by Paula Cox
“Aren’t you going to call the police?” she finally said. Her tone was snappish. His eyes narrowed, and his lips tightened.
“No,” he replied. “And it would be best if you didn’t either.”
“I—” she sputtered for a moment, then forced herself to refocus. “I didn’t really introduce myself before. I’m Lola Sykes. I’m one of the care providers here, and as such, I’m responsible for the kids until they’re picked up by their representatives. I’m a mandated reporter in this state. Do you know what all of that means?”
He watched her, clearly waiting.
She forced herself to keep going, pretending it was just one of her aunties glaring her down. She’d mastered that at sixteen years old. Some super-gorgeous man with stunning eyes the color of bronze was absolutely not going to convince her to back down. “It means that I’m legally liable for her. If I don’t call the cops, it’s not just that I could lose my job, I could be prosecuted for all kinds of things. Interfering in an investigation, child endangerment — they could even decide that I was an accomplice.”
He nodded. “I understand,” he said, but his tone didn’t convey much in the way of understanding. “Go ahead and go back inside. I’ll call the police. You just go ahead and go home.”
“But —” He couldn’t be in on it. He’d panicked just as hard as she had when Grace hadn’t been in that room. There was something bigger going on, but he wasn’t a part of it. She needed to believe that right now if she didn’t want to just crumple to the ground in a pile of fear and tears. “The police will want to ask me questions. They’ll want to talk to me. To both of us.”
“Sure,” he said. “Give me your phone number so I can give it to them. I’m sure they’ll call you if they have any questions.”
She shook her head. “You’re a really bad liar, you know that?”
He laughed. “I’ve heard it before, now and then. Look. I can’t call the police. I don’t know who has Grace, but I have some guesses, and if they’re right, then things are going to go from bad to worse, and involving the cops is just going to make things worse.”
“Where’s Laurel,” Lola asked, watching his face carefully. She saw his jaw tighten and his gaze flick away from her face. “She isn’t just running late, is she?”
He was quiet for a long time, his gaze focused on the middle distance, staring at nothing but seeing everything.
“No,” he eventually said. “No, I think someone grabbed her, too.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure. But there’s stuff going on in this town that you don’t know.”
It was Lola’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised what I know.”
He looked her up and down, and this time his gaze didn’t tell her about how much he liked her curves and her hair and the way she stood. This time he saw nothing beyond the costume that she wore to fit in with a bunch of rich, white women who sent their kids here for “after school enrichment” like it was a fancy babysitting service.
“Maybe I would,” he said. “But the truth is, Miss Sykes, that you’re in danger now, just as much as I am. That shithead saw you running with me, and pardon me for stereotyping, but I doubt it would be hard to pick out the Latina who works here. I’m guessing you’re the only one?”
Oh, she wanted to kick him in the ankle. Or higher. Asshole. “Is this the part where you tell me that I need to come with you if I want to live?” She hadn’t meant to say the word “come” quite as hard as she did, and heat flushed through her again. He smirked, the heat and spark between them pushing the danger a single pace back for just a moment — or maybe making it flare all the hotter.
“Would it work if I did?”
“No,” she snapped, which of course made it even more obvious that it absolutely would. Shit. Shit forever. “I love that kid,” she said after a moment. “I can’t let anything bad happen to her. They didn’t even take her inhaler.” She held out the small Star Wars backpack, emblazoned with the latest female heroine. Grace had been so proud the first day she got to bring it to school. She’d said that one day, she was going to be in a Star Wars movie.
He stared at her for a moment, and then he nodded sharply. “Okay. Go back and get your purse. We’ll head over to the police station. Believe me, this will go faster if we’re both there. I’ll drive you. Is that good enough?”
He was still lying, but the crazy thing was, this was at least progress.
“Fine,” she said, and spun on her heel, walking back toward the school. She didn’t make it half a dozen steps before his hand closed over her upper arm, and he was directing her towards the other fence gate, the one that let out onto the parking lot.
“Do me a favor and don’t scream, okay?”
“What the hell are you doing?” She liked a little rough handling in bed, but that was not at all what was happening here. She tried to jerk her arm free, but she didn’t have the leverage from here, and he was hustling her along way too fast for her to go for a pressure point or try to really twist around on him. She could go dead weight and force him to drag her, but the odds were he’d just throw her over his shoulder, and then she’d be in an even worse position.
Instead of pulling her farther along, he stopped, spinning around, his face painfully close to hers.
“Listen to me, and listen to me very carefully. I love that little girl more than I have any right to, and I one-hundred percent believe that if you call the police right now, the people who snatched her— and Laurel — are more likely to harm her than they already are. Right now, they have leverage over the people I know and over me. Once the cops are involved, that leverage goes away, and they will know that. If you care about her as much as you say, please, just come with me. Come with me, and I promise, we will figure out how to get her back. But I can’t let you call the police right now. I can’t.”
In the end, it wasn’t his surprisingly sincere speech that put Lola over the edge into trusting him. It was a good speech, all things considered, but it wouldn’t have been enough. No, what finally convinced her that he was speaking the truth was the wetness that suddenly glimmered on his lower eyelashes. There was no way such a shitty liar could fake tears that easily. So, whatever was going on, she believed it. And she certainly hadn’t ever been witness to a kidnapping before. It was weird, though; if Laurel and her kid were so important, why were they scholarship students at the center? Why did Grace come in with second-hand everything, so proud to show off that her new backpack was brand new, the kind of new that meant no one had ever had it before? It just didn’t quite stack.
But at the same time, there wasn’t enough evidence to show that something was wrong, either. Lola wanted to go with the story she knew, the one where she called the police, and everything was fine. But if she did that, and it hurt Grace, she’d never forgive herself.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. But I need to get my purse. All right?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Do that. Go ahead.” He loosened his grip, and she stepped away. “No, wait,” he added, and she paused. “Just grab your absolute essentials. Leave your purse here. If we need to, later, we can tell the cops that you were snatched, too, but got away. All right?”
“Okay…” Lola ducked back into the building and pulled her phone out of her purse. She pulled a small wad of cash after her wallet and left the wallet itself inside her bag. She had two small bottles of medicine that she kept with her all the time — and thank goodness she did — and then she was done. She stuffed her phone and the bottles down her bra and headed back outside. She’d half hoped that Gunner would be gone, but he was standing there, waiting for her.
Well, the good news was that she was about to get her first ride in a Gran Sport. That was something.
Chapter Four
Gunner watched the pretty teacher — Lola — walk back out to him, his heart slamming in his chest. How was this going to play out? His baby girl, gone, his sister-in-law, gone, and he had absolutely no idea how he
was going to get either one of them back, despite his show of bravado to Lola. It was probably an idiot idea, telling her not to involve the cops, but it also seemed like the only possible idea. Involving them could only lead to disaster; he was absolutely convinced of it. It was just too convenient – the weird race that Billy Calhoun had pulled a gun on him over, and then dropped it the second he pushed back at all. The fact that someone knew enough about his life that they grabbed Laurel and Grace, both at the same time. It could be that they knew Gunner helped out his sister-in-law, for memory of his dead girl, but what were the odds, really? It was all too convenient.
I should’ve pulled away farther. I should’ve set up some kind of dummy account to send Laurel money. I never should’ve shown my face around that kid. I should’ve just let Laurel be her mother and been content, knowing she was safe. Look what I’ve done now.
He forced himself to stop. He hadn’t been responsible for Sam’s death, and he wasn’t responsible for this. The people who were responsible were the people who perpetuated the violence. No one else. But he needed to figure out what was going on, and fast. Did the Vipers have a connection to this? And if they did, how deep did it run?
He went around to his side of the Buick without opening Lola’s door, then kicked himself and started to go back. Lola had already opened the door and slipped into the low seat, however, and was running her hands appreciatively over the custom dash he’d installed.
“Nice,” she said as he swung into the driver’s seat.
If it had been any other goddamn day, he would’ve offered to pull off her leggings with his teeth and give her a ride. The sight of a woman like that running hands over leather made his cock iron hard in moments. But he had to keep his eye on the prize, and sexually assaulting Grace’s teacher wasn’t going to help him get the girl back. But maybe later. Connections forged in times of trial. Something like that. Maybe later we can let off some steam together. God, no. He was not thinking this way.
He started the car, shifted, and then passed his phone to Lola before he started to drive.
“Open up the contacts and call Colton,” he said. “Put it on speaker, and then keep quiet. All right?”
“Sure,” Lola said, following his instructions. She held the phone out towards him so that he’d be able to hear clearly and speak back. Good girl, he thought to himself and liked the way it made his body feel.
Horse answered after a few rings. “Yeah, Gunner?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “What do we know?”
Horse sighed. “Nothing yet. I’m digging. Laurel’s car just got picked up, out by the highway. From the chatter over the scanner, it’s just pinging as abandoned, no one’s talking about foul play yet. So, the cops aren’t doing anything.”
“Anyone notice that things got interesting at the school?”
“Not yet. What about the teacher?”
Gunner looked away from the road for a moment, looking at Lola, who was gazing back with her eyebrows raised. He made his decision. “She ran out there with me, trying to catch the guy who snatched Grace. I convinced her not to call the cops.”
“Can you trust her to do it?”
“For a few hours at least,” he flubbed, hoping he was a better liar over the phone than he was in person. And it wasn’t entirely a lie anyway. It was easy to convince Lola not to call the cops when she thought he could help. A few hours from now, if he had no leads and no ideas, it would probably be a very different conversation. “If we get to the evening news, and there’s not a story about a little girl snatched and then returned to her family, I think she’s going to get worried.”
“Then we move fast,” Horse said. “I’ll keep digging. Call me if you come up with anything. You’re going to work your angle?”
“You know it,” Gunner said. He nodded his head at Lola, and she interpreted it correctly as a direction to hang up the phone.
“What’s your angle?” she asked. It was a sensible enough question. He liked that she was keeping her head, or at least if she was panicking, she was keeping it to herself.
“We’re going to Laurel’s place. I have a key,” he said when she raised an eyebrow. “I want to look around, see if there’s anything there that might give us an idea who grabbed them both.”
“I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record,” Lola said, and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “But isn’t it possible we’ll be destroying valuable evidence the police need? You know, if that pretty schoolteacher goes all weird and female and calls the police as if an actual crime had been committed?”
“They’ll make it worse. I keep telling you.”
“Are there dirty cops in town or something? Are we in some strange alternate timeline Law and Order scene?”
He was ready to snap back, but her eyes were sparkling with laughter, and in that heartbeat, all of his anger, all of his fear, all of his disgust at somehow fucking this one, simple thing up so massively turned on its heel and channeled itself into pure, intense lust. His cock was rock hard, trapped painfully by the leg of his jeans, and if he had been anywhere else, on any other day, he would have pulled the car into a secluded parking lot to see if she’d let him get a hand up under those pretty leggings.
She wanted him, too; he’d seen it crystal clear when they were flirting in the doorway. He’d tried not to notice then, so focused on getting the girl, but the sparks between them had been heated and intense. They hadn’t gone away, they’d just gotten buried under the fears of the moment.
“NYPD Blue,” he said, forcing the words out so that he could stop staring at the curve of her breasts under her top. “That was the one that always had dirty cops.”
“They both did.”
“Fine. But no. There aren’t any dirty cops in town. That I’m aware of.”
“I’m just saying, when the victims try to take justice into their own hands, things never work out well for them.”
“Nonsense. Didn’t you see Taken? It’s an entire movie series about Liam Nielsen fucking over people who came after his various family members.”
“Point.” She was quiet for a bit, then pulled out her phone. From her cleavage. Wow. He filed that image away for later consideration. She had rather a lot of cleavage, and he imagined a man could get lost in it. That would be just fine with him.
“Huh,” she said.
“What?”
“My friend Cassidy has sent me a bunch of text messages. She’s asking me to meet her for drinks.” There was something in her tone.
“That’s not normal for her?”
“If it were a Friday? Totally normal. Middle of the week? Not normal.”
His stomach curled in on itself, the fear rising up to wash out his desire again. “Do me a favor, please, and turn your phone off?”
“You think something’s wrong?”
“I think that right now, we can’t afford to be too careful.”
She watched him for a long minute, then turned the phone, so he could see and powered it down. Before sticking it back into her cleavage. Dammit.
***
Lola tried not to pay too much attention to Gunner’s eyes tracking her hand as she slipped her phone back into her bra. Served him right for not letting her take her purse. She was feeling less and less secure about this plan as they drove. On the field by the school, with Gunner’s hand on her arm, it had seemed like the obvious choice, but now? No. There was something painfully off right now. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She wished she had a way to turn back time and take a different path. She should’ve called the police.
What would he have done if she had? The question sent shivers up her spine. He seemed like a man who had the capacity for incredible violence if he was provoked. She didn’t want to find out.
She forced herself instead to concentrate on the rather obvious stiffness in the leg of his jeans. He was just as turned on as she was, it seemed — by the situation, by the fear, by her, it almost didn’t matter which one. It
was a distraction from the intense fear that was trying to choke her off at the throat, drop her into total anxiety and misery.
She turned her attention outside, watching the city roll by. Based on what she knew about Grace and Laurel, she’d expected to see Gunner turn the Gran Sport towards the older, more neglected part of town. Instead, he was heading into the newer, recently developed part of the city, where houses were expensive and apartments were luxurious. In fact, he parked the Gran Sport in the underground garage of a building that Lola had looked at once, coughed, and walked away from. But he didn’t look awed or surprised at all as he stepped out of the car. When Lola lagged behind in getting out, he walked around and opened the door for her without a trace of irony or irritation. Wow.
“This is where Laurel lives?”
“Yeah,” he said, either not catching or ignoring her tone. He started across the garage, and after a moment, she hurried to keep up. He used a pass to access the elevator, then rode up several flights. He walked without any hesitation or any sense that he didn’t belong; Lola tried to maintain the same level of clear confidence, but there were so many places she’d gotten into more trouble for looking like she belonged that it was difficult to keep pace. On the sixth floor, he led her down a long hallway towards a door, which he unlocked and walked into. She followed and closed the door behind him.