Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
Just once, I want to know what it’s like to fall in love. Even better, to have someone love me back. Is that too much to ask?
Ally’s past words to Chip haunted her into closing her eyes, the way-too-happy Harlow sun beating down on her through the bus window. Her elbow dug into the ledge, and she pressed her forehead to the warm glass, dejected because she had asked too much. She’d fallen in love, been loved, and would now do anything to hand those feelings back.
Those feelings hurt like a knife twisting in her chest, not even the act of breathing came as easily as it once had. So no, she didn’t want love. Love cost too much. She just wanted her old naivety and ignorance back.
By now, Chip’s presentation would be over, and he’d know she’d left. Her next breath shuddered into her, and she flung her eyes open, hoping the golden fields flicking by could distract from her pain and shame. No matter how well-intended, she’d betrayed him.
She wouldn’t be there to congratulate him. To comfort him. Heck, she wouldn’t even be there to know how things had unfolded at Encode.
She simply wouldn’t be there.
The bus rounded into the small parking lot behind Main Street, the brakes hissing at the stop next to the post office. Soon, the driver launched from his seat and down the few stairs leading out the side door.
As he’d done for other disembarking passengers, he’d pull her suitcase out from the undercarriage, and she’d be forced to call her parents to come and pick her up.
But maybe she’d dawdle for a while first.
Kinda as she’d done since leaving Boston airport.
Not once had she picked up her phone to let anyone in Harlow know of her return. The thought of having to explain, of having to admit her failure. Her throat clogged up, and new tears sprung to her eyes every time she tried to use her phone.
What a weird twist in events. She—Ally Egan—succeeding in business, while deficient at love. How had that happened? Her return to Harlow would be a return to square one. Alone. This time, far more damaged.
She pushed to standing and ambled down the bus’s aisle, her slowed journey an attempt to delay the moment her feet hit Harlow soil. But all too quickly, she was outside in the mostly empty parking lot, hugging her purse and squinting against the sun. The driver returned to the bus and the vehicle rumbled away.
Only one thing to do now. Call home.
She rummaged through her purse in search of her phone, and in her peripheral vision, a white car drove up the parking lot ramp and snaked through the wide-open space, only to stop before her.
She lowered her purse and stepped back. Whoever drove had their pick of spots, so why park in front of her? The passenger window slid open to reveal her answer, Sarah leaning across a beige middle console to address her. “Get in.”
Ally frowned at the short demand. She’d seen Chip’s missed calls. Did her silence not speak loud enough? One thing was certain, she wouldn’t let his sister guilt her into changing her mind.
“No.” She went about stabbing at the icons on her phone’s screen. “I’m fine right here, thanks.”
“Ally, I don’t care what’s happening between you and Chip. Just get in.” Sarah reached across and tugged the inner door handle before pushing the whole thing open, an action designed to prod Ally into doing Sarah’s bidding.
Not shy to convey suspicion, Ally narrowed her eyes. “Why are you here if you don’t care?”
The hot sun blanketed her along with the overly still and stifling air, that thick oppression, coupled with Sarah’s presence, leaving Ally to regret not calling her parents earlier.
Abandoning Chip was bad enough without having to spend time with Sarah. Despite the recent truce, his headstrong sister would have questions Ally didn’t want to answer.
Sarah’s peeved stare bounced away from Ally to a point past her left shoulder, the woman’s expression turning instantly slack.
“Ally!” The alarm in Sarah’s voice had Ally turning to find two men racing toward her from a laneway running between the stores at her back.
One solid and short, another tall and wiry, their scrunched glares and fast approach enough to shatter her daze and pull a scream from her lips.
She wasted half a second grasping for her luggage, but her scrambled movements sent the suitcase crashing to the ground. The men’s speed had her ditching her belongings altogether and launching into Sarah’s open car door.
“Go. Go. Go!” Her unintended screech proceeded the vehicle shooting forward before she even had a chance to close her door.
She had no idea what happened. Or why. Only that everything happened far too fast.
“Wh…who are they?” She wrenched the door closed and then placed her trembling hands around the latch of her still-unbuckled seatbelt, failing at each attempt to fit the metal plate into the lock. “Sarah, who are they, and where are we going?”
“It’s the Syndicate, Ally.” The roaring engine muffled Sarah’s roughened voice. “They got to Chip, and now they want you.”
Sarah’s energy turned erratic, and a reel of expletives burst from her lips while she pounded the heel of her palm to the steering wheel’s edge.
“The Syndicate?” Ally’s question felt weak and breathy. “The Syndicate has Chip?”
She wanted to jump out of this car just to escape the news, to run and never, ever stop. What had she done? A broken heart paled to the sheering panic dizzying her thoughts with all the things that could have already gone wrong.
“No, Ally.” Sarah called over the revving engine and the rumble of rugged road below, the noise increasing as she planted her foot to the accelerator and sped up. “Chip’s on his way back to Harlow. He insisted on returning for you. The Syndicate bought out Encode. They had Stonewall. Dean thinks they’ll use Chip’s invention to siphon money from bank accounts and other holding institutions, that they’ll bankrupt millions, and everyday people will be the collateral damage here. Only Chip deleted Stonewall from the file he shared with Encode, and I figure from what you just escaped, they’ve already noticed.”
Ally’s head hurt from the onslaught of information, that the Syndicate’s pure cruelty had no limits. However, the only words she could choke out was a weak, “But I don’t want Chip to come back for me.”
That much was true. She wanted him to hide. To forget she existed. She wanted the two men who’d tried to kidnap her to leave and never return.
One thing was certain. The Syndicate had a habit of latching on to Harlow, and right now, those men would be out there looking for her. And if the Syndicate sent more, well then, no one in this town was safe.
Two men just tried to kidnap Ally, but Sarah got her first. Sheriff to meet them soon.
Chip blew out a hard breath at Dean’s message. Great that Sarah had found Ally, but his stomach turned rock hard over the attempted kidnapping. A concrete sign that Mark Farro’s involvement with Stonewall was not a coincidence.
If only Chip could do more. If only he wasn’t stuck at the airport with nothing more to do than wait for his flight back to Minnesota with his laptop, phone, wallet, and keys his only company.
He’d deleted his code little more than an hour ago, and already Mark Farro had men on the ground in Harlow. Meanwhile, Chip wouldn’t return to his hometown for hours.
What else will happen between now and then?
His head pounded at the enormity of his situation, an endless downward spiral since the Syndicate would never simply give up. They’d come for Emilia and Blaine. Come for Dean and Sarah. Now, him and Ally. Would anyone in Harlow ever be safe?
The echoey ding of the airport speakers caught his attention, boarding for his flight finally open. He stood and exchanged his phone in his jeans pocket for his boarding pass.
Just a few steps took him to within yards of the steward already checking passes, but a heavy hand landed on Chip’s left shoulder, halting his progress.
A robust man with a round and stubbly face stood behind him, shaking his head. A clear warning for Chip to remain still.
Another man rounded the first and stood before Chip. A man he recognized from his presentation. Encode’s new owner. Mark Farro. “Make a scene and you die.”
His blue eyes stayed stone cold, his cheeks hard and unsmiling; a pointed object jabbed Chip in the back.
A gun? The man behind him had a gun? In an airport, of all places.
Though Chip figured his assailant did his best to obscure the weapon, Chip skittered his attention around the expansive space around him. To the people bustling by. Some on phones. Some wrangling small children. Some struggling to drag cumbersome luggage. All too busy with their own lives to notice the risk to his.
As if to confirm the threat, the man holding him leaned in, allowing his low drone to spell out Chip’s only option. “We have a different flight for you to catch.”