Beauty and the Billionaire

by Claire Adams

  Originally I had planned to venture out into the town a little bit, but I lost my nerve. I was terrified of going out by myself and I couldn’t ask Robert to stop working to babysit me. He was starting to think I was crazy as I watched all the cars that came and went throughout the city.

  “There’s a black SUV, that’s unusual. Right?”

  “No, that’s the Edward’s new SUV. They just had a baby and needed more room,” Robert said as he became more and more annoyed with me.

  “Oh, wait. Look at this sedan. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Katelyn, that’s the city manager’s wife. I’m pretty sure she isn’t going to try and kill you.”

  “Seriously Robert, what about that minivan. I’ve never seen it around town before.”

  “Katelyn, that is the Johnson’s van. Either sit there quietly or I’ll take you home. I can’t keep doing this all day I won’t get any work done.”

  “Alright, I’ll sit quietly.”

  I did sit quietly for the remainder of the day. It was very hard for me to do as I watched car after car went by throughout town. But I decided to wait until I could see the drive and then I almost always knew who it was. There was one woman that drove by in a minivan that I didn’t know, but then I thought it would be silly to think a woman in a minivan would be the one coming to get me.

  Robert seemed to appreciate my silence and he worked quickly on his projects so he could get off from work early. He packed his things at a quarter after four and we loaded into his truck to head over to my house. It was only a few blocks, but I felt relieved to have him with me. I was thinking and worrying so much about someone following us that I could hardly think anymore. I just wanted to relax and feel safe again and that wouldn’t happen until Chris got back from Chicago.

  “I don’t see anyone around, do you?” I asked.

  “Just run in and grab your camera and come back out,” Robert snapped.

  “I also wanted to grab some clean clothes. Do you think that will be alright?”

  “Yes, just hurry up. I don’t want to be out here all day.”

  I jumped out of his truck and made my way up to the door of my house. I got too scared and turned around and came back to the truck.

  “I can’t go in there alone. Will you go with me?”

  “Oh man, Katelyn, just go in.” I stood next to the truck and just shook my head no. I felt like I was going crazy, but I was so scared to go back into my house. I needed Chris to go with me, but since he wasn’t there, Robert would have to do.

  “Please Robert, I know I'm horrible. I’m too afraid to go in there by myself.”

  Robert sighed, turned his truck off and climbed out of the cab. He seemed really annoyed as he walked up to the door of my house. I put the key into the door, but it wouldn’t open. It looked like Chris had jammed something into the door to keep it from opening after it had been kicked in.

  “Let’s go to the back,” I said as I started around the side of the house. This made Robert even more annoyed at me. I used my key to get into the house and then waited for Robert.

  “You go first,” I said as I stood in the corner of the kitchen.

  “Oh man, Katelyn, you are going to owe me big for this.”

  Robert slowly started moving throughout the house and I stayed in the kitchen and waited for him to tell me everything was clear.

  Chapter 40

  “Is everything alright?” I yelled up to Robert as he made it to the top of the stairs.

  “Yes, just come get your things.”

  I hurried up the stairs and into my bedroom. I grabbed a bag from the closet and started to fill it with some more of my clothes. I wanted to grab everything, but I knew Robert wouldn’t be alright with that. Instead, I just grabbed some clothes from each of my dresser drawers and a couple pairs of my favorite shoes. I had forgotten to grab shoes last time and wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

  “I’m going to wait for you out in the truck,” Robert said as he made his way down the stairs.

  “No, no, no. I’m coming. Don’t leave me here,” I said as I tried to hurry and pack my things as quickly as possible.

  “You are fine Katelyn, just grab what you need and then head out to the truck.” I heard him finish moving down the stairs and go out the back door. I looked out the window and watched him get into this truck and start it up. I did feel a bit silly for making such a scene, but it was really hard to be in my house after everything that had happened. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to feel safe in my home again.

  As much as I didn’t want to blame Chris for this feeling, I couldn’t help it. If he had never moved to Bain, then none of this would have ever happened. I went back to packing my things and tried not to freak out. I looked through everything one last time and then headed down the stairs.

  “Don’t scream,” I heard a familiar voice say as I got to the bottom step.

  He reached out and wrapped his hand around my mouth and then tilted my head up to see him. It was Gunner. He looked different. His dimples were covered up by a beard and he looked like he hadn’t showered in the three weeks since I had seen him last.

  “Gunner, what are you doing here?” I said as I tried to calm my nerves.

  There was something different about him and how he interacted with me though. I had an uneasy feeling and didn’t want to be alone with him.

  “Go tell your friend he can leave. You aren’t going back with him.”

  “I am supposed to stay with them until Chris gets back.”

  “Tell him now!” Gunner said as he yelled at me.

  Something was wrong, I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t want to find out. Gunner had been sweet and nice to me before and now he was rude and agitated. Suddenly the thought came to me that Gunner wasn’t one of the guys with Chris. Maybe he was some sort of a double agent and really worked for the bad guys. I tried to remember the times I had seen Gunner before and I thought he worked with Chris, but I had never heard that directly from Chris before.

  Chris had said he was working with the bad guys and pretending to be one of them, maybe this Gunner guy was really one of the bad guys who was trying to get to Chris. Maybe taking me with him or hurting me was the only way they could get Chris out of hiding.

  I couldn’t disobey Gunner though, I could tell in his eyes that he wasn’t messing around. So I walked out to Robert’s truck and did my best acting job ever.

  “Hey Robert, I’m feeling better about things. I think I’m going to stay here,” I said and then I turned around and came back to my house. I walked around to the back door and Gunner was standing there with my back.

  “I need my camera too,” I said.

  “No, let’s go.”

  Just then Robert came around the corner and saw Gunner. Robert threw a few punches and Gunner easily avoided them. Then Gunner threw one single punch and knocked Robert out cold.

  “Gunner!” I screamed and then ran to Robert’s side. I could tell he was breathing, but he had been hit pretty hard. It wasn’t likely that he would wake up anytime soon.

  “Why did you do that?” I said.

  I could feel myself getting angry, but I wasn’t about to show Gunner that. Something was different about him and I didn’t know if he was on Chris’ team or if he was working for the bad guys. There was just too much unknown about this situation and I thought it would be best if I kept quiet. I had to wait and see what was going on before I started to be defiant with a man who could clearly hurt me very badly if he wanted to.

  “He just tried to hit me three times. Get in the SUV.”

  Gunner grabbed my arm and carried my bag in his other hand. When I got to the SUV, he put me into the back seat and I was just about to let myself out when I realized there were no handles on the doors. I looked at Gunner and he watched me through the mirror. Something bad was going on and I just landed myself smack dab in the middle of it.

  He took off driving down the road and I looked back and s
aw Robert as he started to move around. I felt a slight bit of comfort knowing he was alright. But I certainly didn’t feel comfortable or like I was going to be alright.

  Chapter 41

  I didn’t know what was going on and I couldn’t scream for help. I didn’t trust my own opinion at all anymore. Nothing was as it seemed and nothing about this situation seemed safe to me. Gunner had come to take care of me after Chris was shot and taken away and I thought he was nice. I thought he worked with Chris, but I couldn’t know for sure. Now he was being rude and seemed much scarier that he had before. Perhaps it had just been the intensity of the situation, but Gunner no longer seemed like a nice person. He had a new arrogance about him that had been missing from our last encounter.

  I sat in the vehicle and looked around to try and figure out what was going on. There were two other men in the vehicle and Gunner drove. When we got a few miles down a dirt road, Gunner pulled over and moved to the back seat and let the other guy drive instead. I sat quietly and looked at each of their faces. I tried not to make it too obvious that I remembered what they looked like. But the more I looked at them, the more I realized that if they were the bad guys they wouldn’t be letting me look at them so much.

  Unless they didn’t plan to let me live. If they planned to kill me, I figured they probably wouldn’t care at all if I saw them.

  I swallowed hard at the thought. Only a few weeks before I would have never even considered such a thought, now it seemed like my whole life had changed. Everything that had once been normal was gone and a new normal was right in front of me.

  “Where are we going?” I finally managed to ask.

  No one answered me. In fact, no one even turned to look at me. It was like I didn’t exist. I turned to watch the countryside go past as we moved along a back road. It wasn’t a major highway and it wasn’t a county road. Instead, we were moving down a gravel road at a speed much faster than I was comfortable with.

  I knew gravel roads all too well and they weren’t meant for going 60 mph on them. These type of roads were unpredictable and way too dangerous at that speed. I tightened my seat belt and looked for something to hold onto. These guys had a much different level of comfort with speed and danger than I did. I wanted to ask again where we were going, but I didn’t. Instead, I just stayed quiet and tried to pay attention to as much as possible. We were going northeast and I could tell they seemed to know where they were going. They didn’t use directions and the driver guided the SUV along the back roads with expert precision.

  The driver also looked familiar, his big build and blonde hair were very familiar to me. I thought I had seen him on the same night that Chris was shot. I thought he had been one of the men that actually carried Chris out to the SUV after he had been shot. The other person in the front seat did not look familiar to me at all. He had a reddish tint to his hair and freckles on his face. Although he looked equally built and muscular as the other two men in the car, he did not seem as stand-offish as the driver. The red haired man looked back and smiled at me a couple times throughout the drive.

  Gunner seemed to be amped up and wasn’t nearly as friendly as the night when Chris got shot, but he seemed to have calmed down a bit since getting into the SUV. I still had no idea what was going on, but I started to feel a little more comfortable because they were all much more relaxed the further we got away from my house. I started to worry what Rebecca and Robert would think had happened to me. They knew things were getting crazy and they knew about Chris being shot. They knew that Chris had taken off to try and figure out who had come after him. It would be a likely conclusion that they would think something bad had happened to me. I couldn’t handle the thought of them worrying about me.

  Rebecca wouldn’t sleep as she thought of all the bad things that could happen to me. I knew I needed to get word to them that I was alright. But I didn’t feel safe to say anything yet. I decided to wait until we got where ever we were going, wherever that was.

  I leaned my elbow against the window and put my hand on my face. I closed my eyes for a moment out of extreme exhaustion. I couldn’t prevent my eyes from closing and my body drifted off to sleep. It seemed like a quick sleep but when I woke up, we were obviously very far from Bain. The city lights of what I thought might be Chicago flew by as we drove down a major interstate. It was late at night now and I had been asleep for several hours.

  “Do we have anything to drink?” I asked Gunner.

  This time he seemed to have no problem realizing I was there and he handed me a bottle of water. I guzzled it down quickly and then regretted it. We had been in the vehicle for at least eight hours and I had to use the restroom badly. When I drank the water, it just made everything worse. I couldn’t hold it another second, or at least that is what I felt like.

  “Are we going to stop soon? I need to use a restroom.”

  “We stopped about an hour ago, you were out of it. We will be there in an hour. Can you wait?” Gunner asked. I contemplated the question, but I really didn’t think I could wait. I wasn’t use to having to hold my bladder. It gave me anxiety right away.

  “No, I don’t think I can.” I saw a look of compassion from Gunner that reminded me of the night I met him. The night Chris had been shot. He didn’t seem annoyed by my answer. Instead, he leaned forward to the driver and whispered something.

  Within a minute, we had pulled into a gas station and Gunner got out and walked with me to the restroom. When a couple walked past, Gunner grabbed my hand and held it like we were a couple or something like that. I tried to hide the shock of the moment but was pretty bad at it. When the couple finally walked around the corner, Gummy let go of my hand.

  I didn’t quite understand his reason for the hand holding, but it seemed that he really wanted to blend in as much as possible. Or perhaps he just didn’t want me to run away and start screaming that I had been kidnapped. I went to the restroom and Gunner waited outside, when I finished we went back to the SUV together and we quickly returned to the interstate to make our way to wherever we were going.

  I took in everything I could see and I tried to remember each turn we made. I didn’t know for sure these guys were safe and I wanted to be prepared for my escape if that needed to happen.

  Chapter 42

  “Can you just tell me where we are going? Please,” I begged Gunner. He finally looked at me, but he still didn’t respond. It was like there was a big secret about where we were going. Obviously I didn’t know what was going on; I couldn’t tell anyone where we were even if I was asked. Why wouldn’t they just tell me something?

  “We will be there shortly,” Gunner said.

  Then he patted my hand with his. The gesture of kindness overwhelmed me and I started to cry. Everything over the past few weeks had been so emotional. At that moment I sat in a vehicle with three men I didn’t know and was so overwhelmed. I couldn’t take it anymore and I continued to cry.

  What had happened to my life? I had been living a nice boring life where I remodeled my family home and took photos in my spare time. Now I was in the middle of murder and mystery that I didn’t want to be in the middle of. Yes, I liked Chris. Yes, I wanted him to be alright. But I didn’t want all the rest of this. It was too much for my fragile emotions and I needed it to end as soon as possible.

  Gunner reached out and held my hand and squeezed it. He didn’t say anything and neither did the two men in the front of the vehicle. But his kind gesture erased my concerns that he was some sort of double agent. I could tell he genuinely wanted me to feel more comfortable and certainly wanted me to stop crying. Didn’t all men hate crying? It was that universal thing among all men. They loved their women but hated the emotions that often took control of them.

  I took a couple deep breaths and did my best to calm myself.

  I wanted to be strong. The last few weeks and everything that had gone on with Chris had brought up so many past emotions of Michael. When I lost him in that car accident a few years before, it had cha
nged my ability to cope with so many more things.

  We were north of Chicago now, at least I thought, and exited the interstate. We moved quickly through some side streets and onto a country road. Again, the driver seemed to know exactly where he was going. He also did not care that the dirt road was not meant for going 60 miles per hour.

  We pulled into a driveway to a very large Victorian house. It was in the middle of nowhere and the sign at the front of the driveway read Sweet B & B it seemed like a very odd place to be with an SUV full of combat men. Their special forces type skills did not fit with the sweetness of a bed and breakfast. I didn’t really know what their skills were, only that they were some sort of tactical team, but I thought they all had pretty similar skills to Chris.

  I watched as we pulled up to the back of the house and the driver got out. He went into the house and then motioned for the rest of the men to come in.

  “We are here,” Gunner said as he got out of the SUV.I waited for a moment and then he opened my door. I stood there for a minute before I followed the men inside. I obviously wasn’t being held prisoner as none of the men seemed to care that I looked around the house and made mental notes of everything I could before I went inside. Gunner waited at the door for me as I came up the front steps full of trepidation.

  I breathed in deeply and walked into the house. It looked like an old bed and breakfast; everything was outdated and very run down. It wasn’t a current, working business that was for sure. The entryway was covered in huge flowered wallpaper and there was a large chandelier hanging from two stories above. Stairs curved around from one side of the room to the other as they made their way up to the second level.