Chapter Twenty
Lana’s world flipped upside down as the cruiser was driven off the road. One second she was strapped into the back, the next her hair and arms were dangling downward to the roof of the car.
Her first instinct was to check on her wrist, fresh from surgery, and the sling that had come loose.
The next was to escape.
She unbuckled her seat belt and thudded against the roof of the car.
One of the windows had blown out, and broken glass pressed against the scrubs she had been given after her surgery.
If the glass had cut into her clothes and skin, she still wouldn’t have slowed.
Where there was a will, there was a way, and now she could see that one of the windows that was no longer in one piece just so happened to be one she could reach.
A groan sounded from the front. One of the two deputies meant to escort her to the sheriff’s department was obviously still alive.
But she wasn’t going to check on him.
Lana scrambled through the pain, and the window, until her good palm felt dead grass and dirt. A line of trees wasn’t too far from her. Once she got among the trees, even hurt she could outrun law enforcement.
After that?
She could disappear again.
This time, she wouldn’t come back.
This time—
“I suggest you don’t run just yet.”
A man’s voice interrupted her evolving plan. It was so even and calm that her curiosity paused her flight response.
Lana turned to see if he looked as composed as he sounded, standing at the top of road’s shoulder.
He wasn’t too young and he wasn’t too old and wore what she imagined someone would wear to a business interview.
Khakis, a button-up and a thin jacket with a common logo on its chest. She had never seen him before, but he obviously knew who she was.
He pointed back to the road. The SUV that had created their crash was waiting, passenger-side door open.
“There’s a new job,” he said.
Lana’s head swam a little as got to her feet. She made sure not to show the discomfort.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The man laughed.
He might have looked plain, but something about him made Lana suppress a shiver.
“I’m plan B.”
THE SMALL SLIVER of light from the window the night before was no longer nostalgic or cute. It was annoying.
Eve swatted at the nuisance before rolling over to bury her face into the covers.
It took a few beats to realize there wasn’t a man where he used to be.
Suddenly, Eve was wide awake.
She rolled onto her back and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling.
The night before had never been on a list of possibilities for Eve. And never had she thought that sharing a bed with Darius would lead to anything other than talking. Maybe an accidental cuddle after she had fallen asleep.
Not a kiss.
Not everything that had followed.
Warmth went from below her waist right up to her cheeks.
And everything certainly had happened.
Eve placed her hands on her face and did a little wiggle. She wasn’t embarrassed, but she wasn’t going to pretend that she was calm either.
She had already loved every inch of Darius before their time together, but now? Now she’d seen and touched most of those inches. How could they come back from that?
Did they come back from that?
Or were they not something new?
Were they together?
Or had the familiar just been the only thing they could cling to with all the chaos around them?
Eve slid her hands down her face, sighing once her lips were clear.
After their time together the night before, they hadn’t talked much. At least not about what had changed between them, not about their relationship, their futures. They had showered, gotten back into bed and fallen asleep quickly.
They hadn’t gotten down to the fine print of their new arrangement.
But he had to care about her, right?
Eve flung the covers off and hurried out of bed. A soreness south of her waistline reminded her that she definitely hadn’t been dreaming about what they had done either.
How Darius reacted to her now would surely give her an idea of what he was thinking.
If he didn’t say a word about it, then she wouldn’t either.
If he declared his love for her? She would already be yelling hers at him.
If he admitted it was nothing but a safe place to rest with someone he knew wouldn’t give him grief after?
Well, she would probably go cry in the bathroom when he wasn’t looking.
Either way, Eve decided that it was now or never.
She had to have some kind of answer.
She threw her hair up high, took her jeans from the dresser and pulled on an old shirt. On reflex she patted her back pocket once she was dressed. Her phone was, of course, not there.
Remembering where her cell had been plugged in the night before, Eve turned to the nightstand, and something caught her eye at the window.
Her blood turned to ice.
The gap between the curtains was filled with a face.
Someone was looking in.
A woman.
Eve would later wonder if everything would have gone differently had she not moved. If she had screamed or called out for Darius. If she had run from the room, never once looking back.
Would things have gone better?
But in the moment, Eve didn’t yell. She didn’t run. She didn’t scream.
Instead, she hesitated.
That’s the only reason she saw the woman put her hand up to the window. And that’s the only reason she noticed the writing scrawled across her palm.
Save them.
It was the woman from the steel mill. The one who had broken into the same house the day before. Eve could see the sling was still on. She could also see that the woman wasn’t holding a weapon.
There was blood, though, along her hairline and dripping down the side of her face.
Maybe that was why Eve went to the window and, against all her better judgment, slid the curtains to the side.
When the woman made no immediate move to attack or show aggression, Eve took her lack of judgment even further.
She unlocked the window and slid it up a few inches. Just enough to hear her.
The woman didn’t waste any time.
“A man is in your living room threatening to kill Theo Weaver, Winnie Collins, and Deputy Collins to get your detective to leave the house with him,” she rushed. “He wants Detective Williams to lure you out, but if he finds out you’re here, then he’ll kill the detective without a second thought.”
Like she had timed it perfectly, there was a commotion coming from the front of the house. Yelling. But no shots.
Yet.
Eve glanced at her phone.
The woman hurried on.
“They can track phones, but they can’t track me,” she said.
“Leave with me now, and you can save them all later.” The commotion from the other side of the house became louder.
The woman might have been bleeding, hurt and pale, but her words were steady, her eyes clear.
But that didn’t mean Eve could believe her.
“Why would you help me?” she asked. “You’ve attacked us before.”
Despite the intense situation, the woman actually rolled her eyes.
“I’m breaking my contract, and the only way to not get killed is to help you guys not get killed.”
Eve’s adrenaline spiked as something in the other room shattered.
Her heart squeezed.
“Why?” she had to ask once more.
The woman was nothing but serious when she answered again.
“Because when enough men keeping telling you to kill a woman, it’s always a good rule of thumb to reevaluate. Now, come on so we can outsmart those idiots.” The woman stepped to the side, angling her body away from the house. She looked seconds away from running.
Not attacking.
All concerns about Eve’s relationship with Darius disappeared.
With no real evidence, Eve decided she believed the woman completely.
So much so that she took her cell phone off the nightstand, hid it under the blanket on the bed and grabbed her coat.
She was out the window and running before the door to the bedroom even opened.
THE WINDOW WAS OPEN, and Eve was gone.
Good girl, Darius thought, gun to his back, and the man holding it laughing behind him. Now, stay gone this time.
“I guess some things just don’t change,” the man said. “If there’s a window, Eve surely will find a way through it.”
The man must have shrugged. The gun moved against him slightly.
“I suppose I should have been quieter, though,” he continued. “But you know what they say about hindsight. Twenty-twenty and all that.”
Darius was hurting. Not only had the man gotten inside the house and beaten him good, Darius had let it happen. All because of the picture the man had showed him on his phone.
A picture of Winnie and her father, tied up and bloody somewhere nondescript.
It had been the master key to every space in both of Darius’s houses.
A master key that would have broken, had Eve not fled through the bedroom window.
Darius was glad for her quick thinking so she was out of danger.
But also because of who the man was.
This time, Darius had recognized his attacker.
This time, he knew the danger had pushed them all to the brink.
“I should have kept better track of you,” Darius bit out, turning to face the fourth gunman of the week. “Last I heard, you were incarcerated in Tennessee.”
Jon Decanter had aged, and not just in the simplest of terms. Time had been unkind to him, taking a boy who had been Darius’s age and making him a man who appeared older, more worn and grizzled.
His clothes gave him the appearance of a PTO dad, but the scars along his jaw and arms spoke to a different kind of lifestyle.
His gaze, however, hadn’t changed.
Hate rested there.
Angry and all too familiar.
“You track me?” Jon laughed again, the sound chilling.
“Like little Evie would let you do that. After what she did, after the prank I pulled on you? I’m surprised she left you to me now, if I’m being honest. Then again, it’s easy to be brave as a kid who doesn’t know the world yet.
Now that she’s had a taste of money and fame, I’m sure she won’t risk that for some lowly detective who never could move on. ”
Darius balled his fist.
He could disarm Jon right then and there. Get the gun with or without one of them getting hit in the process and really give it to his personal ghost from the past.
But.
If the adult Jon was anything like the kid Jon, then there was an element of instability and callousness to him that could destroy any chances of Darius saving Winnie and her father.
Or Eve, if she decided to climb back through another window to try and save him.
Darius decided the best plan was to see what Jon’s plan was—and quickly.
“If tying a kid up to a piece of industrial equipment to slowly get mutilated is a prank, then I’d hate to see what you think a good joke is.”
Jon must not have liked the snark. He pushed the barrel of his gun harder into Darius’s back. Normally, the pressure wouldn’t bother him, but it just so happened to be the area that had been kicked repeatedly by the demon in humans’ clothes behind him.
“Talking has always been her strong suit, not yours, Darius,” Jon said.
“You’d just get everyone killed with that mouth of yours.
So I’d leave the snark to the professionals instead.
” He applied more pressure into the gun’s barrel.
“Speaking of professionals, I think it’s time to leave before the colleagues I’m sure Evie has called in come running.
I’d hate for you to lose the chance to save that lovely family I have all tied up, simply because the response time of Seven Roads’s finest is actually impressive. Let’s go.”
Darius glanced at the nightstand.
Eve’s phone was gone.
Relief pure and true moved through his chest.
He let Jon lead him outside to a black truck, its front partially damaged and a side mirror missing.
The relief that Eve had gotten away disappeared the second Jon cussed low.
“Looks like I underestimated Lana after all,” he said. “I should have killed her first.”
Darius caught his eye, his brow arching high.
Jon’s mood switched gears again.
He laughed and looked back at the house.
“Hate to break it to you, Darius, but maybe little Evie didn’t get away after all.”