by S. R. Jones
Nerves gnawing at my stomach, making me nauseous, I go down the stairs where I check my cutesy rucksack once more. It’s all good, so I stuff it and the tied tight trash back into my cavernous Mulberry and sling it over my shoulder.
Picking up Boo, I attach his lead, and then grab my keys. We head down another long hallway to the entrance foyer to ride the elevator down to the lobby.
The doors swoosh smoothly open and I walk out. Norm, the security guard, grins at me and I ask him to call me a cab. I don’t hang around for Norm to ask why I’m not using our driver.
Five minutes later a cab pulls up in front of me.
“Where to?” the driver asks as I climb in.
“JFK, please.”
As the cab pulls into the slow-moving traffic I shove down my terror.
I’m really doing this!
Chapter Three
Liam
Holy fuck! She’s running.
I’ve watched her transformation, from the glam rich woman to a young girl with cropped hair and elfin features. She’s picked somewhere to run to, and I know where it is. Sausalito.
Why not back to the UK? She must have her reasons, but it seems crazy to me to stay in a strange land.
Then again, she’s little support network back home. An alcoholic, drug addicted mother, and a string of abusive stepfathers. In London most of the people she knows are from Nick’s life, and they’ll rat her out immediately.
I saw her search for tickets to the UK online as the camera angle picked up what she was looking at on her phone, and can only assume she’s going to pretend that’s what she did. Not that she’s thought this through too well because what about the dog? She loves him, and I am sure Nick knows it, too. He’s not going to believe she’s left him behind, and I doubt she’s thought through the pretense of booking her dog on too? Or maybe I’m underestimating her, and she has.
Whatever. I need to follow her, and I can’t do that and watch here. Not that Nick’s here, but some of Howard’s guys are on him in Vegas, and my role in this right now is to watch this apartment. Thank God I brought Reece out here with me. I call him.
“Yeah, boss?” he drawls.
Not that I am, his boss that is. Not anymore, since I brought him, Luka, and Ethan onboard and made them all partners. They still defer to me though on most things. I don’t think it will last. Once they get used to the business, they’ll start to be more forthcoming in their opinions, which I welcome. They’re all good guys and they know their shit.
“I need a solid. Can you come and watch the apartment?”
“Sure. Not doing anything at the moment. Well, technically, I’m watching porn, but my dick’s too sore to rub another one out, so you’re in luck.”
Half of everything Reece says is utter bullshit, so I don’t bite. “Get here as fast as your little legs can carry you.”
“See you in ten.”
He hangs up and I start pacing. I want him to get here before the lady of the house leaves. She’s just smashed some avant-garde shitty photographic bit of art to bits on the wall of the hallway with her boot heel. I like her style. Still, it will be another thing for Nick to hold against her, and if my assessment of the piece of shit is correct, he’s going to go nuclear when he finds out she’s gone.
Reece turns up in the rental car he’s taken rent of, and I wait for him to park and come up the stairs. We’re across the street and half a block down from the gorgeous Mrs. Madison and I want to be outside her building in my car when she leaves, because my gut tells me she’s going now.
“What’s up?” Reece comes crashing into the room, as subtle and light footed as a Yeti.
“I think the lady of the manor is doing a runner, and I want to follow her.”
“She’s leaving him? Nice one.”
Reece has watched her for a fair few hours now, too, and he knows the epic shit she’s married to.
“Yep, and she’s not staying local. Sausalito.”
His brow furrows. “I don’t recall her having family or friends there.”
“She hasn’t. Stuck a pin in a fucking map of the States and it landed there.”
“Worse places to go I suppose.” He shrugs. “Fuck, Nick is going to lose his shit. She’s like his favorite toy to break.”
“I know.”
He sits and fixes me with a hard stare. “I get she’s been treated like shit, but she’s getting out now, and she’s not our concern.”
“She is mine.”
“Why?” His expression is genuinely confused.
I don’t blame him, other than my men and their families, I don’t tend to give a shit about much in this life.
“I don’t know.” I go with the truth. “But I can’t let her go without knowing she’s okay. And anyway, maybe she knows more than we realize. She could be an asset.”
As if on cue, as if to answer my prayers and give me a reason for the madness I’m about to undertake, she goes into the study, and opens Nick’s drawer with a key she takes out from under a pot with an orchid in it. She takes a USB stick from a box of them and puts it into the computer, booting it up. She nibbles on one short, neat nail as she types a variety of different words into a password protection box for some file I can’t make out. On her seventh attempt it lets her in and she starts downloading files.
I can only hope Nick’s online and computer security is as lax as his security in general, because otherwise she’s running a huge risk. I’m kind of perversely glad she’s done it though as it gives me a valid excuse to follow her.
Reece sighs and rolls his eyes. “Fair play, you’re right. We need to know what’s on that disc. Although, you know I could probably hack into his computer easy enough and get the information when we get to that stage of the investigation.”
At the moment, we’re watching him, cataloging his movements, keeping a low profile because Howard, and those who hired him, don’t want Nick spooked just yet. They want to know who he is dealing with. Abigail running might spook him, though, yet another reason she needs a tail.
“So…Sausalito.” Reece grins. “Hot California babes.”
I give him my patented shit-eating grin back, but I doubt I’ll be fooling around with any Californian babes. There’s only one woman I’ve got a hard on for right now, and I know it’s all kinds of wrong to want her the way I do, what with how abused she’s been, but I do.
Abigail is on the move again, heading downstairs. Crap, I need to get into my car and be ready and waiting.
“Later, brother. Thanks.”
Reece isn’t my biological brother but he’s as close to me as anyone in this world. We had one another’s backs in the forces and would lay down our lives for each other. No one else in my shitty world would do such a thing for me, risk their neck for me, except for my other ex-forces buddies. Ethan and Luka in particular.
I head out the door and jog down the stairs to the parking garage.
Mrs. Madison is about to have a tail on her break for freedom.
By the time she gets to the airport, via a cab with her small, scruffy pooch in some sort of doggy hold-all, I’m starting to worry for her. The sort of emotion I’ve not felt in the longest time.
I half-wonder why I give a shit. I half know why I give a shit, though. Her eyes. The moment she looked so desolate and lost in the kitchen, but it wasn’t the sadness or the hate for her husband. No, something else struck me, and resonated within. Her self-loathing. Abigail hates her husband, but she hates herself too, and I know what that feels like.
Some days I want to simply up and leave. Walk away and not stop. I’m sick and bored of myself. The guy everyone thinks is so put together. The one who came home without the scars of Luka, the shitty job and life choices of Ethan, or the fake bonhomie of Reece. I’m the one they think made it. But I’m a shell, and the kicker is, I was long before I entered a war zone. I’ve got no one to mean anything to me, and I keep it that way because I don’t do intimacy.
Don’t do caring and shar
ing. My friends matter to me, but it’s not the same. I don’t have any family I give a real shit about, my parents included. No significant other. I don’t even have a fucking cat. A few times a year, I go and fuck some random woman’s brains out in a high-end sex club, and even those encounters are pretty damn rare.
Even more of a shameful secret I keep, every now and then, I go and fight in an underground fight club. Not one of these places where people kill one another or anything crazy like that, but it’s harsh enough. We can break bones. The only rule is, nothing on the face because some of those people work in high-up positions in important organizations. A few weeks ago, I kicked ten tons of shit out of some financier who was on the TV the next night pontificating about the future direction of the markets.
Afterwards I went home alone and drank a cup of tea as if nothing had happened. A fucking cup of tea!
Worst of all, I’m not lonely. I’m not anything. A husk of a person inside the put together bullshit exterior. I sense Abigail is the same. Does she even know who she is? She went from poverty stricken nobody to the wife of one of the UK’s wealthy elite, and through his abuse back to a downtrodden no one, hidden away from society. Who is the real Abigail?
More pertinent maybe, who am I? I’m fucked if I know anymore.
Perhaps I want some sort of real connection for once, but I tell myself I’m not going to speak to her or get involved in any way, I’m only going to make sure she’s okay.
Yeah, right.
Keeping sure to hang back, I follow Abigail into the airport and watch as she does a few things like getting a drink at the bar, acting all nervous, which I am sure she is. She doesn’t have much of the drink though, but she dramatically spills some on the bar and asks for a wipe. My guess? She wants the bartender and other people to remember her being here in case Nick comes asking.
She goes to the ticket area and mills around but doesn’t buy a ticket. This throws me, why not buy one and then Nick can see she’s supposedly headed to the UK?
After a while she goes to a coffee shop and buys a coffee. She takes it right to the back of the shop, out of the way, and sits in a seat in a darkened corner near the restrooms. Then she heads into the ladies, and she’s ages.
The place is busy with a high volume of women going in and out. I’m jumpy in case I miss her, but I know what she’ll look like when she exits. Sans the wig she’s kitted out in, with her newly shorn hair.
Eventually the door opens, and a small, slim young woman walks out. She’s wearing a bright t-shirt, bubblegum pink cardigan wrapped around her shoulders. On her feet she’s wearing bright trainers, not expensive heeled boots.
Her hair is short, dark, and tousled. Her face surprises me the most. Gone is the expensive make-up that somehow made her features blander. The soft, smoky eyes and caramel lips. Instead she’s wearing dark rings of eyeliner with a ton of mascara and some shocking pink lipstick.
The overall effect is jarring. She looks years younger. Before, her style aged her by a good five years or so. Now, she looks all of twenty. Innocent, petite. Something about her makes a long dormant side of me roar to life. A protective side I didn’t think existed outside the need to keep my team safe.
If I thought I felt something before, now I want to jump out of my seat and go help this small, lost looking female. And she does look lost. It’s in her huge eyes as she glances around. Blinking at the light, she pulls some sunglasses out of her bag and shoves them on.
Pulling her shoulders back, she takes a deep breath and walks through the coffee shop with a way too studied air of forced casualness. Not that most people will notice, but since I seem to have become her new stalker or something, I catalogue it all.
Protector, stalker, lover? What do I want with her?
I don’t know. I only know I can’t give up now. I need to see where this goes, if she gets to Sausalito okay.
Exiting the airport, she joins the wait for a cab. It’s then I realize she doesn’t have her dog with her. Puzzled, I run for my car so I can trail her again. I hope the wait takes her long enough for me to grab my car and get around to the front of the building where the line is. Luckily for me, it does. Unluckily for me, the wait takes longer than I anticipated, and I have to sit with my engine idling, hoping no one approaches me and tells me to move on. This is not a designated parking area.
Finally, she’s in a taxi, and I’m following, keeping close.
We head all the way out to Queens Village. When she exits the cab, she goes and takes a seat at an empty bus stop. I drive on by and park the car half a block away on some deserted parking lot.
Walking toward where she is, I stay behind her, and luckily for me, there’s a bench to the side of the bus stop. I pull up the hood on my sweatshirt, and hunker down on the bench, pretending to be texting on my phone.
Surreptitious glances at my quarry show she’s suffering increasing nerves. She’s biting her nails now and glancing around her. When her head swivels my way, I make sure to look down at my phone. I’ve sunk in on myself. Body language-wise, I probably look like a sulky teen, and the stance hides my height and hopefully my build.
A horn to the right of me rents the air, and I flinch. Wow, jumpy much? I need to calm the fuck down because this is not like me. I glanced in the direction of the sound and see a skinny kid with blond hair waving at Abigail. He pulls up, parks terribly, and leaps out of the car, rushing over to her.
“It’s me, bitch.”
“Jay!” Her voice is shaky.
“Where’s Boo?”
She laughs then, and opens her bag, and the little guy pops his head out.
“Cool. Hey Boo-boo-bear.” Jay ruffles the dog’s forehead and kisses its nose.
“I thought you bought a Honda with the money I gave you?”
“Sorry, doll.” Jay pats her shoulder as he speaks in some sort of over the top accent. He sounds like those guys from the old Spencer Tracy flicks.
In a more normal voice, he carries on. “The fucking Honda wouldn’t start this morning. I ended up calling around repair shops, and by the time I got one who said they’d be able to fix it, I knew things were getting desperate. As luck would have it, my neighbor has been trying to sell this beauty for a few weeks, so I went over there and offered him cash if I could take it today. He agreed. Sorry if I scared ya, what with being late, but you knew I’d always come through, right?”
She doesn’t answer him, but her expression tells me she thought the worst for a moment.
“How much did this cost?” She screws her face at the old Toyota.
“Three thou. She’s old, 2004, and she’s done a fuck ton of miles. But, he’s a good guy, and gave me a full service history and other stuff. I hated having to do it, because he’s someone who knows me, but we didn’t have many choices, doll.”
Apparently, Jay likes to speak like a gangster from the thirties every now and again, which clashes oddly with his appearance.
“I’ll give you the money for the car,” she says.
“Girl, you already gave me enough.” Jay shoots her the side-eye.
“No, I insist. This way you can keep the Honda or sell it. A car will be useful when you’re enrolled in college this fall.”
“I’m going to miss you so bad.” He drops the tough-guy speak again and his face falls, too “You saved my fucking life, Abi. Got me off the streets, put a roof over my head. I wouldn’t be standing here today without you. I love you. You’re the family I never had.”
“Ditto.” She rests her forehead on his, and it’s such an intimate moment, I look away, not wanting to intrude on it.
“How much money you got in there?” He tosses his head backwards toward the bag behind her on the bench seat.
“Enough in total not to have to work for at least a good few months, if I rent something halfway reasonable. I’m hoping once Nick checks out everyone back home, I can eventually return to England with him off my trail.”
She sighs and nibbles on a nail again. “Un
til I can go home, I’m hoping to get a cash in hand job. I’ve waitressed and worked in hair salons in the past. I’ll take anything so long as it helps toward the rent and keeps me occupied.”
“You still determined to go where the map tells you?”
She nods. “Thing is, I feel like if I let fate guide me, she’ll keep me safe. Stupid I know. Problem is, she picked a bloody expensive area!”
“Uh-oh. Where you headed?”
She laughs, for a moment the worry and fear wiped away by her smile. “Sausalito.”
“Jesus. Can’t you just hit Oakland instead? It’s nearby, right?” Jay shakes his head at her as he reaches to pick up the case.
“Nope. I go where the pin lands. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to visit the bay area. I’d love to rent one of those houseboats on the docks. Wow, talk about romantic. I know I can’t afford one but being there will do me good. Sea air, beautiful views.”
“You’re a California girl at heart, I think. A real hippie chick if you scratch that fake rich girl persona Nick made you wear.” Jay smiles at her.
“Once I’m settled, I’ll give you a number you can reach me at.” Abi’s face becomes serious. “Nick doesn’t know about you. No one does. The money I gave you I got from hocking tons of my expensive stuff and replacing it with charity shop buys that looked similar. I also raided some of his charity savings accounts. The ones he uses to impress his friends with and for tax write-offs. I did the same thing for my nest egg for leaving. Not the charity accounts, it would have felt wrong. But I hocked everything of value he gave me, including my wedding ring. The ones I’ve been wearing for the last month are fakes. Luckily for me he brought me a boring humongous solitaire.”
Jay gives a wry smile. “Nothing lucky about your life, doll. I still wish you’d take back the money you gave me. Keep it for yourself. You are going to need it.”
“No way, Jay. You going to college matters as much as me getting away. We’re both headed for a new life. Besides, it’s not my money; it all comes from Nick and the things he gave me.”
Fuck me, she’s so damned good if this exchange is anything to go by.