Chapter 22
22
I knew Kai was doing something majorly illegal by not getting the sheriff involved with my attacker, but I couldn’t really bring myself to care. For that minute that he had me in his grip, I thought I was going to die.
I rolled my head on the passenger seat and looked at Kai’s profile. He looked fierce. I could see him on the cover of some Scottish romance novel. He’d be like a warrior with a sword in a kilt, and he’d be faithful only to me.
Want only me.
Forever.
But that was the rub. Where was our relationship going?
It was funny that I thought I needed to talk to Sue. I didn’t need to talk to Sue about a damn thing. I knew where my heart was at. It was here. Right here, connected to Kai’s. That is, if Kai would have me.
He was nothing like Denny. Kai had only talked me up. He had made me feel like a better version of myself. Plus, he was such. And I mean, such . A good guy.
I’d met Sam the one night that I was allowed to bring over dinner. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Part of me thought that someone who worked with Pearl for all those years would have had to be a little bit crotchety, but then again, Harvey had hurt his feelings. So I went in with no expectations. What I wasn’t expecting was a man with Old World manners and charm. I was stunned he was living alone, but after dinner he took out a photo album and showed me pictures of his wife who had died thirty years ago.
It was after that that he and Kai went into a back bedroom to work on the exercises, and I listened to Kai constantly tell Sam to go easier. Apparently Sam was a lot like Kai—hard on himself, and anxious to get better. No wonder Kai liked him so much.
“Whatcha looking at?” Kai asked softly.
“I’ll tell you later.” I didn’t want to tell him anything gooey when my attacker could overhear.
When we pulled up to the building, Simon Clark and Roan Thatcher came out. I waved to them from the front seat and grinned. Roan came over to the passenger side window and I rolled it down.
“How are you doing, Marlowe?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Doc checked me out. No adverse reactions from the chloroform.”
My head whipped around as I heard Simon shout through the other window. “What the hell Kai, you didn’t tell us he hit her with chloroform.”
“I was going to. First and foremost, we need some answers,” Kai muttered.
Roan opened my door and held out his hand. “Darlin’, why don’t you go on inside with Betty, and she’ll get you set up with whatever you need. If you want snacks, iced tea, soda, beer, whiskey, whatever, she’ll set you up.”
“She can’t have alcohol, are you dumb?” Kai shouted at Roan.
Roan laughed. “She’s a big girl, she knows what she can and can’t do.”
Kai reached across the middle of the van and grabbed my hand. “No alcohol. Not until all of the chloroform is out of your system. Okay?”
I squeezed his hand. “I promise.”
“Oh, you’ve got him wrapped around your little finger, don’t you, Darlin’?” Roan chuckled.
I frowned. “I’m the one doing what he says, so I think it’s the other way around.”
“Didn’t you see—” Roan started to say.
“Give it up, Thatcher,” Simon broke in. “It’ll play out as it’s meant to.”
They thought they were so smart. I’d met Simon’s wife. He was the one who was wrapped around his woman’s finger. As for Roan, I hadn’t met his woman, but considering the way he was just talking to Marlowe, my guess would be he was just as whipped.
“So what do we have here?” Simon asked as he opened up the side door of the van. I got out so I could stare at Marlowe’s would-be kidnapper. Now, besides all the blood dripping on and around his face, there was vomit too. Must not have been a comfortable ride for the bastard.
“This asshole thought it would be nice to kidnap Marlowe outside the hardware store. I thought it was a bad idea, and I made my concerns known.”
“Looks like,” Roan agreed.
“So you brought him here, why?” Simon asked.
“You seem to have a large building here. I was thinking I could make some use of it and get some of my questions answered before I handed him over to a Nash where he would immediately ask for a lawyer.”
“Hey, Simon, he has your number.”
Simon glared at Roan.
“Give it up, Boss. Anybody checking out this place is bound to wonder what all this empty space is for and wonder why there isn’t a big for rent sign up front.”
I glanced over at Simon. “He has you there.”
“Is that what made you think I might rent more of this than just our office space?”
“It finally did cross my mind,” I admitted.
“Shit,” was all Simon had to say about that. “Just don’t mess up the space too badly when you have your talk with your new friend.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
“Why does he get all the fun?” Roan asked. “That doesn’t seem fair. The last time I got to ask anybody fun questions was when we were in Baltimore. I’m going to go with Kai.”
I looked over my shoulder suspiciously. He didn’t look like somebody who was implying I needed help. Which I was going to. I couldn’t move this dead weight on my own.
Fuck!
“Have at it. Again, remember to keep it on the linoleum.” Simon handed me a set of keys then turned to go back to the office door.
Roan leaned into the van and pulled the unconscious man out, then picked him up and hefted him over one shoulder.
Fuck!
Shut the fuck up, Davies, or Beaumont or whoever the hell you are. You can walk. You can jog. You can run. You can fuck. You have a woman who you love, so just shut the fuck up about those few things you can’t do!
“Where do we go?” I asked Simon.
“Around to the back.” He laughed. “Probably should have had you drive there. Oh well.” He hefted the man up a little more.
By the time we got to the back entrance, Roan wasn’t even breathing heavy. Those were the days .
“My fiancée, Lisa, really likes Marlowe. She’s really impressed.”
“Were you born and raised here?” I asked.
“Yep. Went to school with Beau. I was a few grades ahead of him. I ran into him a couple of times when we were in the same country, fighting the good fight. Your brother is a good man.”
I liked hearing that.
“What brought you back to Jasper Creek?”
“I put my time in and was at that point where I either needed to become a lifer, or go take over the family business, ya know?”
I nodded, like I did know. But I didn’t.
“Anyway, I come back here and I find out that my Dad’s moved to Florida and my brother might still be in Tennessee, but he doesn’t want to have anything to do with our old service shop. The cherry on top is that Dad has put this know-it-all female in charge of the business. He’s given her carte-blanche on how to run it.”
“Why would he do that if you were going to leave the service and run it?”
“Oh yeah, when I decided to leave the service and come home, I decided to make it a surprise.”
“Ah. Fuck.”
“It gets worse. Guess who’s renting the old family homestead?”
“The know-it-all female?” I ventured.
“You’ve got it in one.”
“What did you do?”
“I ended up proposing.” He laughed. “There might have been some other shit that went on between me showing up and me proposing, but the important part is I proposed and she said yes.”
I chuckled.
Roan pointed with his head. “There it is. That door.”
I moved forward and with the second key I tried, I was able to open the lock. We were in a big storage facility with a cement floor. “Where’s the linoleum?”
“We either use the bathroom or the kitchenette. I prefer the kitchenette. More space to move around.”
I nodded. Cement was bad because blood had a nasty habit of soaking in, and you weren’t able to totally clean it up. Linoleum was easy to clean up.
“Let me down,” the guy over Roan’s shoulder slurred.
I shut the door and followed Roan to the kitchenette.
“Sure, I’ll let you down.” Roan dumped him onto the floor. The guy had a hard landing, what with his hands and feet tied up and all.
“Where am I?” He sounded a little less slurred, but he was nasally. I was pretty sure I had broken his nose.
“You’re in a place where no one can hear you if you scream. But you won’t need to scream as much if you just give us some answers,” I told him.
Roan gave me a thumbs up. He was the slightest bit of a goof.
The guy tried to push up into a sitting position, but the way he was tied wouldn’t allow it. He dropped back down onto the floor in defeat. “Just ask me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. I don’t like this bumfuck town. This was a shit assignment.”
“What are you talking about? You’re going down for first degree murder,” I shouted into his face.
“The fuck I am!” he shouted back, his fear palpable. “I was paid to get answers out of the bitch, not kill her.”
“Bullshit. You’re the second person who’s tried to kill her in the last forty-eight hours,” I yelled back. If I didn’t need him to answer questions, I would put my boot through his skull.
“No, man. No. I can prove it. The old man told me himself. I was to get her phone, and I was to find out where she has her shit backed up. I was to find the video. If I had to hurt her to get the information, that was okay. But I needed to make sure all of the copies were gone, and bring him her phone.”
“What in the fuck are you talking about?” Roan interrupted.
“Check the van if you don’t believe me. Her phone was still rolling around in the back when you took me.”
I nodded my head at Roan and he left to go check things out.
“Now what fucking video are you talking about? And who is your client?”
“The senator. He called me in late last night. He said some other guy screwed the pooch and almost killed the teacher, which is not what the senator needed to have happen. Then the senator lays it all out to me. The teacher has a video on her phone that he needs.”
“What kind of video is it?” I was confused.
“I don’t fucking know. It was some asshole kids. Girls. Bullying some other asshole kids. Girls. Anyway, all those snowflakes got their dicks in a ringer, and somebody taped it or something and the senator wants to make sure he has every copy.”
“So he sent you ?”
“I used to work at Blockbuster back in the day. I told him, I was an expert at getting things erased.”
“So you were going to get her to delete her entire back-up account? How were you going to make sure it wasn’t archived somewhere else?”
He gave me a dumbfounded look.
“Fine, tell me who this senator is.”
“Teddy Thompson, District Eighteen in West Virginia.”
“And how are you supposed to get in touch with Teddy when you accomplish your mission?”
“I’ll call him, and then we’ll set up a time where we can meet up and I can give him the phone.”
“Have you met each other before?”
He shook his head.
“Well okay then.”