by Anne Malcom
But that was my movie knowledge working. And life rarely worked like the movies.
Good editing chopped out the long spaces between the action where real life happened. Where nothing happened.
That’s what the week had been. Nothing. Well, not nothing if you counted either Heath or Duke being with me at all times.
Even while shopping.
Heath loved that.
But I was technically back on my old beat, that being all things fashion and beauty, so shopping was mandatory.
Technically being I was trying, to the best of my ability, to still investigate the story without Keltan finding out.
I’d told Roger about what I could.
“Makes it a better story,” he said.
I raised a brow. “What, the prospect of my death?”
He raised his own. “Well, no one ever got a fuckin’ Pulitzer for writing stories that promised they’d stay breathing in their mundane fuckin’ life.”
So, Roger wasn’t exactly overly concerned with my survival when I told him I was still investigating. Plus, I had a pretty solid piece as it was already. It was technically publishable, since my facts checked out, but it was a lot of coincidences and conclusions made by me. That was not good journalism.
And I wanted to be more than good.
I wanted the fucking Pulitzer.
Hence my staying late and telling Keltan it was on a shoe story.
He’d grumbled about it on the phone but said he’d pick me up and take me “home.”
Another thing that happened in a week—his apartment had become “home.” And not just him saying it in his firm and forceful tone like he had earlier. And not just because I was being threatened by a drug lord notorious for chopping the heads off his enemies and controlling large amount of the cocaine trade that had him at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list—I’d Googled him. And not just because he was strong, had a gun and was likely to protect me with his last breath if his frenzied promises were anything to go by.
No. It was because it was just us.
Everything had been turned on its head in the shortest amount of time. The chaos that had existed inside of us, stopping us from becoming anything, was now chaos on the outside while the inside remained still. Or we’d merged our chaos to create still.
Whatever it was, it was simple. Us, at least. I didn’t question it. That didn’t mean we didn’t fight, of course. We did fight about me giving up my lease to Polly. I said “no way.” Well, I said a lot more words than that, but that was the gist.
Keltan said “yes fucking way,” since I wouldn’t be leaving his place any time soon. Or something with the same sentiment alongside more swearwords and New Zealand slang I didn’t properly understand.
We argued about him paying for everything and being the alpha who ‘took care of’ his female when she could take care of herself, credit card bills not included.
But then we talked.
About his family back home. The one where his brother ran the farm with their mom, though she was getting older and they were considering putting her in a small unit ‘in town.’ About his sister, whom he obviously adored, and her job in Paris.
He didn’t open the Ian box.
Nor did I open the Grayson one.
Maybe they were already open. But we didn’t need to talk about that. It had been done. Once our demons had been introduced, fully incorporated into each other, they no longer needed to be minded. They became part of the emotional furniture.
So yes, despite the death threats, constant bodyguards and missing my best friend like crazy, I was doing well. The best.
Thinking of my best friend had me quickly finishing another guest post for Covet. They still brought me on for opinion pieces every now and then, and Lord knew I needed the money. I may have indulged in a little too much therapy at Prada with Heath.
But one couldn’t regret Prada.
Breaking up
They say—the proverbial “they”—that breakups are hard.
Yes, it’s not new. Every single rom-com, TV show and any form of pop culture or life experience will tell you that.
Breakups are hard.
With men, you get over it. You patch up the hole in your heart.
Mostly, at least.
But with friends? No. That hole will never leave you. A break up with a girlfriend isn’t just the loss of the partner who shares your bed. It’s the sister who you share your life with. The one who you don’t have to pretend with. Because let’s face it, ladies, you pretend with guys. Even you, the woman married for twelve years. Maybe it’s the fact that you really don’t like that certain bedroom act that makes him crazy, or you can’t stand those moccasins he wears, or you pretend you don’t get your upper lip bleached every four weeks.
Whatever it is, that little secret you keep for whatever reason, it’s not shared with your life partner.
It’s with your soul mate. Otherwise known as your best friend.
And then they’re taken. Maybe it’s death, and that’s a gaping, jagged hole that will never heal or fade. That’s a hole that will stay raw and excruciating forever. You just learn how to deal with it. Because you have no other choice.
But what if they just disappear? You know they’ve done it before, but this times feels different. Final. And you need them for more than just to tell you it’s okay to max out your credit card at Prada. (Who needs dinner?)
But you need them for everything else. Because even if we have our life together, or at least our love life together, does that mean we’re okay without them?
Our soul mates?
No. I didn’t think so either.
Neither does Prada.
I sent the article away without reading over it too closely. It still hurt my heart, after all.
I considered calling Wire and demanding he hack into a satellite like Cade had tried to order him to do. I just had to think of a good enough threat to make him do it. But I fell short considering Cade had probably used his ruthless and inventive imagination.
In the meantime, I tried a rather less rash version of getting her back. I did so while pushing off my desk, only just realizing the entire office was empty and bathed in dull twilight. People were eager to leave and I had been so lost in my own thoughts I didn’t notice.
Even the light to Roger’s office was off. He usually lived there, the reason for his divorce. Both of them.
I put the phone to my ear, the dial tone replacing the echo of my shoes in the empty room.
“What kind of psychopath leaves a voice mail? Text me like a normal person. Apart from you, Gage. You’re a psychopath but you also need to text me. But not if you need help with disposing of a body. The last one was too heavy and I broke a nail.”
Hearing her voice hurt. Made me miss her more.
“Rosie, this is my twelve hundred and fifty-fourth message,” I said, jostling my laptop into my handbag while resting my phone between my shoulder and ear so I could press the button for the elevator.
The dead air of the phone and the silence of the office bathed in twilight was more than a little creepy.
“And I’ll leave twelve hundred and fifty-four more until you call me back. Tell me where you are. I’ll come and pick you up from the Dominican Republic, Australia, even Wisconsin. Just let me know my best friend is okay, please. I need, you,” I whispered into my phone, my façade slipping as I held it to my ear, watching the lights of the elevator show their journey up to me.
A ding sounded, echoing through the air.
I sighed into the phone as the doors opened. “Just call me, okay? I—”
I was preparing to sign off with a death threat but instead I let out a gasp at the two men advancing from the elevator. Two men wearing bad suits. One smelled of Old Spice and had a familiar pair of shoes. The other’s ill-fitting suit was familiar.
Oh, and they held very big guns. Should’ve mentioned that first.
And I was just thinking how the nothingness was
the places the movies cut out. It seemed we’d made it to the next part of the story, where it became interesting again.
I scuttled back, the phone tumbling from my ear and clattering to the ground with a resounding crash.
I instantly realized my mistake. Dumb movie heroine move, Lucy. Drop and most likely smash the only possibility you have of alerting the authorities of your situation. Well, if the style-challenged gentlemen didn’t immediately shoot me.
Old Spice raised the gun. “Now don’t do anything stupid like run, darlin’,” he instructed, voice nasally. “I’d hate to have to kill you before we get to play with you.” His eyes went downwards to my black skintight sheath dress and favorite patent leather Prada slingbacks in a way that dirtied my skin with its cruel promise.
I swallowed bile and stayed stationary as they approached me, fighting every instinct that told me to run. Logic told me I wouldn’t get far. It wasn’t because of the shoes; I could run a mile in those. It was the fact that our office was on the top floor, open-plan with cubicles in the middle, offices at the corners. The only escape was the elevator, which the gun-wielding gentlemen had just stepped out of, and the stairs to the left of the elevator, which the aforementioned gentlemen were standing in front of.
The architect of this building obviously didn’t consider this when designing the place.
He would be getting a strongly worded e-mail if I survived.
My thoughts went to those guns and the two men and precisely how they got up there.
Anyone could go up to the floor, but after-hours, you needed a keycard to get into the building and the parking garage. Though I was sure criminals on the payroll of a man who controlled a lot of the cocaine traffic between America and everywhere else had ways around such questionable and lax security measures as these.
What wasn’t questionable or lax was Keltan and Heath. Keltan had said he was coming when he called about an hour ago. Which should have placed him in the building… right about now.
No way would he let two gun-toting brutes in the elevator.
Not while he was breathing, anyway.
I tasted bile once more, itching to do something, to get out of there to make sure he was. Breathing, that was. If he wasn’t, nothing could save these assholes from my revenge.
If he wasn’t, nothing could save me.
“Not running. Smart, lovey,” Old Spice’s friend said, grabbing my hand roughly enough to make me cry out.
I quickly swallowed the pain when he grinned at the sound, revealing rows of yellowing, crooked and decaying teeth.
“Oh, I’m gonna enjoy more of that, lovely.” His British accent was thick, and the leer on his face kept it from being anything attractive.
I met his eyes. “Go fuck yourself.” I realized where I knew him from—the elevator that day with Wire.
My stomach dropped at how right Keltan had been at the threat. And how much of a bitch I’d been about it.
I hoped I had the chance to apologize to him for that. And breathe again.
Elevator guy squeezed even harder, pushing the cold barrel of the gun into my midsection as he dragged me into the elevator. “You American women may be more attractive, but your mouths are much dirtier,” he said blandly, his accent rough. Not at all like Prince Harry’s. Then again, I didn’t think Prince Harry would really need a gun to get a girl to get into an elevator with him.
The doors closed, trapping me in the enclosed space with the two of them. Fear curdled my stomach, for sure. Unadulterated terror, actually, but anger burned too.
“Two of you are needed to subdue one woman?” I asked with bravado I wasn’t feeling. “Rather excessive, don’t we think?” I paused, my thoughts on Keltan. “If you’ve done anything to him—” I began to threaten, my anger getting in the way of my logic. Not smart of me, considering if they hadn’t encountered my bodyguard boyfriend, then stating he existed wasn’t in my best interests. But I doubted them coming when I was most vulnerable was dumb luck. They likely knew about the bodyguard boyfriend.
All of that was cut off, however, by the blinding pain in my cheekbone from a backhand courtesy of the British dude.
I slammed into the side of the elevator painfully, my hip hitting the railing. I didn’t cry out, biting my lip so viciously that my mouth filled with the metallic twang of blood.
“We didn’t tell you to speak, lovey,” he informed me pleasantly.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, attempting to stand on unsteady feet.
The numbers on the elevator went down slower than they ever had.
Two pairs of eyes on me while I was at my weakest was something that I would never wish on my worst enemy. Not when those eyes swam with depravity I recognized from the two men in my life who had looked at me with those same devoid eyes.
“See, we’re here for something simple,” moustache guy cut in. “We just need the manifest.”
He nodded to the bag containing the laptop and his friend picked it up. “We know what’s on there and we know how to clear whatever you’ve got on the company server.” He paused, looking at me. “We also know you’ve got something not on the computer.” He tsked. “Don’t you know paperless is out? Might’ve just saved your life if you hadn’t been in this very elevator clutching the only thing other than your little story that would have stopped you getting dead.”
His friend looked up after rifling through my bag. “Not in here.”
Moustache guy grinned at me, a sick promise in it as he raised the gun to my forehead. “Where’s the manifest?”
My knees shook, but I clutched at my impassive shield to stop me from looking completely helpless. “I tell you right now, I’m guessing you’ll shoot me,” I stated. “I like not being shot, so I’ll pass on telling you.” I was hoping to stall so I could see what the lobby offered. If it was the lifeless body of the man I loved, I knew this would go a lot differently.
The ding of the elevator gave way for the ding that echoed through the stillness in my soul.
Something made the moustache guy move quickly as the door opened. Then I was no longer struggling to stay upright on the railing but was pressed against so much Old Spice I almost choked on it.
Cold steel kissed my temple.
I got the reason for the sudden movement when the doors fully opened, and I was presented with another weapon pointed at me. One held by the man I loved. I sucked in a clean breath at seeing him upright. He was flanked by a stony-faced Heath, weapon of his own raised at the British guy.
The air turned to ice the moment Keltan’s eyes focused on me. Then the gun at my temple. Then at the blood trickling down my lip and the area of my cheek that felt hot and tight.
“Snow,” Keltan bit out, his voice unrecognizable.
“Hey,” I whispered.
His eyes met where I guessed moustache guy’s would be. “You’re fuckin’ dead,” he promised.
The man’s response was to press the gun harder into my temple and yank at my hair painfully.
I didn’t make a sound, which was what I was sure he wanted. To taunt Keltan with my pain.
No way was he getting that.
No way would I give that to Keltan. To haunt him. Especially if he pulled that trigger.
I couldn’t get right with the fact that it was the last time I might see him.
My eyes roved over every inch of him, desperately. Hungrily.
They finished at his eyes, which turned hard. Diamond hard. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare, baby,” he ordered. “You are not sayin’ goodbye. Don’t you fuckin’ dare.”
The doors started to move, and I felt the finality of the gesture. Felt my throat close up with it.
Heath moved forward to put his boot in the elevator door to stop it from closing.
I let in another breath.
British guy’s gun steadied itself on him. “Easy, mate. You want to take your foot from there if you want to live,” he declared as the doors started to open again.
I sucked
in a breath of air at the prospect of a few more moments looking at Keltan.
Heath glanced at me. “Remember what I said the first time I met you, babe?”
I frantically searched my mind.
“Keltan’s a shit shot anyway.”
Heath seemed to sense I’d found it, the memory.
“I was lyin’, babe,” he said meaningfully.
I was aware enough, through everything, what he was trying to get at. My life depended on it.
I looked to Keltan, who nodded stiffly once.
“Still,” he ordered, his voice soft. Heartbreakingly so.
I immediately closed my eyes and did just that—still.
The bang of a gunshot in a small space was enough to burst an eardrum. The roar in my ear was so painful it felt like my head was going to explode. My eyes seemed to flash with patches of white as two more shots bounced through the space, chattering my teeth with their force.
I didn’t get to still my frantic heart as to who fired those shots and who they hit because I tumbled to the ground, wet blood spurting down my head. And because of the dead weight on me, I slammed painfully into the inconsiderably uncarpeted floor.
And then there was nothing.
“That’s withholding evidence,” Detective Max accused, snatching the paper from my hands to run his eyes over it.
The manifest that had almost gotten me shot. I was more than happy to be rid of it.
“Not withholding,” I said. “I was just holding. So, I could give it straight to you. Before you snatched it, of course,” I added.
The corner of Keltan’s mouth tipped up beside me, despite murderous being the mood of choice since this whole thing began.
Considering this ‘whole thing’ meant two men trying to kidnap me, hitting me and him having to end up shooting moustache guy point blank, with me inches away, it was a wonder his mouth could even move that much at all. He’d had constant contact with me since the moment I’d regained consciousness in his arms with his calm yet frantic voice.
“Baby, I need you to wake up. Now,” he’d ordered through the fogginess of my head.