Chapter 20
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"So, you're telling me you have proof Nathan was stealing from both of us?" Preston raises an eyebrow, and I try to take in our surroundings.
Cassie has been completely silent since she said we needed to try to leave the building. I’ve watched every emotion race across her face. First anger, then confusion, fear, and more anger. She’s putting things together and has a better handle on things, most likely.
I wish she had come to the conclusion of leaving about ten minutes earlier. Maybe then we wouldn’t be facing down Preston, who, in my books, is at least five times worse than Phineas.
Our survival is going to depend on Phineas and how he handles the situation. His face is still a bit pale, but at least he sounds confident in what he's saying. I'm hoping Preston will buy it. I’d guessed that he was hiding something from Preston when he stressed the importance of not letting slip what we were working on. The extent of what he was doing was totally hidden from me.
A sound to my left causes me to turn my head slightly. It's Nathan. He's moving his hand to get my attention. His eyes shift nervously to where Phineas and Preston go back and forth, talking in low tones, sometimes raising their voices enough for us to hear them.
“You brought someone else in to deal with inside problems?” Preston raises his voice, his anger vibrating against the warehouse walls.
“He was betraying you. I figured it would be worth it…”
“We have real men for that, not two amateurs from a PI agency.”
So, Preston doesn’t like the idea of Phineas and me working together. Me and him both. It certainly wasn’t my idea, and I’m glad Phineas is getting his dues.
“If you’d just hear me out—” Phineas sounds like the lackey this time, not the boss and it’s a bit shocking to witness.
“Hear you out? Did you forget who works for who?” Preston’s face is so red I would have guessed he ate something far too spicy. Phineas makes a motion, and they step just a little further away.
"If you leave me here, they're going to kill me," Nathan says softly. His words pull me away from the tense conversation in front of me.
That's what he said before, and I didn't believe him. Or maybe I did believe him, and I just didn't want to do anything about it.
"Preston is something else. He may be my uncle, but all he cares about is his money."
Nathan's tone is so low that I can barely hear him. He keeps an eye on Preston the whole time just in case one of them looks our way. For the most part, they seem engrossed in their conversation—one I could probably hear more of if Nathan wasn’t talking my ear off.
"What do you want me to do about it?" I hiss back. It's not as if we're in a great position ourselves. Helping Nathan isn’t exactly in the cards at the moment.
"Get me out of here," Nathan says. "We can escape if we work together. And I have evidence, a whole lot of it, against the Thornton family and Phineas."
Tempting.
It would be nice to have what I need to put the Thorntons and Phineas behind bars. That’s been a long-time dream of mine.
Phineas and Preston are distracted. They have only looked our way a couple of times. Maybe this is our opportunity.
A rush of excitement pulses through me. Evidence against Phineas? That would be a change for once. He’s always been one step ahead of me and had me under his thumb. If I could one-up him…
Wait, evidence. That's why Phineas was after Nathan. He kept telling me he wanted to get out of this life that he wanted to move on. The only thing keeping Phineas from leaving the crime life behind without a second thought might be someone holding something over him. Something that would tear down whatever new life he built in an instant.
If he truly loves Lorraine as much as he says he does, he would most likely do almost anything to make sure that wouldn’t happen.
It looks like Phineas and I aren't so different after all. I was working under him to get my life back, and he was working under another to get his back. The irony isn't lost on me .
My gaze travels back to Phineas and Preston. He’s trying to make it look like he was watching out for Preston by hunting down Nathan. If Preston knew Phineas was after the evidence… Nathan’s plight is becoming more compelling by the second.
I'm not even sure how we would escape. Not to mention, how would we get to this evidence without them catching up and making us pay for our rebellion? That’s how these sorts are. They’ll teach you a lesson if you dare to cross them, which means if you are going to cross them, you have to make sure you’ll be out of their reach.
"Come on, we just have to get out of this building, and I can help you with the rest," Nathan says, his voice growing more persuasive. “If you stay here, you get nothing, and I die. That will live on your conscience.”
If I had listened to Nathan seriously a bit earlier, we would have already been out of the place before Phineas or Preston showed up. I could have used his evidence against Phineas to trade for my own… No wonder Phineas wasn’t straight with me about why he wanted to find Nathan. It would have been too much of a risk for him.
"I'm not sure what you suggest I do," I say softly. His eyes grow wide, and his hand trembles just a bit.
He’s scared of Preston, confirming my suspicions about the man. Trusting him to have our best interest at heart is out of the question.
"It doesn't matter what you do; we just have to get out of here." Nathan is wavering on the edge of desperation. I feel a little sorry for the guy.
I nod and turn toward Cassie. Getting out of here, with or without Nathan, isn’t such a bad idea. I hope she'll overlook the whole working-for-Phineas thing long enough to work with me.
"What does he want?" Cassie asks, her voice about as low as Nathan's.
She probably couldn’t hear him, which is good because it means no one else did either. We're only about fifteen to twenty feet away from Preston and Phineas. We can't hear everything they're saying, only when they raise their voices to speak to each other.
So, hopefully, they're oblivious to our whispers, at least as long as they're arguing.
Phineas looks my way as if he can sense me thinking about him. Did he notice us whispering? Does he care? There’s something unreadable in his expression. Is it worry, and if so, for him or for me?
"He wants us to get him out of here, and he says he has evidence against the Thornton family and Phineas." I frown at that last one, trying to shake my mixed feelings about Phineas away.
Am I actually feeling a hint of guilt at trying to put Phineas behind bars? No. New love or whatnot, he's still done bad things and deserves to pay for them. Lorraine and his hope for a new life doesn't change that.
“You can’t just get rid of them,” Phineas snaps, his tone making all of us tense. Who does Preston want to get rid of? He said them , so chances are it’s more than one of us…
Phineas is standing up for me. That’s something. Escaping is looking better and better.
We sit in silence for a couple more minutes before Cassie leans toward me; her eyes are as wide as saucers.
"I think all of this has something to do with what happened back in New York,” she whispers. It looks like she's just come across the biggest revelation of her life.
"What do you mean?" I whisper back, unable to quiet my curiosity.
"I've seen Preston before. He was in the green room on set, there in New York a couple of weeks before I was blacklisted."
"Are you sure?" I ask, the wheels in my head turning. Maybe it wasn't a jealous secretary or bad press, after all.
Maybe Preston was worried about Cassie figuring out his connection to Corey. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been doing plenty of research into the Thornton family, and one thing I found is that one of the Thornton men has a bad reputation.
People talk about him and say he's the family's black sheep. Even though he wasn't named, I'm starting to think that it may be Preston. Someone involved in the wrong side of the law, who has his hand in a lot of circles no one wants anything to do with.
Of course, an operation as big as the one the Thorntons may be running would need a man to do the dirty work and slip under the radar. If Cassie saw him at the wrong moment, maybe they would have become a little paranoid about who she might tell or how it might connect back to them in the future.
Getting rid of her, or at least distancing her from themselves before she could connect two and two, would have been the first move for anyone in that position.
Once we're safe, I’ll have plenty of time to mull over the whole conundrum. I look between Cassie and Nathan.
“This is my town, and I’m not going to have you going around killing people.” Phineas hisses, loud enough for us to hear. He casts me a sideways glance, and Preston does the same, though his is more of a glare.
Does Phineas really want to protect me, or is he just trying to assert his authority over his territory? It’s hard to tell.
If we try to escape with Nathan and it goes wrong, Preston might kill us. It would also show that we're not working with Phineas anymore, which may be the only protection we have left.
My moral compass is having a war with itself again.
“Are we going to come up with something or not?” Cassie whispers.
“I’m thinking. If we get caught, we could make things a lot worse for ourselves.”
“So, you're saying that we should just wait here and be at their mercy?” Cassie asks, a bit of sarcasm seeping through her tone as she half rolls her eyes.
“I'm not exactly saying that,” I reply. Now that she puts it like that, she has a point.
“If we stay here, we're sitting ducks, and Phineas could turn on us at any minute." Her green eyes search mine as if trying to decide whether I am more loyal to her or Phineas. I try to ignore the sting. Of course, I’m loyal to her, a thousand times more than I’d ever be to Phineas. Her safety is the main reason for all my hesitation right now.
Since things aren’t going Phineas’s way, I have no doubt he’d throw us under the bus to save himself. On the other hand, trying to escape with Nathan won’t be a piece of cake. If anything goes wrong, we’ll be on the hook for it—because I don’t trust Nathan as far as I can throw him, which wouldn’t be very far.
I make up my mind. “We’re going to escape. Or at least we’re going to try.”
Cassie
Escape.
It’s a word full of fear and hope, depending on how you look at it. It’s a dumb idea, really, and yet, staying put could be worse.
“So, what do we do?”
Phineas looks our way and narrows his eyes, then pats Preston on the shoulder and leads him further away from us toward the front of the building. Now, we can’t hear them at all. Our window is tiny and growing smaller by the second. We need a plan. I look to Lincoln.
I may not know if I can trust him, but deep down, I know he wouldn’t let anything happen to me if he could help it.
He’s digging around in his pocket and retrieves a lighter.
“Can you reach anything that would catch fire?” he asks me.
I nod. The couch is about a foot to my left. I watch Preston and Phineas like a hawk, never taking my eyes off them. When I’m sure I have a couple of seconds of opportunity, I reach over as far as I can and snag a couch pillow. It’s a bright yellow color, hideous, really, but firm and fluffy. I keep it behind my chair, so it won’t be visible even if one of our captors looks over.
“I’ve got a pillow.”
“Okay then. I’ll light it on fire, then you’ll throw it by the couch. We’ll stay put until there’s a decent amount of smoke. When everyone notices the fire and starts panicking, we make a run for the car. Got it?”
“What about me?” Nathan nods to his restraints, which we put him in earlier. How hard is it to untie that tie and the homemade rope made from kitchen towels?
Lincoln scoots his chair closer to Nathan. He waits a few seconds, then does it again. I hold my breath for those seconds each time, hoping Preston and Phineas don’t look our way. Once he’s close enough, he reaches one hand over, working on the restraints in the most inconspicuous way possible. It helps the couch blocks some visibility between us and Phineas and Preston.
I sweep my gaze over the rest of the room. For now, Preston’s goons aren’t visible. After they made us sit down, they disappeared back outside. Probably to keep watch. We have no way of knowing where they are between us and the car.
“Lincoln, what do we do about the men outside?” My whisper is a little louder than I intended, and I wince.
“It’s a gamble. We’ll have to run for it and try to stay together. If they’re outside, Nathan and I will take care of them, and you get to the car. You drive it over to us, and we all escape. Right?” He meets Nathan’s gaze at the end of his sentence.
“Right.” Nathan nods. “You won’t regret it. It’ll be worth the risk.”
I can only hope he’s right about that. Lincoln doesn't look happy about our plan of action at all. I can see how his jaw ticks and the storm in his eyes. He hates this, and I don’t blame him. It’s got a lot of flaws and a lot of ways to go wrong. Lincoln likes it to look like he’s got things well-planned, but actually, he’s just praying it all works most of the time.
It doesn't take him long to help Nathan out of his restraints. We must not have tied him super well. Then I hear the click of the lighter. We all wait in silence, only the hum of the fridge and the talking by the door filling the room.
I smell the smoke first. When Lincoln presses the burning cushion into my palm, I can feel the heat of the flames. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from reacting. I toss the pillow as hard as possible without making too much of a spectacle. When it lands squarely in the middle of the cushions, I grin in victory. Soon enough, we’ll have a blazing bonfire to cover our escape.
We all keep looking toward the couch, and I’m worried someone will notice. But apparently, Phineas and Preston have more important things to consider.
Smoke slowly fills the building. The two men pause their conversation, sniffing and looking around.
“Hey, what’s going on in here?” Preston asks, taking a step toward us.
“I… don’t know… What on earth?” Phineas yells as the two of them rush forward. They’re furious, eyes wide, perhaps in shock.
“Now!” Lincoln yells. We don’t need to be told twice. We shoot out of our chairs, racing toward the exit in unison.
The goons must have heard the commotion because they seem to materialize in front of us as they step in from outside. One of them grabs me, his meaty arms wrapping around my waist. I twist and jerk down as hard as I can, throwing myself to the ground.
He leans for a minute as if he might follow me down but regains his balance as I crawl between his legs, standing up behind him. I don’t stop to see what everyone else is doing. Instead, I keep running straight for the barely visible back door in the thick smoke.
I glance over my shoulder to see Lincoln tackling one of the men. Nathan is right there. Is he helping? It’s hard to see through the smoke.
I hesitate, then turn back. I’m halfway back to Lincoln when he shouts at me.
“Go, Cassie! Get the car.”
Phineas and Preston are barely visible in the warehouse. It’s hard to tell what they are doing, but if I had to guess, they’re trying to get out as much as we are. The fire took over quickly enough, and the whole place is ablaze.
My hands clutch the keys tighter as I run, my breath burning in my lungs. When the car comes into view, it’s time for everything I can give. I push forward and dive into the driver’s seat, locking the doors behind me before I start the car and drive back toward Lincoln and Nathan. If they’ve gotten the goons outside, maybe there’s a chance I can run them over.
Should I have stayed back and helped them fight? No. Lincoln said to go.
Please let them be ready to go!
I see Lincoln first. He’s on the ground, exchanging blows with a guard easily the same size as him. Nathan pops up a moment later, a second guard lying unconscious on the ground. They’ve managed to move the fight outside. There is nothing but flames and smoke behind them.
Nathan tackles Lincoln’s guard with a flying punch, pushing him off Lincoln, and the two scramble toward the station wagon. I unlock the doors just in time for them to barrel into the back seat.
“Drive out of here and turn left. When you’re sure we’re in the clear for a few minutes, we’ll switch.” Lincoln manages to get his words out between puffs of breath.
“You think I can’t do evasive driving?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.My heart thunders in my throat. He’d be right. Evasive driving is something I’ve never done before.
Lincoln chuckles.
“If you think you’re up for it, then I trust you can do it.” He grins wildly, a sense of adventure plastered on his face.
Adrenaline courses through my veins. I’ve never done any evasive driving of any sort. My eyes jump to the rearview mirror. The goons are getting up, and they’re running toward the car. I hear another car starting in the distance. Phineas and Preston. They’re around here somewhere and will want to catch us.
I position my foot on the pedal. I can do this .
I slam my foot down, tearing out of the parking lot.