by Hannah Ford
WHAT HE PROVOKES
(What He Wants, Book Eighteen)
Hannah Ford
Hannah Ford
Contents
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1. WHAT HE PROVOKES
Copyright © 2015 by Hannah Ford
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WHAT HE PROVOKES
CHARLOTTE
The next half hour passed in an array of scenes and images that flash-banged themselves against my brain.
Noah ushering me out of John’s apartment.
The people who lived across the street wandering outside just as the first police cruiser pulled up, watching us curiously, asking Noah questions that he blatantly ignored.
Policemen talking into their walkie-talkies as they set up tape around the scene of the crime.
The scene of the murder.
John had been murdered. Probably by the same people who had taken Mikayla. The thought made my stomach roll in on itself, the bitter taste of bile filling the back of my throat.
Noah paced back and forth on the sidewalk, his strides long and heavy.
“This is ridiculous,” he fumed. The police had asked us to stick around, told us that a detective was on the way to take our statement.
“They just want to know what happened,” I said. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and the neighborhood was starting to look even creepier and more rundown than it had when we got here. Even the things that should have been cheerful – a red wagon in the yard across the street, the flowers on John’s porch – were starting to look dingy and abandoned.
“They can take our statement tomorrow,” Noah said, checking his watch, even though as far as I knew, he had nowhere to be. “We don’t have an obligation to tell them anything.”
“No, we don’t,” I said. “Not legally. But we should.”
“Why?”
“Because a man died, Noah,” I said.
“My obligation is to keep you safe, Charlotte, and you are not safe here.”
“I’m fine.” I pulled at my sweater, shivering as the breeze kicked up.
“You’re cold.” Noah took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders, pulling me close to him and rubbing my back. I pressed my cheek against his chest, feeling the warmth of his body through his dress shirt. His heartbeat was steady, rhythmic, a contrast to mine which felt like an uneven staccato.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about what I’d just seen in there, the grotesqueness of the body, the way John’s eyes had bulged from his head, his lips swollen and blue, his neck bloated and purple like an eggplant.
I swallowed. “Noah…”
“It’s okay,” he said, kissing my head softly. “It’s okay. I am going to take care of everything, Charlotte. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”
I let his soothing words wash over me, wanting so badly to believe them. I tried to lose myself in his touch, his words, his presence. But I was having a hard time calming down.
Not that it mattered – the sound of a siren wailing through the twilight shattered any chance of peace, and a second later, a shiny police cruiser pulled up to the sidewalk and a detective stepped out.
He was wearing a dark suit and tie, his face cleanly shaven, his hair brushed back from his face. He looked familiar, and it wasn’t until he spoke that I was able to place him.
“Well, well, well,” he said, a smirk playing on his full lips. “Mr. Cutler, we meet again.”
I felt Noah stiffen next to me.
“Detective Rake,” Noah said, his voice even, his tone displaying no sign of emotion.
Detective Rake. He was the one who’d questioned Noah about Dani DeClair and Nora’s murders, back when Noah was a suspect in the investigation.
I remembered the detective had tried to push Noah’s buttons then, and Noah had returned the favor in spades.
Detective Rake’s eyes fell on me, and I straightened up and took a half step away from Noah. I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand.
“You okay?” Detective Rake asked.
I nodded. “I’m okay.”
“She’s fine,” Noah said, and his cool tone was gone, replaced with something else, something dark and menacing. A vein in his neck throbbed.
“I think Charlotte is probably capable of talking for herself,” the detective said, giving me a kind smile. “Aren’t you, Charlotte?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am capable of talking for myself.”
Noah didn’t say anything, but I felt him pull himself up to his full six-foot-three inches, his chest puffing out and his shoulders sliding back. “Can we make this quick?” he demanded. “I need to get my fiancé home.”
Detective Rake’s eyes widened in surprise, and his gaze flicked down to the engagement ring on my finger. He looked back up at me, his eyebrows cocked in question. I knew what he was thinking. The last time he’d seen me, we’d been in a tiny interrogation at the police station. I’d been a part of Noah’s defense team, and Noah had been the main suspect in two different murder investigations.
That wasn’t even that long ago, and now here we were, engaged.
I swallowed and kept my eyes on Detective Rake’s, refusing to look away. He didn’t even know me. He had no right to question my choices, to judge me on who I’d chosen to spend my life with. And besides, Noah had been cleared of all charges.
Still, a niggling thought tugged at the back of my mind. Was this how it was going to be from now on? Everyone still suspicious of Noah, everyone worrying about me? I remembered that therapist from school, Dr. Cartwright, how he’d looked at the marks on my wrists, the expression on his face half alarm, half pity.
I tugged my sweater down and pushed the thoughts out of my head. My relationship wasn’t anyone’s business. But you’ve thought it, too. You’ve worried this is getting too dark for you, that maybe you’re getting in over your head.
“Sure, we can make it quick,” Detective Rake said easily, pulling out a small black leather notebook and his phone. “I’m going to be recording this, too.”
“For what?” Noah demanded.
He shrugged, then pressed a button on his phone. “Just in case. Now, you said you got here and you found the body?”
“Yes,” Noah said.
“And how did you know the victim?” Detective Rake asked.
“He was – ” I started, but Noah cut me off.
“We didn’t.”
Detective Rake glanced up from his notebook. “You didn’t know him?”
“No.”
“Then what were you doing here?”
“John – the, uh, the victim -- he texted me and said he might have some information about the girls who’ve gone missing from Force,” I said.
“Charlotte!” Noah’s dark eyes blazed with anger and his jaw twitched.
I ignored him. I knew Noah had a bone to pick with this detective, that he held a grudge after how he’d been treated that day at the police station, and I didn’t blame him. But sometimes there were more important things than getting over on someone. If we could convince the police to start looking
into this, there might be a chance we could find Mikayla and the other girls.
“John approached me earlier in the day,” I said. “He told me he had information about the missing Force girls, and that he wanted to meet up so he could tell me everything he knew.”
“Charlotte,” Noah said, his voice a growled warning. He was giving me leeway, but it wouldn’t be long before he shut this whole thing down.
“What missing girls?” Detective Rake asked, looking up from his notebook with interest.
“The girls I told your department about when I gave my statement about what happened at Force the night I was almost killed.” I bit the inside of my cheek and tried not to show my frustration. Acting frustrated would serve no purpose. If I wanted the police to take me seriously, then I needed to present my case calmly and rationally. “There were women who were being held at Force against their will.”
“With all due respect, Ms. Holloway,” the detective said, a smarmy smirk on his lips, “isn’t that kind of the point?”
“No,” I said. “That isn’t the point. It’s – ”
“Charlotte,” Noah said, the edge in his tone growing sharper as his hand tightened around mine.
I clamped my mouth shut. Noah was right. It wasn’t my job to educate Detective Rake or anyone else about the finer points of BDSM, and what was or wasn’t considered consent.
“Ms. Holloway has answered your questions,” Noah said. “Why, I have no idea, but she is a kind person, so it’s to be expected. We’ve told you everything we know. My fiancé was approached by this man, who asked to meet her here to give her information about some girls at Force. When we got here, the man was dead.”
Detective Rake’s eyes narrowed. “It’s just a little coincidental, don’t you think, Mr. Cutler?”
“What is?” Noah asked. I recognized the tone in his voice, and I squeezed his hand back, trying to telegraph a message. Calm down. The last thing we need is you getting arrested for assaulting a police officer.
“That you happened to just stumble upon another murder scene,” Detective Rake said.
Fury rose in my chest and my free hand curled into a fist by my side, the sharp bite of my fingernails digging into my palms. “Noah was cleared of those charges,” I said. “He didn’t do anything wrong. Professor Worthington – ”
“We didn’t stumble upon a murder scene, Detective Rake,” Noah interrupted. “And if your department was more competent, perhaps there wouldn’t have been a murder scene in the first place.”
Detective Rake picked up the phone and switched off the recording. “I’d be careful about making those kind of remarks about the police department, Mr. Cutler.”
“Is that a threat?” Noah asked, his tone implying he would relish the idea.
“No,” Detective Rake said simply. “But you took the Lilah Parks case, right? It would be awful if our investigation turned something up that made her look guilty. It’s already such an open and shut case that our investigators are confident a conviction is a guarantee. But there are ways to make these things even more difficult.” He shrugged. “Not to mention some of us still aren’t entirely convinced that the right person was arrested for the murder of Katie Price.”
Noah’s eye twitched and for a second, I was afraid he really was going to punch Detective Rake. I imagined him getting hauled off for assaulting a police officer, being herded into the back of a police car and thrown in jail. What I would do? Who would I call? The last time Noah had been arrested I’d called Professor Worthington, but obviously that wasn’t an option anymore. Not since he’d, you know, tried to slice my body into bits.
A smarmy smile crossed Detective Rake’s face, almost like he wanted Noah to hit him. I could tell he thought it would be worth it, taking a punch in exchange for the satisfaction of watching all his buddies come to his rescue and take Noah to jail. What the detective didn’t realize was that if Noah hit him, it wouldn’t just be one and done. Noah would end up knocking him out.
“We’re done.” Noah took a step toward Detective Rake and I realized again just how big Noah was, how intimidating of a presence. Detective Rake wasn’t a small man, and yet Noah towered over him. “If you threaten me again, or imply that you will try to sabotage one of my cases, I will have you thrown off the force. And if you attempt to contact my fiancé and get more information out of her, I will do much worse to you, Detective. I will end you.”
A look of guilt passed briefly over Detective Rake’s face, and I could tell he’d been planning to contact me, probably to ask me to come down to the station and expand on my statement.
Noah waited a beat, his eyes boring into Detective Rake’s, like he was contemplating whether or not it would be worth it to take a swing at him anyway, if getting arrested for assaulting an officer would be worth it.
But in the end, he must have decided it wasn’t.
He walked back down the sidewalk toward his car, pulling me with him.
* * *
The vibe in the car was tense and strained, the darkness outside seeming to seep through the windows and settle over my relationship.
Noah’s foot pressed heavily against the gas as he sped through the streets of Harlem back toward midtown.
“Slow down,” I said, tugging on my seatbelt to make sure it was securely fastened. “You’re driving crazy like a crazy person.”
“No.” His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“What do you mean, no?”
“Just. What. I. Said. No.” He jaw set into a hard line, and I could tell he was pissed. “You’ve lost the right to call the shots after what just happened back there.”
I turned in my seat, staring at him incredulously. “After what just happened back there? Please say you’re not blaming for showing up to find that man dead! That’s no one’s fault except the person who killed him.”
“Of course I’m not blaming you for that man being dead, Charlotte, but what I am blaming you for is dragging me there. Now I’ve been present at the scene of another murder, and that detective has a hard-on for me, he always has.”
I laughed. “Sorry, Noah, I didn’t know you had a problem with being a murder suspect, since when you were one you didn’t really seem to give a shit.”
“I don’t give a shit about Detective Rake, Charlotte. What I give a shit about is you seeming to believe you can just run off and do whatever the hell you want.”
“Is that what you think? That I want to be spending my time running all over Harlem chasing down some guy I know nothing about, stumbling onto dead bodies?” My phone began to ring in my bag, the trilling melody of some catchy pop song echoing through the car. I hated that I’d picked that song. My taste in music tended to veer toward bubble gum pop or melodramatic emo. Not that emo would have been much better, but the pop song I’d chosen as my ringtone seemed to just emphasize Noah’s point, that I was some kind of silly girl who flitted about the city, with no idea what kind of hornet’s nests she was poking.
“Answer it,” Noah commanded.
“I was going to,” I mumbled, so he wouldn’t think that I was answering it just because he’d told me to.
My mom’s name flashed on the screen. Shit. With all the craziness of the day, I’d pretty much forgotten about her, had forgotten that she’d asked to come and visit me. I wasn’t even sure I wanted her to come anymore after what she’d told that reporter about me dating Professor Worthington.
“Who is it?” Noah demanded.
“It’s my mom.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Noah, I’m sure.” I sent the call to voicemail, and it immediately started ringing again, my mom’s name flashing back across the screen. I silenced my phone and shoved it back into my bag.
“I wasn’t sure if it was someone else calling with some new information, if we needed to head back down to Harlem, or Newark, or perhaps head to JFK and hop on a plane to Detroit.” We were getting closer to Manhattan proper now, the buildings becoming taller and
more ornate, the streets and cars shinier and more expensive.
We were coming up to a light at the corner of East 77th, and it flashed yellow. But instead of slowing down, Noah hit the gas, speeding up and flying through the light.
“The only person putting me in any danger right now is you,” I said. “Slow down! You’re driving like a maniac.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Charlotte,” he said, his voice a low growl. “That is not how this works.”
“I’m not telling you what to do,” I said. “What I’m telling you is that I need to be able to at least have some freedom, Noah.”
“No.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s not insane, Charlotte, it’s what I need. What you agreed to when you decided to be with me.”
“It’s not what I agreed to! What happened to what you said the other day, the day you proposed? About how this was just how we were, how it was just going to be this way, the two of us pushing each other? What about that, Noah?”
“That was before you started putting yourself in this kind of danger, before you started hiding things from me.”
“What have I hidden from you?”
“I had to hear about that text from Jared, Charlotte. That is completely unacceptable!” He slammed his hand against the steering wheel.
Anger pulsed inside of me, anger at the fact that he was throwing this back in my face, that he was trying to make it into an issue of trust, when from the beginning, he was the one who could never let me in.
“I explained that to you, Noah,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm but failing. This was the closest we’d ever come to a real fight, the kind of fight that spiraled into people screaming and sleeping on the couch. I didn’t like the way that felt, but I had to stand up for myself.
“Explained what? That you’d planned on telling me eventually? Not acceptable.”
“Yeah, exactly,” I spit back. “The same way that you explained how you can’t tell me what the doctor said about Lilah.”
