My stomach dropped. “He followed me here?”
Morgan shook her head. “No. He couldn’t know where we are. Right?”
I swallowed, ashamed that I’d led him straight to her.
Shane appeared in the hallway. “You two okay?”
Morg nodded and he planted a quick kiss on her forehead. “Go to the room, okay?”
“But—”
“No buts. I’ll be fine. The police are on their way, but it’ll take a while.”
Morgan pursed her lips together. “Don’t go outside,” she ordered, pointing her finger at him.
He smiled. “Yes, ma’am.” Swatting her butt, he told us to get inside the room and stay there until he came for us.
I didn’t know what room he was talking about until she led me to what looked like a closet between the guest bedroom and their own. It wasn’t a closet, though. The door was a façade. It led to an intimidating steel enforced door that opened into a panic room.
“Holy shit, Morg. This is like in that movie!”
“What movie?” she asked.
I groaned, grabbing my forehead. “You’re kidding, right? Panic Room. Jodie Foster? God, I’m old.”
She giggled nervously, her eyes scanning the buttons and knobs. She looked toward the screen and then back at the controls. “The siren only comes on when the door is activated. Let’s see…” Pushing some buttons, a flat screen illuminated with six squares showing different rooms in the house. Shane, with his ball bat ready, was creeping through the living room.
“I don’t see anything. Do you see anything?” Morg asked, her eyes nervously scanning the images.
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
And nothing was out of the ordinary. Shane flipped on light after light, securing each room. Nothing was amiss. The alarm probably scared the person off, or so we assumed. When all was well and the police officer pulled up to the gate, Shane came and got us out of the room.
One thing was for sure—this house had just become like my favorite bar. I’d worn out my welcome. I couldn’t go home, but I couldn’t stay there.
This was the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. Morgan almost never flew, and she was horrendous when she did. And she complained about my driving. She even broke out in hives! “Morg, I can go by myself. I’m a big girl.”
“No!” she shrieked before composing herself. “No, I’m totally fine. I just hate airplanes, and wind and wings and clouds and heights. It’s fine. I’m fine. Really, I’m fine. Totally fine.”
The fact that she’d said the word fine five times in a row in a voice that resembled Alvin the Chipmunk meant she was anything but. I patted her back as the stewardess asked us to fasten our safety belts. Morgan put her tray in the upright position and grabbed all of the reading material from the pocket of the seatback in front of her, scanning it intently as the woman explained how the breathing apparatuses worked and how we could use our seat cushions as floatation devices. Morgan clutched her chest and began to hyperventilate. I handed her the barf bag and told her to breathe into it.
Slipping two Dramamine pills into a small bottle of water, I made her drink the whole thing. Hey, don’t judge. I’m a great friend. I even wiped the drool off her mouth mid-flight.
***
The Big Apple was enormous. Teeming with people, cars, light and sound, it was a dancer’s wet dream. I was in heaven. Not only did Shane get us a suite in Times Square, he also sprang for tickets to see a Broadway show, a private tour company to show us around the city, a private boat to take us to Liberty Island, made dinner reservations for two nights, and called to check on Morgan every half hour.
That boy was a mess without her, and she missed him, too. When they weren’t Face-timing, they were texting. When texting wasn’t enough, they were calling.
We were walking down the steps from the Museum of Natural History when I turned to Morgan. “Babe, I’ve got this. I’ll hang out in the city for a week or two while the cops figure everything out. Go home to him.”
She shook her head defiantly; that spark present. “No way. I would never leave you like this. Besides, I need you for my shoot and we start shooting tomorrow. We have to rent a car and take a little trip to get to one of the sites, though.”
“Where is the site?”
“Not too far. It’s within driving distance. No planes.” She smiled a too-bright smile. I bet she was glad about that, but the fact that she was being all cryptic creeped me out. She was normally an open book. I squinted at her, but she ignored me and started prattling on about the street vendors and the boulders in Central Park.
***
New York was a fantastic experience and I was grateful to Shane for it, although I’d find a way to repay him and Morgan for the trip. They wouldn’t accept money outright, so I had to get creative. No one was paying my way, and money often ruined friendships. Morgan tucked herself into the driver’s seat of the rented Corolla and buckled her safety belt, nodding for me to do the same. “I can drive if you want,” I offered.
“No!” She cleared her throat and I attempted not to take offense. “No, I’m good. Maybe you can take a turn later or something.” Smiling brightly, she shifted into drive and we took off into the early morning sunlight that bathed the city. “It’s a long drive, so yeah, I’ll need a break. Later.”
“Later,” I echoed.
She smiled and quickly nodded.
“Where are we going, anyway, and where’s the fire? I thought we were scheduled to be in New York a few more days?”
I didn’t miss the way her eyes darted nervously toward me and then back to the road. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just want to get started on the project!” Her tone was an octave too high.
“Listen up, kid. And yes, I can call you that because I’ll be thirty in less than twenty-four hours. I know when you’re lying. And you, Morgan Justice, are lying to me right now.”
She stiffened her arms and sucked in a deep breath. “Well, there was a slight complication, but Shane is all over it. Riley’s helping out now, and we’re going to figure everything out. There’s no need to worry.”
“What complication?” I asked, turning my legs toward her.
Morgan tucked her dark hair back behind her ear and smiled for a second. “So, I went out to get coffee and bagels yesterday and when I came back, there was something waiting outside the door.”
“A severed head?” I laughed.
She shook her head. “A note and some sort of coin with a weird symbol on it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Shane said not to scare you. You’ve been so out of sorts, Brook, and I didn’t want you to know he’d found you.”
And he had. He had found us both. Tears clogged my throat. It was one thing for this son of a bitch to threaten me, but it was entirely another for him to threaten Morgan. “What did the note say?” I asked cautiously.
She glanced toward me. “It was different; definitely angry and more unstable, I’d say. I think he was mad that you left Vegas.”
I’d shown her the other notes so she would know what was going on in case something happened to me. Hell, I’d given her copies, just in case.
“His tone was…frightening. It’s like he sees you as a possession, Brooklyn. Not as a person.”
It took me a few minutes to process things, but after I thought about it all, I looked at my best friend. “I want a few things, Sin. I want the letter and coin, and then after your shoot, I want you to take me somewhere he can’t find us. Then I want you to go home.”
She began to protest about leaving, but I stopped her. “You need to go home. Just make sure he can’t find me. We’ll find somewhere small, in the middle of nowhere. Then, you leave. And give me your phone.”
“But I need to call Shane . . .”
Holding out my hand, I waited. She finally gave it up and I found mine in the bottom of my purse. Pushing the button on the console, I waited until the window was down and chucked them both into rush-
hour traffic, earning honks and curses from the drivers beside us.
Good riddance, New York. My namesake sucked. It was such a huge city, but he found me there anyway. I had to change tactics. Smaller, no name town. Somewhere everyone knew everyone else, where little old biddies sat on their porches and gossiped until the sun went down, and would make sure they knew if any outsider encroached on their turf. Bigger wasn’t always better, after all.
Dressed as a maintenance worker, I watched from down the hallway as Morgan lifted the rose, the coin, and the note that I’d sealed. The coin belonged to my late father, a prominent attorney in the city of Las Vegas. He gave it to me the day I graduated from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, earning my Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice. He thought I was going to law school, just like him, and that I was following in his footsteps. But I didn’t want to be like him. He thought Mother was ignorant of his affairs, but she knew of every woman he took into his bed, or on his desk, or in his car. And she grew bitter and tired of confronting him with his behavior, only to have the fact that she would be left penniless thrown into her face. Mother had grown up in poverty and had no intention of returning there. I couldn’t blame her for that.
When Peter began seeing Kate behind Brooklyn’s back I thought of revealing it to her, but thought better of it. I didn’t want her to resent me. I wanted her to cling to me.
She had never cheated on a man she dated. Brooklyn was virtuous, though she was temptation incarnate. She was my sweet paradox.
Morgan’s hands shook, rattling the paper, as she read the note I’d left for her friend. And mine trembled, wanting to strangle her for invading our privacy.
She’d better give Brooklyn the gifts. Brooklyn had angered me. I only meant to visit her at Shane’s house, but his alarm sounded and I was afraid the behemoth might shoot me. Instead of inviting me in, they closed me out. They called the police for help, as though I were some sort of criminal.
And then she ran. And she didn’t just run across the city or state, she hopped on a plane and flew across the entire damn country. Didn’t she know how I felt about her? That I would keep her safe? Treasure her? Didn’t she know I loved her more than my own life?
I had my father to thank for Brooklyn. Without his ties to prominent people and favors owed, I wouldn’t have gotten the job, wouldn’t have been put on the case, and wouldn’t have met Brooklyn. Now I couldn’t let anything jeopardize our relationship. This was fate.
So I followed her. And I would keep following her until she saw for herself.
I would never let her go.
***
From my hotel room, which was just a floor above Brooklyn and Morgan’s, my fingers slid over the keys of the computer. I’d installed a program to track Brooklyn’s phone and saw that she was in New York, but was moving at a rapid clip.
She was in a car on the freeway. At rush hour. Didn’t she know how dangerous that was? I watched the blip across the screen until the blip beeped twice and disappeared. She was gone.
I rushed out the door, down the back staircase and down the seventeen flights of stairs to the ground floor. My shaking legs carried me to the front of the building where a line of cabs was parked, waiting for their next customer. It would be me. I had to find her, to make sure she was okay.
Morgan might have known that losing the phones was necessary, but she still alternated between pouting and giving me the stink eye until we found a small convenience store that sold pre-paid cells. When Shane answered her call, he wasn’t exactly amused either. But in the end, he agreed that we did the right thing. She had a way of making him see the logic in almost anything. Morgan was his calm. I wondered if I would ever find mine.
Riley ran a personal security firm now, one that he created to provide services specifically for the MMA Fighter crowd he and Shane already knew. Shane said he was talking to Manny about his staff and planned to go through the personnel files if Manny didn’t deck him for asking.
“Why would he look there?” I asked, confused.
Shane’s voice flooded the speakers of the tiny Toyota Corolla. “It might be someone close, since he was putting things in your locker room. It might not be, though. He could just be good at what he does. A friend of his is talking to a detective to see if anything sounds familiar. Stalkers tend to follow patterns.”
I didn’t know much about stalkers, other than from my own experience, and Morgan had forbidden me from Google-ing it. She said she’d already done it and it would do nothing but scare me. Newsflash, Morg: I was already scared.
Shane told us to be safe and to let him know what was going on and where we’d settled. I couldn’t help but wonder if telling him was safe for me. I just wanted Morgan to leave. I knew she’d dig her heels in, but damn it, I had to do this on my own.
Two things were certain: I hated to run but was running, and I needed to learn how to shoot a gun again. Daddy taught me how to use a shotgun years ago, but I needed something light that I could carry with me. Pepper spray would only get me so far, and I didn’t plan on getting that close.
Morgan drove the entire day, between rest areas and restaurants, and was hell bent on keeping me from getting behind the wheel. We passed through D.C., whose interstates had almost become a parking lot, and were finally driving into the Virginia countryside. It was beautiful with lush mountains, rivers, and rocks everywhere. Compared to the dry desert, this was Eden.
Cities became smaller and turned into towns, and towns into villages. When we passed an intricate wooden sign that read, “Welcome to Swift Rapids, Population 328,” I screamed. “Morg, this is it! Stop!” Sin maneuvered the car to the shoulder. Before she came to a full and complete stop, my ass was out of the vehicle—arms and legs included. Safety warnings were overrated.
Across the road was a wide, shallow river that was full of rocks and tiny, churning whitewater rapids. It was breathtaking. My fingers twitched with the need of a paintbrush.
Morgan was huffy when she climbed out of the car. “You should really wait for a car to stop before you leap out of it, you know.”
“Meh.”
“Seriously. I could have run you over!”
I flicked a deal-with-it look her way and then looked back at my rapids. She finally smiled and relaxed her resting bitch face. Even she couldn’t help but love the tranquility. Sighing, she turned to me and hooked her arm through mine. “The sun is setting and we need to find a place to crash.”
“Sounds good.”
If we had blinked, we would have missed downtown Swift Rapids. It was that small. There was a small resale shop with everything from clothes to lawnmowers, a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, and a small restaurant named Lyra’s, whose sign boasted the best peach cobbler in the county. Situated next to the restaurant was the only hotel we could find, the ‘Inn and Out’.
Morgan pulled into the parking lot of the hotel and shuddered. Sure, it wasn’t the Ritz, but it was pretty much the only option in these parts. Two floors and what looked like twelve rooms: six on the top floor and six on the bottom.
Grabbing my purse, I jumped out of the car before she could protest, but Morg was quick. The clerk was a middle-aged woman who looked like an older version of Flo from the Progressive Insurance commercials, and I swear the woman had more wrinkles than one of those hairless cats. They framed her eyes with lids sagging beneath layers of royal blue eye shadow and surrounded her caked-on, ruby red lips. Smacking her gum, she asked if we needed one room or two. Apparently they had a vacancy.
“One, please,” I answered with a smile. The woman turned to a peg board behind her that held keys—like actual keys on rings. “You’ll be in one-oh-three. And I’ll need a credit card to secure the room. We will charge an extra fifty dollars for any damage caused while you stay.” The woman’s eyes narrowed at the pair of us as if she were staring at hardened criminals.
You did have that little misdemeanor, remember?
Shut up, conscience. Everyone hates you.
Digging into my purse, I found my wallet and then my credit card. Morg’s eyes got all big and she screamed, “No! You can’t use it. Remember?” Her eyes begged me to remember, and through the fog of sleepiness, I remembered Shane saying something about not leaving a paper trail.
“I have cash. I’ll pre-pay, even the deposit. Then, if the room isn’t damaged, you can give the money back.”
Flo’s eyes narrowed. “Y’all aren’t into drugs, are you?”
Morgan stiffened, then planted her hands on her hips. Oh, hell. I spoke up quickly, “Nope. Credit card is maxed out. It wouldn’t work anyway.”
The woman sized us up but accepted my offering and the greenbacks that I slid across the counter to her. She counted every single bill twice and then slid the key back across the scratched linoleum counter. “I’ll be the one inspecting the room when you check out, and I’ll be watching you – so no funny business.”
I made what I hoped was the boy scout sign and then crossed my heart, grabbing Morgan and pulling her out of the small office. I ducked my head to avoid the hanging strips of fly tape, but Morgan’s hair got stuck in one. She shrieked like someone was killing her.
We grabbed our bags and headed toward one-oh-three. Flo used two fingers to part the plastic horizontal blinds and then motioned from her eyes back to us. Yeah. Yeah. I get it, Flo.
Gritting my teeth, I mentally repeated over and over, Do not flip her off. Do not flip her off. Everything in me wanted to flip her the bird. She deserved it. But I was tired and didn’t have the energy for this crap.
Morgan plodded ahead, opened the door, and flipped on the light. But what I didn’t understand was why she was standing in the doorway with her mouth agape, looking like a fish out of water.
“What’s wrong?” I asked tentatively. If that fucker sent some freaky flowers or a note, I was going to go bat shit crazy. And I wasn’t sure how crazy “bat shit” even was. Cat shit? Now that had parasites in it that ate your brain or something. Cat shit crazy was real.
Temptation, The Complete Serial Series 1-4 (The Temptation Serial Series) Page 3