“You’re late,” Fox grumbles.
“Sorry.” It’s a woman, her soft voice trembling at the edges. She keeps shifting in the seat and I guess she’s not entirely comfortable around him. “It’s not easy to leave in the middle of my shift without someone noticing. I did what you said so no one followed me.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“You don’t understand. They’re—my employers aren’t what they seem. If they find out about this, I won’t just be fired.”
Familiarity tugs at me as I concentrate on their voices. Something about her voice—I recognize it.
“I know all about what they’re capable of.” Venomous loathing drips from Fox’s voice. He’s silent for a beat, then his sharp baritone is closer and I picture him crowding into her space the same way he does to me when he wants to be intimidating. “And I don’t give a fuck. Not my problem.”
The woman squeaks and I think she presses back against the window to get away from him. “I don’t want Mrs. Landry to find out.”
It’s an effort not to suck in a shocked breath. Lana. The person in his car is Lana, our family’s in-home chef.
What the hell? What is she doing here? Why is she talking to him?
I want to burst out of my hiding spot and demand answers, but I corral the irrational urge in favor of self preservation and listening for more information.
Nothing makes sense. I swallow, being careful to inch around to hear better while Lana sounds like she’s trying to get tears under control. My fingers clench around my school skirt as I try to understand what’s happening.
“Are you going to give me what I want or are you going to keep crying about it?”
Fox’s patience is running out. There’s movement above me—he’s digging through the canvas bag. It makes a little bit of light pierce the shadows I’m hidden in. Whatever he takes out makes Lana release a low, panicked sound. My mind races to figure out what he took out of the bag. A tightness in my stomach has me picturing a gun.
“I’m not playing around,” he says in a deep, detached tone. “You’re going to give me what I want, or I’m going to make your life harder than what they might do to you if they found out you helped me.”
“Yes—yes, okay,” Lana says hoarsely.
I’ve never heard her like this. She’s afraid. Not just of Fox, but also of my parents. What she said before echoes in my head. If they find out about this, I won’t just be fired. What more can they do to Lana other than fire her for meeting with Fox? The NDA they’ve made the household staff sign is ironclad, but I always thought it was because Mom cares so much about our public image with her prominent position.
Unease twists my insides into knots. Whatever is going on, it’s serious. Once again I’m hit with the suspicion that he isn’t the only one hiding things from me.
“Good. But I’m taking a thousand off the price we agreed on because you just pissed me off.”
Lana makes a distressed sound. “No, please! I—I need it all for my daughter’s treatment. We don’t have the insurance coverage, please—”
Fox growls something too low for me to make out, but it makes Lana settle down. My heart lodges in my throat. Lana has a daughter? She’s never told me about her. Not that we’re close, but there are some days when Mom’s lecturing me that she feels like the only one who knows my secret hell. Do I even know her at all?
I miss some of their conversation while I’m lost in my swirling thoughts, but when I refocus my blood turns to ice in my veins. Lana is giving him the details to our security system. She’s telling him how to get past the one thing I thought protected me from him.
“It has to be this weekend,” Fox says. “I can’t get around the Landry’s security system, it’s why I’m paying you. They’ll be at the mayor’s Memorial Day party, like you said. I’ll do it while they’re there.”
Shock filters through my system. He wants to break into our house in a way that we won’t be able to detect while we’re at Mayor Taylor’s party? We’ve been going to the mayor’s house for his holiday weekend celebration for years, ever since Mom and Dad got their promotions. It’s stuffy to be around all the rich assholes in town gathered in one place compared to when it was only my classmates for his daughter Jenna’s party, but I’ve always gone. How am I going to go while knowing he is trying to get into the house?
Fox would really go that far to get to me? Does he have any limits?
My throat thickens and it becomes hard to breathe for a moment, my vision going fuzzy at the edges from the force of the dizziness crashing into me. I close my eyes tight and try to breathe through the bout of panic without alerting them to me hiding in the back seat. An ache sears my chest.
When I get myself under control, the car is quiet again. Lana must be gone.
With the kind of access she sold him, he could get at me anytime he wanted. My stomach knots as I brush my fingers over my leather bracelet, touching the stones. I don’t have anything in my room he could possibly be shocked to uncover. Nothing he could use against me to start more rumors about me at school. None of this is connecting the dots to make a clear picture.
We’re moving again. Fox takes fewer turns as he drives. I stare through the sliver of light bleeding into my hiding spot without seeing. My throat stings with the questions swarming it, needing an outlet. I want to kick his seat and scream at him, demand to know what the fuck he’s planning. To let me in.
This feels bigger than his efforts to bully me. It would be crazy for him to pay our cook so he can bypass our state of the art security system. He’s able to get at me more easily than that, something he’s proved time and again in the last few weeks.
He said something about my parents that sits like lead in my stomach. He knows what they’re capable of. The way he said it makes chills break out across my skin. Hate like I’ve never heard before, deep and vicious and deadly.
“Shit,” Fox spits before taking a sharp turn that snaps my attention back to him.
I’m jolted by the force of it, scrambling to brace myself so I don’t go flying across the floor in the back. He curses again and the tires of the Charger screech as he speeds up suddenly. We whip around another bend. I can’t hide anymore. I have to know what’s going on.
While he’s distracted by driving, I carefully move the bag and drop my blazer, remaining crouched low out of his periphery. Trees fly by the windows in a blur and the car speeds down an incline. So we were up in the mountains, I guess. Behind us, I hear the rumble of an engine. We’re being followed.
Fox seems irritated, but not about to lose his head. He doesn’t have his leather jacket on, the black t-shirt stretched around his powerful biceps. For the first time, I get a sense of his tattoos. The intricate design of a wave covers most of his left upper arm and disappears beneath his sleeve. It makes my throat burn and my wrist tingle against my stone bracelet to know he has an ocean tattoo. I want to see the rest of it, to discover what those feathers I glimpsed near his neck are.
He pushes a hand through his dark hair, tousling it. I can just make out his profile, jaw clenched. A muscle tics in his cheek as he flexes his white-knuckled grip on the wheel, the veins in his forearms protruding. He darts pissed off looks at the rear view mirror and clicks his tongue.
“Pain in the ass,” he grumbles.
My pulse thunders as he drives away from the tail following his car. He’s skilled but we’re moving terrifyingly fast, whipping around corners. It makes my nails dig into the dark interior, but I’m only partly worried. The other part of me is flooded with the thrill. Adrenaline courses through me and I have to keep reminding myself to stay low and not jump up to whoop.
I doubt he would appreciate my enthusiasm for his driving while he’s being followed, and that’s not even touching the fact I’m hiding in his car.
As he’s taking another turn, his body twists to check over his shoulder.
The exhilarated smile falls and my heart drops into my stomach as his eyes
lock with mine.
Fuck.
Fox sees me.
The growl that sounds from him might as well be the roar of an infuriated bear. His expression twists into a violent scowl as he faces front. He says nothing and my heart pounds.
“Fox,” I whisper.
He ignores me, but I catch the way his whole body tenses. The wheel creaks beneath his grip. I fall silent, limbs stiff from being in my hiding spot for too long. Watching his profile, I ease off the floor onto the back seat. He makes another displeased sound that makes my heart thud, catching my gaze in his rear view mirror. It lasts seconds before he cuts away to look at the road, but it could’ve been an eternity.
Now that I’m not hiding beneath it, I see what’s inside the duffel bag: dark clothes, some kind of techy tracking device, and binoculars. There’s a gun and my heart clenches. The mental image I conjured was right and emotions collide in a confusing swirl. The only thing missing is fear. Fox has a gun and it should scare me, but it doesn’t.
Glancing behind us, I see the tail. A big black SUV speeds up, gaining on us. It doesn’t have any markings or a license plate from this angle. They’re getting closer and my eyes widen.
“They’re going to ram the back!” I shout.
Right before it happens, Fox makes a hairpin turn down an alleyway as we reach the outskirts of the residential center of town. The SUV can’t follow with the same precision Fox has in the Charger. He takes advantage, making a series of quick turns as soon as we reach the end of the alley.
We’re able to lose the tail, but my heartbeat doesn’t stop racing because Fox doesn’t relax.
I’m not out of danger yet.
Fourteen
Fox
Fury rockets through me, an unruly fire in my veins that draws on every violent tendency I have. I need to punch something, but first I had to deal with the fucking tail. People are starting to take notice of my digging. I expected it at some point, but I thought it would be later, when I had more proof gathered.
It doesn’t bode well that they found me so quickly, whoever they are. Security for the Landrys, maybe. Or if I’m really unlucky, they could’ve been cops in the chief’s pocket, as dirty as he is with a goddamn license to act under the guise of the law. It’s possible the cook didn’t follow the route I mapped for her exactly, or she’s being watched. The specifics aren’t important right now. I have a bigger problem in my lap.
I throw another furious look at Maisy in my back seat through the reflection in the mirror.
“I think you finally lost them,” she murmurs, craning her neck to peer out the rear window like this is an afternoon joyride.
The urge to lock my fingers around her throat and squeeze for her goddamn actions has me damn near ripping my steering wheel off in a death grip. How dare she hide out in my car. Another surge of rage thunders through me, swallowing the long-dormant feelings that have been nagging me since our detention.
My lying daisy couldn’t resist sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong and now I’m screwed. The plan to get in their house to go through their personal computer for their secrets is a bust. I paid off the cook for nothing, because now Maisy will warn her parents of what I was going to do. It’s what she did before when she broke her promise.
I drive for several minutes in silence, leaving the center of town and heading toward the shipping district where my warehouse is. I won’t take her there, but I can’t do this downtown where there are witnesses.
Once I find an empty parking lot near a hiking trail, I pull in. Maisy doesn’t move while I cut the engine. The energy buzzing beneath my skin becomes too much. I explode from the car, yank open the back door, and grab her, ignoring the little yelp she makes as I drag her out.
“Hey—”
“No,” I bark, slamming her back against the frame of the car. “No.”
Maisy has gotten too comfortable. Ever since I let her on my bike and gave her a ride home, she’s becoming an insolent challenge, forgetting what I’ve promised to do to her. I shouldn’t be that surprised, since promises mean nothing to her. My lip curls. I’ll make sure she doesn’t forget who I really am, just like I won’t forget who she is—a liar.
“I’m sorry,” she says in a rush, eyes wide and hands up in a defensive gesture. I want to rip that goddamn bracelet from her slim wrist. It’s as much of a liar as she is, making me want things I can’t have. “I just…”
My teeth grind and I pin her with my whole body. “You just what? Thought it would be cute to sneak around with me? Think again. I told you, little daisy.” My fingers flex on her upper arms, digging in. “Playtime is fucking over.”
She tips her chin up, her favorite defiant move. “Why do you have a gun?”
I drag in a sharp breath. She never acts like I expect her to. Every fucking time.
“I told you. The rumors about me aren’t wrong. I’m dangerous.”
Run. I want to scream it in her face. But if she did, I’d chase her, hold onto her with every ounce of strength. I can’t let her go.
How can I hate her so much but need her within reach at the same time? Is it the echo of the deep connection we once shared, or something more that twines us together?
“What made you think you had a right to get in my car?”
Maisy frowns and squirms against my immovable body. “I’m glad I did. You’ve gone too far,” she accuses. “You can’t get to me by going through Lana. Leave her out of this and just come at me.”
A hollow bark of laughter punches out of me and I shake my head. It annoys me when Maisy acts like she doesn’t know anything.
“I don’t need your damn cook to get to you.”
“Then why did you pay her for information on the security system on my house?” Her eyes narrow. “And you shouldn’t have stiffed her, either. It sounds like she really needs the money for her daughter.”
Now she pretends to care about others and wants to lecture me on bribing ethics. My brain can’t even process the ludicrousness of it. The version of her that’s kind and caring is another lie.
“I’m not telling you that,” I force out gruffly.
There’s a mutinous little pinch to her mouth that snags my attention to the shape of her lips. A harsh breath leaves me as a new need pushes at my senses. It takes more effort than I want to admit to tear my gaze up, fighting back the ridiculous desire to crash my mouth over hers.
What the fuck is wrong with me? I will not kiss her. I should be shaking her lithe body and demanding she never pull a stunt like this again.
“And more importantly,” she continues like I didn’t sidestep her question, “why were you being followed like that? If you didn’t take the alley when you did, they were going to hit you.”
I don’t have the answers she wants. I barely have the answers I want for myself. If I did, I wouldn’t give them to her. But as my head clears enough for more thoughts to slip past the anger, one blaring truth becomes inescapable. I’ve been reckless with my life. It’s never mattered to me if this hunt ends with my death. That’s how far I’m willing to go to uncover the truth for my family.
But that disregard for life doesn’t extend to Maisy. For all that I hate her and her family, the thought of her death is unacceptable.
The wrongness of it clangs in a jarring blare, still echoing in my head when I met her eyes in the car.
Whoever followed us is connected to the same sick people in power that have this town in their claws. They’re dangerous, capable of making murder look like an accident. They don’t care who they have to get rid of. If their greed is threatened, they’ll go to any length to make sure they stay on top.
No matter what I feel for her, I don’t want her dead. Hate is intense, but it’s a passionate emotion that is as all-consuming as love. In some ways hate is love, equal in intensity from how deep it runs.
I loved Maisy before I hated her. Maybe it never fully went away, just shifted around to become this bigger, more complicated emotion that cont
rols my heart when I look at her.
“I don’t know,” I finally say. It’s like I’m hearing my voice from outside my own body, reeling a bit from the possibility I’m still in love with my ex-best friend. “They definitely weren’t looking for a friendly chat if they caught us.”
Her throat works as she swallows. Fear mixes with the bright exhilaration lighting up her hazel eyes. Something unlocks in my chest, a crack in my fortress that allows me to see her right now, separate from her parents.
For one too long, heartbreaking moment, my head fills with flashes of worst case scenarios. The SUV driving my car off the road, taking us somewhere to detain us, or skipping all of that to put twin bullets in our heads—all of it ends with Maisy dead in my mind.
No, my mind revolts against it. A tremor runs through my hands. She can probably feel it. The thought of her broken and gone from this world is wrong. My throat closes over and I blink against the staggering wave of refusal crashing down on my head.
This never started as an us situation, but now that I’ve had the thought, it won’t leave. It’s messed up as hell, considering the dirt I’ve been looking for on her crooked parents. But it was always me and her, back then and now.
Fuck it.
Something inside me snaps and I lose control of myself. I can’t hold back anymore, taken over by a single driving need to kiss her, to hold her close and erase the images in my head of what it would be like if she was gone.
My hand fists in her hair and my mouth slams over hers. She stiffens for a moment, then makes a small sound as her lips part for me. A rough, broken noise scrapes my throat as I plunge my tongue into her mouth, claiming her in a way I’ve always wanted to but haven’t let myself.
It was a line I wasn’t going to cross, but that’s out the window now that I’m kissing her. I never want to fucking stop.
Savage Wilder: Dark New Adult High School Bully Romance (Sinners and Saints Book 4) Page 12
