Runaway Heiress

by Jennifer Morey

  When his lips left hers, she arched her neck to stay in contact, but he was out of reach.

  “Do you want me?”

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  “How much?” He moved slow and deep, knowing exactly where she needed him.

  Sensation robbed her of coherent thought. “More.”

  His mouth found the swell of her breasts and he loved each nipple with his tongue. Then he rocked his hips against hers, creating sweet pressure that sent any lingering ability to think straight into oblivion. The sensations intensified, each movement was deliberate, practiced and sure.

  “More,” she urged him.

  He gave her more, pushing harder into her. A deep coil of sensation began to unfurl. He held her gaze through her overwhelming orgasm. She cried out with the strength of it and heard him immediately follow her to that place of sheer ecstasy.

  Coming back down to earth, she lay on her side with him behind her. He said nothing. She couldn’t say a thing. She could only float in wonder over the way he made her feel. Except now apprehension began to encroach.

  His forefinger traced patterns on her shoulder and arm. Goose bumps dotted her skin and he kissed them.

  She felt a change in their relationship. That intimate moment when he’d had his hand on her stomach had triggered the shift, deepened their connection. For the better?

  Would Jasper eventually grow tired of the monotony? He might stick around for the baby but would he distance himself? She might be overreacting but her experience with Darien made it difficult, if not impossible, for her to trust.

  Chapter 14

  Jasper sat with Sadie in the waiting room of the hospital. The doctors told them Chad hadn’t awakened yet and if he didn’t awaken soon they’d begin to get gravely concerned. Sadie hadn’t taken that news well. She sat in the chair beside him, leaning her head on his shoulder.

  He heard her stomach growl. “I’ll go get us something to eat.” He started to move.

  She lifted her head. “No. Let me. I need to do something.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’ll go.”

  She’d been behaving strangely ever since this morning. After making love, they’d taken a shower together, which had further cemented their bond. No negativity or weight of their circumstance intruded, not until they’d finished getting ready for the day, for the trip here. A gradual sobering had occurred. On the plane Sadie had fallen into silent withdrawal.

  Jasper had to admit, the potency of their chemistry unsettled him. He knew it unsettled her. She didn’t trust him. He had his own demons.

  But he wouldn’t leave her alone long. His phone rang and he saw it was Kadin.

  He nodded to Sadie and she walked from the room. He’d let her get a head start, but after this call he’d have to make sure she was all right.

  “Hey, Jasper. I have some more on Jafari.”

  As Jasper listened, he grew more and more stunned over the extent of criminal activities Darien had hidden from Sadie. And afraid that she might be more of a threat to him than she realized.

  * * *

  Sadie walked toward the elevator wishing she didn’t feel so down in the dumps. Her night and morning with Jasper had been magical. Why couldn’t she keep feeling that way? She already knew the answer, but that didn’t stop her from wishing anyway. This was when clairvoyance would come in handy. If only she could see the future she’d feel safe.

  Pressing the elevator down button, she stepped inside. A man entered just as she pressed the main level. With his head down, he reached over and pressed level two.

  Something about him made her uneasy. A big man standing well over six feet, he had short, fine brown hair and a trimmed mustache. He looked at her and recognition slammed her. He was the man who’d killed Darien’s supplier.

  The elevator stopped at the second floor. Sadie moved quickly to the door as it began to open, but the man removed a gun from inside his jacket and pressed the barrel to her back.

  “Walk off the elevator and go to the stairs,” he said. “Make a sound and I’ll kill you.”

  “Do that and you’ll be caught.”

  “No. I’ll be gone before anyone sees me.”

  His calmness frightened her. She walked off the elevator, searching for someone to help her. A nurse disappeared into a room and no one else was in the hall.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he repeated. “My gun is silenced.”

  Nothing she said would persuade him. She had to do as he said. Her baby...

  “Open the door,” the man ordered.

  Sadie had no choice. Just realizing that terrified her. She went into the stairwell.

  He pushed her toward the descending stairs. Sadie went down, glancing back to see the man right behind her aiming the gun. He wouldn’t kill her. If he intended that, he’d have done it already, wouldn’t he? Especially here in the stairwell with no one around.

  At the main level, she bolted for the door. If she could run into the hall and find help...

  She had her hand on the doorknob when the man grabbed her long hair and yanked her backward. She collided with him and he then grabbed her arm, painfully keeping her from falling.

  “Try that again and I’ll kill you now,” he said into her ear.

  “Darien wants me alive,” she said, not knowing if that was true but trying the scare tactic anyway.

  “He’s through with you after you sent your watch guard after him. He doesn’t react well to anyone getting the best of him. He said if you gave me any trouble to not bother bringing you to him.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t care what you believe. Get moving.” He pushed her toward the stairs.

  She stepped down.

  “Why is he doing this?” she asked.

  “You don’t know?” The man chuckled darkly. “That doesn’t surprise me. He was a fool for using your computer in the first place. I kept telling him not to do that but he wouldn’t listen.”

  Computer? What computer? Five years ago she’d had a laptop, the only computer she’d taken with her. She didn’t use it anymore. She’d purchased an updated one last year. “Why was he using my computer?”

  The man didn’t appear to mind telling her, which probably meant he didn’t consider her a threat. Which also meant he probably intended to kill her.

  “To hide all his transactions.”

  Darien used her computer to conduct his drug dealings?

  “After he was finished, he planned to destroy your laptop. In the meantime he wanted to make sure if anyone confiscated his computer they wouldn’t find anything.”

  At the garage level, he forced her to open the door. But he took her arm again and stopped her long enough to check for other people.

  “What’s so important about my laptop?” she asked, stalling. “If police were to confiscate his computer, they’d likely take mine, too.”

  “Not if you weren’t there. Darien planned to put you somewhere safe until the deal was done.” He shook his head with a snide laugh. “He never imagined you’d get away on your own—and take the computer.”

  “Maybe he was too busy thinking of himself.”

  “He should have listened to me and killed you when he found you, instead of killing that bum.”

  Sadie closed her eyes briefly. Poor Bernie. He’d died for no reason, because of some sick man’s need for revenge. Darien couldn’t stand it that she’d left him, that she’d escaped him and he hadn’t known.

  “Get walking.” He shoved her and she had to walk.

  Sadie walked slowly. “How long have you been killing for Darien?” he asked.

  “It’s not always killing. I’m the other guy at his side. Steven was the public fac
e. I’m the guy in the black market.” He took her by her sleeve and yanked her in the direction of a parked van.

  “How did Darien find me? How did he know Bernie and I were close?” she asked. That had always bothered her. Steven had always been careful when he’d come to see her so she still wasn’t convinced Darien had learned from him.

  “Your father told him where you were.”

  A shock wave made her stop walking as she gaped at the man. “What?”

  “Darien and your father kept in contact after you disappeared. Your dad worked tirelessly to find you and Darien used that to his advantage.” The big man narrowed his eyes as though in mock shrewdness. “Matias Loredo is a smart businessman but he has no instinct when it comes to people. People are only useful to serve as his pawns.”

  That definitely matched her father to a T. “How did my father find me?”

  “He found out about your nonprofit. Saw a picture of you at one of your fund-raisers.”

  “I don’t remember anyone taking a picture of me. I was careful about that. And I never agreed to do any news features.”

  “He had people all over the country keeping a watch out for you. Policemen. Reporters. Friends and business associates. One of them must have seen you at the fund-raiser and taken a picture.” He grabbed her sleeve again and forced her onward. “Your father found you over a year ago. Darien took his time planning.”

  Darien had known for that long? As demented as he was, he likely enjoyed the planning.

  “He didn’t know where I lived, though.”

  “No, not until a few weeks before he asked me to kill Bernie.”

  He spoke as though killing was nothing, just another task. Sadie felt sick.

  Shoving her between the van and the car next to it, he let go of her shirt. Sadie stumbled and kept her footing as she turned to face him.

  “What are you going to do?” She didn’t need to ask. He’d kill her, but maybe not here, in this public parking garage. She could see a car driving to a lower level, already having passed them.

  She heard another’s engine start.

  “Darien can’t risk you going to the police with what you know,” the man said. He stood close to her, with the gun pressed to her stomach and his back to the garage. “Your dad thinks Darien will bring you home to him.”

  Would he just kill her right here? He’d shoot her and her body would fall onto the concrete? What about her baby? Would it make a difference if she told him she was pregnant? No hardened killer like him would care.

  The car she’d heard backed out of its space. She saw it on the far side. The driver slowly pulled away from the space and would have to pass them to get to the exit.

  “I wouldn’t even consider trying to attract any attention,” the man said.

  She looked into his dark eyes as the car drove in a U-turn to head for the exit down the lane. The driver didn’t glance her way, just kept going.

  “Good girl.”

  “If you let me go, I’ll pay you double what Darien offered.”

  “Get in the van.” He leaned over and pulled the back door open.

  In the few seconds it took for him to do that, Sadie decided to act. She grabbed his gun and stomped hard on his knee, bending it backward and hoping she broke or tore something. His hand loosened on the gun and she took it from him.

  He retaliated too fast for her, hitting her face and grasping the gun over her hand, squeezing until pain bit her. Prying the gun from her, he would have aimed for her, but Sadie stepped back and bent so she could swing her leg. She clipped his wrist and the gun went flying.

  Once she found her footing again, she bolted for the front of the van, running around that and the next car before going between those parked vehicles. Out in the parking garage lane, she noticed a car approaching, coming in off the street.

  She waved her hands above her head. “Help!”

  The car stopped. Sadie ran to the passenger door.

  As she put her hands on the handle, Bernie’s killer fired at the driver. The driver ducked and started the car moving.

  Bernie’s killer jumped out of the way as the car passed and squealed tires into the turn to the lower levels.

  Sadie turned and ran for the exit. She could see the opening, just fifty feet or so to go.

  Bernie’s killer gained on her. She heard his running feet on the concrete floor of the parking garage. He grabbed her hair first.

  “No!” Sadie reached back and tried to pry his fingers from her hair. He yanked and made her lose her balance.

  She stumbled as she attempted to correct her balance but then he tripped her. She twisted so she wouldn’t land on her stomach, crashing painfully on the concrete on her side.

  Bernie’s killer had let go of her hair. Sadie rolled onto her back and would have jumped to her feet, but he had his gun aimed at her. He looked ahead toward the exit. No cars entered. He could shoot her right now and no one would see. No one in front of him...

  Sadie heard another person running from behind Bernie’s killer. As she looked there, she saw Jasper slow to a walk with a gun. He fired in the next instant. Bernie’s killer dropped, a hole in his head. He fell with staring eyes next to her.

  “Ugh.” She pushed his hand off her and scrambled to her feet.

  Jasper ran to her. She threw her arms around him, thank you for saving our baby running through her mind but she didn’t say the words aloud. She felt them, though. Jasper must, too, he held her tight from long seconds.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes. But for a few seconds I thought that was it,” she said. “I thought I was dead.”

  “Not on my watch.” He kissed her temple. “Let’s go back up to the room. Chad woke up right after you left.”

  She made a sound of gladness and rushed off toward the elevator.

  Jasper followed. On the ride up, he told her about Kadin’s call.

  “We already know he’s from Iran,” she said before he finished. What had Kadin found?

  “Yes, but what Kadin discovered is he’s receiving large payments from an Iranian company.”

  “Payments...” She stared at nothing as her mind raced with all her would-be killer had said. “He’s selling equipment to Iran. That’s what must be on my computer.” She explained what the shooter had revealed in his overconfidence as he took her somewhere secluded to kill her.

  “What’s your computer got to do with anything?” Jasper asked as the elevator doors opened and they walked out.

  “That big brute told me Darien has been after my computer ever since I went into hiding. He used it during his illegal transactions and planned to destroy it when he was finished.”

  “Protecting his own computer?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “And now he’s vulnerable.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to toy with me anymore. That man down in the parking garage was going to kill me.”

  “He won’t get that close again.”

  “He also said my father told him where I was. He was trying to find me and someone recognized me at a fund-raiser. My father almost got me killed.”

  Jasper stopped at the hospital room door. “He wouldn’t have told Darien to hurt you, would he?”

  Sadie had no idea. “I suppose that depends on how angry he was over my leaving the way I did.”

  “He had to know you ran to protect yourself.”

  “He also knew I hated working for him.”

  Jasper looked at her while he seemed to think that over. “Without talking to him it’s hard to tell.”

  The last thing she wanted to do was talk to her father again. “Fat chance of that ever happening.”

  Raising his hand, he touched her face, running his thumb over her lower lip a
s though he thought of kissing her. “Maybe you should forgive him.”

  “It’s hard to forgive someone who isn’t willing to change what caused the rift in the first place.”

  He leaned forward and did kiss her then. “Whatever you decide.” Stepping back, he added, “I’ll call the police while you go see Chad.”

  “Won’t they ask too many questions?” This had graduated from a simple murder investigation to much more.

  “It’ll be an anonymous call. I checked and the big guy was smart enough to park somewhere out of view of cameras.”

  Of course he was...so he could kidnap her.

  * * *

  Back in Wyoming, Jasper helped Sadie look for suspicious files on her old computer. It didn’t take long to find them. Darien hadn’t even tried to conceal the folder, which he’d labeled SpaceTech, the name of his company. She hadn’t gone to her documents folder after moving. Most of her computer use was online.

  He was remarkably organized.

  “He sure wasn’t afraid to keep records,” Jasper said. He sat beside her at the desk in the library.

  “It was probably habit. He probably kept records like this for his legal transactions.” He’d only separated these to make his legal dealings look buttoned up tight.

  She opened the commercial invoice for one shipment. SpaceTech was listed as the consignee. The name of the shipper’s point of contact made her go utterly still.

  “That’s the man I saw murdered.” She pointed to the name, Henry Barnes.

  “Not surprising. I didn’t think he was killed over drugs.”

  “The drugs were planted to throw off authorities?”

  “Darien went to great lengths to cover up his true dealings with this company.”

  Sadie opened another file, this one a shipping document where SpaceTech was the shipper.

  “This one went to Dubai.”

  Jasper leaned closer. “It’s the same component. Look at the part number.”

  The numbers matched on both invoices, but the descriptions differed. One read cryogenic accelerometers, and the other read aircraft parts.