Trouble Comes Knocking (Entangled Embrace) (16 page)

I hugged her neck, squeezing extra hard. “You are an amazing friend, you know that?”

She squeezed back. “I know.”

Laughing, I swatted her ass as she left the car. Then I drove to where I’d planned to spend my night, parked about a block from The Slotted Spoon. Ana’s sound check worked perfectly. I dialed John, remembering yesterday’s lesson he gave me on how to conference. “Can you hear us both okay?”

He paused for a second. I could hear Ana ordering a drink in the background. “Yeah,” he said, finally.

“Is everything else set up?” I asked, nervous energy making me shift back and forth in my seat.

“I have several search screens up, I’m energy-drink equipped, and I have my Bluetooth connected in case I have to pee.”

“Eww.” Although, now that he said it, I hadn’t thought about what I would do if the need arose. I looked around and saw a gas station not too far from where I parked. “Gross, but I’m glad you brought it up.”

He laughed. Through the phone, I heard Ana greet her date. I knew she’d turned down the volume on her phone so they couldn’t hear us, but I heard them much more clearly than I’d expected.

“You look beautiful,” Tom said in a voice part desperation part pure disbelief. He knew he’d won the lottery yet still thought he’d deserved it somehow. “Here, let me pay for your drink, and we’ll get out of here.”

“You look pretty hot yourself,” she responded in her most seductive voice. “I’m digging the shiny purple shirt and black pants. Totally retro.”

“This guy is crazy, John,” I said as I heard them leave. “Not like psycho gonna cut her face off and wear it to a party kind of crazy, more very delusional about who he is crazy.”

John laughed and then chugged what I assumed was an energy drink. “Most guys are. I mean, you’re way out of my league, but somehow you haven’t figured it out yet.”

I was glad he couldn’t see me blush. It was the kind of compliment girls live for but rarely actually get. And for some reason it made me think about Eli. I was still angry at him for what he said and the way things went down between us. Still, just like John, he made me believe I could use my ability for good. He made me feel special because of that, not like the freak I used to think I was.

Even if he hadn’t meant to. Even if he was, in the end, using me.

“So, babe, don’t say anything when we get there,” Tom told Ana. “Go in with me, they won’t question it, but you can’t be chatting everyone up or anything. Pretty little thing you are, you’ll already be such a distraction I’ll have no problem winning.”

“Sure, baby,” she responded. “It’ll be cool sitting in. Like I told you, I love watching poker, but I’ve never been to an underground game before. Seems so mysterious and hot.”

His car engine died, and I knew they would be going into The Slotted Spoon any minute. “Well, these guys are serious. The buy-in is five thousand dollars, and from some of the things they’ve said, they don’t take owing money lightly. I don’t know for sure, but I think at least one guy died because of his debt. He owed a lot though.”

I shivered, wondering if that was Mr. Winters.

“I don’t like this,” John said into his Bluetooth. “I’m thinking we need to call the whole thing off.”

“It’s too late,” I told him, feeling the same way but knowing we couldn’t do a thing to stop it. “They’re already there. She has her phone volume turned off. Even if I told her to get out, she wouldn’t hear me.”

“Still, this sounds way too dangerous. Someone killed? I mean, we knew about Mr. Winters, but this is playing with fire. I don’t like it,” he said again.

I agreed. “You have the recording equipment set up, right?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“Been recording since you first called.”

“Good. Let’s just not miss any of this.”

The next thing we heard was Tom and Ana going into the game. None of the voices sounded particularly familiar, though none sounded happy Ana was there, either.

“She’s not going to say anything,” Tom defended, obviously embarrassed about being called out in front of his female companion. “She’s only here to watch. Right, babe?”

“Yeah, poopikins,” she said in her most seductive voice. I could hear her trying to work the room. “I think this is so exciting. I love watching.” I’d have laughed at the unmistakable sexual innuendo in her voice had I not been scared for her life.

The men relaxed, though, and started the game.

“They aren’t saying anything,” John said about a half hour later. “What do you think, most boring stakeout in the history of stakeouts?”

“Ugh!” As Tom won another hand, it sounded like this night wouldn’t be ending any time soon. I reached for the box of cheese crackers I’d brought. “I didn’t think to bring a book. At least I have games on my phone. Think I might find any poker games on here? We could play each other while they play inside.”

John laughed. “I’d come join you, but I’d be abandoning my post, and I think that would be considered bad stakeout etiquette.”

“Bad indeed.”

We listened for a little while longer, but things continued down the same boring road. Ana didn’t talk, and the guys playing the game never said anything interesting. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d promised to stay there with her, I’d go home.

“Do you think there is any way we could artfully spring her from the game?” I asked John after another hour passed.

He groaned. “Sorry, kid. I think we’re stuck.”

I wondered how Natalie was fairing tonight. We were doing all this for her, and I hadn’t even told her. It wasn’t as if I needed the gratitude, I only wished she knew how much we cared, and that we weren’t going to let her go down without a fight.

Closing my eyes, I let them rest for a few minutes as I continued to listen to the game. John and I weren’t talking much anymore, and sometimes I could even hear what sounded like light snores on his end. After a few minutes I heard a car pull up behind mine. I opened my eyes to see what was going on, then screamed as someone broke my back window.

“What the hell is going on?” John asked, though I couldn’t concentrate on him anymore.

A gun pressed hard against my skull, and instinctively I raised my hands. “What do you want?”

“Open your door.”

“Okay, okay.” I slipped the phone into my pocket and unlocked the door.

He didn’t wait for me to open it and instead yanked it open himself. “Get out.”

I glanced up, catching only a glimpse of him in a dark hoodie and blue jeans, the ace of hearts tattoo on his neck, before he smashed the gun across the side of my head. Brightness and fireworks of pain echoed through my brain. I fell to my knees as I stumbled from the car, crying out, “Please, why are you doing this, Ben?”

He kicked my side, and I rolled into a ball, trying to protect myself as the sharp pain in my pelvis took my breath away. I looked up, completely disoriented.

“Get up,” he said, motioning with his gun. “Get into my car.”

At the gas station across the street people were pumping gas, but I couldn’t even find a voice to scream. Not that they could have heard me. Five lanes of busy traffic separated us, and I’d intentionally parked in the shadows to try to stay hidden during my stakeout.

With the gun still on me, I held my hands in front of my face as I followed his orders.

I fell into the driver’s seat, then maneuvered over the middle console, bumping my head on the roof before settling into the passenger seat. He followed me in, keeping the gun trained on me. Shifting the green Cougar into reverse, he drove north toward Fort Worth.

Chapter Fifteen

Still reeling in shock and pain, I begged my brain to find some escape, or at least a way to stall him until John showed up with the cavalry. I finally understood why the victims in movies always tried to get the bad guy to talk. The way I saw it, the more Ben said to me, the longer I had to formulate a way out of this.

What I couldn’t understand was how I hadn’t known it was him. “So all of this is because you liked Natalie and she didn’t like you back?” I asked as he drove us into a part of the city I’d never seen.

“That was the icing on the cake,” he said, gun never wavering from its target: me. “I couldn’t have asked for a better setup. When Simon went to my father saying he wanted out of the poker games, it’s like he handed me my opportunity on a platter.” I saw him clearer now: dark circles under his eyes, a long scar from his ear down his neck and disappearing into the hoodie.

“Wait, your dad is Ulysses Smith?”

“Yes. How else would I have gotten the job at HGR?” He pulled off the freeway and into an industrial part of town. It was nearly pitch-black, nothing but a handful of stars to light the way. There wasn’t even a moon, which made it all the eerier.

“So he wanted out, and that’s why the money went missing?”

“He had to buy his way out of the games. That was the only way my dad could make sure he wouldn’t do anything crazy, like go to the cops. Dad knew Simon didn’t have that kind of money, and he’d have to steal it to get out.” He smiled in what looked to be smug satisfaction.

“Why did he want out?”

“Said he fell in love. With that secretary chick. Was going to leave his wife and go live happily ever after.” Ben talked in a somewhat clipped tone. He drove slowly like he didn’t have a great idea of where he was going. His eyes darted from side to side, drifting slightly in each direction. Maybe I could jump out.

Then he saw something and the car straightened, everything becoming more focused, from his posture to the set of his jaw. I looked around, trying to discover what landmark he might have seen. “There sure are a lot of buildings out here.”

He didn’t say a word.

I might die
, I thought, surprised at how calm, how focused, I felt. I shifted once again toward the door. “So Winters fell in love. That’s good.” I reached for the handle, ready to jump, but he sped up.

“Love’s not real. No one actually loves anyone else. John doesn’t love you. He thinks he does, but he doesn’t.”

John loved me? He couldn’t yet; it had been only a few weeks.

“How did you know I was at Eli’s house that night?”

“Hacked John’s phone. He left that thing laying around all the time, it wasn’t hard to install a program that let me see all of his text messages. You two text a lot. Stupid shit, too. That’s why I know it isn’t love. You don’t talk about anything real. Nobody talks about real shit anymore.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

He turned a corner and slowed a little, not answering my question. I tried a different tactic. “So why did you kill him? I mean, I assume you were the one who killed him.”

“Because of you,” he answered, using the gun as an exclamation point. “He still owed another fifty thousand when you went to him and ruined everything. He was going to back out, said he couldn’t steal anything else from the company. Couldn’t risk being caught. Said he’d pay it back some other way.”

“So what happened?”

“Dad didn’t believe him, and neither did I. Eventually the theft would have come back to him, and then he’d have flipped on all of us, sending the cops our way. The only thing we could do was get rid of him.”

“But why frame Natalie?” I asked, at this point caring less about the mystery of the whole thing and more about hugging Aunt Dolores one last time. There had to be a way out of this. I could run, but I certainly couldn’t dodge bullets, and I didn’t know how good his aim was. The lighting wasn’t great, but I didn’t want to depend on that as my only hope for getting out alive.

He pulled into a warehouse area and drove slowly. My heart galloped as time slipped away. If I kept him talking, Natalie could be saved. At this point I didn’t feel much hope for me.

“That was the best part,” he said, eyes wide and speech growing more manic as he went. “I’ve owed that cock tease for years for what she did to me. I already took care of Diana, and she didn’t even do as much. This was far sweeter.”

Bile rose in my throat. I glanced around. The entire place was abandoned. Not a car in sight. Nothing remarkable to give John a clue as to our location. I didn’t even know how to find help if I somehow made it out of this. “What do you mean took care of Diana?”

“Diana knew I liked Natalie but told her not to go for me. Me. Then she set Natalie up with Clive.”

“That was a couple of years ago. Why did you wait so long to do something about it?”

He pulled up to a building and stopped the car. “Diana called me a loser. Said no woman would want me and I’d have better luck with my hand than ever finding a girl. Told me I reminded her of one of those quiet guys who carries a rifle up into a clock tower.”

Kinda, yeah. “But you’re not that guy, and you don’t have to be that guy. We don’t even have a clock tower that I know of.”

He smiled, his eyes dead, and motioned me out of the car. He pushed me ahead of him into the warehouse and down a set of stairs. The calm from earlier left as my breathing became more erratic.
I can’t die here,
I kept chanting in my head. I looked around as much as I dared, trying to take note of a way to escape. My breath blew out white and wispy in the cold night air. He pulled out a flashlight to light the way, but it barely showed ten feet in front of us, much less anything identifiable. I touched the phone in my pocket, wishing I could hear John’s voice. I stumbled, finding it hard to keep my balance while my knees threatened to buckle. The place became colder and damper the farther in we went. Rats scurried around in the dark, and my imagination went into overdrive as the smell of something rotten hung in the air. This place was creepy times twenty, and I needed to figure out a way to let John know where I was.

We walked to the far corner of the room, and the foul smell grew stronger. I gagged, then covered my mouth and nose. “Where is this place?” I asked. If I could at least get that out of him, I knew John would find me.

“It’s an old family warehouse,” he answered. “No one uses it anymore. Well, nearly no one.”

My thoughts raced. “Look, you don’t have to do anything,” I said, definitely feeling a distinct need to wet myself. “Why don’t you just disappear? No one needs to know you killed Mr. Winters.”

“No one will know. Don’t you get it? You’ll die here. Your little friend, Ana, she’ll be next, then John. No one knows where you are. I can plant evidence on their bodies and make your death come back on them. The perfect revenge. When Simon told us he wanted out, all this was going to be pinned on Diana. He was supposed to steal the money from the company, but the missing data would show up under her log-in. That was my idea. Skinny little bitch. Then she completely ignored me in the elevator one day. Acted like I didn’t even exist. I took care of her that night. Simon balked a couple of weeks later, wanted nothing to do with stealing anymore. Like he thought I wasn’t smart enough to hide the trail. Then I had better plans for them both. No one messes with me or my family without going down. My pops taught me that. Someone messes with you, they get cut.”

He stopped talking to me at some point and seemed only to be talking to himself. “Said I was too soft, my old man did. Said I could never take over his business. Weak, he called me weak. Said if push ever came to shove, I’d be the sniveling ball crying somewhere on the floor. Well, who’s crying? Not me.”

“Why are you doing this?” I whispered, knowing he wasn’t listening to me.

Apparently, he was. He laughed. “Why not? I get to go on living my life while you rot down here.”

“So you’re going to shoot me?”

“No.” His flashlight panned over to one of the columns and landed on a body. What remained had strings of blond hair, missing teeth. The greenish flesh was slightly see-through and something crawled out of one of the eye sockets.

I screamed, my knees giving out.

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” He covered his ears and then started hitting the side of his head. That only lasted a few moments until he stopped and relaxed. “Actually, scream all you want. No one gives a fuck about you down here.”

“That’s…that’s Diana, isn’t it?”

He smiled and crouched down next to me on the cold, damp concrete. “What’s left of her. She used to be a looker. I came down to see her every day after I brought her here. It’s amazing how nice girls get after they’ve been left alone in a warehouse for a few days. After a while she stopped playing nice, so I just used her as a punching bag until she wasn’t anything.”

“Oh God, you’re sick,” I said, backing away from him and trying not to look at the body. That would be me if I didn’t get out of here.

Get out!
my mind screamed.

“So all this because of the money?”

“Fuck the money,” he said, still kneeling, proud of his sick domain. “My family needed me, and I did what I had to do to protect them. Who will protect yours, Lucy?”

Fight or die,
I suddenly thought.
Fight or die.

“Get up,” he said, standing and waving at me with the gun, motioning me forward. “I’m tired of talking.”

Stumbling to my feet, I walked toward Diana, but in the last moment veered, rushing him and knocking us both to the floor. The flashlight flew from his hand and went out.

“Fucking bitch, I’m going to kill you!”

The gun blasted as I rolled out of the way. My ears rang and echoes bounced off my eardrums as I quickly pieced together in my mind how we’d gotten from the staircase to here. One wrong step and I’d be lost in a pitch-black warehouse with no idea where to hide.

His footsteps matched mine, and I knew if he caught me, I’d be dead.

“Lucy,” he called in a crazy singsong voice. “Lucy. Might as well come on back to me, darlin’. If you stop now I’ll just shoot you. If you keep going, I’ll make you pay.”

He was trying to bait me. Trying to get me to say something so he’d know where I was. My heart pounded as I felt my way along the boxes and rubble. I ran into a wall of spiderweb and gasped as I tumbled away from it.
Stop shaking,
I told myself, my limbs feeling as if they might give out. I’d been lucky; in the dark I couldn’t see what was around me, but I hadn’t run into anything yet. Slowing, I hoped I’d have a better chance of hearing him coming my way, but my ears still rang from the blast. No sight and little hearing left me disoriented.

“Lucy,” he called again. “Come on out, you little bitch.”

If Ben didn’t catch me, I might as easily die from pure fear. But if I could make it to the far edge of the room, I could follow the wall around until I found the staircase.

God, please let me get out of this alive.
The ringing in my ears faded enough for me to hear my own heavy breathing. His footfalls moved away from me. I tried to take slower, deeper breaths, but that only hyped up the panic. I squeezed my hands into fists.
Get it together. You can do this. You are a warrior woman.
That did it. Finally able to breathe again, I moved forward, finding my way toward the wall. When I sensed he was far enough away, I reached for the phone in my pocket and prayed John was still on the other end and that Ben wouldn’t see the light. He wasn’t there.

There were zero bars, and I was completely alone.

God,
I prayed again.
Please don’t let me die here.

I found the wall and walked along it as quickly and quietly as I could. I stepped on something furry and it let out a screech. A bullet ricocheted in my direction, and I sprinted.

“Lucy, I know where you are now,” Ben taunted. He raced toward me, pummeling through boxes and tossing things aside. “I’ll be there in a minute, darlin’.”

I fought my way along the wall as fast as possible, and after an eternity found the staircase. I started up, but his hand closed around my ankle.

“Got ya.”

“No!” I screamed, kicking backward. My heel connected with bone, and he let go, falling away from me. Another bullet hit metal above my head as I scrambled on all fours up the stairs.

Once on the upper level, I ran as fast as I could toward the open doorway, Ben right behind me. “Fucking bitch, fucking little Lucy bitch. I’m going to kill you!”

Fight or die
, I kept thinking as my lungs burned and my heart fought for each beat. My thighs burned, but I kept running, my life literally depending on it.

“Run if you want, Lucy,” Ben called. “I can just as easily kill Ana tonight instead of you. I know exactly where she is, and it isn’t as if she knows where you are right now.”

His words slowed me.
Oh God, no!
I stopped and hid behind a box.

“You have a choice,” he shouted again, this time not as far away. “You or your friend. Are you willing to die for her, Lucy?”

I stifled a cry, not sure of what to do. If I came out, I would certainly die. If I stayed hidden, Ana would be this psychopath’s next victim. With shaky legs, I decided to step out from behind the box just as a hand clamped down over my mouth.

“No,” Eli whispered fiercely into my ear. “She’s safe.”

I turned to him, eyes wide. “What are you doing here?”

“John called me. He tracked your phone to this part of town, and we’ve been searching the warehouses to find you.”

“He has a gun,” I whispered.

“C’mon,” he said, taking my hand.

I followed in a low crouch, hoping Eli knew the way out. We only went a small distance before the sound of footfalls grew stronger. “He’s behind us!” I whispered, frantic now that I knew Eli’s life was in as much danger as my own.