Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
The bulletproof blazer didn’t seem like a very big defense against an actual gun. Lucy flinched as the muzzle of Aaron’s gun jammed into her gut and wondered if carbon nanotubes worked at close range. She had no desire to play the guinea pig to find out.
“This way,” Aaron hissed, dragging her out of the elevator and away from the lobby.
“Aaron, wait,” she protested, but he shoved the gun against the small of her back.
“Quiet. You don’t make a noise and I don’t blow your spine out.”
All the elation, the happiness, the relief that Lucy had felt a moment ago deflated like an old party balloon. She felt stretched out and flimsy, like she’d rip at any moment. She stumbled over a wrinkle in the carpet and Aaron snatched her back upright, hissing threats in her ear.
“You’ll do as I say, and you won’t say a word,” he said, hauling her down the hallway toward the back of the hotel.
“Where are you taking me?”
“What did I just say?” His voice was fraying, and Lucy shut her mouth. She didn’t want to agitate him any more than he already was; that gun was far too close to her body for comfort.
They turned down a hallway and followed the glowing EXIT sign. Lucy’s stomach clenched, her throat closing like a fist.
She needed to think. Do something , she told herself, but they marched on and on, away from Sam and the safety of the lobby.
Aaron moved beside her, wrapping an arm around her elbow. The gun moved to the soft flesh at her side. She could feel its hardness through the layers of her clothes and knew a blazer wouldn’t save her, even if Cormac had said it would.
Could she risk her new self-defense moves? Cormac had mentioned they’d work on disarming an attacker, but she’d only had a few days’ practice with basic moves. She had no idea what to do when a gun was involved. If she screamed, would Aaron shoot?
He might; desperation wafted from him in noxious gusts.
“Morning,” Aaron said to a passing staff member who eyeballed them oddly. Lucy tried to make big eyes at the woman, who pushed a cart laden with towels and cleaning supplies. Lucy opened her mouth to try to call for help, but Aaron tightened his grip on her arm, laughed pleasantly, and cut in, “Or is it afternoon?”
The maid huffed politely, checked her watch, and said, “Still morning, sir,” and pushed her trolley past them.
He hauled Lucy toward the exit door and shoved it open with his side. Then they were stumbling down some concrete steps and half-jogging toward a waiting car.
“Aaron, whatever you’re planning, it won’t work,” Lucy tried, certain that if she got in that car, she’d never see Cormac again.
“Shut up. You’ve ruined everything.”
“I just make wedding stationery. I promise. You got it all wrong.”
“Keep lying, Barlow,” he sneered. “I know the truth. You swanned into my shop and started asking so many questions . And then you paid me with one of my own bills. Brazen of you. Taunting me like that. I almost throttled you on the spot.”
“What?”
“ Shut up! ” Aaron hissed. “And Mama was worried about the ring, because she and Aunt Meredith had never tried anything so audacious as what they did at the retreat. And look how that turned out. So she didn’t believe me when I said you were trouble.”
What was he talking about? His mother? Lucy tried to keep up, but Aaron’s voice slurred, like he was drunk or feverish. She thought of that first meeting, how his face had changed when she’d paid him. Was it possible? Had she unwittingly given him one of his own fake bills?
It made sense, she realized in a distant, horrified sort of way. He’d thought she was sending him a message, but Lucy had had no idea she was paying with a counterfeit bill at all.
They stopped in front of a rusty pickup truck in the employee lot.
“Get in,” he said, opening the passenger door for her. When she was in her seat, he nodded to the safety belt. “Put that on. And no funny business.”
Lucy’s fingers trembled as she grabbed the buckle and slid it into its latch. Aaron slammed the door and jogged to the driver’s side. Lucy had her hand on the door handle as soon as he closed the door, but it was locked. He must have enabled the child locks.
She was stuck.
Breaths coming faster, Lucy beat back the panic trying to rise within her. Think , she commanded herself. Think! Get out of this!
“If you let me go, I’ll never tell anyone about this,” she wheedled.
“Be. Quiet .” He started the engine.
“Cormac will come after you,” she said, changing tack. “He’ll never let you get away if you hurt me.”
“I’m not scared of that meathead you call a boyfriend.”
“He’s less of a meathead than that idiot who attacked us.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Aaron said, keeping the gun in his lap as he drove out of the lot. “He’ll never find you.” He grabbed the gun again, his finger curled against the trigger.
Lucy didn’t know anything about guns, but she knew you weren’t supposed to do that . Wasn’t that the first rule of gun safety? Trigger discipline?
This idiot would end up shooting her by accident. That would be just her luck. She shifted in her seat, covering her thighs with the blazer, for whatever good it would do.
Her bag was on her lap, and she knew that if she unzipped the top, she’d be able to reach into the little interior side pocket and grab her phone. But how could she do that with Aaron glancing over every few seconds? She shifted the bag so the zipper faced away from him.
She had to distract him. Get him talking.
“Did you write that threat on the name card at my friend’s wedding?”
Aaron let out a bark of triumphant laughter. It sounded scratchy and terrifying. “Liked that one, did you?”
“How did you get inside the wedding venue? No one even saw you.” She tried to make herself sound impressed. Stroking his ego seemed like a good way to calm him down.
“There was no need,” Aaron said, shoulders easing slightly. That was good. “I just paid one of the caterers to find your card and pick it up off the table. Cost me twenty bucks,” he crowed, grinning. His hand kneaded the steering wheel, and finally, the hand that he’d kept on his gun moved to join the other on the wheel.
Lucy let out a small breath.
“How did you meet Pete and Paul?—”
“Enough questions,” he barked, grabbing the gun again. Lucy froze, forcing herself to take deep breaths.
They drove toward Stirling, but instead of heading for town, Aaron veered off on one of the roads that bypassed the town. That led them on a huge gridlike route down country roads that bisected farmers’ fields, and then they looped back on the far side of Stirling. They’d skipped the town entirely. Where was he taking her?
By that time, Lucy had gotten the bag’s zipper open. Talking to Aaron was a minefield, so she had to find some other way to get out of this situation. Slowly, she reached inside and felt the edge of her phone.
Why hadn’t she put Cormac’s number on speed dial? How could she call him and ask for help without alerting Aaron?
To Lucy’s surprise, Aaron looped back toward the interstate but didn’t turn away from Stirling. He took the exit that would lead them to town again, on the opposite side of the Old Road Hotel. And when they made another turn, Lucy knew exactly where he was taking her.
The front of the building was boarded up with pieces of plywood where Vicky had driven through the glass. Yellow and black police tape was draped across the door and the plywood covering, proclaiming it a crime scene. It was dark and grimy, and it sent shivers of fear darting through Lucy’s gut.
Aaron had taken her to the place where this had started all those years ago: the Stirling Stationery Store.
He parked in front of the shop. “Get out.”
She slipped her phone into the blazer pocket while she undid her seatbelt, but she had no time to dial. Aaron was at her door, scanning the street, jerking his head to indicate he wanted her to get out of the vehicle. The shop loomed ahead, the dark window on the left looking like a one-eyed giant surveying their progress.
“Aaron, you don’t have to do this.”
“I do,” he said, “because Mama thinks I mess everything up. But I told her I could handle you.”
“You don’t need to handle me.” She slowed down as much as she could, not wanting to approach the building. “You can just leave, and I won’t say anything. I won’t tell anyone.”
“I don’t believe you,” he snarled, which was fair. She was lying, after all.
Aaron shoved, and Lucy stumbled forward a few steps. The shop’s door was only a few feet away, and she knew down to the marrow of her bones that if she entered that space, if she let Aaron take her to the secret room in the back, she would never get out. He’d kill her there, and no one would ever find the body. She and Cormac wouldn’t get their forever. It would break him.
In the distance, she heard the screech of tires as an engine roared.
Death was a cackling demon standing in the doorway of Aaron’s shop, beckoning her forward.
But Lucy wasn’t ready to die.
She’d just gotten over her fears of failure. How absolutely rotten would it be to die after bagging a deal with one of the biggest greeting card companies in the country? How could she crawl out of the hole she’d dug for herself after she crashed and burned in her previous career, only to have her life end like this ? At the hands of a madman who’d thought she was selling counterfeit money instead of wedding invitations!
Something crumbled in Lucy, a barrier she hadn’t known existed. Behind it, she found an endless well of strength, and bravery, and honest-to-goodness rage.
She was not going to die at the hands of the freaking Stirling Stationery Man.
“Stop stalling,” he said, stepping forward, which Lucy knew was a mistake. Because she could feel him at her back, could sense just where his body was positioned.
That endless well of strength and fury and righteous anger exploded, and Lucy died and was reborn in the detonation.
“ HI-YAH! ” she cried, stomping on Aaron’s foot. He yelped, but Lucy wasn’t done. She jabbed her elbow into his solar plexus with a scream, her lips curling into a cruelly satisfied snarl when she heard the breath wheeze out of him.
That car she’d heard screeched to a stop on the street, and Lucy knew she had to get away. What if it was an accomplice of Aaron’s? What if it was his mother, who’d obviously been pulling the strings?
She turned to see the Stirling Stationery Man doubled over, gasping for breath, still clinging to that gun. He stood, his eyes burning, and let out a feral yell as he staggered toward her.
Lucy let her knees soften. She brought her palms up. She used the twist of her hips to lend power to her movements, and she jammed the heel of her hand into Aaron Phillips’s face. Cartilage crunched and blood spurted out of the man’s nose. Lucy stood there, slightly horrified at what she’d done, while Aaron staggered back with a cry of pain.
Then she heard a door open and felt the cool relief of a familiar voice. “Lucy! Run! ”
Cormac was lunging out of Meaty’s wood-paneled Crown Victoria, his face tight lines, his eyes blazing with fury and fear. He took her in with one glance, then, clearly satisfied that she was uninjured, swung around to face Aaron Phillips.
Cormac’s face changed, and Lucy followed his gaze. Her stomach dropped as she saw Aaron clutching the gun with both hands, pointing it at the man she loved. His face was smeared with blood. It coated his cheeks and lips and teeth as he bared them in a snarl.
“Say goodbye, Lucy,” Aaron said. “Your boyfriend’s about to get his brains blown out.”
“Lucy, stay there,” Cormac commanded, like he didn’t have a gun pointed at his head.
“Yeah, stay there,” Aaron repeated, his face crimson, his eyes full of strange, murderous light. “That way I know where to aim when I take my second shot.”
Cormac moved, but Lucy already knew he’d be too slow. He was too far away, and Aaron would be able to get multiple shots off. One of them would hit him, and if she survived what happened afterward, she’d have to go through life knowing she had Cormac—and then she lost him.
Calm settled over her, and time seemed to slow. Cormac wouldn’t be shot today. He would live because he was a good man, and because Lucy loved him more than anyone who had come before. He was hers, and she was his—forever.
They’d made that promise the night before, and Lucy wanted forever to last more than a measly day.
She felt herself lunge, heard the echo of Cormac’s panicked yell, saw the moment Aaron turned to aim the barrel at her. Lucy’s nanotube-clad arm reached out to Aaron as she crashed toward him, knocking his arm to the side as Aaron’s poor trigger discipline failed him, and the gun went off.
Pain exploded through Lucy’s upper chest. She flew back and landed on the concrete path leading to the shop, and time snapped back to normal. Cormac collided with Aaron, disarming him with a flick of the wrist and bringing the other man to the ground.
Lucy groaned, her shoulder in agony, and watched as Cormac pinned Aaron to the ground then sat back and smashed his fist in the Stationery Man’s face. Aaron cried out. His nose was pulp. Cormac snarled again, winding back.
“Honey,” Lucy croaked, and Cormac’s fist stilled.
Chest heaving, he stared at the man on the ground. “I want to kill him.”
“Please don’t,” she said.
“He deserves it.”
“I know, but then you’d go to jail, and that would make me sad.”
She watched Cormac reel himself back in. Saw the moment he regained control over his murderous urges. He flipped the other man over and pulled a pair of zip tie handcuffs from his pocket. In the distance, sirens echoed against the buildings in the center of Stirling, coming closer.
Cormac staggered to his feet, found the gun, and emptied it. He dropped it on the ground and turned to Lucy, who was trying to sit up despite the pain in her shoulder.
“Hi,” she said lamely when he dropped to his knees in front of her. “My shoulder hurts.”
Cormac peeled back the blazer and they both looked down. He let out a breath at the sight of her unbroken skin, his eyes filling with tears. “You’ll bruise,” he said, “and we’ll have to get you checked out for broken bones.” He ran his fingers over her red, aching collarbone, jaw tensing.
“But the blazer worked,” Lucy said wonderingly.
Cormac put both hands on her face and kissed her hard, his whole body trembling. It was agony for her shoulder, but so worth it.
“I’m okay,” she whispered when he pulled away. Behind him, police cars were screeching to a stop and people were pouring out of them.
“I was too late,” Cormac said, tortured.
Lucy shook her head. “You were right on time.”
“You got shot .”
“Only because I wanted to stop him from shooting you.”
“Don’t ever do that again. Do you hear me, Lucy? Don’t ever put yourself in the path of a bullet for me.”
She traced the line of his jaw and felt the love in her breast swell. He was her man. This caring, beautiful, overprotective, bullish, stubborn, funny man was hers , and she was never letting him go. “I was the one wearing the bulletproof clothing,” she said, “and besides, did you see my moves? I used my hips like you said, and then there was blood everywhere. His nose made a horrible noise when I hit it. You should have warned me about that.”
Cormac huffed and shook his head, his eyes still full of pain. “You shouldn’t have had to do any of that, baby. I should’ve been here to keep you safe.”
The police were doing their thing just behind Cormac, making noise, moving fast, and the detective was marching toward them with steely purpose. He looked very angry as he glared at the back of Cormac’s head. They’d have to deal with whatever consequences were coming. Lucy suspected Cormac hadn’t had permission to drive that Crown Vic across town to get to her.
It would be easy to pull away from Cormac and leave things as they were, deal with the storm gathering on the lawn behind him, but Lucy knew this moment was important. She put her hand on Cormac’s cheek and looked into those deep, dark-blue eyes.
“You taught me how to get away from an attacker. You gave me a bulletproof blazer. You did that, my love. And you know what else?” She stared into his eyes, smiling. “You made me realize that I won’t crumble under pressure. You’re the only person in my life that’s treated me like I’m capable. You gave me everything I needed to keep myself safe, Cormac. I was throwing the punches, but you were the reason I could do it in the first place.”
Cormac still looked troubled, but his shoulders softened. “You were amazing. Perfect form.”
“Exactly. Don’t take this moment away from me and try to claim it for yourself,” she said, stroking his cheeks. “This might be the only time I get to save your life.”
“You’re damn right it will be,” he growled, but his eyes had lost their darkness. The corner of his lips curled ever so slightly, and Cormac leaned forward to rest his forehead against Lucy’s. “I love you so much, Lucy.”
“And I love you.”
“I thought I lost you before we even got a chance to make this work.”
“I’m here,” Lucy replied softly. “And I’m not going anywhere. It’s you and me.”
“Me and you.”
“Forever,” Lucy added, for good measure. He looked like he needed to hear it, and, hell, Lucy needed the reminder too. She’d almost lost him.
Cormac kissed her, then, and the world fell away. Her shoulder ached when he wrapped his arm around her back, but Lucy ignored the pain. She was in the arms of the man she loved, and he loved her back, and a whimpering Aaron was being hauled off, and Lucy knew that absolutely everything would be okay.