Chapter 1 #2
I’m stupid for leaving his protection but staying also has risks.
Providing this car has no tracker on it, it should be safe-ish, and what self-respecting assassins have trackers on their getaway vehicle?
Safe, providing the cops don’t come after me, too.
Three men are dead back there, with bullet holes in them.
There is a place on the coast where I can hide.
I hope James and Raina are still away. And if they aren’t?
I’ll beg them to let me stay. I just need some peace, some space, then a miracle.
I can keep away from everyone for a week or two.
Is that long enough though. My hands are shaking on the wheel. I relax them and inhale slowly, exhale. The tires keep humming. And after that? How do I get home to Australia?
Flying saucer? And it’s not exactly home anymore.
An eerie kind of silence descends on my thoughts. I don’t know what I’m going to do, really. If I can rest and think and get my head in order, I will still need to meet the world again.
My butt shifts on the upholstery as I go over a bumpy section and I remember the surgery I had done in Australia. Internal sutures, after the finger surgery was done, because the first doctor didn’t check me inside. Despite all the rapes and the violence I told him about. The stupid fucker. Men.
I know I shouldn’t think that—putting all men in the same basket is wrong and dumb but…one basket is easier.
The scalpel blade, when I pressed it into Alden’s neck. I can see it, feel it twist in my hand, and the red line appear on his skin.
I dearly wanted to cut him deep, and he didn’t even do anything bad. He tried to help me. Fuck men though. Even Rafael.
Joseph and his damn drug-fueled party started this. May he burn in Hell, rot for eternity.
I merge onto the highway and head north, feeling the pounding of my angry, anxiety-riddled heart. I’m not normal right now. Surprise surprise.
Those men in London were chasing me. Only me. I find I’ve pressed the accelerator too much and I’m speeding. I ease off. I don’t have a driver’s license here. If I do something wrong and get pulled over, how do I explain this car?
Fuck the police too.
I wriggle, settle myself in the seat, and pray for an easy run to their house. I’ve no phone and no money. I eye the glove box. It’s dead unlikely I’ll find money in there or a paper map, but it’s worth a look.
Phones are bad, remember. Phones can be tracked.
I can do this. I’ll ask directions at a service station and keep calm.
I pinch my lips together. I can do this. Today was scary.
But Shawn and Zasha were worse.
Rafael
As the rider slows his horse to a trot, his frown lessens. “Alden! You’re okay!” The hooves make loud clops when they strike the road. From the way he turned his head as he passed the flattened section of hedgerow, he saw the wreck. Though perhaps not the bodies.
Alden smiles grimly and nods. “I’m fine, father, though the Porsche is a write-off.”
“I see.” The man leans forward over the withers of his mount, his hands fidgeting on the reins, his eyes and mouth hard.
I lower the gun to my side.
He takes a few measured seconds to assess me and my weapon then our nearby surroundings. “Good. Thank god you’re not hurt.”
He carefully dismounts, keeping the reins in one hand, and giving the horse a pat. Then he steps over to also pat his son on the shoulder and grip him there. He gives the bemused Alden a light shake.
At a guess, from the peppering of gray in his hair, he must be about fifty.
Finally, he looks to me. “What’s happened here? That looked like a gun in the grass back there, and you have one. I expect the police have been called?”
“Not ye—”
“No.” I cut off Alden. “I wouldn’t.” I’m thinking fast under the surface while trying to act in command of the situation.
This could be a nightmare for the CNC Fraternity.
If no one had arrived to see this, we had a chance to cordon off this area and wipe the crash site clean.
I will have to make contact and ask. They offered me a broad slate of services for watching her, keeping her under control.
Now I’m having to sort out what to do, in seconds.
Georgia is still back there. I glance above the hedge and am relieved at the lack of smoke in the air—only the same burned rubber and oil smell.
I need to go check on her.
Alden’s father raises his eyebrows. “And you are?”
“The man who shot the three men who spiked the tires then tried to kill us. If…” I say this firmly as he opens his mouth to speak. “If you call the cops, you’ll be in the media spotlight for months.”
“I don’t know you, sir. You carry a gun and you helped my son survive this—I can see this and I am grateful. However, the repercussions from not reporting this and it then being discovered would be worse and much more illegal than—”
“I may have shot a man too.” Alden grimaces. “Wasn’t exactly murder but the asshole was lying down…”
Benjamin sighs. “On top of the awful news I have for you this is bad. Don’t look at your phone, boy. Please.” He runs his hand through his hair, making what was a perfectly orderly short haircut a ruffled mess. “Who am I talking to here?”
“What awful news?” Confused, Alden looks at his father, checks his jeans pocket for his phone and takes it out but doesn’t look.
“Just wait. Please.” Again he squeezes his son’s shoulder.
“Rafael Navarro,” I tell him.
“I’m Benjamin Somersby.”
He offers his hand and I shake it. I could leave this to stew in his mind, and hope he comes around, though the chances of that are small. On the other hand, I know how the frat board works, how they love getting hooks into new members who have powers they can cobble to their own.
I eye both men, giving the father a chance to say this news he has, but he waits for my answer. Is that pain I see in his eyes whenever he looks at his son?
This situation here needs resolving ASAP. I have to recheck Georgia.
“I can fix this. I can contact a man that you can talk to. He will, I believe, convince you that cleaning this up, all of this”—I sweep my hand out to the side—“is perfectly possible. If we are fucking fast.”
As long as no stray cars, riders, gardeners, or farmers even, or whoever lives around here, don’t decide to use this road.
The sign we passed, a half a mile back, read Somersby Estate, and that probably means we are on land Alden’s family owns.
All of it for tens of thousands of acres, if I know the Brits.
“I prefer my family to stay out of this sort of furor but we cannot hide that.” He jabs toward the hedge.
Furor? Now I recognize him, from a lobbying meeting my family organized for our company. He’s a sitting member in the House of Lords. Interesting friends, my Georgia has cultivated. She said she was snatched off a road in Australia while out riding her bike?
I can’t help using Alden’s idiotic action as part of my reasoning.
“Shooting people in the head when they’re not certified dead is regarded as murder and, yes, I did that too.
That said, I know people who will want this quashed.
For reasons.” How to say this? “The woman on the other side of this hedge needs to be…”
Kept quarantined slash kept captive slash away from the press. Choose one.
“Surely, she is not our problem?” Benjamin folds his arms.
I lamely add, “She’s special. These people I can phone know you, or some of them do. All I need to do is contact one of them and I feel sure they will convince you that we can and should hide this.”
Now he looks angry, bows his head and rubs his finger back and forth, above his nose. “Okay. Okay.”
Only a little angry. I’m impressed. Most people would be terrified by a stranger with a gun standing before them, after having murdered three people.
“Who then?”
I rattle off three names. The ones he is likely to know. CNC Fraternity board members, all of them.
He sighs, sniffs. When he looks up there’s a measure of respect in his voice that wasn’t present before. “You think…you can get rid of bodies and a destroyed Porsche? And what about the pretty, red-headed woman back there. What if she talks?”
“She won’t,” Alden begins. “Those men were sent by Joseph to kill her and—”
“No, they weren’t.”
“Father.” Alden frowns. “I was informed they were coming by Joseph himself.”
“No, you weren’t.” His voice cracks. “Why would he and besides…” He heaves out a shaky breath. “Joseph has been dead for weeks. He was found floating in the sea off the coast of Spain.”
Now I can see why there is a world of hurt wrecking this man.
“Fuck. No! No!” Alden barks out then steps back, shock in the wideness of his eyes. “How long…how long have you known?” His voice drops to nothing. Clearly, they were close, despite the bad things he said about Joseph on the way here.