Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
I called Logan at least ten times within an hour. When he still didn’t pick up, I called Ian as I paced my room. By the fifth time I called him, Ian finally picked up.
“Hello,” said a weak voice and I could faintly hear a beeping sound in the background.
“Ian?” I said.
“Shiloh.” He let out a grunt and I could hear him moving. “Why are you calling me? It’s not safe.”
“Well, I’m not safe where I am. Where is Logan?”
He let out a sigh. “How are you not safe? Logan said you went to a safe house.”
“Sheriff McAllister found me.” I paused to steel myself to say what I had to next. “I had to kill him and the men he brought with him.” I didn’t bring up that Creed had killed the sheriff’s buddies. It wasn’t important right now. “My location has been compromised. I have three dead bodies rotting outside and I don’t know what to do.”
Ian let out a curse. A lot of them. “If McAllister found you, then X knows where you are. You need to get out of there now.”
“The sheriff and Mr. X are still working together even though Mr. X took his daughter?”
Ian was quiet for a heartbeat. “Tell me everything you know, kid.”
I told him everything that had happened from when I’d started to sense things weren’t right to after I’d saved Colt and driven to Colorado. “Now it’s your turn to tell me why Logan hasn’t called me.”
He went quiet again. “Logan busted his phone before we boarded our planes out of Arizona. To make it harder to figure out that we were coming from Arizona, we flew separately and picked flights with a lot of layovers. Logan didn’t get your messages until after he landed at where Mr. X was last spotted, which was in Tennessee, and he replaced his phone. By the time he listened to your messages, it was the day after the attack on your friend. Right around the time he found out, I found out because word of what had happened had reached me. We booked direct flights right back to Arizona. Before we boarded the plane back, Logan checked your tracker and saw that you were almost to your safe house. When we landed back in Arizona, he checked again and saw that you had made it. We threw ourselves into the investigation after that. We reviewed the video feed from your house. Your cameras caught X going in and out of your house many times and as you suspected, you were in the house with him without knowing it. He got in through the spare bedroom window that you found open. I’m pretty sure McAllister was the one who left it open for him when he broke into your house the last time.”
“Do you know how the sheriff got in touch with Mr. X?” I asked him.
“We didn’t know McAllister and X were connected until a few days ago,” he said as if frustrated. “Before we found out McAllister was involved, we discovered that someone had created multiple social media profiles with your Arizona driver’s license photo. The bios of these profiles said that you lived in Arizona and gave a phone number. We’re pretty sure that’s how the two connected.”
I thought back to the last time the sheriff had broken into my house. “The sheriff had mentioned to me once that he found it intriguing that I didn’t take part in any social media. He also said he couldn’t find a single picture of me other than my driver’s license. I think he was toying with me because he was already in contact with Mr. X by then.”
“Sounds like it.” Ian let out another sigh. “Listen, kid, I need to tell you something and I need you not to do anything dangerous because of it.”
That instantly put me on edge. “What?”
“We didn’t know McAllister was working with X or that X had taken his daughter until a few days ago. Up until that point, even though he was on thin ice because of what he had done to you, he was helpful and very involved in the investigation. He played the my nephew and my daughter’s friend are missing card. Everyone believed him. Even Logan and me. Logan was certain that the kids’ disappearance was connected to X. They went missing right after they attacked you, and we lifted a print off of Jacob’s suicide letter. It belonged to X.”
“I already knew he killed Jacob. The note was Mr. X’s words.”
“It was definitely his brand of crazy,” Ian grumbled. “The only thing that stood out about McAllister was that he kept giving us excuses to keep us from interviewing his daughter. He said he had sent her to a family member out of state to keep her safe. Logan sort of sympathized with him on that, but I found it odd. When he finally agreed to let us meet her, he said it had to be at his house. Logan and I agreed to go there.”
Oh, no! “It was a trap.”
“Fuck, kid, I don’t know how to tell you this.”
Before my legs could give out, I sat on the edge of the bed. “Logan’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We walked into that house and McAllister fucking maced us. I couldn’t see and the next thing I know, I’m being stabbed. I fell to the ground and all I could do was listen. Logan struggled and fought, even though he was as blind as I was. He was yelling. Shit was breaking. It took a while, but McAllister was able to hurt Logan enough to make him go down. As soon as he did, he called X and asked where to bring Logan. I had lost so much blood and I couldn’t fucking see, all I could do was lay there. I think McAllister seemed to forget about me because as soon as X told him where to meet him, he was focused on leaving with Logan. I came in and out of consciousness quite a bit as he took him away. When I was really able to come to, I was alone in his house. I searched for my phone, I didn’t have it anymore. I had to drag myself out of his house and to his neighbors. I don’t know how long it took me or how long it took for EMS to get me to the hospital. I had to have surgery and didn’t wake up until late last night. During the time I was out, McAllister took over the hunt for X. He added you as one of the missing kids and used the disappearance of his daughter—a sheriff’s daughter—to get more media coverage to spread your picture far and wide.
“By the time I woke up and reported what had happened to me and Logan, McAllister was gone. I thought he skipped town. I didn’t think he got a lead on where to find you. Someone must’ve seen you and called it in.”
I just sat there quietly processing. “Mr. X has Logan?”
“I believe so.”
“There is a good chance that he’s dead,” I said in a vacant voice.
“Or X is going to use Logan to lure you to him.”
I could break down right now. I really could. Or I could stay strong and get my family somewhere safe. “We can’t stay here.”
“No. I’m going to send agents to come and get you. Can you find somewhere safe until then?”
“There’s a hotel in town,” I said.
“Which town and hotel?” he asked.
I told him.
“If it will make you feel any better, your friend is going to be okay,” he said.
“Which friend?”
“Isabelle. She’s still in the hospital but she’s no longer in critical condition. Doctors say with a little bit of physical therapy, she’ll make a full recovery.”
I stared up at the ceiling as tears flooded my eyes. It took a tremendous effort to keep myself composed. “Thank you for telling me that.”
“Be safe, kid.” He hung up after that.
I knew I couldn’t just sit there. It was just really hard to move. Isabelle was alive. I was so unbelievably happy about that, but the news of Logan was tearing me apart.
I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “Okay.” I repeated the process of breathing like that again before I nodded and forced myself to stand.
As soon as I started to head out of my room to go tell the guys, that phone Sheriff McAllister had given to me started vibrating in the pocket of my sweatshirt. I pulled it out and the screen read X.
I swallowed as I hit the green button to answer it and then brought it to my ear. “Hello?”
Mr. X’s haunting voice filled my ear through the phone. “Hello, my Shiloh.”
I was in no rush after my call with Mr. X, and at the same time, I was. Walking into the living room where the guys were waiting for me, I kept my hands in my sweatshirt pockets because I couldn’t stop fisting them. I took a seat next to Creed on the couch. “I got ahold of Ian.” After announcing that, I explained everything that Ian had told me. As I spoke, I noticed Keelan had changed his pants. I had given Knox supplies to help bandage him up while I’d made my calls.
“So we need to leave?” Knox asked.
I nodded.
“What about the bodies outside?” Creed asked.
“Ian will take care of it.” I hoped.
The four of them started to get up to go collect what they would need to leave. I grabbed Creed’s wrist before he could walk away. He eyed my hand on his wrist and sat back down.
I waited for the other three to leave the room before I turned my body to face him. I took his hands in mine. “I love you so much.”
He frowned. “I’m going to be okay.”
He thought I was telling him I loved him because of what had happened earlier with the sheriff’s men. That was all right.
“I wanted to be a chef, to be a wife and a mother. I wanted those things, but when Mr. X took my family away, I made myself stop wanting those things because I thought if I didn’t want them, I couldn’t be disappointed for not getting them.” I stared down at our hands, and I squeezed his. “On Halloween, when I was dancing and having so much fun with Isabelle, I let myself envision a future. I let myself want more.”
He was still frowning. “And what do you want?”
“I want what I wanted before, and I want it with the four of you. I want to spend the rest of my life placing bets with you and Colt, I want to spar with Keelan, and I want to rebel against Knox. He may act like he doesn’t like it, but we all know that he enjoys it.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of Creed’s mouth. “He loves that you won’t back down and that you’re not afraid to push back.”
I returned his small smile with my own. It was a little forced, but I managed to give him one. “I want family meals, to celebrate birthdays, and to wake up every morning next to one of you. I want to laugh with you and fight with you and love you until I’m old. And one day, many years from now, I want babies who have beautiful blond hair and either aquamarine or golden-brown eyes. I want all of that. Desperately.”
His eyes searched mine. “Not that I’m not happy to hear all of that. I am. I want those things with you, too, but why are you telling me this?”
I let go of his hands to cup his face. “I’m telling you so you know—so that it may help you when you feel upset. That I love you so much and would do anything to have that future with you.”
He closed his eyes with a sigh and grabbed my wrists. “I’m going to be fine, Shi. I was in shock, but I know I had to do what I had to, or they would have killed my brothers.”
This is okay, I told myself. Hopefully, he would understand later.
I leaned forward and kissed him.
Please forgive me.
I pulled away and stood. “We should get ready to leave.”
Creed stood as well, and we both headed for the hall. As soon as we entered it, we saw Knox standing there, leaning against the wall. Creed passed him to go into the spare bedroom to collect his things. I avoided Knox’s stare as I also passed him and entered my room. I grabbed my go bag off of the trunk at the foot of my bed. I had taken it out of the safe before calling Logan and Ian. Since the sheriff had found us, I’d known I would need it again. As I unzipped it, I heard Knox close the bedroom door.
“That was quite a talk,” he said.
I grabbed a few days’ worth of clothes from the dresser and stuffed them in the bag. “He had to kill those men because of me.” It wasn’t a lie. I did feel terrible he’d had to do that, but I didn’t have the room in me to feel the guilt of it yet.
“Is that really why you said those things to him? As a way to make him feel better?”
No. I’d said all that because I knew he would take what I had to do the hardest. I had hoped to help him understand that so long as the threat of Mr. X existed, we would never be free to have that beautiful future. I hoped that by telling him my most vulnerable desires, he would understand that I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize them if I didn’t have to.
“Yes,” I lied, and if Knox could tell, he didn’t call me out on it.