by K. M. Scott
“Of course he’s lying. That’s what he does! He’s lied about everything since the day you met him, and now he says my sister is the one who told Hailey where we were and you want to believe him? I’m sorry, Jordan, but between the two of us I’m clearly the one who’s better at seeing through bullshit. He’s trying to get us to fight with each other and distract us.”
I tried to calm him down, but that was next to impossible. I had no choice but to show him what Justin had said was possible. Very possible. “How else did he find out where we were, Gage?”
He looked away and mumbled, “I don’t know.” It was an important question and one he was clearly trying to answer in his head with someone other than his sister.
“What did you two talk about when she was here? Why was she here in the first place?” I asked.
The pieces were beginning to fit together for me, and if the truth was that Denise had given us up, that meant Gage was going to have some very tough choices to make very soon. I knew he loved me, but if the choice was between his family and me, how could I expect him to choose me?
As Gage’s face went white, I knew my answer. There was no reason Justin would lie about something so egregious with the threat of losing his life dangling over his head. Even if he believed Gage wouldn’t carry out his threat, there was no reason he’d choose to blame Denise.
“Gage, we need to speak alone,” I said, wishing more than ever this was all over and we were back in my apartment in Brooklyn in each other’s arms complaining about the city heat as the not-so-cool air from my junky little fan blew over us.
His only response was a curt nod as he swiftly moved to the closet off the kitchen and opened the door. As Justin whimpered something about telling the truth, he dragged him and the chair both into the closet and slammed the door with a bang.
When he turned around, he looked like he had aged twenty years. Lines crossed his forehead and his mouth was set into a tight frown. “Jordan, I know you want to believe him, but he’s full of shit. No one in my family, least of all my sister, would do this to us…to me,” he said, running his hand through his hair.
He clearly had a pretty strong bias, but now didn’t seem to be the time to say anything like that. “I know you don’t want to believe that she would, but how else would Justin have known we were here and get here so fast? We weren’t here for even two hours before he showed up,” I said, hoping some cold hard facts would bring his always logical mind around to my side.
It wasn’t as though I wanted to believe that Denise would have done this to us. I wanted Gage’s family to love me. The goal certainly had not been to get them to dislike me enough that they would turn me over to people who wanted to kill me.
It wasn’t going to be that easy, though. As I finished speaking, Gage backed away from me, as if the very thought of Denise committing such a sin against him was enough to push him away.
“You don’t understand, Jordan. My family doesn’t operate like that. We aren’t some soap opera family that goes around stabbing each other in the back. Family is important to us, and no matter what, you do whatever you can to make sure they’re safe. Denise was raised with the same values I was, and you don’t betray family. Period.”
He wasn’t thinking clearly. That was evident in how he avoided my question. Gage didn’t want to hear logic right now. He wanted to return to normality. At this point, it was hard not to wonder if Gage and I would ever return to that state.
Still, I needed him to start thinking clearly, or he wouldn’t be considering all of the angles of the complex mess we were both in. “Gage, please. We need to think about this rationally,” I started, but before I could continue, he cut me off.
“Fine. Rationally, it doesn’t make sense that Denise would this to me.”
“What did you two talk about, Gage?” I asked again. I had a strong feeling that I knew why he was dodging the question.
“Jordan, that doesn’t mean anything. She didn’t do it. End of story.”
From the closet, Justin yelled that he wasn’t lying, but even as I was beginning to truly believe what he’d said, Gage was nowhere near buying his story.
Ignoring our captive’s pleas, I raised my hands to cradle Gage’s face. “No, not end of story, baby. You mean to tell me that what you two talked about had nothing to do with what’s going on with me?”
His gaze dropped, and I knew the truth without him saying a word. “You two talked about us being on the run, and we’re supposed to believe she isn’t the one who sold us out? Why would he lie Gage? You threatened to kill him if he didn’t tell the truth. You, yourself, said he didn’t seem to be lying, so what am I missing here?”
I understood feeling betrayed and refusing to admit the truth. If someone had claimed Nina had done this to us, I would be doing the exact same thing, but if Gage didn’t start thinking clearly, it was going to cost us even more than it already had.
The logic of my point was setting in, but he fought it tooth and nail. “No. No, Jordan, I refuse to believe that Denise would do this.”
I looked up into his dark eyes so troubled and asked, “Why was she here, baby? All you need to do is answer that and we’ll know if he lied or not.”
“She needed to get some work off of her laptop,” he answered, but the look on his face showed he knew something about that sounded wrong.
“You mean the laptop we were doing all our research on?” I replied.
The anger had taken longer than expected to set in. I was busy trying to get Gage to understand the peril this put us in and I had almost forgotten to be mad. Almost. How could he have been as foolish as to hand over the only edge we may have had over Hailey and Justin. Of course, she had probably done a quick search of the history and figured out exactly what we knew.
“Listen, I don’t blame you for telling her what was going on. She’s your sister. How could you have known that she was gathering information?”
“Stop it right there,” he interrupted sharply. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Listen Gage, whether you like it or not, we’re going to have to face the reality that someone told them where we were and it’s looking like your sister is the prime candidate.”
He didn’t like hearing that, but I couldn’t stop to sugar coat it for him. We needed to make a move now or at any minute Hailey or the police would be showing up at the cabin’s front door. I didn’t know which was worse.
He opened his mouth to speak, but this time I cut him off and raised my hand to stop him.
“No, I know it isn’t what you want to hear right now, but you’re going to have to deal with that later. Right now, we have Justin tied up in the closet, but we don’t know where Hailey is. She could be close. We can’t get hung up on whether it was your sister or not. We’ll figure that out later.”
It wasn’t perfect, and I certainly had no interest in dealing with this later as opposed to right now, but we needed to get moving unless we wanted to face serious trouble. Gage didn’t want to deal with it later either, but something in what I said must have resonated because he took a deep breath in.
“We’ll find out who really did this Jordan. I promise,” he said as took my hand.
As I looked into his eyes, I hoped that he was right that Denise hadn’t been the one to tell Hailey where we were, but I seriously doubted it. “Of course, but we need to focus right now on what to do next,” I said, thankful that he seemed to be returning to his normal self.
“We need to see if there’s anything left for Justin to give us. After that, we’re going to have to do something with him. It isn’t safe and you’re right. Hailey is probably on her way and that isn’t good. We can’t leave him here and get my family involved in whatever Hailey’s doing, though,” Gage said, his confidence showing in his voice.
I nodded my agreement and he kissed me on the forehead before crossing the room to open the door to let Justin out. “You ready to tell the truth, or do you need a little more time
in the closet?” Gage asked as he dragged the chair back to the center of the room. He spoke to the man like an untrained dog, earning a glare from Justin.
Whatever he’d been doing in the closet while Gage and I were speaking, it hadn’t included mustering up any courage. When he was settled and the chair had stopped wobbling, he looked up at Gage and pleaded. “I swear I told you. I’m not lying,” he whimpered.
“Gage, we need to move on. We don’t have time,” I said quietly. I knew we couldn’t keep fixating on the Denise issue or we would never get any further information before Gage eventually lost it and killed Justin.
He threw me a look that told me he was less than thrilled but he clearly saw the truth in my reasoning.
“Justin, if you’ve got anything else to say, I better hear it and it better be damn good,” Gage growled.
“Hailey…Hailey’s mad, and she’s on her way,” he answered, his eyes flitting around as if he expected her to crawl out of the woodwork.
“Gage, what are we going to do?” I asked from beside him as Justin’s description of Hailey sent chills up and down my spine. A madwoman was after me and wanted me dead, and I didn’t want to give her a chance to achieve that goal.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about it in front of this one,” he said with a jerk of his head towards the crying Justin. “I need you to go upstairs and grab the things we brought. We need to get going.”
Whatever harm hearing his sister may have been involved in this whole thing had faded, and the man I knew and loved was back. I ran upstairs and grabbed our things, but being out of his sight only made my emotions about Denise come surging back.
Silently, I fumed as I threw things in bags and went back downstairs. How could she do this? What was her problem? I hardly knew the woman and she helped someone who wanted to kill me! I shook it off as best I could and raced back downstairs to join Gage.
“Good. Now grab some bottles of water out of the refrigerator. We’ll get food on the way.”
Again, I followed his directions, returning to stuff our bags with all the water I could find. Gage stood silently in front of Justin who sat slumped over in the chair as if he’d lost all hope of seeing another day alive.
“Did you knock him out so we could talk?” I asked.
“No, but he’s headed in that direction all on his own. Most likely hasn’t stopped to eat while he’s been pursuing us. He’s coasting on fumes,” Gage answered stoically.
I had never seen a time before where Gage had lacked any form of mercy. It scared me a little, but I knew he would never display that kind of behavior in regards to me. Still, it was unnerving to see the man who I knew was capable of so much love and tenderness staring at a man who looked like he was dying and not giving a damn.
There was a strangeness in seeing Justin like this too. For almost the entire time I had known him, he had simply been Brock. I was supposed to be in love with this man. I was married to this man, but I had no idea who he was other than a pathetic conman.
I had kissed his lips and far more than that. We had made not only love but memories, moments that now felt cheap and contrived.
I had made plans for a future with this man, and even though I had known deep in my heart he wasn’t the one for me, the choice I made had seemed like the safe one at the time. Now as I looked at him after all that had happened, I felt nothing but disgusted at how willing I’d been to discount love for security. I’d gotten neither from him in the end and both from Gage.
“All right, Justin, wake up,” Gage barked, startling me out of my thoughts.
“Please, please I’m telling…”
“Yeah, we get it. You’re telling the truth. Enough already. We have to move you, so here’s how this is going to go. You’re going to stay still while I loosen the rope from the chair. Do not move after that. If you do, Jordan will shoot you. I’m going to adjust your bindings and then I’ll tell you when you can move again. You fail to follow these instructions and I will kill you. Do you understand me?”
Gage still held the gun and the vein in his head was pulsing. If Justin had any ideas about being brave or daring, I hoped he wouldn’t act on them. I didn’t give a damn about his welfare, but I didn’t want to see the man I loved kill him.
“Yes,” Justin said. “I swear I won’t do a thing. Just don’t kill me.” He had given up the tough guy act and seemed to be falling back into his natural state.
A pathetic mess.
And that was just what happened. To my great surprise, Justin followed orders to the letter and didn’t try anything stupid. When we were done, he stood, still tied up, and did his best to avoid eye contact with the both of us. He stared at the floor and looked like a fidgeting rat the way he looked back and forth as if counting the floor boards.
“Jordan,” Gage said, his tone softening as he looked at me, all the while keeping a hand on Justin’s back and shoulder. “I need to get him to the car and I need both of my hands. Are you able to carry our things out and hold the gun?”
I smiled and nodded. “You are looking at the all-time champion of one trip from the car to the apartment with all the grocery bags.”
My voice still sounded terrible, and Gage almost laughed before catching himself, which was enough to make me feel slightly better. I didn’t know what we were going to do, but more than anything I just wanted Justin out of the picture so Gage and I could have moments of laughter again. Real, beautiful moments, not ones that were cheapened because they were tainted with this mess we were in.
“Right then, let’s go.” He gave Justin a nudge and he responded by taking a few tentative steps forward. “Just like I said, one foot in front of the other and don’t do anything stupid.”
We were a motley crew making our way down the mountainside away from the cabin. We reached the vehicle and Justin was clearly surprised when Gage opened the door and gently placed him in the backseat.
“See, that’s how you put someone in a vehicle, you animal,” he said and shut the door.
When he turned to me he must have seen the anger and confusion in my face because the first words out of his mouth were, “I know this looks bad, but he isn’t staying with us. I plan to dump him a few miles outside of town. Since he has no cellphone, it’ll slow them down while Hailey looks for him to try and figure out where we’re going.”
His words were hushed and although I could tell he was thinking of things on the fly, I trusted his judgement.
“And then where are we going?” I asked, earning a concerned look from Gage.
He put his hand out and gently rubbed my cheek. “We’ll figure that out after we take care of him. For now, I’m thinking we talk in the car as though we’re going to California. If we do that, maybe they’ll follow the false trail and it can net us some extra time while we sort out where we’re going.”
I took a deep breath of Wyoming mountain air and tried to convince myself that wherever we went it would be okay.
“How are you feeling? Are you okay?” he asked.
His eyes showed his concern, and he furrowed his brow as he looked at my bruised neck. I wasn’t okay, and neither was he, but now wasn’t the time to break down in tears over it. The business with Denise was still in the front of my mind, along with what we’d do about Hailey and Justin, but I knew we had to keep on track. Otherwise, the entire situation would start unraveling around us.
For the sake of the man I loved, I hoped it hadn’t been her who told Hailey and Justin where we were. I knew if it came to light that Denise was responsible for putting me in harm’s way, Gage would be devastated. His family meant the world to him, even if he hadn’t been back home to Wyoming in years. That was the kind of man he was. That loyalty ran deep in him, and if his sister had betrayed it, I didn’t know how he’d handle it.
“I’ve been better. Thinking I may need to pick up a scarf to avoid odd stares in public.” My hands instinctively went to my swollen neck and I winced. This was just what I needed on top
of everything else.
“I’ll find you the best one there is,” he vowed as he kissed the top of my hand.
This small moment of sweetness amidst the chaos felt nice. My mother used to say that even in the darkest storm there is hope, and I was trying to believe that. Admittedly, things hadn’t gone our way much, but at least we had Justin tied up in the backseat. I couldn’t help but think that was a good thing, although it would have been better if Hailey was tied up next to him.
Maybe if we could weather the storm long enough the glimmer of hope flickering inside me would grow into something even better. I hoped so. We’d seen enough bad times to last a lifetime.
Chapter Twelve
Gage
Jordan smiled up at me and for a moment that happiness only she could make me feel returned. She was my Jordan, the complicated, sexy, and entirely maddening woman I couldn’t imagine my life without. My gaze drifted down to her neck to see the bruises from Justin’s hands choking her already darkening against her tanned skin, and a tiny spark of rage ignited inside me. If I wanted to keep that happy feeling, I would have to get her that scarf and quick.
It was bad enough he had tricked her into falling for him and then helped in her abduction, but the fact that he had nearly strangled her made me want to rip his arms off.
I walked Jordan to her side of the car and let her in before getting in the driver’s side myself. Looking up at the rearview mirror, I saw Justin staring back at me with a look that said he wasn’t sure I wouldn’t toss him out of the car and leave him up here in the mountains to die. A small part of me liked that, so I narrowed my eyes to angry squints and in my best badass voice said, “One problem with you and I’ll leave you out here to be eaten by fucking coyotes.”
The interrogation hadn’t gone as well as I had hoped, a fact I didn’t want Justin or Jordan figuring out. In truth, Justin hadn’t told us much that we didn’t already know and I knew he was lying about Denise. He could cry and whine that he was telling the truth all he wanted, but I knew that wasn’t the case. Denise was family, and family didn’t hurt each other like that.
