Savages Boxed Set

by Gadziala, Jessica

  But with Paine telling me that they would apparently have no qualms about killing me, well, it made it impossible to pretend ignorance of the danger.

  "Elsie," his smooth voice said, making my head snap up automatically. "Whatever it is, get out of it," he said, his hand raising and snagging some of the large amount of hair that had fallen out of my ponytail whilst running. He tucked it behind my ear, brushing the lobe and trailing his fingers down my neck slightly in doing so. And I totally shivered. Visibly, not just on the inside.

  "I..."

  My mouth clamped shut as his hand dropped, both of us looking out toward the door to the shop when there was banging.

  "Your not-boyfriend," Paine surmised as my hand automatically reached for my cell. It wasn't like him not to text when he arrived somewhere.

  But, he had. Three times. I must have been too distracted to hear the ding.

  "Must be," I agreed, slipping my phone into my pocket again and moving out toward the shop, taking a long, greedy sip of my coffee before placing it down on one of the desks. "Hey, Paine..." I said, turning back toward him, "thanks for, um, letting me in and for the coffee. I really appreciate it."

  "Don't mention it," he said, shrugging. But he was also advancing at me in an almost predatory way that made me go back a foot before his arm went around me.

  No, not just around me.

  His hand settled hard on my ass, squeezing for a second.

  My entire body froze, shocked, unsure how to respond. But the whole thing only lasted a total of maybe five seconds before his arm pulled back and I saw the scissors in his hand.

  "Like I said," he said, placing them on the desk, "smart girl. Now go out there to your not-boyfriend, go back to your safe little life and forget all about the Third Street guys. And me," he added as he brushed past me, unlocked the front door, and pulled it open to reveal Roman.

  Now, just because he was my not-boyfriend didn't mean I couldn't appreciate how good looking he was. Roman was a good six foot- maybe six-one. He was thin, but strong in a non-aggressive sort of way. Maybe it was fair to call it a swimmer's body. His chestnut-colored hair was slightly long on top, and brushed back then cropped close at the sides which only succeeded in making his classically handsome face even more striking. He had a straight nose, strong brow ridge, and very endearing brown eyes framed in thick lashes. He kept his face clean-shaven and he dressed well. Even after being woken up in the middle of the night, he was put together. He had on dark wash jeans that fit well and a white, thick-knit sweater with two buttons near the throat, which he left undone.

  "Christ, Else, you scared me," he said, gesturing with his phone in his hand.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't hear the ding," I shrugged, brushing it off. Though, in general, I was hyper aware of my cell. It was completely out of character of me to not answer right away, let alone at all.

  "Are you alright, you look a little..." he trailed off, giving me a smile I always found myself smiling back at, warm, teasing. "You're a mess, Else."

  "It's a long story."

  "That ends in a tattoo shop," he commented, jerking his chin toward the building I was standing in the doorway of. "Planning on getting some work done? Or have you already? Somewhere naughty? If so, can I see?" he teased and I found myself laughing as I stepped out into the street. I wasn't aware Paine had followed behind until Roman's eyes went behind me and almost... darkened. "Who is this?" he asked me, giving me a look I can only describe as probing before turning his attention back to Paine.

  "Oh, um... Roman... this is Paine. Paine, Roman. Paine is..."

  "A friend," Paine supplied, offering his hand which Roman took and shook hard before dropping like it burned him.

  "Well, Paine... thanks for keeping an eye on Else for me," Roman said, reaching for my hand and tugging a bit roughly as he turned toward his car parked right by the sidewalk, opening the door for me.

  When I chanced a look back at Paine, his lip twitching said a hundred different things at once. Not the least of which was: it sure doesn't look like he knows he's not your boyfriend. But then I was pressed into Roman's car and the door slammed, the blackout windows making it hard to see him anymore at all.

  Then Roman was in his seat and the car turned over and he shot off.

  TWO

  Elsie

  "Whoa, slow down," I said, pressing hard into my seat with one of my hands on the dash. He had to be going sixty on the main drag, thirty above the speed limit. My stomach felt like it took up residence on the floor. "Roman, slow down!" I shouted when he didn't immediately take his foot off the pedal.

  "Else, what the fuck?" he asked, glancing over at me, his features looking tight like he was... angry? Why would he be angry?

  "I know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have called. I should have gotten a cab. You have work in the..."

  "No, Else. Always, always call if you need a ride. That wasn't what I meant."

  "Then what did you mean?"

  Roman pulled the car off onto a side street, throwing it into park while somehow simultaneously un-belting and turning to face me fully. "I'm not being a snob..." he started.

  "Okay," I said, head tilting to the side a little.

  "You want to be in this part of town on a Friday or Saturday night, having drinks with the girls, having fun. No problem. All for it. But what the fuck are you doing at this hour in that part of town... alone?"

  I forced my lips to tip upward. "Not being a snob, huh?" I teased.

  "Elsie," he said, his tone firmer.

  "Don't dad-voice me, Rome," I scolded. We'd never had that kind of friendship. If anything, we always encouraged each other to do wild things, to push the boundaries, to do things that would cause raised eyebrows. But, then again, we generally did those things together. I couldn't think of anything, aside from losing my virginity at the tender age of fifteen, that I had ever done without him at my side. Maybe that was what this was about. He was feeling left out, excluded.

  And, in a weird kind of way, I was pushing the boundaries without him. But I wasn't doing it for the raised eyebrows or even the rush of adrenaline. I was doing it because I had to. And I was keeping it from him because I had to do that to. So, for the first time in probably our entire friendship, I had to lie to him too.

  "I'm not dad-voicing you. I'm trying to understand what is up with you lately."

  Of course he had picked up on that too.

  I'd been off.

  I knew that. It was something that couldn't be avoided. I was more scatterbrained, less easy to get in touch with, secretive. All things that had never been qualities I had before.

  "Fine!" I said, throwing my hands up in mock frustration. "I was looking into tattoo shops for us. You ruined it!"

  Roman's head tilted, his brows drawing together slightly. "Tattoos? For us?" He said it in a way that implied I might as well have suggested we get septum piercings and wear them with huge bull rings every day.

  "For our friend anniversary. Twenty-eight years next month," I said, thinking of my birthday. That was the first time we met. We have pictures of us lying side-by-side on the hospital bed the afternoon of my birth, Roman a mere ten weeks older.

  To that, Rome's face softened. A sweet smile pulled at his lips. "What did you have planned?"

  "Honestly? I hadn't gotten that far." I hadn't gotten that far because I had just come up with the idea. "I was just looking around."

  "Else... why after midnight? That shop didn't even look open."

  "Paine's, ah, he's very busy. Popular. He couldn't fit me in any other time. I don't know a lot about tattoos so I had a bunch of questions."

  "Where was your car?"

  Crap. Of course he would ask that. It was a good question. I loved my car. I drove it whenever possible. It was a recent purchase and I was proud of myself for being able to get that kind of financing on that kind of car without a co-signer, without having to involve my father. That being said, it was the kind of car that stood out. It was last year's Pors
che 718 Boxster S in Miami Blue paint. It was more than a down payment on most people's houses. It was not the kind of car you drove into the slums when you were trying to not be seen. Or, you know, have it stolen.

  And that was exactly what I was going to go with, even if it made slightly less sense to use it when talking about the industrial part of town. It was believable enough.

  "I didn't want to bring him into that part of town. You know how I feel about that car. I took a cab. But um... the driver was really creepy. I didn't want to get stuck with him again on the way home..."

  "Aw, Else, glad you called then," he said, satisfied as he moved back into his seat, pulling his belt, and putting the car back into drive. "Let's get you home. You have work in the morning too."

  So then we were driving, me flicking impatiently through the radio stations while Roman tried to fight for the songs he liked and I largely ignored him.

  There were two sets of townhouse developments in Navesink Bank, one was a typical middle-class sprawling development full of families and the occasional single man or woman. They were perfectly nice and I had done a walk-through of three different units before my father got wind and threw a fit. And, see, that sounds pathetic given my age, but then again... you don't know my father. Edward Bay was intimidating, if not downright terrifying, when he was in a good mood. So when he was ticked off, or personally offended like he was when I wanted to get a middle-class townhouse, he was wet-your-pants scary. Why was he personally offended, you ask? My father was a successful businessman. By that I mean he made the kind of money that bordered on obscene and he liked to live like he did. He liked to flash his wealth around. So he was insulted when I refused to dip into my trust fund and drop half a million dollars on a house way too big for one person to live in.

  From there, I put up a valiant effort to profess my independence and stick to my guns. But, well, my father made a career of browbeating men and women far greater than me.

  So I had a townhouse that cost half a million dollars that had two extra bedrooms I had no need for, a state of the art kitchen I had no skills to cook inside of, and a HOA fee that was the cost of a nice two-bedroom apartment in pretty much any town surrounding Navesink Bank.

  I'm not saying it wasn't nice to live in a beautiful townhouse. I wasn't a fan of falling into the 'poor little rich girl' trope. I was lucky; I knew that; I had always known that. That being said, some gifts came with clauses and mine was feeling forever under the thumb of a man who I had spent my entire life trying to free myself from. It meant that he would always feel he had a say in my life decisions, my career decisions, and pretty much anything else I did that he felt might reflect back on him.

  Roman parked in the driveway in front of my garage where my car was stashed away. Each townhouse in the neighborhood was two stories and part of a three-home section. The two on the ends had pitched roofs and shutters, the one in the center with a flat roof and a extended picture window. The bricks on the fronts were also in a pattern in colors: Regency brick, Dover, then Orleans. I had a house on the left with the pitched roof, the shutters, and the Regency brick. I might have resented the money coming from my trust fund, but it was a gorgeous house.

  "Do you want to crash here instead of driving home?" I asked as the car idled. We each had stuff stashed at each other's houses for the occasions when one of us got too tired or too drunk to drive home. He had an entire dresser in one of my guest rooms. I had half a closet in one of his.

  "You don't mind?" he asked, facing me and I noticed how tired he looked for the first time.

  "No, of course not," I said, shaking my head. "You can always stay."

  With that, I climbed out of his car and made my way over to the stairs that led to my front door, reaching under my shirt for the key I kept around my neck before Roman came up behind me. It was another thing that he would find out of character. I had a janitor's key chain I usually carried, fifteen different keys on it that I considered everyday essentials to have on me. So just having the key to my door, not even the deadbolt key, around my neck was weird. But I was worried about the keys jingling while I was looking around in the slums.

  I hit the code for the security and stepped inside. "Haul it, Rome. I don't want to call the security company again," I called, flicking on the lights as Rome came inside and closed the door. He hit the code for me as I moved to kick out of my flats before I remembered Paine's comments about me bleeding all over my shoes.

  The entryway was wide with a white staircase leading upstairs and crown molding. To the left was a large living room painted in a soft blue-gray and decorated with gray sofas and chairs and white accent furniture. There was a television mounted over a fireplace I had never used. The living room led into a small enclosed sun room off the back of the house. To the right was a dining room in a slightly darker shade of blue with a white dining set and sideboard. The dining room led into the kitchen off the back, white cabinetry and walls with stainless steel appliances and a massive island.

  "Coming up?" Roman asked, gesturing toward the stairs.

  "You go ahead. I think I am going to have a cup of tea before I tuck in."

  "Goodnight, Else," he said, running a hand down my arm before moving up the stairs.

  I waited ten minutes, standing right in my doorway like a weirdo, listening to him move around and settle down in bed before I dashed up the stairs as silently as I could and made my way into my room, going straight through to the bathroom and slipping off the shoes.

  Adrenaline and fear gone, the pain was settling in. The backs of my heels were cut open and, as Paine said, there was a fair amount of blood smeared onto the once-expensive ballet flats. I reached into the shower and turned on the heads as I stripped out of my clothes.

  Even though he wasn't exactly a scary guy, I was glad to have Rome in the house that night. It was silly to feel unsafe locked into a gated community with a full time staff of guards and a state of the art security system, but after the events of the night, I did. It was nice to have a man around. If for nothing other than my peace of mind.

  Rome's house, if you could believe it, was a step up from mine. He had a much better relationship with his father than I did with mine. This was evidenced by the fact that he worked at his father's tech company, one of many businesses he owned and the only one that wasn't medical or pharmaceutical. Rome and his father, Rhett, were in no way nerdy or even all that up-to-date on technological advances, but they were shrewd businessmen who knew that technology was where the money was. So after college, Roman came back to Navesink Bank and got a job making high six-figures and had something I called a mini-mansion one street over from where I grew up. In an actual mansion, like he had grown up in as well.

  That being said, his house was big and lonely and, when given the option, he always chose to stay with me.

  I dressed, slathered on some triple antibiotic and big band-aids on my heels, then climbed into bed. It was well on its way to two in the morning and I knew sleep wasn't going to come easy, despite having to get up for work at seven.

  My job was another thing my father hated.

  See, my dad worked in energy. As in, the not-so-green kinds: coal, oil, gas.

  I also worked in energy, but in the green kind: wind and solar.

  My father made tens of millions a year. I made the mid-low six figures.

  His gripe was not necessarily in the kind of energy I worked in. Even he knew that green was going to be the way of the future. His issue was with the fact that I worked for his competitor. In public, he would just throw an arm around me and claim I had inherited his enterprising spirit. In private, I got lectures.

  Yeah, twenty-eight years old and being lectured by my father.

  It made it really hard to feel like the adult I was at times.

  But, aside from the townhouse, I made my own way in life. My trust fund sat and didn't get touched and I worked to pay for my utilities, my car, my hair, my nights out on occasion, my wardrobe. I took care of myse
lf. Before my mother passed away when I was twelve, she told me that that was what she wanted more than anything for me- independence. She begged me to never let myself be dependent on a man. Being her dying wish, and perhaps an insight into the kind of life my mother lived being dependent on my father, I threw myself into that mission with every bit of determination I possessed. I got good grades at school, never settling for a B when I could get an A. It was the same attitude that got me through college, then got me a good job at a Fortune 250 company despite being one of the youngest and most inexperienced candidates.

  I never settled. I got what I set my mind to. I never gave up.

  So, even given the minor setback that was being chased by two gang members through the streets of Navesink Bank, I was not done. I was not settling for non-answers. I was not giving up.

  I just had to come up with a new strategy.

  The problem there being, I was obviously no kind of detective. And, good stamina aside, I had no real skills to help me in this particular mission. I couldn't involve Rome. I didn't want to involve my father. But I obviously needed some kind of help.

  Top of the next day's agenda was to go online and find out what kind of PI or whatever I could hire or bend the ear of in the area. Even if all they could do was point me in the right direction, it would be well worth whatever fee I would need to pay. I couldn't keep snooping around and putting my life in jeopardy to find answers.

  I needed to find someone who could just... give some to me.

  THREE

  Elsie

  I had two calls out to two different PIs I had come across when I searched around on my lunch break. One, to a man named Sawyer who boasted a resume that made me slightly uncomfortable to even think about, full of information on his time in the military and the extensive training he had done afterward. The second was to someone who, if his website was anything to go by, seemed younger, a bit more in touch with millennial generations and their penchant for broadcasting their lives online. His name was Barrett and he claimed he could find answers to any questions you might have.