mom’s friend, but a man you’ve known mere weeks and who is seen clear as fucking day on the surveillance cameras isn’t under suspicion at all? What the fuck was he doing there, then? Who the fuck is he? And how the fuck do you know him, Beau? How did you meet him?”
I begin to sweat. There’s no reasonable explanation, nothing to justify my reasoning, except the truth. And if Nath is telling the truth, I can’t tell him the truth. Who James really is. Why he was there. Fuck. “You didn’t follow us from the graveyard?” I ask.
“What?”
“You had nothing to do with the two men sent to James’s apartment to murder him?”
Nath starts laughing hysterically. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m bloody serious!”
“Two men in James’s apartment sent there to kill him?” He looks across to me, grave. “Then how the fuck is he still alive, Beau?”
I rest back in my seat, snapping my mouth closed. Because he killed them instead. Shit. “Is this some rescue attempt?” I divert quickly. He’s ambushed James’s apartment, held Goldie at gunpoint, because he thinks I need rescuing?
“Something’s going on,” he says to the road. “I looked into the car thing you mentioned. Checked the records. Nothing. But when I called the dealership, they confirmed Jaz’s car was booked in that day. So I dug deeper. Visited a few people.” He looks at me, and I hate the haunted glaze in his eyes.
“What?”
“A tattoo place over the road from the store. Cameras outside with a perfect view over the parking lot, but there was no CCTV footage in the case file. So I paid the owner a visit. Apparently, the night of Jaz’s death, the police turned up and seized the footage.”
The footage with James in it. “So how did you get it?”
“A few threats, a peek of my badge. The owner managed to salvage some. Not all, but enough to prove James was there.”
But not enough to show him saving me. Trying to save Mom. The police seized the footage. What the fuck is going on? “When you saw the recording, how did you know it was James? You’ve never met him.”
He looks at me out the corner of his eye. “Ollie,” he mutters. “I showed it to Ollie.”
My mouth falls open. “Ollie?” I breathe.
“Yes, Ollie.”
So now Ollie knows James was at the scene of my mom’s death too? “Oh Jesus, Nath, you’ve made this so much worse.” I run my hand over my forehead, my brain heavy with a million questions, a million worries. If not Nath, then who? But by taking me, rescuing me, he’s put himself in the frame even more.
“How have I made this worse?” he asks as he pulls a left at the lights.
“You need to take me back. Let me explain to James.” It’ll be okay. I think.
“No, Beau.”
“Don’t you think Goldie’s going to tell him where I am? Don’t you think he’ll come find me?”
“I know nothing right now.”
“And where the hell are you taking me?”
“I don’t know, Beau!” he yells, looking up at his rearview mirror as we pull off the main street. “Fuck.”
“What?”
“Cops.”
I look over my shoulder. “You’re driving like a dick. I’m not surprised you’ve been pulled.”
Nath signals and starts to slow, pulling over at the side of the road. “I’ll deal with it.”
“And then what? Are you kidnapping me?” I ask, incredulous, smacking the door with my cast and immediately wincing in pain. The door slams, and my eyes follow Nath as he strides around the back of his BMW toward the cop car, pulling out his badge as he goes. I sink into my seat and look at my cell when it rings yet again. I can’t even begin to imagine James’s mental state. “I’m okay,” I say when I answer. “And Nath isn’t dirty, James.”
“I know,” he breathes. “I fucking know.”
What? I look into the side mirror, seeing one of the cops laughing with Nath, the other with his ass resting on the hood of his car. “How do you know, James?” I ask.
“It’s not safe there, Beau,” he says, ignoring me. “With Nath, it’s not safe.”
“Where are you?”
“We’ve been pulled over.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .” I fade off, my eyes returning to the side mirror, my heart slowing, ice gliding through my veins.
“Because what, Beau?”
“He’s been pulled over by the police,” I whisper.
His inhale is loud and sharp. “Get the fuck out of there now!”
I sit frozen, my cell limp at my ear as James bellows his orders down the line, my stare rooted to the mirror.
“Beau!”
Nath lifts a hand in goodbye to the cops. Turns. Walks away, smiling, but I can still see the stress all over his face.
“Beau!” James roars. “For fuck’s sake, get the fuck out of there.”
I see the cop who’s on the hood reach for his belt. “No,” I murmur. “No, no, no.”
“Beau!”
“Nath,” I scream, startling at the sound of a gunshot. Nath drops like lead to the ground. “Oh my God.” My hand goes over my mouth, suppressing my wretched cry. Panicked and hardly able to see through my tears, I scramble to get the door handle, hearing James still yelling. I get out of the car. Both cops look my way. Both look surprised to see me. And both reach for their belts.
I dive back in and clamber across the car to the driver’s seat, starting the engine, looking at the mirror. They’re heading toward me. “God, no.”
I slam the car into reverse and hit the gas awkwardly, shooting back, one arm braced on the wheel. I crash into one of them and push his body a few feet back until it smashes into the cop car with an almighty bang. And when I look up to the mirror again, I see him trapped between the trunk of Nath’s car and the hood of the cop car. A trail of blood seeps from the corner of his mouth. “Oh my God,” I breathe, frozen. I’m woken up from my inert state when the other cop appears at the passenger side, and I push myself into the door, swinging my legs round and kicking aimlessly, catching him on the jaw, sending him flying back onto the sidewalk.
I can hear James yelling. Screaming. “Beau, talk to me!”
I frantically search for my cell and take it to my ear with a shaky hand, wedging it between my shoulder and my cheek. “I can’t leave Nath.”
“Drive, Beau. For the love of God, drive. Otto is coming up behind you.”
I look up at the mirror and see a car pull over, Otto getting out.
“Drive!”
The tears come on thick and fast. The heartache. The pain. The anger. I screech away, wiping at my face, sniffing back the tears. “No,” I sob, smacking the wheel repeatedly. “No, no, no.”
“Beau, listen carefully. I need you to head for Midtown. Tell me what street you’re on.”
I carefully glance around, furiously brushing at my eyes to clear my sight. “On Northwest Nineteenth Avenue passing Northwest Sixteenth Street,” I sob.
“Keep going until you get to Northwest North River Drive. Do a left and follow the road. There’s a right turn just past the marina. Pull in there. Goldie’s not far behind you,” he says, just as I see the nose of her car poke out in the traffic before overtaking a few cars, speeding past them and pulling in behind me.
“I see her.”
“Good girl. She’ll bring you to me.” He hangs up, and I grip the steering wheel harder, trying to drive sensibly, my vision foggy. When I reach the end of the road, I take a left as instructed, my eyes looking for the turning past the marina, my frayed nerves obliterated. I see it and peek at my mirror as I take it. Goldie is still close behind. I pull over and get out. My legs are wobbly, and I grab the top of the door to steady myself.
“You’re not going to pass out, are you?” Goldie asks, seizing me and steadying me.
“Where’s James?” I demand, hating having to depend on her to hold me up. “Tell me where the fuck he is.”
Her lips press together. She won’t tell me. She won’t disobey a direct order. “Get in,” she says, depositing me in her car. Then she goes to Nath’s BMW and drives it further down the deserted lane, pulling in past some overgrowth. She’s out of sight for all of ten seconds, and when she emerges, she walks toward me as cool as could be, fastening her jacket.
Then the sky lights up, a fire ball erupting behind her.
62
JAMES
I hear the explosion down the line and push my fist into the steering wheel. “Fuck,” I curse, thumping it repeatedly, so fucking furious with myself for missing so many fucking clues. The moment I parked, clarity struck. Small moments kept coming back to me. Little things. Things that probably would have gone amiss to many. Fuck, I missed them myself. But now?
Now it’s like a cloud of comprehensions has burst above my head. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I slip my car into drive and pull out of the side street up the road from Butler’s house. How could I have got it so wrong?
“All sorted,” Goldie says.
“How’s Beau?”
“In shock, I think.”
“Take her back to mine. I’ll meet you there.” I drive home in a haze of fury mixed with worry, because what needs to happen next might be the end of Beau and me.
And no matter what, I can’t let that happen.
I feel like my fucking hands are tied.
Powerless.
When I pull into the underground car park, Goldie is literally holding Beau up as she walks her to the stairwell. I hop out and hurry over, taking over and tucking her in close to my side. “She won’t stop shaking,” she says, opening the door for us. I nod and check Beau. She’s vacant. Hollow.
“Beau, look at me,” I demand, harsher than I should, truly worried.
Her eyes turn up. Expressionless eyes. She’s looking straight through me. I have no idea how to handle this. “Bath,” I say like a chump.
“Is that your answer for everything?” she asks, blinking and moving away. “Fuck me black and blue, have a bath. Get me pregnant, have a bath. My best friend is murdered, have a bath.”
I recoil, injured. “Okay, no bath,” I say quietly.
“I want a bath,” she whimpers, her bottom lip wobbling, her eyes welling. “I want a fucking bath!” She flips out, screaming, and Goldie withdraws, shocked, while I stand like an idiot wondering what the fuck to do. A bath. Give her what she wants, James.
I scoop her up, my heart squeezing when she clings to me, and walk through the doorway. Goldie keeps her distance, trailing a few paces back. “Otto’s boarded up the doors and swept the apartment and building.”
I frown. “Boarded up?”
“Butler drove himself in.”
For fuck’s sake. Hardly a security breach, more a fucking ram raid. Regardless, we need to get out of here. “Get it repaired.”
“Already on it.”
When I get Beau into my apartment, I’m forced to hang back while Goldie runs more checks, and the whole time, Beau cries shallowly, her shoulders jerking. Eventually, we’re allowed to enter, and I take Beau straight to my bathroom and sit her on the toilet seat while I slip my gun on the vanity and run her a bath. She stares blankly at her feet.
“This is all my fault,” she mumbles. “I should never have asked him to dig. I should have left it alone.”
“This is not your fault.”
“It is. All of it.”
I growl and kneel before her. “Stop it.”
“I killed him. And a cop.” She looks at me with glassy, traumatized eyes. “I backed Nath’s car into one of the cops. I’ll be sent to prison.” She shoots up, knocking me back, and starts pacing the bathroom, her hands in her hair. “Our baby will be born in prison.” Swinging around, she finds me, and I see nothing but terror splashed all over her face. “We have to leave.” She marches out of the bathroom, and I follow, my worry multiplying. “Pack your things, we have to go.” She flies into my dressing room and starts pulling down my clothes with one hand, tossing them in a pile behind her. “Where’s your passport?”
“Beau,” I say gently,
moving in slowly, warily. “We can’t leave.”
“Stop me.” Drawers are yanked open, my boxers and socks tossed out. “I’ll be dead before I bring my child into this world in a state penitentiary.” She whirls around. “Why aren’t you packing?”
“Because we’re not leaving.”
She laughs. “Of course we’re leaving.” Her arm swings out and points at nothing. “I just killed a cop and drove away.”
“You killed no one.” I go to her and pick her up, carrying her back to the bath. “Nath’s car was hijacked and the felon shot him.” I help her into the waterproof arm protector. “The police showed up, and the felon panicked, ramming Nath’s car into the police vehicle. Later, the police found Nath’s stolen car burned out in a disused yard.” I pull her T-shirt off and lift her into the tub. “The end.”
She blinks rapidly. “Are you forgetting the cop left alive at the scene?”
“What cop left alive at the scene?” I ask, and she inhales, withdrawing. “They were dirty, Beau,” I say, placing my palms on her shoulders and pushing her down.
“You killed them.”
“No. The carjackers killed them.” I tilt my head, and she stares at me, stunned, as my phone rings. I dig it out of my pocket. “Otto,” I say, as Beau listens, her heart visibly pounding.
“Butler’s alive. An ambulance has taken him to the emergency room.”
“What?” Beau asks, sitting up straight in the bath. “What is it?”
“Nath’s alive,” I tell her, and she deflates, her hands going over her face. He’s alive. But he’s far from okay. I turn away from her, returning to Otto’s call. “Give me a minute, I’ll call you back.” I disconnect and place a towel on the edge for her arm. “Soak,” I order, adding some lavender oil.
“You’re not getting in?”
“I have things to do, Beau.”
She’s up in a heartbeat, water pouring from her body. “You’re leaving me again?” she asks, snatching a towel down off the rail. “No, James. No way.”
“Calm down,” I say, pacifying her, not liking her looking truly fraught.
Indignant, she smacks my hands away, as I try to push her back into the tub. But she dips. Turns. And my palms slip right off her shoulders, sending me plummeting forward.
The Enigma: Unlawful Men Book 2 Page 36