Chapter 23
Saylor
Since Mal had to go to a band meeting, he’d put Naomi in charge of arranging transport for me to the airport to pick up Paige. LA traffic was intimidating, and I was afraid of another clash at baggage claim like the last time.
“You ready to go?” Naomi asked from the front door.
I looked up with a frown. She hadn’t knocked; she just let herself in. “Yeah, no. I think we’re going to have a talk first.”
“Fine.” She huffed before stomping inside the house like an annoyed toddler. She flung herself down on the couch with the grace of one too. And she didn’t look at me once. She pulled out her cell phone and tapped away at the screen.
“Right.” I blinked a few times. “I don’t like you letting yourself in. This is my house too, so in the future, you need to ring the bell and wait to be let in. I don’t mind you letting yourself in through the gate, but you don’t enter the house unless or until one of us opens the door.”
She sighed heavily, dropped her phone into her Prada bag, and then closed it with a quick zip. “Let’s get one thing clear here. I work for Mal. I’ve worked for Mal for years. So I’m only going to listen to what he says. He’s my boss, not you.”
“And I respect that. I’m not trying to boss you around; I just need you to respect me and my place in Mal’s life.”
She scoffed like I’d said something ridiculous.
“What do you have against me?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She had the gall to roll her eyes at me like this conversation—and me—were totally beneath her.
“Right.” I let out a little laugh. This was all so weirdly insulting. I honestly didn’t know how to handle it.
“Is that the only word you know?” Naomi mocked.
“No, actually it’s not. Let’s go with bitch because that’s what you’ve been to me since day one.”
“Oh honey, you’re not special. I’ve seen girls like you come and go.” She flicked her long fingernails at me. “You’re a dime a dozen.”
“I beg to differ because, unlike those other girls, I have this.” I held up my left hand and flashed the huge rock on my finger. “And something tells me that bothers you the most. Is that the problem here? If so, I’m sorry he didn’t pick you.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Fuck. You.”
“Right.” I laughed. “This is you being professional? Being all bitchy and snarky and disrespectful?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” If she lifted her nose any higher, she’d tip over.
“Right,” I replied mockingly. I was so done with her bullshit. “Get the hell out of my house.”
“What?” Naomi blinked up at me like I was crazy.
“You don’t respect me. You don’t respect my marriage. I don’t want you anywhere near me. So you need to get the hell out of my house.”
Naomi gave me the mean girl snarl. “With pleasure. And joke’s on you because I didn’t book a car. I was going to drive you myself. Good luck figuring it out on your own. I’m out of here.”
She flounced toward the door but paused as she stood in the doorway. “And just so you know, it’s not your house—it’s Mal’s house. I should know because I helped him pick it out. And unlike him, I see you for who you really are. You’ll be gone way before he fires me. Toodles, bitch.”
She fluttered her fingers at me, gave me her mean girl smirk, and then slammed the door shut.
I blinked a few times before breaking out in incredulous laughter. That was…something.
But that annoying voice in the back of my mind whispered maybe she was right about the length of my marriage.
Shaking off the insanity of the moment, I pulled out my phone and booked an Uber to pick me up.
Twenty minutes later, I was bouncing down the 405 to LAX and talking with my driver, Stella. “Did your daughter look at any other design colleges?”
Stella, I quickly found out, was a proud mama with a daughter who was going to FDIM.
“She toured PRISMA, but felt like FDIM had more of what she wanted.”
I nodded as I stared out the window at the passing traffic. “That’s good.”
“It’s not a little thing to change careers like you are. It takes guts.”
“So does marrying a stranger.” I laughed softly to myself.
“Wait, what?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Just something I heard once.”
“So you didn’t marry a stranger?” Stella asked with raised eyebrows as she changed lanes, narrowly missing a Tesla who blared their horn.
I clutched at my armrest and wished for a guardian angel to save me.
“Saylor? Did you marry a stranger?” Stella prompted from the front seat.
“I might’ve…” I gasped as Stella quickly merged into the next lane despite the blare of horns behind us.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Stella made a gesture to another driver before turning back to the rearview mirror and my reflection.
“Gotta say if my daughter did that, I’d tan her hide.
You should really know everything you can about your partner before you join your lives together legally. He could be a nutjob for all you know.”
“Right.” Speaking of nutjobs, I would’ve felt safer with Naomi driving me. “It’s working out so far…for the most part.”
“What does for the most part mean?” Stella asked before breaking harshly and honking at a car that cut her off.
“Uh, just that he’s going through a lot. His best friend died the night of our wedding, so we kinda came back to a lot of craziness.”
“Whoa. That’s heavy.”
“Yeah. Yeah it is.” I went back to staring out the window and sighed as I contemplated the insanity of my life lately.
And this car ride didn’t even make the top ten.
I really wished I knew how to reach Mal. But maybe he just needed some time. And clearly some space to sort through his feelings.
I just wanted him to lean on me a little—open up to me. What was the point of marriage if we were only there for each other during the easy bits?
And would he be there when I was going through something? Or would he retreat then too?
“Here,” Stella called to me as we rolled up to the terminal at LAX.
I took the business card she held out to me.
Stella St John
Hell on Wheels
“I’ll get you there early—no matter what LA traffic throws at us!”
Phone 323-867-5309
“I can’t stand on the curb, so we’ll settle up for this part of the ride, but I’ll be over in the cell phone waiting lot until you’re ready for me to pick you up.
I’ll give you a discount for the return.
” She pulled up to the curb then turned around to squint at me.
“I like you, so fifteen percent off the return.”
I blinked a few times then finally shook my head. “Um, okay. It’ll be two of us, and Paige is supposed to have several bags.”
Stella shrugged. “No problem.” She flexed her arm. “I got you both.”
I grinned, charmed despite my earlier fear. “It was nice to meet you, Stella. I can’t wait to see what you think of Paige.”
“I’ll call my daughter while I’m waiting and see if she’d be interested in showing you around FDIM. She can use some good people for friends.”
“Um, thanks.” It felt weird to be set up by a stranger for a friend date, but then nothing about my car ride to the airport had been exactly normal.
“See ya soon!”
I climbed out of the back seat and Stella roared away before I’d even closed the door fully.
“Wow.” I shook my head. That’d been… “Wow.”
With a relieved sigh, I headed inside to read the arrivals board. I found Paige’s flight and corresponding baggage claim carousel number with ease then followed the signs in that direction.
I got maybe fifty feet from the arrivals board when someone grabbed my arm roughly and shoved something into my back.
“Me and you are going to take a little walk.”
It might’ve been a month since I’d last heard it, but I’d recognize Trent’s gravelly voice anywhere.
He pulled my arm sharply. “Come on.”
“Ow,” the protest came out involuntarily when he wrenched my arm.
“Shut the fuck up!” he bit out. “You do get what’s going on here, right? I’ve got a fucking gun.”
I shuddered. “I’m very aware.”
I could feel the cold metal pressing into the back of my dress right between my shoulder blades.
Oh god.
I looked around frantically at those passing around us, but we were just another obstacle in their path.
No one realized what was going on right in front of them.
No one was going to help me.
The weight of my situation slammed into me, and tremors shook my body.
“Come on.” He shook my arm harshly again. “I’ve got a car in short-term parking. We’re going for a little ride.”
Oh shit.
I watched enough true crime documentaries to know it was a bad idea to let your abductor take you to a secondary location.
What should I do?
Trent shoved us in the direction of the short-term parking lot, and I stumbled.
“Um, Trent? I don’t know what my mom told you, but I’m married. Happily even. So we can’t—” I broke off as he laughed bitterly
“Fuck, I know that. Believe me, I know. It’s all part of my plan.”
“Plan?” I repeated numbly as I stumbled through the doors I’d entered only a few minutes before.
“Oh yeah. You’re gonna get me a shit ton of money. More than enough to pay off my bookie and then some.”
“You mean the Bratva?” The bundle of nerves squirming around in my stomach multiplied as I remembered the last time someone shoved a gun at me.
“Shut the hell up!” Trent snarled as we hit the sun strewn pavement.
“Everything okay here, folks?” An LAPD officer suddenly asked as he walked toward us with his hands resting on his vest just under his shoulders.
“Fine,” Trent returned jovially. “Just helping the wifey stretch her legs. You know how they cram you into those metal tubes. It’s like a cattle trailer, I swear.”
Trent’s tone was close to the one I’d known for so long I was having a hard time reconciling the insanity of the moment. It felt like an out of body experience or something I’d seen on tv. The jovial cop, the crazy ex, and the stupid girl who let herself be abducted.
I had the insane urge to laugh, but I bit it back. Barely.
Instead, I blinked wide eyes at the officer and shook my head.
His hands dropped to his belt and he quickly unclipped his gun but left it in the holster. “How about we have a conversation? I need to ask you two a few questions. Standard procedure, you understand.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have time for that right now.” His smug voice suddenly sounded tight. Like Trent knew the cop was seeing through him. “We have an appointment we can’t be late for.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to be, I’m afraid. Come with me, please.”
Trent whipped the gun out from wherever he’d hidden it and pressed it against my temple.
“GUN!” the cop shouted before drawing his own and pointing it at Trent.
People screamed and ran away in chaos. The sound of mayhem and running feet joined a weird buzzing in my ears that made me sway in Trent’s arms.
“Let her go!” someone shouted.
I couldn’t breathe.
My chest was hardly moving, and no matter how hard I tried to calm down, my panting increased.
I blinked, and three more cops had joined the first one, fanning out behind him.
“Look, let’s all calm down.” The first cop lifted his gun away from us and pointed it harmlessly at the sky. “Nothing has happened here that can’t be undone. Let’s all just take a breath.”
Hysterical laughter bubbled up, but I swallowed it down. Maybe he was psychic?
I locked panicked eyes on him, and he stared placidly back at me.
After a beat, his gaze darted from mine to the cement under me then back.
He repeated it again, and this time I almost laughed out loud.
Seriously?
He wanted me to dive to the ground?
He got that there was a gun pointed at my head, right?
He did it one more time, and I swallowed heavily.
Okay. I blinked once.
I was going to do it.
“I get that you’re going through something right now. But for the moment, everyone’s safe.”
I mentally counted in my head.
One.
“Don’t do something you can’t take back. Don’t make me do something I can’t take back.”
Two.
“All we want is for everyone to go home safe.”
Three.
I dove for the pavement away from Trent.
Immediately, a gunshot rang out.
I clutched at my head and cried out.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Four shots followed.
Then silence.
So still, I could actually hear the tweet of a bird.
And then more chaos.
“Is she okay?”
“Disarmed!”
“Oh my god.”
“Was she hit?”
Someone touched my shoulders, and I whimpered.
“No visible wound. Looks like it’s all his blood.”
I finally opened my eyes, and the first cop was bent over me with his hands on my shoulders.
He smiled down at me.
“You were so brave. How are you feeling? Do you think you could stand up?”
I nodded disjointedly.
“Let’s get you up.” He gently pulled me up, careful to keep my back to Trent. “What’s your name?”
“S-S-Saylor. Saylor Holt.”
His smile belied the sadness in his eyes. “Nice to meet you, Saylor. I’m Luke. Let’s walk over here and sit down. Is there someone we can call for you? Were you meeting someone?”
I looked over my shoulder, and the ugly sight of Trent’s sprawled body with murky, bloody patches on his back and leaking under him would forever be emblazoned on my mind.
“Whoop. Let’s go this way.” Officer Luke gently guided me to a bench further down the way and far from Trent’s clearly dead body. He sat next to me and frowned. “Were you meeting him or someone else today?”
“Paige. Paige Morris was on a flight from Vegas. I was supposed to meet her at baggage claim. She was bringing all my clothes from Vegas.” The numb words fell from my lips and didn’t even feel like they were coming from me. “I just got married.”
“Was he…” Officer Luke cleared his throat roughly.
I shook my head. Despite the distance, my eyes were fixed on where more cops were gathered around Trent’s body. Someone draped a sheet over him. “My ex. Trent Hale. We broke up a month ago. More than? I married Malcolm Holt.”
“Malcolm Holt? As in the Long Licks’ lead guitarist, Malcolm Holt?” Officer Luke blinked at me.
The buzzing was back in my ears.
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was so dry that my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Heat flashed over my scalp, making me dizzy.
“I don’t feel so good.”
That thought was immediately followed by, “Is this a bad time to mention that I’m late?”
Officer Luke’s hand came down on the back of my neck as he forced me to lean forward and put my head between my knees. “For your friend? We’ve got someone trying to locate her now.”
“No, I mean my period. I’m late. And maybe pregnant.”
And then darkness swallowed me.