6. Harper
Chapter 6
Harper
Shit! Shit, shit, shit !
Why didn’t I ever join a gym or play a running sport in high school?
If Cian doesn’t kill me, all this cardiovascular activity will. I’m panting and moving as fast as I can while dodging strollers, laughing families, selfie-taking couples, and rowdy teenagers congesting the walking path next to the main street. My legs feel like they’re sprinting, but I know I’m practically crawling compared to how fast I need to go.
The fading daylight will help me a little, but not nearly enough. Men like Cian are creatures of the night. They get meaner, smarter, and more deadly the darker it gets outside. Trust me. I know these things.
I need to get to the truck and hightail it out of here.
How could I be so stupid? I clocked him from across the room at the bar the night I escaped, and he wasn’t even in my sight line. Two months of freedom has already dulled my danger radar.
The muscles in my legs pulse from exertion as I pound the sidewalk as hard as I can. I’m a bit turned around, but I remember where I parked. If I can evade Cian long enough to lose him, I’ll double back and make my escape.
An ice-cold pang stabs through my chest.
What if Finn’s with him? My broody, deadly former fiancé…
If Cian and Finn both lie in wait, there’s no way in hell I’ll escape my fate. One of three things will happen. They’ll drag me back to New York, they’ll force me to marry Finn right here, or they’ll kill me for resisting options one or two.
I want to scream at the cars zipping past, at the tourists in their beachwear, fresh from an evening surf. Why can’t I be normal? Why does my life have to be a damn action movie?
And if my life must be an action movie, why can’t I be the hero instead of a damsel in distress? I want to hide in the nearest bathroom and indulge in a five-year-long panic attack.
I’m about to risk running into traffic to gain some distance when a hand clenches down on my forearm. Cian yanks me back and spins me until we stand face-to-face.
Fear vibrates beneath the surface of my skin.
Even though he takes care not to hurt me, the angry fingers latched onto my forearm tell me how rough he could be. How he could break weak things with a snap of his wrist.
Weak things like me.
His eyes glow in the dusk, alight with speechless rage. Despite that, he keeps a tight leash on his anger. I never once get the sense that he’s close to losing control.
Something else shimmers in his gaze, almost like hurt, but that’s ridiculous. I’m clearly seeing things that aren’t there.
The few seconds that pass feel like hours as we stand still, the moment brittle and tense. We both know Cian’s here to drag me back to hell.
Pedestrians pass us, minding their business as if we’re just a normal couple having a tense moment. I should scream. Kidnapper! Rapist! Criminal on the loose!
Instead, my mouth refuses to form words. My attention remains riveted to his frustrated face.
The heat radiating off my neck and cheeks grows strong enough to light one of the torches on the side of the footpath. This is not how a runaway captive being tracked down by their captor should act, right? I should be plucky, strong, determined, and just as defiant as I was during those weeks I spent planning this.
In reality, I experience this awful , almost overwhelming urge to apologize, which is absurd. Cian’s the one who’s here to ruin my life, not the other way around.
Even if I could talk my way out of this, what would I say?
Please let me go, Cian. I promise, if you never tell anyone you found me, I’ll…
What, exactly? Groveling only works if the person I grovel to actually gives a shit about me.
To Cian, I’m just an assignment. There’s nothing I can offer that’s more valuable to him than his responsibility to the Irish Kings.
Which means I’m imagining the warm glow hidden in his eyes. I’m imagining the way he pulls my arm forward just a little, almost like he’s guiding me into his embrace, like he wants to hug me close.
The grip on my arm loosens and falls away altogether, leaving my skin cold where his hot palm used to be.
Why does the sight of him clad in a basic, patterned Hawaiian shirt and board shorts set my body on fire? He’s dressed like a groom on his honeymoon, not a guy who’s usually packing two guns in a holster against his chest.
His Hawaiian Romeo vibe gives off the impression that my pursuer is a regular guy instead of a trained killer.
Before running away on the eve of my wedding, I’d never so much as stood a man up on a date.
Being a woman in the world today is still terrible sometimes. We’re socialized to behave politely and consider a man’s emotional well-being, even if he’s in the middle of committing a crime against us. That brainwashing is so deeply ingrained that guilt puddles in my belly when I take a step back from Cian.
Then I bolt into the street.
“Harper!” Cian roars my name.
Blaring horns deafen me, headlights heat my flesh, and cars swerve to avoid me. I dart across a five-lane road, eyes fixed on the opposite sidewalk. My heart is pumping so fast I can’t even feel it.
I don’t realize how badly my legs are shaking until I reach the other side.
When I glance over my shoulder, traffic’s still flowing. Cian stands on the curb where I left him, fuming so hard his shoulders rise and fall with the effort.
Even with several lines of moving cars between us, the fire of his wrath burns my skin. He was already upset with me, and now I’ve made him even angrier.
If that guy gets his hands on me again, my life as I know it is over. My freedom too.
I cannot let that happen. I won’t.
After my crazy-ass traffic stunt, losing Cian comes easy. I double back to an ugly public parking lot on a Waikiki backstreet. A white pickup truck with the Fukuoka Farms logo on one side waits between a red jalopy and a new Lexus. Jean and Tony let me borrow this truck to get to and from work at Dish .
I throw myself into the cab and almost kiss the seats. Still shaking, I turn the engine over, whip out of the lot, and get the hell out of Waikiki.
After an eternity of painstaking stoplights and congested surface streets, I merge onto the highway. I’m too amped to switch on the radio. Listening to highway noise as the light dies into humid, starry darkness, I try to calm down.
My brain is trapped in a wild free fall. Uneasiness digs at me like a knifepoint dragging across the surface of my skin.
What the hell do I do now?
Oahu is a small island. Cian’s here, and he already knows where I work. I got away from him today, but he won’t give up.
He’s about as likely to stop searching for me as I am to hand myself over to him on a silver platter. We’re equally serious about our respective motivations, which means keeping my freedom will come down to outsmarting him.
But how am I going to do that ?
I still have enough money to buy a plane ticket and start over someplace else. But where? How will I even leave the island without getting caught?
I beat the steering wheel with the palm of my hand and debate copying the action with my face.
Why must follow-through be my Achilles’ heel? I never think anything through to the end. My brain plays through seventy-five percent of a scenario and then goes fishing.
I figured out all the logistical details of escaping my family in New York and coming to Hawaii, but I didn’t consider what I would do if they found me.
Stupid mistake on my part.
The Kings have more power, reach, and influence than most mafia families along the Eastern Seaboard. Shane Gallagher even has a tech department where Rory develops gadgets to help the family do better business, which essentially means committing crime in increasingly clever ways.
I could have fled to outer space, and they still would have found me. The fact that I believed I could build a life for myself away from it all seems so incredibly foolish now.
My throat constricts, and I swipe tears as they line the rims of my eyes.
Even if I could sneak off the island, where would I go? The anxiety that accompanies the thought of packing up my meager belongings and flying off to a strange new destination threatens to overwhelm me. I just began settling into a new life here, with people I care about. I don’t want to start all over again.
But if I stay here on the island, it’s only a matter of time before Cian and the others catch up with me.
What about the Fukuokas? I can still picture the confusion on Mike and Paul’s faces when I ran out on them earlier.
And Jean and Tony… Ugh, they’ve treated me with so much kindness. They gave me a job and a place to stay. I don’t want to get them mixed up in any of my shit.
The best course of action is to get out of work for a few weeks and go into hiding. I’ll find some roadside motel and stay inside for fourteen days straight. Hopefully, I’ll conceal myself so well that Cian and the others will either get tired of hunting for me or believe I slipped through their fingers and escaped someplace else.
Once they’re gone, I can return to my life here. There’s just one problem with this plan… How am I supposed to know when my would-be captors are gone? It’s not like Cian’s going to shoot me a text telling me he’s given up and that he’s headed home.
Even if I discovered a way to recognize when it was safe to stop hiding, how would I explain my actions to the Fukuokas?
With all this erratic behavior, they’ll probably think I’m a vagabond with a criminal history or a recovering addict who just suffered a relapse and disappeared on a bender for a few weeks.
And how could I possibly explain?
No, I swear. I’m just the runaway daughter of a high-ranking member of a powerful and dangerous mafia family on the East Coast. My dad sent some trained killers here to get me, but I ditched them and everything’s okay now, so I’m ready to get back to work.
As I navigate the road, dread and despair claw at me.
I’m doomed.
After the hundredth look with nothing nefarious in sight, I let my back relax against the seat as the sun sinks below the horizon.
The only thing I don’t love about my work commute is the occasional nighttime drive. Usually, I do the morning shift, and I head home in the mid-afternoon hours and arrive by or before sundown.
In New York City, it never gets dark. Yes, the sun goes down, but there are streetlights every five feet. There are city lights twinkling above and around, every night, every week, every month of the year.
Oahu isn’t like that. There aren’t enough city lights to recreate a solar system. Especially out on the North Shore. This is where the island gets remote the fastest. Here, it gets dark. Dark dark. Pitch-black, meaning only the two short, bright corridors created by my headlights pierce the surrounding twilight.
Driving at night out in the sticks is a horror movie, pretty much.
My heart skips when a tree branch lurches in the wind. I could do without the gruesome shadows too.
Anticipation mounts inside me as I close the distance between myself and the Fukuoka home. Even though I know tonight is probably the last night I’ll ever see them, I’m eager to get back.
If the Kings are coming after me for shirking my duty, if one runaway bride matters enough to them that they’re flying operatives into the Pacific to bring me home, then they’ll have no problem threatening or killing anyone close to me as incentive for my cooperation.
I can’t give them that chance.
Up ahead, I spy the dirt driveway that leads around to the back of the Fukuoka house.
As I maneuver the truck onto the path, a tall figure appears in my headlights out of nowhere.
I scream like I have lungs the size of this truck’s cab and yank the wheel so far to the right, the truck almost spins a U-turn back into the street. I stomp on the brakes, which launches my torso toward the dash harder than I expect. My seat belt prevents a concussion, but my vision still swirls with darkness before brightening again.
The driver’s side door squeaks open. The horrible, metallic squeal sounds far away to my ringing ears. When my chest stops heaving and I muster the strength to peek, I expect to find Jean or Tony or the person they invited over for dinner that I nearly mowed down with this truck, but instead…
“Get out.” Cian glowers at me. With the truck’s height, he and I are eye-to-eye, his demonic gaze heavy on mine.
“How did you find me?” That I’m capable of speech while choking on more fear than I’ve ever experienced is a miracle.
Terror grips my heart like my father’s fist and squeezes, tightening around me with enough strength to snap my spine.
“Now.” That one word turns me to stone.
I freeze, the same way I did when I saw him on the patio a few hours ago.
How did Cian find me?
Behind his hulking frame, the Fukuoka house remains dark.
Does that mean…the people inside are dead? Was I fretting about what to tell my new, kind friends when they were dead all along?
Cian thrusts an impatient arm into the cab, groping my hip for the seat belt release. His fingers grasp my waist and drag me out of the truck.
I can’t breathe. This is…this is all too much.
As soon as my foot touches the ground, my legs give out and so does my consciousness. Mind slipping away into the dark, the last thing I hear is his rough, demanding voice.
“You’re coming with me .”