Chapter Twenty-One
N othing about him had changed , but everything was more.
More muscles, more hair, more presence, he even exuded more alpha dominance. And anger. I could feel it all the way to my toes, and it crushed my soul, but I couldn’t blame him.
He had every right to be angry.
There just wasn’t anything I could do about it. Not if I wanted to keep Maverick safe.
The truck I’d stolen from him three years ago had a huge bull bar in the front, and I was considering my options when the old man behind us got out of his car and saved me from having to make a decision.
“Hey,” the old man yelled. “You’re blocking the exit, and if you don’t let that lady pass, I’m calling the police!”
I didn’t look at Garrett, but I could feel his indecision.
“I’m not messing around,” the old man yelled.
The blond-haired man wearing a shirt exactly like Garrett’s got back in the black Escalade and started to back the SUV up.
Garrett’s hand closed over the open window and he bit out a warning. “This isn’t over.”
It was over before it’d started, but I didn’t say anything. The second his hand left, I put the window up. The blond man backed the black Escalade all the way up and I floored it.
The truck’s huge engine kicked in and we shot forward. I didn’t take my foot off the gas, and I bounced in the driver seat as we went over the curb and hit the street. I didn’t even look for traffic. I floored it in the lane that led out of the parking structure .
Glancing behind me, I saw the blond man get out of the driver side and Garrett get in as the blond man jogged to the passenger side of the black SUV. Still gunning it, ignoring the yellow light ahead, I blew through the intersection and took the first two turns I could.
I wasn’t a stranger to driving a getaway car, but I hadn’t done it in years, and I’d never done it with my son in the car.
“Hold on, Mav. Mommy’s going to drive fast, okay?” I glanced in the rearview mirror as I took another turn. The SUV was five cars back.
Maverick pumped his little fist and kicked his feet. “Go fast!”
I didn’t have time to think about how much he looked like his father, or how every day I was reminded of my choices. I could’ve run back into Garrett’s condo that early morning, three years ago, but I hadn’t known I was pregnant. And I’d never wanted to get Garrett involved with my problems. He didn’t deserve that.
But now he was here, and he was chasing me.
Looking in my review mirror, waiting to see a black Escalade come around the corner at any minute, but hoping it wouldn’t, I changed lanes.
“You holding on, Mav?” It was a rhetorical question because he was strapped into his car seat, but I needed something to distract me from my thoughts.
“Mama, hold on.” Maverick made a car engine noise. “Go fast!”
I stepped on it.
The Raptor flew through another intersection, then I cut across two more lanes and headed toward South Beach. The streets were crowded, and it’d be harder to maneuver through traffic, but that was exactly why I chose it. More traffic gave me more opportunities to lose him.
I was taking another turn down a busy street when my cell phone rang.
Torn, I thought about not answering it. There was only one person who called me, and Nathan only called when he wanted something.
If I didn’t answer, I would pay for it later.
If I answered and he found out what was happening, Garrett would pay for it .
There wasn’t a choice.
I answered.
“Where are you?” Nathan’s voice came through the truck’s speaker.
“Nathan!” Mav yelled from the back seat before I could answer.
“Hey, kid.” Nathan chuckled like he actually liked Mav. “Where’s your mommy?”
“I’m here. What do you want?”
Nathan dropped the fake nice voice for Mav. “In a hurry to get me off the phone?” In direct correlation to the amount of crime he committed, Nathan’s paranoia had only gotten worse over the years.
“I’m driving.” I took the next corner too fast and the tires screeched across the hot midday pavement.
“So I can hear,” he said dryly. “What’s the rush?”
The black SUV barreled around the last corner, closing the distance. “Just giving Mav a fun ride.”
“Go fast!” Mav yelled, making the car noise again.
I fought to keep my voice calm. “What’s up?”
“Head back to the house. I need you to make a deposit.”
That was the deal I’d struck with Nathan after Mav was born. I continued to make deposits for him, he didn’t ask me to do anything else, and he didn’t turn me in. It wasn’t much of a deal for me, I was still trapped, but it was the only way I knew how to keep Mav safe. I had plausible deniability if I was caught because the “deposits” were never to a bank, and hopefully Mav wouldn’t be taken away from me.
But none of that mattered right now. I couldn’t go back to the house, not with a tail. “It’s not happening.” I wasn’t going to lead Garrett, or his friend, into an ambush.
“Oh really?” I could practically see the sinister smile spread across his face. “You’re denying me?”
“I’ll do it later.” Usually I could get away with a few hours with Nathan. As long as I made the run the same day, he wouldn’t give me too much shit.
“Yeah?” he asked too casually. “Why’s that? ”
Gunning it, I changed lanes, and a split second later another car did the same, forcing me to slam on the brakes. The huge truck lurched, the brakes locked and all four tires burned pavement this time. “ Fuck .” The curse came out before I could stop it.
“Okay, why are you in South Beach?”
I cranked the wheel and changed lanes, cutting off another car before gunning it again. The black SUV was only two cars back now. “How do you know where I am?”
“Brookelyn, Brookelyn, Brookelyn,” Nathan tsked. “You think I don’t track your cell and that ridiculous truck you refuse to give up? Which, by the way, you still owe me for letting you keep it. That cost me a mint getting the title scrubbed and reissued.”
I scanned the bottom of the truck daily when Nathan wasn’t watching to look for tracking devices. I’d never found one. “It didn’t cost you a dime.” Nathan didn’t pay for things. Ever. He schemed, bartered, threatened, stole, blackmailed, or coerced. But he didn’t buy anything. “The title’s as fake as the name on the registration.”
“Then maybe you should slow down before you get pulled over and drive home sensibly,” he retorted with his own special brand of smugness.
And maybe he should fuck off. “I’ll be there when I get there.” I never called his house home, because it wasn’t. It was my prison. “I’m hanging up now.”
“You have five minutes.”
I was in a dangerous mood. “Or what?”
“You have to sleep sometime, Brookey.”
White knuckling the steering wheel, adrenaline pounding, heat and nerves already sticking my shirt to my back, a chill ran up my spine. I knew what his threat meant. It was the same one I’d been hearing since I’d pushed my son out of my body on the bathroom floor in the pool house of Nathan’s estate because I was too terrified to go to the hospital.
The same terror I felt now. “You so much as touch my son, you’re dead.”
Nathan laughed. “You always were a handful.” His tone sobered and his voice turned smooth as glass. “What makes you think I would ever touch our son? Children disappear every day. Especially ones with rich parents, wife .”
I hated him. I hated him more than I hated myself. “I’m no more your wife than Maverick is your son,” I bit out, only adding fuel to the fire.
“Five minutes,” he warned, with steel coldness. “Take your next right. I’ll be waiting in the driveway.” He hung up.
My nostrils flared, and God mocked me.
Traffic cleared out of the right lane at the next intersection.
A hundred scenarios went through my head, but there was only one choice.
I prayed Garrett could handle himself.
Jerking the steering wheel to the right, I turned.