by Crowe, Liz
She fully realized that ever since her accident and her subsequent sealing off of herself from everyone who loved her, she’d added so many layers to her innate self-doubt, it had grown into a massive wall around her—one she’d sheltered behind, slinging drinks and beers, and collecting tips, happy to hide in anonymity. But one man had breached that wall. Clumsily at first, spilling drink dregs down the front of her halter top. And later, with grace, humor, and a huge, sappy heart. Plus, a whole hell of a lot of orgasms, no extra charge for syrup. With a sigh of satisfaction, she rolled onto her back, J.D.’s pillow still clutched to her chest.
Of course, now that she’d allowed herself to be shoved back into the spotlight. Between her fake engagement to one of the sports world’s most eligible bachelor and that damn documentary, there was no hiding behind anything, real or imagined, anymore. Her Instagram following was pushing six figures. Marlo had even assigned her someone to help manage it and her twitter feed, so it wouldn’t seem like she didn’t want to interact with the rush of new fans.
She got up and stretched, wincing at all the sore places, figuring she might as well take a bath. Her phone was buzzing away, as it always did lately. The fact that she’d deflected J.D. when he’d asked about any odd messages from strangers wasn’t lost on her, but she’d not gotten anything since that one, the day the documentary released so she figured it for a straight up troll. A jealous ex-girlfriend, or wanna-be ex-girlfriend. Not the honest-to-god danger that J.D. thought she might be in.
Besides, she’d set this day aside as one of recovery, alone—her preferred method. Social media and phone-free. But for some reason, she couldn’t relax, even with all the jets bubbling and the water as hot as she could take it. She got out, dried, and wrapped herself up in one of J.D.’s dress shirts before heading for the kitchen.
After a bowl of oatmeal and several cups of strong coffee, she felt somewhat normal again. Her phone buzzed with a text which turned out to be confirmation of a mani-pedi appointment J.D. had made for her, letting her know the manicurist would be arriving around three PM. But as she was about to put the phone down, determined to honor her self-imposed communications moratorium, she swiped the screen down to reveal four more of the badly spelled ‘ur a big whore and a black one for that matter’ style missives.
Her heart raced as she read them over and over again. Recalling her promise to J.D., she copied them all, and pasted them into a message to Security Man Mike. As she waited for the DELIVERED confirmation she gnawed on an already sore hangnail and paced in front of the bank of windows. Realizing that the damn thing wasn’t going through, she tried sending it to J.D. only to receive the same, non-delivered result.
Legit nervous for the first time, she tried to call him, only to hear his deep, sexy voice encouraging her to “leave a message or better yet send a text.”
Her nervousness ramped to straight-up scary. She tried Mike, Ted, even Gloria at the front desk, but nothing went through. She touched the intercom button for the front desk. Nothing. After a few minutes spent pacing and freaking out, she pulled herself together.
“God damn, Makayla, you’re physically stronger than most men. Cut the crap. Get dressed and go … downstairs. Make sure everything’s okay. Stop acting like some kind of distressed damsel already.”
Determined to stop being such a baby, she made her way toward the bedroom to find clothes. The doorbell rang when she was halfway to her goal, freezing her in place.
But the mani-pedi. That was due right about now, wasn’t it?
She re-fastened the robe around her and stumbled over to the door. “Who is it?” She tried to use the peep hole, but it was pitch black for a few seconds. Then Ted, J.D.’s preferred driver and sometime bodyguard, filled the doorway. He had a box in his arms and the oddest expression on his face. “Oh, hey, Ted. What’s up?” She stepped back from the open door, pulling the robe’s belt tighter around her waist, embarrassed to have been caught lolling around like some kind of spoiled house cat. “Come on in.”
“I’m sorry, Kayla,” he said, his voice tight and strange-sounding. Something about it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “I didn’t know.”
“Move, asshole,” a different voice barked from behind the huge man.
Before she could respond, Ted lurched forward, dropped to one knee, and sent the gift box tumbling to the floor.
“Oh my God, are you all right?” She moved to help him up, for the moment forgetting—or perhaps blocking—the fact of the other man she’d heard, now standing in the open door of J.D.’s condo.
Ted tried to get back to his feet.
“Stay down there, boy,” the other man snarled. “Like I told you. If you think you’re gonna be a hero today, you’re sadly mistaken.” He marched into Kayla’s space and kicked Ted in the back, which sent the big man face down to the floor. She saw a spreading blood stain on Ted’s lower back which forced everything to snap into focus.
“How did you get in here?” she demanded, backing away, wondering if she could make a dash for the kitchen and grab a knife before the man caught up with her.
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is I’m here now and your fucking asshole boyfriend’s going to pay for what he did to me.”
“Don, listen,” she said, her voice and hands shaking. “You aren’t thinking straight. Go on out of here now and I won’t tell anyone what happened.”
Don Harris, former head of athletic trainers from her alma mater and women’s national soccer team official physician, stood in front of her, brandishing a small handgun and a huge knife. She wasn’t sure which one had done the damage to Ted, but he hadn’t moved since Don had kicked him so that seemed a moot point.
His mouth twisted in an ugly grimace. He’d gotten grossly fat since she’d last seen him. His face was beet red. Sweat beaded on his bald head and he was breathing as if he’d run a marathon. “You fucking bitches and your god damned ‘Me too! Me too!’ bullshit. You ruined me. And that pussy magnet J.D. let it happen on his stupid girlie TV station.”
Kayla wracked her brains to remember what had happened to him since the airing of that quickly produced documentary. She thought he’d been arrested but must be out on bail or something. He smelled about as awful as he looked—sour and boozy. He lunged for her, but she sidestepped him, still operating on shocked adrenaline and terror.
“I will shoot you in your stupid face if you don’t cooperate with me, bitch.” He waved the gun around. She wondered if he even knew how to use it. Something he proved the next second when she tried to make a break for the kitchen. The bullet grazed her ear, making her yelp and grab for it. The hand she pulled away was bloody. She stared down at it, then over at Ted.
This was happening to her. Right now. And she was all alone. The building’s communications had been cut off, she got that now. This asshole had done it, somehow.
And J.D. was somewhere in the air in one of his cushy private planes, unable to be her hero. She bared her teeth at the ugly, panting man who approached her slowly.
“Sit the fuck down. Right here.” He yanked one of the tall bar height chairs around in front of him. “I killed that asshole over there already. Don’t make me do it to you next.”
She sat and let him lash her wrists behind her and her ankles together with duct tape. The robe gaped open, baring her breasts, but she didn’t care. Raw fury filled her head. This abusive jerk was not going to do this to her. Not today.
“Sweet chocolate,” Don hissed in her ear, using his knife to nick her right below her left nipple. “Bet you taste real good. No wonder J.D.’s willing to pay to keep you around. How does it feel, honey? To be one of his whores?”
Kayla closed her eyes and pondered her options. She’d been raised in the relative safety bubble of suburbia and had few street smarts, but for the few she’d learned the last three years, isolated in Detroit by her own design. But she knew for a fact she was at least ten times more fit and capable than the drooling, sweating man looming over
her holding his weapons. She looked up into his eyes.
“You know what, you’re right about one thing. My best friend is Marlo Haggarty. Maybe you remember her? We played soccer at State together, when you were there? Yeah, so she was one of the women who called you out. I know what you did to defenseless young women. And I also know that you’re gonna rot in jail for it. That is, if your fellow inmates let you. I hear they don’t take kindly to kiddie molesters.”
The slap caught her off guard. The chair tumbled over, making her land on one arm with a loud cry of pain. “Fucking cunts,” he muttered, hauling her back up and moving around behind her so he could put the knife against her neck. “All of you ganging up on me. I was only doing my job. You slutty bitches begged me to touch you. And you all know it.”
Kayla saw the silver glint of the blade out of the corner of her eye. He was pressing hard enough to draw a line of blood. She felt it dripping down onto her now bare shoulder. “Now that we understand who’s in charge here, I want you to use this.” He dropped her phone in her lap. “We need to have a little face time with your main man together.”
“How in the hell am I supposed to—?”
He picked up the phone and swiped up to show the main screen. “Open it.” He held it at the right angle so it recognized her face. J.D. had provided her with the over-priced device the first week she’d been in production on Lady Balls. She’d protested, knowing if she let him gift it to her, the gifts wouldn’t stop and she’d been right about that. She sucked in a breath when the knife blade dug deeper, making her somehow taste metal, or perhaps that was what real fear tasted like. He opened the texting app and touched the microphone. “Start talking.”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“Hi, honey, I miss you and want to see your face.”
She did as she was told. Before she could touch SEND the doorbell rang again.
“What the fuck?” Don blurted, as he closed his fingers in her hair and pulled, exposing yet more of her throat. “Do yourself a favor, hot stuff, and do not say a fucking word.”
The doorbell rang again. And once more. “Kayla?” a woman’s voice called out. “I’m here for your mani-pedi. You all right in there?”
“Say something, but know that if you let on I’m here, you’ll bleed out within fifteen seconds after I slit your throat.” Spittle from Don’s lips coated her cheek.
She sucked in a breath and tried not to gag from the rank smell of the man holding her hostage. “Hey. Um. I’m fine. I’m not feeling well. Let’s reschedule.”
“You sure?” the woman asked.
“Yeah. Oh, and make sure J.D. doesn’t forget his daughter’s birthday tomorrow. Remind Gloria while you’re at it. Ow!”
“Kayla?”
“I’m okay. Just tripped and stubbed my toe. Go on. I’ll call you when I’m feeling better.”
“Okay. Hope you feel better soon.”
“Nice work, bitch,” Don hissed in her ear. “I might just have to snap a piece off of you myself.”
Kayla clenched her jaw and tried not to scream. “My phone,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You dropped it. It’s over here, in front of my feet.”
She knew that this man was not going to let her live. He’d probably even kill her during the face time call to J.D. She could smell desperation rolling off him and figured he knew he was fucked, since he’d killed Ted already.
This realization made her square her shoulders and shift the chair so it was closer to the tall table where she’d had a normal life, eating breakfast and thinking about how lucky she was—like some kind of Cinderella—only a few hours ago. She figured she had maybe ten, fifteen minutes tops left, unless she did something about it.
She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. It took her about a second to acknowledge that Ted wasn’t dead. He was holding up his hand, his fingers spread out as if he were counting. She blinked and he held up four. One more second and he was only holding up three fingers. The man was counting backward to let her know when he was going to make a move. He kept his face down on the rug, but she could tell he was coiled, ready to strike. He counted down to two.
She refocused on the man who was now crouched in front of her, his huge gut making it hard for him to bend over and retrieve her phone. “Don,” she said, using a softer tone, attempting to sound alluring and not freaked out of her damn mind. She leaned over him, letting her still-bare breasts graze his shoulder.
He flinched away from her and landed on his ass, then scrambled to his feet. “Surely we can work something out about this,” she said, keeping her gaze on him, willing him not to turn around and see Ted getting up. She licked her lips and arched her back.
Don seemed horrified or at perhaps mesmerized by her. He took a step closer, his gaze pinned to her tits.
Ted’s face was ashen. His whole left side was coated in blood. He took a step toward her attacker, then dropped to his knees with a soft groan of pain.
Yep. This is on you, Kayla-girl. Time to save your own ass, and better make it snappy.
Don was already looming over her, reaching for her. She knew she had about an eighth of a second to act. Using all the strength in her well-trained core, she lifted her legs and kicked out, hoping to hit the slobbering fool in the nuts with her duct-taped together feet. Instead, she slammed the full force of her pro-athlete legs into his left knee. It shattered under her bare feet at the same moment his loud scream filled the air.
As he fell toward her, his face a mask of pain, his legs buckling beneath him, she introduced his nose to her knee hard enough to hear it break as well and to send her chair toppling backward, slamming her head against the floor, making her vision blurry for a few seconds.
He dropped onto his side without a sound.
“Ted! Ted! Get up! Get me out of this tape!”
Ted crawled toward her and used the knife that had fallen from Don’s hand to cut her lose. Then to her surprise, he hauled her up and over his shoulder then half ran, half lurched out of the condo door and into the hall. The elevator doors opened, revealing the spa lady, Gloria, and two more armed guards.
“In there,” Ted said. “He’s in there. Holy shit, that hurts.”
“Put me down, damn you,” Kayla demanded. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
“Cops, ambulance, and fire department are downstairs already. The whole building, shit the whole block is on lockdown.” Gloria pointed her un-holstered gun at the condo door. “In there, you say?”
“Yeah,” Ted said. “Kayla knee-capped him and then broke his nose.”
“Way to go, girl,” Gloria said, her face a grim mask of determination. “Get downstairs and leave the rest to us.”
Kayla pushed Ted into the open elevator and hit the express button, using her thumbprint to prove she had the power to do so. The doors slid shut and they were in the lobby in record time. “Hurry!” she called to the EMTs who stood at the ready with their equipment. “He’s in there.”
She was shuttled aside as they ran in and stabilized Ted. They strapped him onto the gurney and rolled it out to the waiting ambulance. At the last minute, one of them turned to her, his gaze flickering up and down her bloodstained robe. “Catch her,” he yelled, which were the last words Kayla heard for a little while.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Where the hell is she?”
Kayla’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of the familiar voice. She’d been dozing on her bed in the ER, waiting to hear news about Ted’s surgery. Wincing at the pull of the stitches on her left breast, she sat. She’d lost a lot of blood, she’d been informed by the paramedic who’d accompanied her to the hospital. That plus the shock. No wonder she’d passed out. But she was going to be all right. It was all minor damage—a few stiches to her boob and two in her neck, a bandage over her earlobe. She hadn’t even suffered a concussion from her fall to the floor, at least according to the CT scan.
But they wouldn’t discharge her until they were sure that her
inability to stay awake wasn’t due to something they hadn’t caught.
“Kayla! Where the hell are you?”
“In here,” she said, rattling the curtains that separated her from the rest of the sorry humanity in this place. Tears welled in her eyes and she marveled that she had waited until this moment to cry.
The curtain was yanked open. “Oh dear Jesus,” James said, walking over to her and pulling her into his arms. “Thank God you’re all right.”
She nodded and burst into loud sobs, which he held her all the way through.
“Better?” he asked, brushing her hair off her face. “Want me to get you some water?”
She nodded and pulled tissues from the box on the tray. James disappeared for longer than she thought necessary to find water. She almost dropped off again by the time she heard his voice, raised again, this time in anger.
“I thought that building was secure, Baxter. You let that murderous asshole waltz right in and threaten my baby sister?”
She heard a lower voice, the timbre of which hit her nerve endings all at once. She resisted the urge to call out to him, to reach out her arms and make “gimme gimme” motions with her fingers like a toddler, but just barely.
“Fuck that, man. I don’t care what you say. I’m not letting you near her anymore.”
Kayla closed her eyes. “James,” she hollered. “Leave him alone and get back in here. Preferably with water.”
Her brother pulled the curtain aside. “I found someone looking for you,” he muttered, then stepped aside to let J.D. in.
He stumbled over to her bed and gathered her into his arms.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he kept saying as he rocked her. “Thank God you’re all right.”