Chapter 39 - Laurel
The fear that raced through me didn’t send me under the covers. Not this time, because it wasn’t all for myself. Too many other people were suffering because of what I brought to their door. It didn’t matter if I didn’t mean to. It didn’t matter if I was stunned that Rand would go so far.
I had been wrong to assume he’d give up on me. He was twisted and obsessed, and it had nothing to do with love or concern. He believed that he owned me, and was hunting me down like a car that had been stolen from him.
Worse than running away, I had done it in such a way that his employees might have laughed a little behind his back. Maybe he caught them whispering when he walked into a room, or they gave him an appraising glance, wondering what he did to me to make me leave an amazing job and a beautiful house.
I was in another beautiful house, about to run again, but this time it was the last thing I wanted to do. Mik might have annoyed me, even enraged me at one time, and who was I fooling? He still did sometimes. But he was miles away from what Rand was. A thousand times better as a human being.
But just like Rand, he didn’t love me. Where Rand viewed me as something he owned, Mik viewed me as something he had to take care of.
He’d made a promise and was going to keep it.
But he didn’t understand just how bad it could get.
I had lived with the man for a year and was still horrified to learn how intent he was on making sure he had me under his heel again.
Whatever he was doing, or whoever he was working with to torment Mik’s family, I was certain it would stop once he knew I was no longer with Mik. Once I was gone, his ego would give him no choice but to leave them alone and follow me again.
This time I wouldn’t make it so easy for him.
For about a minute, I felt strong and in charge, and then it all drained out of me as I looked around at Mik’s room. A place I had tried to stay away from, but had enjoyed some of the best moments of my life.
I sank to the floor, my phone falling from my hand to land with a soft thud on the thick rug. A low ping told me I had a message, and moving in slow motion, I turned it over to see that Nell had sent me an address.
Another message followed. I hope I didn’t freak you out, but I’m so scared for you. I’ll be there in an hour, but I’m turning my phone off until I get there.
She wasn’t just scared for me. Rand must have really been on a tirade if she and two other employees quit, and now she was leaving Napa Valley altogether, turning off her phone so no one could track her.
That’s what happened when you stood up to someone like Rand.
They didn’t like it and put a target on you.
I tried to call her back, but she was true to her word, and the call went straight to voicemail. I searched the address, and it looked like a house in a nondescript suburb about an hour and a half away.
So close and yet so far when I was the princess in the tower. Could I get out? Did I really want to? Standing back up, I was surprised how steady my legs were. Maybe because this was the right decision, no matter how much I didn’t want to do it.
The most important thing was to make sure Rand stopped screwing with the Fokins, who were nothing more than innocent bystanders. Once I was settled under a new identity, far away… No, if I was going to leave, it had to be a clean break.
If I was going to get out of the house at all, I had to be cool about it, and I certainly couldn’t leave with a suitcase or even a larger-than-usual bag.
I had fifty bucks in my wallet and from what I knew from watching movies, I could only use my bank card once before I set out toward Santa Barbara, or it would leave a trail of my movements.
So, I’d find a machine and withdraw the uppermost limit.
That was probably only going to be several hundred dollars, so I found myself standing in the big walk-in closet with all its tidy shelves and drawers, looking down at the large pull-out tray that held Mik’s watch collection.
Just think of it as a severance package, I told myself, slipping one of the flashier ones into my pocket.
Maybe one day I could pay him back. ‘Maybe one day’ was a wish I made too often, and the prickle of anger kept me moving down the stairs.
The first guard I came across was Georgiy, who was one of the security team that I liked, but also one I knew had Mik’s highest trust. He’d already been sent to the hospital once because of me, and I wished I had found one of the other ones instead of him.
He took his job seriously, and if Mik told him one thing, I didn’t think I could cajole him to do another.
“I need to get one of those big cookies from the Beverly Center,” I said, grinning at him. Wow, I was doing great. “Are you in?”
He didn’t blink, and the fact that he always had a low-level scowl on his face didn’t mean he was going to instantly call my bluff and accuse me of escaping. Escaping, as if I were actually a prisoner. I was on a mission to save him as well as Mik and his family.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll bring the car around. Meet me out front.”
My heart raced, and I forced myself not to sigh with relief.
Other than stealing Mik’s watch and getting out of the house, I had no real plan.
I still wasn’t certain I should drag Nell into it more than she already was because she had the audacity to tell Rand off, but I’d worry about that when and if I could ditch Georgiy.
It was around lunchtime, and there was a line of cars heading into the parking garage. I tried to tell Georgiy he could just drop me off and park, or circle the block a few times if he wanted.
“I won’t be long. I don’t think I need anything else,” I said.
“Just the cookies,” he said, deadpan.
“If you tried one, you’d understand.” For a second I believed he’d let me get out, but instead he drove to the valet area, getting out with me to dutifully trail in my wake on this fictional quest for cookies.
Damn it. The place was bustling, but not so packed I could bolt and expect to disappear in the crowd. Georgiy could easily outrun me, and then I’d have some explaining to do.
I slowed my pace, looking all around me, trying to picture the lay of the land outside, and the best place to run once I was free.
Part of me wanted to whirl around and blurt everything out to Georgiy so he’d haul me back to Mik, who really would put me under lock and key, but that was the coward’s way out.
It was time that I protected myself as well as those I’d grown to care about.
“Oh, look, a sale,” I said, stopping abruptly in front of a clothing boutique full of shoppers. He’d be a bull in a china shop inside. I pointed to a nearby bench. “Let me just run in and check it out real quick.”
Instead of taking a seat and starting up a game on his phone like I wished he would, he followed me in, turning heads as he brushed past the display racks.
I swallowed back some swear words and grabbed a few things, telling him in an undertone that he absolutely could not follow me into the changing room.
“You’re embarrassing me,” I hissed, the tears springing up in my eyes, not fake at all.
Looking abashed, he stepped back to the entrance of the store, and I carried my items into the changing room, where an attendant showed me an open booth.
I had dreamed up a scenario like this so many times before, trying to find the courage to ask for help when Rand was breathing down my neck and threatening to cause a scene. I let her hang up my selections, but then blocked the hallway, holding out my hands.
“Listen,” I said in a low, desperate voice. “That guy that came in with me?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly, nodding. “I thought he was going to insist on helping you undress.” At first she tried to make a joke out of it, but saw my very real distress.
“Can you please help me?” I asked, with the same dread that kept me from pleading for assistance before. If she refused, I was screwed. “Is there a back way out of here?”
With a brisk nod, she told me to wait, then went back to the archway that led from the main shop back to the changing area and pulled a curtain across it. With another nod, she beckoned me forward.
“Thank you,” I whispered as she led me down a short hall, past a tiny office and a stock area, then opened a door leading into a long hallway behind all the shops.
“Follow that, go down the stairs, and turn left, and you’ll get to the parking garage,” she said. “And don’t go back to him, okay?”
I didn’t have time to feel bad for besmirching Georgiy’s reputation, reckoning I had about ten minutes before he got suspicious and crashed into the shop again.
The saleswomen might be able to buy me another couple of minutes after that, but it hardly felt like enough to get out of the mall before he caught up to me.
I tore off like I was trying to win a race, with the knowledge that I was doing the right thing being the prize.
Mik would be pissed at Georgiy, and probably worried about me for a while, but he could open his restaurant in peace and have all the success he deserved once Rand got off his back for shielding me.
Bursting out from the dim parking garage, I blinked in the blazing sunlight, glancing left and right to see one of the big city buses rolling to a stop at the corner.
At least ten people waited to file on, and I walked briskly to get in line, my heart thumping out of my chest from the short run and the paranoid feeling that a hand was going to clap over my shoulder at any second.
It would be merely embarrassing and frustrating if it were Georgiy, but what if it was Rand? He could be anywhere now that I knew he was no longer hiring people to do his dirty work but had left for LA again to find me himself.