Dangerously in Love (10 page)

“Are you sure, Hill?” Caitlin asked as she stood, retying her sarong that had come undone.

“I am.”

“Why the sudden change? I mean, why do you want this now?”

Hill stood, removed the condom, and zipped his pants.

“I’ll discard that,” she said, taking the prophylactic from him.

“You asked why? Because it’s what
you
want, Cate” he said. “And I want it, too.”

Hill leaned against the wall, one foot crossed over the other, contemplating what would happen next. He couldn’t believe he had devolved to the point of not just wanting to commit murder, but looking forward to it. What had happened to him? He broke his pensive gaze and stared at Caitlin who stood beside him looking satisfied. She would finally get what she wanted—Adam’s money. And Hill would finally get what he wanted—her. It was a win-win situation, Hill thought.

He pushed himself away from the wall to stand in front of Caitlin. He pressed his hands over her shoulders against the wall behind her, leaning his weight into them and looking down into Caitlin’s eyes.

“There’s no turning back,” he said.

She nodded. “I know.” She thought for a moment then said, “Come back tonight. We could do it then. I’ll leave the side door unlocked for you. I could drug his drink to make him too weak to fight back.”

“Okay. Tonight then. Midnight.” Hill leaned in for another kiss. But a sudden noise distracted him. He heard it very clearly. It was close. It sounded like bare feet slapping against the granite. The sound approached rapidly, and Hill hardly had enough time to react. Caitlin heard it, too.

“Hill, you have to go. That’s Adam.”

Hill pulled her to him, kissing her passionately, untying the sarong to get one last feel. “I don’t want to run and hide.”

“But you have to, Hill. He’ll kill you. I’m sure of it.”

Hill kissed her again as if there were no tomorrow. Adam rounded the corner and entered the cabana just as Caitlin rewrapped the sarong around her waist.

“What are you doing? What’s taking you so long?” Adam asked.

“I was meditating,” she said just as she noticed the condom wrapper on the floor near the bench.

“Since when did you start meditating?” he asked as he surveyed the cabana suspiciously. How about having some lunch in town. We haven’t done that in a long time.”

“I thought you’d be busy, Adam.” She walked toward the bench, stepped on the wrapper and slid her feet under the bench when she sat down.

Adam rubbed his mouth. “I’m never too busy for my wife. Come. Let’s go.”

She saw her thong on the floor near the linen storage unit. She stood, wide-eyed with her mouth agape as she saw Hill reach out and grab the thong. Adam turned around to see what Caitlin was staring at. When he didn’t see anything, he looked her up and down. “Are you coming?”

Caitlin looked back at Hill, who was hidden behind the portable linen storage unit, pissed that he had to hide at all. “Yes,” she said and followed Adam out of the cabana.

***

Hill was humiliated that he had to cower like some teenager hiding from a parent. But they had a plan, and that trumped any bad feelings he had right now. Sweet revenge plus the bonus of winning Adam’s woman and money.

Knowing he had a small window in which he could make it back to his truck, he would have to hightail it across the property. But he didn’t want to run. He didn’t want to hide. He despised the idea of doing either. And if he had to, he was willing to fight. But he knew for damn sure that he wasn’t ducking and hiding anymore. He strolled out of the cabana, not bothering to look back, hoping he wouldn’t be seen. Yet, if he had been seen, he was ready to stand his ground. He walked across the property as if he owned it until he arrived at his truck.

Hill contemplated his plan. His conscience, which he continually ignored, screamed at him. He could hear his mother admonishing him,
“Hilton Allyn Parker! Don’t you dare!”
His mother believed in God’s will. She would say,
“Everything happens for a reason. There are no accidents.”
So that meant it was no accident that Rosemary had recommended Hill’s landscaping service to Caitlin. It was no coincidence that they fell for each other. And there was a divine reason why he felt compelled to murder Adam. At least that’s what he surmised.

Then another of his mother’s ‘life lessons’ came to mind,
“Every action has its consequences— whether good, in the form of reward, or bad, in the form of punishment.”
What would be the price for killing Adam? Prison? Hell? Maybe even losing his own life? He shook his head, pushing all of that out of his mind. The only things he wanted to recall were the two gunshots that still rang in his ears and the scent of gunpowder that had filled his living room. Adam had threatened his life, and Adam needed to pay. Adam Church was a monster who needed to be exterminated.

Thinking back, his father used to tell him that it was okay to let his opponent think he was a weaker or lesser man. Being underestimated was a good strategy to gain the upper hand, to knock someone off kilter. Of course, the judge was talking about arguing a case. Hill realized that he had underestimated Adam and the lengths to which he would go to protect his possessions. Because of that, Hill was at a disadvantage. But all of that was about to change tonight.

Dressed in black, Hill turned off the lights and stood in front of his full-length mirror, checking to make sure he’d fade into the darkness. Satisfied, he looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock—time to leave.

***

Hill cut off the lights as he turned onto the gravel pathway. The night was so quiet that he feared the heavy engine of his Ford F250 and the crunching gravel under its tires would alert Adam to his arrival. He turned off the ignition after parking the truck near the front entrance. The Ford made too much noise in all of the stillness of the night to pull in any further. He sat in the truck, trying to settle his nerves, taking deep breaths and remembering the two bullets he’d dug out of his wall—he mustn’t forget his anger. He couldn’t let his conscience override what he needed to do.

As he slipped his trembling hands into the leather gloves, he repeatedly told himself to ‘man up’. He had the upper hand, the element of surprise—he was the ‘unexpected’. Hill pulled on a Lycra skull cap and took one more deep breath. As he stepped out of the truck, the gravel crunched and shifted under his black Nikes. He reached into the truck bed to grab his sledgehammer. Leaning against the side of the truck, his heart raced, pumping adrenalin through his body. His breaths came in unsteady bursts. He closed his eyes, trying like hell to brush away his fear, hush his conscience, and forget about all the things that could go wrong.

He swiftly made his way across the property, concealing himself behind the trees and structures, until he reached the bungalow. There weren’t any lights on in the house, but the two large men who had accompanied Adam to his warehouse were posted at the back of the house. This was an unexpected development. They’d never been there before. What was going on? Hill pressed his back against the bungalow, peering around the corner and trying to figure out what he should do. He knew he couldn’t take on two armed men with only a sledgehammer. He slid down into a squat, waiting, hoping the men would shift to the front of the house soon.

I can do this.
He kept repeating that in his head. He could do this. He wasn’t going to allow his fear to control him. This
needed
to happen. This was
going
to happen, and it would happen tonight. Just as he mustered the nerve to make a run for it, his phone vibrated. He knew he should’ve left it in the truck.
Rookie mistake
, he thought. It was mistakes like this that got his former clients pinched when he was a defense attorney. The vibrations persisted. It sounded like a power drill in the silence of the night. He fumbled around, trying to quickly retrieve it but his gloves were a hindrance. The buzzing sound was even louder when he pulled the phone out of his pocket. He snatched off his glove with his teeth and hit the ignore button as quickly as he could.

Peering around the corner, he nearly choked on a gasp. The men had disappeared. He stood, shoved his phone in his pocket, and backtracked to the other side of the bungalow, trying to ascertain the men’s location. He didn’t see them. He slipped his glove back on, picked up the sledgehammer, and darted diagonally across the lawn to the side of the house.

Huffing to catch his breath, he suppressed a cough. Hill knew he shouldn’t continue with the plan— there were too many unexpected obstacles—but he was already committed. He was at the house now. All he had to do was get to the side entrance. He saw the beam of a flashlight illuminating an area near the bungalow. It was one of the men he’d lost sight of when the phone vibrated. They had apparently heard the noise and were investigating. Hill had to hurry out of sight. All the men had to do was switch their focus from the bungalow to the house, and he would be discovered. He had to get to the side of the house . . . and quickly.

Hill slowly sidestepped his way toward the entrance. There was no place for him to hide if the men returned to their post before he reached the door except beside the HVAC units about fifty feet away. He knew he needed to hurry, but he also had to be careful. If a vibrating phone caught the men’s attention, so would a cracking twig or rustling paper—Hill had to take each step carefully. The flashlights were now beaming toward the house. The men were on their way back to their post. Hill quickly shifted from a sidestep into a full-on run toward the HVAC units where he squatted out of sight just as a flashlight lit up the area where he’d been standing several seconds ago.

Then he heard someone at the side door. He realized he was only feet away from the door now. The lock clicked. His heart was beating in his throat. Still squatting, he leaned into the darkness, low to the ground, staring at the door. No one came out. It must have been Caitlin unlocking the door for him. Maybe. He couldn’t be sure. His phone vibrated again. He pulled it out but didn’t recognize the number on the screen. He ignored it and turned off the phone. As soon as he did, he realized it might have been Caitlin trying to warn him—trying to call it off.

He skulked to the side door and twisted the knob. It was unlocked just like she said it would be. He peered around the door before entering, then slipped through the narrow opening. He didn’t want to open the door too wide, allowing the moonlight to spill into the dark room. He wasn’t sure if there were men posted inside the house as well. He quietly closed the door then hurried through the long corridor that opened into the basement.

His palms were sweating in those hot gloves. It was at least seventy-five degrees outside, and the basement felt even hotter. Beads of sweat saturated the skull cap. He wanted to take it off, especially since he was in the house. But he didn’t know if Adam had installed cameras. He’d only been inside twice—once when he’d made love to Caitlin on the dining room table, and the other time when he helped Adam move the trunks from the basement into the truck. He had spent most of his time in their yard working or in the bungalow with Caitlin.

He reached the top of the stairs but didn’t know what awaited him on the other side of the basement door. Could there be another armed man posted there? He had no idea. Hill gripped the sledgehammer, twisted the door knob, and peered through the slight opening. All he could see was darkness. He pushed through the door, looking to his left and right. Nothing. Somehow, he felt a little bolder, less afraid. It was as if the adrenaline had taken over—it was like a rush of excitement, actually. Not the happy-go-lucky kind of excitement, but rather the ‘I might die tonight’ kind.

Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the spiral staircase to his left and dashed toward it, listening for any sounds. He quickly ascended the stairs, but paused at the landing, peering over the railing to check if anyone was downstairs. Nothing was stirring. The first room on the right was the bathroom. He looked inside then continued down the hall. He began to hear faint sounds, but they were coming from ahead of him. A rhythmic knocking—a thumping sound. He gripped the handle of the sledgehammer even tighter as he eased down the hallway. The thumping became louder. Voices joined in the mix. No, not voices. Grunts, groans, and moans. As he advanced further down the hall, he heard a clapping sound—flesh on flesh. Bumping, slapping, grunting, moaning, and . . . it was clear.

He was at the room. He pressed himself against the wall outside the door and looked around the corner into the room. The plan was for him to go into the room and whack Adam on the head with the sledgehammer, knocking him unconscious. But he couldn’t. Caitlin was on top of him, grinding and swirling her hips with her head thrown back—seemingly in the throes of pleasure. Or maybe it was he who was in the throes of agony, watching his woman make love to another man. But she wasn’t his woman. She was Adam’s. And she said so as he listened and Adam asked whose she was. Caitlin said, “Yours, baby.”

His heart sank into his gut, churning and burning with anger and pain. He wanted to kill them both but couldn’t muster the energy. Not now. Had she lost track of time? She knew he would be there at midnight. And considering her position at the moment, who the hell had unlocked the side door for him? It couldn’t have been Caitlin—not the way she was immersed in passion. No, someone else had unlocked the door, which meant someone knew he was there. But who? His head began to throb. Fear set in. He felt compromised. And then he heard Caitlin call out Adam’s name, and just as cautiously as he had made his way into the house, he returned to his truck, dropping the sledgehammer in its bed. His conscience had been screaming at him, and he had finally listened. He was
not
a murderer. Caitlin was
not
his woman. And Adam would get what’s coming to him one way or the other, but it wouldn’t be because Hill took his life.

Halfway home, Hill tried to get the image of Caitlin screwing Adam out of his mind. It kept replaying over and over like a looping reel. He pulled off his gloves and skull cap, tossing them onto the passenger seat. He cued up Led Zeppelin on his iPod and plugged it into the AUX port on the radio console.
Since I’ve Been Loving You
played first on the shuffle. He turned up the volume until the truck vibrated with each beat. He bobbed his head to the rhythm, immersing himself in the instrumentals. Next up,
I Can’t Quit You Baby
. Before the song ended, he was home. He sat in his truck for a few minutes until the song finished then dragged himself inside. There was no more wind in his sail.