A Heart's End - A Billionaire Romance Novel (Romance, Billionaire Romance, Life After Love Book 6)

by Nancy Adams

  “I can do things that most people can’t, Jules,” Sam continued. “And under that logic, I can help your situation. Like I said, my law team have already found several faults against the state in your case and assure me that they can easily beat it from a legal point of view. They have also told me that they can explain away your little sojourn to Mexico and have it ruled out. But you must come back with me now. You must return with us, so that we can work all of this out.”

  “But I still don’t understand,” Jules cried out in an exasperated voice. “Why would you help us? Ain’t no one ever helped us. Not when those sneaky fucking brothers of Margot took away our boy’s birthright. Not when we were down and out in Europe. Not when I was drafted for Vietnam the moment I got back to America and had to leave my wife and kid behind in a foreign country. Not when the state of Louisiana had me over a barrel. Never in our lives has anyone ever really helped us when we truly needed it.”

  “Then let me hold out a hand to you and change that.”

  “Why are you so eager to catch us? Men like you don’t simply help people, there always has to be an angle for you. You give away billions to charity and to promote freedom in the world and to help the poorest; but through that you promote yourself and ease your own conscience. You get something in return. Men like you don’t ever do anything truly altruistic; there’s always an angle. What’s yours?”

  “Is the boy with you?” Sam asked, seemingly ignoring the question.

  “Yeah, but what’s that got to—”

  “Can he hear this conversation?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Then, like I said before, I will inform you of everything in person. Please, let me do that. When I do, I’m sure you’ll understand my reasons for keeping it that way.”

  “What if I don’t stop? What if I simply keep going and ignore you?”

  “I’ll catch you eventually, Jules. I mean you absolutely no harm. I mean to help you. But I must catch you, don’t you see? I can’t let you—”

  That moment, Jules grabbed the phone from Juliette’s hand and thrust it out the window.

  “Why’d you do that, Jules?” she asked. “He was promising to help us.”

  “He wants something and I ain’t about to wait around to find out what that is.”

  “But why throw the phone out of the window?”

  “Because that’s how the son-of-a-bitch is tracking us.”

  The phone went dead and Sam wondered what had happened. He then went cold when John informed him that the family’s signal—which was still at least four miles ahead—had stopped.

  “He’s dumped the phone,” John acknowledged.

  Sam closed his eyes and let out a withered sigh.

  “Then we keep following in this direction,” he said with assertiveness, “and hope we catch them before they turn off.”

  “Okay, boss,” John replied, before tapping on the driver’s shoulder and informing him that they would need to go as fast as possible. The four-by-four accelerated forward and began weaving between cars, cutting them off, the other two cars in the convoy following suit and causing chaos on the freeway.

  I will get to him, Sam kept repeating in his head. I will get to him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Claire and Will were sitting in the back of a pickup truck bumping down an old dirt road through the middle of woodland in the pitch-black night, the half-crescent moon blocked by cloud so that nothing could be seen in the darkness. Soon they made it into a clearing and stopped. Two middle-aged men turned to them from the front seats. The one in the passenger seat was Phil and the driver was Harry. They were the aforementioned hunting pals of Will’s dad.

  That morning Will had called his father and gained contact with Phil and Harry through him. He had found that their stories were in fact true and that they could get him inside the reserve. They could also show him on a GPS mapper how to reach the house. Of course they’d asked what it was for, and on the spot Will had told them an elaborate fib that had greatly interested them.

  “So,” Harry began once he was looking at them both from the driver’s seat, “the place where we’re gonna take you to is just up ahead. Now on your GPS we’ve placed markers that should take you along a ridge of cliffs for a moment and then down through some woods and then along the river for a while. Now after that, you’ll reach a ridge of boulders that you can climb pretty easy. Look,” he added, pointing to the GPS map that both of them were looking at, “you can see here that I marked the boulders with a flag. Once you reach the top of that, it’s a whole other section of woods. But from there on in, you can’t use your flashlights because that’s where their patrols start. Those are random and you can come across one of his ranger guys any time. I was caught out one time last year and had to make a run for it. Luckily I got away, but that was in broad daylight running through there and not in the pitch black. You go running around out there in the dark, you’re likely to come to mischief. That’s why I’m saying that if you get caught and you ain’t sure where you’re going, just give up. It’s better than risking getting lost out there, or worse, getting yourself killed. You stick to the markers and they should take you about five hundred or so meters from the house, but that’s as far as we ever ventured. After that you’re on your own.”

  Will and Claire were studying the map intently and attempting to swallow Harry’s words. Phil elbowed his friend in the ribs and nodded to him.

  “Well, go ahead and ask,” Harry said to Phil.

  “We been wondering,” Phil began, “if you wouldn’t mind letting us into your little bet?”

  Will looked up from the map and smiled. The bet that Phil was referring to was the reason Will had given the two hunters as to why they wanted to reach the house. Will had told them that Claire had bet him that he couldn’t reach all the way to the house before being caught, and he claimed he could. To verify his claim, Claire was going along with him and would watch him to see if he could achieve it. Now the two hunters, both of them betting men, wanted a piece of this counterfeit bet.

  “Okay,” Will stated, “what are you saying?”

  “Well,” Phil went on, “I say you ain’t got a shot in hell. But Harry thinks you might just make it. We was gonna place a bet between ourselves, but also one against you with odds of three-to-two.”

  “Three-to-two!?” Will exclaimed playfully.

  “I’d say more like two-to-one at the very least.”

  The two hunters looked at each other and smiled.

  “Okay,” Phil said, turning back to Will, “two-to-one. And Claire has to verify it for us. If you don’t make it, you gotta pay up to the both of us. But if she tells us that you did it, we’ll gladly pay you double the bet each.”

  “But what kind of price are we saying?”

  “Well, you got those two coffee shops so you ain’t short of a penny, so we was thinking at least a hundred dollars.”

  Will rubbed his chin before grinning, spitting on his palm and shaking the two men’s hands.

  They then looked at Claire, and Harry added, “And you’ll verify it all for us? He’s gotta go up to the house and touch the place without anyone being alerted.”

  “I’ll make sure,” she said with a weak smile.

  After that the hunters took the two through the dark woods for a while. They were both dressed in all black and were carrying a couple of flashlights, which would be useless once they were past the boulders and about a mile from the house. Will had decided that morning (in truth, he’d been pressed into it by Beth) that he would go along with Claire and that he’d do his best to get her safely through.

  It wasn’t long before they reached the perimeter fence, the whole thing covered in plants that had consumed it so that it resembled a well-groomed bush rather than any manmade structure. Pulling some leafy branches that lay at the foot of the fence to one side, the hunters revealed a hole in the ground covered in tarp. They removed the tarp and there was the tunnel.

  “Th
rough there,” Harry whispered, shining his flashlight down the hole, “you gotta crawl for about ten meters in pitch black. It ain’t been raining for a few days so it should be dry, but it’s still gonna be muddy. The other end opens out like this one and is covered in tarp and branches too, so you’ll have to feel for it when you reach the end of the tunnel and push it to one side. You both okay with that?”

  Will had a slight grimace across his face and he turned to Claire and asked if she was okay. With absolute conviction she replied that she was. So first Will and then Claire entered the tunnel, finding themselves crawling along mud in a meter-by-meter hole that was reinforced by a makeshift wooden frame, the two hunters wishing them luck once they were both down there. When they began crawling along, they heard the sounds of the hunters closing the hole up behind them, making Claire’s heart skip when she considered that they were closed in. A sudden panic set in when she thought about what would happen if they couldn’t get through the opening at the other end and, as she shined her flashlight at Will’s feet while he shuffled himself along, she felt suddenly overcome with terror.

  After a while, Will stopped and called out to her, wondering why he couldn’t hear her moving behind him. Shaking herself, she began to crawl along the mud, following closely behind, doing her best to keep her mind away from claustrophobic thoughts. Having crawled for what felt a lot longer than ten meters, they reached the end and, with a couple of shoves, Will thankfully pushed through the opening and Claire watched him pull himself out with relief overtaking her heart. Once he had, she shuffled forward to the opening and Will helped her out.

  Claire emerged into a thick wooded area and turned to see that the fence was several meters behind them.

  “We made it,” Will whispered as they reset the tarp and branches.

  “We sure did,” Claire agreed, both their faces covered in dirt already.

  “Well, let’s get going.”

  Will got out the GPS and they studied its screen for a moment, before heading in the direction it set out, shining their flashlights ahead of them and making their way slowly onto a ridge of rock. There they walked for about an hour before finding woodland that took them down. Every so often one of them would lose their footing, slip over, and the other would help them up. The moonless night meant that everything was completely blacked out and the only vision they had was what they could make out in the light of their flashlights. Soon they heard a river and felt that they were getting closer to it, until it roared in their ears and they worried that they may be close enough to it to inadvertently fall in.

  Out of the woods and onto a riverbank, they carefully made their ways along rock- and tree-filled terrain for another hour or so before arriving at the stack of boilers marked with the flag on the GPS. The climb wasn’t as easy as the hunters made out and it took the pair at least another hour to make it to the top where they sat for a while, exhausted. While they sat on rocks getting their breaths back, Will shone the light in front of them and saw a woodland that steadily ran downhill. This was where they wouldn’t be able to rely on their flashlights any longer. However, the hunters had given the pair something invaluable. They’d given them glow-sticks so that they could at least see a few meters around them and not be as visible as they would if they had flashlights.

  Having rested for long enough, they snapped the glow-sticks into life and were on their way, following the GPS closely to avoid the alarm system that the hunters had mapped over the years, and which they’d clearly marked on the GPS. It wasn’t long before the woodland began to slope down at an even steeper gradient and they began to hear the river’s roar once again. Their hearts froze when they saw the sign of a flashlight bobbing along among the trees about fifty meters ahead of them.

  Will, having seen it first, grabbed ahold of Claire and forced her down on the ground. They each placed their glow-sticks in their pockets so that the faint light was hidden. In the darkness, their eyes studied the direction of the bobbing light and realized with a slight terror that it was zigzagging its way toward them. Claire immediately closed her eyes and began to pray. Meanwhile, Will watched the light with dread as he heard the footsteps of the ranger snapping their way through the woods. The light appeared to be heading straight for them, and when it was only a few feet away (Will closed his eyes) the ranger stopped as his radio crackled into life.

  “Come in, Donaldson,” it went.

  The ranger picked up the radio, held it to his mouth and said, “Donaldson here; what’s occurring?”

  “You done out there?”

  “I got a little bit more of the inner perimeter to scan.”

  “How long you gonna be?”

  “I don’t know; about an hour.”

  “An hour!?”

  “Yeah, an hour. You know how long it takes.”

  “But Jeff we got a game going for tonight, the others are all ready.”

  “But if you hadn’t forgotten, I—well, we—got a duty to do.”

  “Yeah, and you got a duty to your buddies to give them the chance of winning back the money you got off of them last Friday.”

  The ranger let out a sigh and Will could almost smell the guy’s breath, he was standing so close.

  “Okay,” the ranger let out after a short while. “I’ll be back in about ten. Put the kettle on.”

  “Good man! You know it makes sense!”

  With that the ranger put his radio back, groaned a little and then began walking away from the pair cowering among the bushes just feet away. Neither of them moved until Will could no longer see the ranger’s flashlight bobbing in the dark, and he shook Claire, who still had her eyes closed.

  “He’s gone,” Will whispered.

  Claire merely smiled and they pulled their glow-sticks out again, got up from the ground and continued on their way. For the rest of the journey, up to the last point the hunters had given them, they came across no other rangers or any alarm systems. It took them half an hour in total and they slipped and fell many times, but soon they were in a part of the woods that had a wide pathway running through it and Claire realized that she had possibly been there before with Sam, though in the dark it was of course impossible to tell for sure.

  “There’s nothing more on the GPS except the house’s location,” Will whispered. “And that’s about seven hundred meters ahead of this path. I’m sure that there’s some kind of alarm system all around here, so I think it’s best if we split up. You go along the woods near the path and I’ll walk along the path itself. That way if I set an alarm off or you do, I can draw their attention while you make a run for the house.”

  “What do I do then?”

  “I don’t know! You said he just needed to see your face. Let’s hope it works. Just get to the house and see what happens.”

  “Sure.”

  Claire went off into the woods with the GPS and began making her way in the direction of the house once she felt she was far enough away from the path. Will, meanwhile, shrugged his shoulders and began strolling quickly along the path. The way he saw it, the sooner he set off an alarm, the quicker he could play decoy and let Claire get to the house while he gave the security the runaround.

  Of course, he didn’t have to wait long to get his wish, and no sooner had he moved a hundred meters along the path than a set of floodlights went off and he instantly placed his arm across his face as he was temporarily blinded by the glaring brightness.

  From within the woods, Claire saw the mass of light go off some hundred or so meters from her and she instantly quickened her pace in the direction of the house.

  As for Will, he stood to see what would come, and he soon heard the sound of a truck approaching at speed and decided to make a run for it. Then the headlights were upon him and someone ordered him to stop, shouting through a megaphone. Will dived to his left and through the woods that led away from the house. The truck screeched to a stop and Will heard the doors open, followed by the sound of several men chasing after him. Glancing over his
shoulder, he saw at least four flashlights bobbing behind him, so he turned his attention straight back to what lay ahead and held out his glow-stick in order to make out the thick field of trees. Several times he almost crashed into one of them, or had his head removed by a flailing branch, having to speedily duck underneath it. He slipped once or twice and the gap between him and his pursuers appeared to be closing all the time.

  While Will gave the rangers the runaround, Claire pushed her way toward the house. But as she came back out onto the path, she set off another alarm and the place filled with light. This pushed her further and, glancing at the GPS, she observed that she was only a hundred meters from the house.

  And there it was, coming around the corner, the side entrance to the Cliff Face. But no sooner had she spied it for the first time than she saw two men exit the building and look straight in her direction before setting off toward her. Thinking quickly, Claire dived to her left and decided to make an angle across the edge of the gardens where someone could possibly see her out of the glass facade of the house. She was exhausted and knew that she could no longer outrun the men; she merely wished to be seen when she was captured.

  Taking out their guns, the security men followed her run and quickly caught up with her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jess was playing violin in her room, Maud watching and correcting her from the bed, when the house’s alarm system went off. One of the security team popped his head around the corner of the open doorway and told the pair to stay in the room. Feeling curious, Jess placed her violin on the bed and began walking toward the window. She noticed the great illumination of floodlights outside that lit up the closed blinds.

  “Jess,” Maud called out, “stay away.”

  But the girl ignored her and made it to the window, where she parted the blinds to see outside. There she watched as someone dressed all in black sprinted across a patch of garden that ran along an outstretch of cliff just below and to the side of the main house. The moment the person made it there, they stopped, faced the window and began shouting out: “Sam!”