by C. L. Stone
We were just stepping outside, after all.
He held me by the elbow, encouraging me to walk with him. He spoke about the weather as we passed people. I followed him through the inn’s main lobby, noting a handful of other guests and employees, but no Loïc or Ace in sight. No one seemed interested in us.
He guided me to a different door than where I’d entered earlier. He released my arm so he could open the door.
I plastered my smile to my face and he walked beside me. The front porch split into two stairs and connected to the front sidewalk. I followed him down until we were standing by the street.
“Don’t say anything yet,” he said in a low voice, and he kept his own smile beaming. “And please don’t run off.”
“Why should I run?” I asked. “I thought Ace sent you to me.”
“Seems everything has gone balls up. Your date is going to have to find his own way out of his own mess. Those girls you were talking to...”
I sucked in a breath, holding it for a minute. My heart beat increased, my breath quickening. The girls. They seemed brash. The hostess didn’t like them. They said they had been in Atlanta, didn’t they? Back to Atlanta was what they said? “They’re the vloggers? The ones that showed up in his hotel room?”
The man nodded and lost his smile when we seemed to be out of range. “I’m not even hired yet, and this is some messed up...” He stopped and then glanced across the street. “I’m supposed to take you for a ride, but if you’re uncomfortable...And honestly, I’m uncomfortable. I don’t like not knowing everything going on.”
I agreed with him, but I considered the situation I was in. I needed to get away before there was a scene with vloggers who knew of the real Eva and could figure out who I was. Especially if I was connected to Ace at all at this point “What’s your name?” I asked.
He pressed his palms together in front of himself, and did a gentle bow of his head. “Oliver.”
I was silent for a moment, studying his broad stance. This could be some sort of mistake to go with him, but I was in the middle of a city without a cell phone and had no idea which direction I should go. I couldn’t go back inside. Standing in the street didn’t seem like a good idea either.
“Can we agree this is really weird?”
He frowned. “I’ve had plenty of weird in the last couple of weeks.”
I spread my arms out, and then opened the small black pocketbook I carried. “You can search me, but I’ve nothing but lipstick and cash. And I don’t think I could take you in a fist fight.”
He chuckled and his shoulders relaxed. “No, I don’t think you could.”
I sensed he was more hesitant than myself. I needed to show I was willing to behave. “Leave the door unlocked and drive slowly,” I said. “If I get uncomfortable, I’ll have you stop. If you get any more uncomfortable than you are now, stop and allow me to get out. Just make some circles around tourist spots. We’ll stay in public. Can’t be too much trouble if we do that, right?”
Oliver nodded in the affirmative and motioned for me to follow. We dashed across the street until he stopped at a dark SUV parked under a broken streetlight.
He took out his keys, smashed his thumb against the key fob until the headlights blinked at us. “Get in.”
I could only hope I wasn’t getting in with someone more dangerous than the vloggers. I hurried around and climbed in. He jammed the key into the ignition and within moments, we were rolling away from the Wentworth Mansion.
My heart beat so wildly it was shaking me. I put my seatbelt on and pressed my body to the back of the seat, wanting some stability. I did this until it was stinging my burned skin.
Oliver started out going down a few avenues, and then we wound up in an area with warehouses, and soon reached a dead end.
“Sorry,” he said. He pulled his cell phone out, pushing a few buttons to bring up a map. He studied it a moment. “I don’t know this town. You don’t know where to go, do you?”
I shook my head, glancing up and down the street. “I’m not from here. I know I saw tourists, but I can’t remember which direction.”
“They seemed to be all over.” Oliver passed the phone to me. “See the beige block of buildings not too far from the water there? That’s probably it. Help me get us there.”
I held his phone in my hands, and over time—after only going down the wrong way once on a one-way alley—we managed to find the start of Market Street, and then were forced to slow because of tourists. There was a large, brick open-air building in the center of the road and everything was lit up with bright streetlights. The shops in the building seemed to be packing up for the night, but the area was still heavily crowded where there were bars and restaurants.
He made one pass, but once we got to the end, he turned around. The road wasn’t long and we’d be driving in circles, a little too noticeable if we did it for long. “If you can find a place to park,” I said, “we don’t have to keep driving.”
“We just need to stick together and take off if we see any trouble.”
He crawled through the street, going up one way and down the other until he found a parking lot where a man stood by, asking for money to park there. Oliver pulled in, handed the man some cash, and then parked in a spot in the back between two large trucks.
My mind buzzed with a thousand questions. It didn’t seem far enough still. Those girls...I was so stupid just talking to random people. Even if they hadn’t been the vloggers, anyone could have looked a little closer at me and recognized my face.
“What’s going to happen to Ace?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Oliver said, and he turned the engine off and unbuckled. He turned to me, the intensity in his eyes returning, and a curious twitch of his mouth appeared. “Frankly, I don’t like any of it. I was told there would be some weird stuff sometimes. I don’t like this secrecy.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly, “for getting me out so...discreetly. I wish I could give you a straight answer. I honestly don’t know what’s going on with Loïc and Ace. I just met Ace yesterday.”
A thick dark eyebrow rose. “I’ve been interviewing for months. I heard working with Courteau wasn’t like normal jobs. The pay was sky-high. Maybe a little too good. I should have known it probably meant something weird.”
“Were you interviewing as an assistant?”
“Security, I think. Although he seems to mix the two.” He shook his head. “You only met Ace yesterday?”
I nodded, and then paused, unsure I should continue. We both seemed wrapped up in something neither of us understood. Was he being honest, or was this a Loïc trick, too? And was talking about this breaking some sort of trust with Ace? He never told me any such thing, and I had little to hide...except for who I really was.
Oliver bit his lower lip, eyeballing me. He then checked the mirrors and around us. “Look, Courteau was pretty clear. He wanted me to drive you around a bit, told me not to hurt you...which I wouldn’t but he was specific. He also said not to ask you questions about you. And that if I said Ace, you’d believe me.”
The concern that Loïc had for my safety surprised me. “I don’t know him,” I said. “Does he know about me? I was told this was the first time I’d be seeing him. When I passed by him once on the way to the restroom, he never even looked at me.”
He twisted in the seat, arm going up until his palm was pressing to my seat’s headrest. With the way he held it, it broadened his bicep. “Well isn’t that funny? Earlier today, he told me his buddy, Ace, had a new girlfriend and he wanted to learn everything he could about you.”
I sat up quickly, an eyebrow raised. “Ace told me Loïc was some sort of rival.”
Oliver pressed his lips together, making an O shape. “Naw, Courteau told me Ace was a friend. His friend had a stalker. We had to look out for him as a favor. We found out about you. We didn’t know if you were sent by stalker girl, Zoey and her friend. Or even if you were some sort of gold digger. Or something else. We d
idn’t know yet.”
“I didn’t know Ace existed until yesterday, and he had me pretend to be his date tonight. Could Loïc be lying about this friendship?”
“They could both be, which is really asinine since Courteau insisted on lies being unacceptable for the job, and if he learned I had at any time, he’d fire me.”
We fell silent, staring at each other. The uneasy feeling that had followed me around since meeting Ace now settled firmly. There was also the way Loïc snubbed me completely, but he knew who I was already? In a way, that felt like a lie, too. This also wasn’t some preemptive strike like what Ace suggested. They knew I existed, so it was just like...getting to know each other in public?
“Look,” he said after a few minutes. “We’re getting jerked around here. I have to stay, though. Courteau...knows a few things about me and I have to be sure it doesn’t go too far. But if you need to go, I recommend it.”
The revelation had me studying him closer. His intense gaze was full of caution, wary. It didn’t surprise me when he had said security. He seemed protective and remarkably calm when dealing with the possibly explosive situation before. He was also careful around me, wary to let a woman into his private car.
Ever since I met Ace, I was hiding from the truth. Yes, I left Atlanta after the police raided my home, but my motive wasn’t to deceive anyone. Ace made me think I could correct the errors and still hide from the nastiness that was unraveling on the internet, but his plan was to distract Loïc, a person I didn’t know.
I had agreed to it, but under duress. Would I have ever agreed to this without knowing everything? It seemed to be the same thing Oliver was debating. Should we be getting involved with people we didn’t know?
I examined Oliver, debating on telling him everything. I needed someone on the outside who could give me a second opinion. His admittance to being stuck because Loïc held something over him jerked the truth from my lips.
“I can’t run either,” I said. “Ace knows things about me but he had promised to fix it. It’s the only reason I was playing along. I don’t like it but I felt I had no choice. Well, I did, but it seemed like a good solution at the time.”
Oliver frowned. He removed his hand from the headrest and looked forward to the brick wall of the building we were parking next to. “I’m not really supposed to ask about you.”
“You aren’t asking. I’m volunteering the information,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m getting mixed up in, but tell me if I’m crazy.”
So I told him. He listened, keeping an eye on our surroundings, occasionally meeting my gaze. I told him about my mistake running away from Atlanta after I heard the news, getting lost on a farm road, Ace picking me up, and everything that had happened since.
When I was finished, Oliver’s mouth slackened and he scratched along his broad jawline. “That’s some story.”
“I’m not lying,” I said. “I can actually prove it. I was willing to go back before Ace told me what he wanted and promised to help me. I want to know if I’m getting in over my head, and if I’m just making things worse for myself. And if Ace is good to his word or he can’t really help...and that we’re not just in the middle of some frat boy prank game we don’t understand.”
His held the steering wheel, twisting his hands over it. “My last employer was involved in things I don’t even want to repeat now, asking me to do things for her I didn’t want. When I refused, she set me up. I’m innocent, but it was basically my word against fake evidence she had created.”
“And Loïc knew?” I asked.
“He was the one that got me out from under her. I was grateful, and when I told him I needed a new job, he made me an offer.”
“Very generous of him. How did you meet him?”
“He was in the middle of it. She was asking me to do something against him...at the time, someone I had never met before.”
I was trying to follow, but his cagey description of what happened made it difficult. “How bad could it be?”
His upper lip twitched and then he broke with a sigh. “I didn’t want to scare you, but she tried to say I attacked her. She had pictures of herself covered in bruises.” He turned to me, stabbing the steering wheel with a fingertip to make his point. “But I’ve never touched her. She hired me for security, so I was around at times when she was alone, but...I’d never touched a woman who didn’t want me to.”
“What did you do that made her so mad to want to suggest something like that?”
“She wanted me to get back at something Courteau did to her. Wanted me to go to his house and plant something. I didn’t know him at the time, and I refused. I knew if I did, it would be a lot more trouble. That kind of thing follows you forever.”
“Did Loïc...did he hurt her? Is that where the bruises came from?”
“I don’t think so. I was with her for a while. Courteau never even talked to her. I got the feeling the bruises were from some of her...more exotic sexual exploitations.”
It didn’t make sense to target someone you didn’t know, but it had to be bad enough to blackmail your security agent. I sat back, gazing out the car window. “How did you get away?”
“When she threatened me, I went to Courteau. I don’t know why. I thought just telling him would somehow help me save my own skin. At that point, I didn’t care. I took the chance over getting involved and ending up in jail. Only, he said he could fix it and asked if I wanted to work with him.” He rolled his head back against the headrest. “And I thought I was done with weird situations like that. Here I am in a car with a woman I don’t know. No offense, but after...just...I’m not sure I want this job right now.”
We’d been in the car a while. People were heading back to their cars and leaving, or arriving to take up space. The car was also getting stuffy with our breathing and the air turned off.
“Maybe we should get out of the car,” I said. “Let’s take a walk, within view of people but out of hearing range.”
“Good idea.”
I hopped out of the SUV and met him at the curb. There was a long stretch of Market Street that was crowded with people heading into restaurants and bars for the night. On the other end was a concrete park with a splash pad fountain.
I walked beside Oliver as we headed toward the park, wondering if I felt intimidated next to his broad stature and his intense gaze. However, he had every opportunity to say or do something in the vehicle. He could have driven me anywhere. He had done exactly what he said he would.
Seemed he was more terrified of me. After the experience he’d shared, I didn’t blame him. Being alone with a woman meant he was vulnerable to lies.
There were several concrete pillars about thigh high surrounding the central fountain, and I realized when we got close that they sprayed water around. We started a slow walk around it.
I breathed in the cool air coming from the harbor nearby. Stars were sparkling overhead, brighter when we were out from streetlights and the main tourist strip. “I heard nice things about Charleston before I decided to come here,” I said. “And it is really pretty.”
“Beauty can be deceptive.”
I looked at him, but he stared at the ground as he walked.
“Did you...like her? Your last employer?”
“At first. Until she turned on me when I wouldn’t do something illegal. I should have known though.”
“I hope you won’t let what she did make you bitter.”
He stopped walking and looked up at me. His dark eyes met mine, and his face was shadowed. “I’ve seen a lot of things in my line of work, but I made assumptions about her because she was pretty. I won’t make the same mistake.”
“That’s what I said after I learned what my ex had done.”
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his dark suit pants, making his shoulders and chest stretch the material of his turtleneck sweater. His lower lip twisted to the side as he gazed at me. “You don’t have to stay, you know.”
“Ace p
romised he could help me. Do you think he was telling the truth?”
“I don’t know what to believe, but they’ve got enough money to pay off the right people. So possibly, yes. Will he? I don’t know. I don’t know him.” He shifted his weight on his feet. “I think I believe you. Your story. If you go, the worst that would happen is you’d spend a couple of months in jail. That’s the absolute worst possibility if they don’t believe you’re innocent. You were scared. And a couple of months is a drop in the bucket.”
“I don’t want to go to jail.”
“There’s a chance you wouldn’t. If you can convince a judge you were naïve thinking if you weren’t involved, you were just avoiding the drama, and show them the craziness happening to you online, it seems believable. You could show them the comments.”
I sighed. I didn’t want to do any of that. It made me angry that I had to defend my honor to a court system when I was innocent. It was worse when I considered doing so would only agitate the hate mob on the internet more. Bad things happening to good people just made me upset, and now it was happening to me. “How long would it be before a trial would come around for something like this?”
“Depends on how backed up the court system is in that town, although the bigger the city, the longer the wait. A few months. Maybe a year.”
“And I’d have to stay in Atlanta until then. I wouldn’t want to stay in my old apartment or I might have my own vloggers or news people chasing me around.”
“Any friends to stay with?” he asked.
“No. I don’t know how I’d be able to get another job during all of that either.” The more I talked about it, the more panicked I got. The entire idea of it seemed crazy to me. To go back to face people, to try to get by, find a new place to live and hope no one followed me.
The wind picked up from the ocean nearby. He took a step toward me, until our toes were aligned. He tilted his head down to look at my face. His broad stature protected me from the worst of it the breeze blowing into my face.
