A Taste of Pink (Shades Book 4)

by Stephanie Hoffman McManus

  That was a big fat lie. I’d call for help the second he was out of sight, but maybe I’d get lucky and he’d be stupid.

  He laughed. No such luck. “You really think I would leave without you? I’m not like him, Riley. I won’t ever leave you. You’re mine, and I’m going to prove it to you. You’ll see. Once we get out of here, I’m going to take you to the special place I got for us.”

  I shook my head and cried, “You’re crazy Warren. I’m not yours.” Probably not the smartest idea calling the guy with the gun crazy, but I was terrified and pissed.

  “I’m not crazy.” He stalked me into the corner of the room. I cowered as he waved the gun around and lowered his face to mine. “I love you, and I know you love me too. You just need me to get you out of here. Away from all these people who are controlling you and manipulating you. They’ve turned you against me.” The fury slipped from his face and his expression became sad, like he truly believed what he was saying. “I know it’s not your fault.” One hand reached out to stroke my cheek. I recoiled, and a muscle in his jaw ticked as he dropped his hand.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This isn’t how I planned it. I never meant for you to get hurt.” There was genuine regret and remorse in his voice. Maybe I could use it.

  “What abut my car accident? Did you mean for that to happen?”

  “I just wanted you to pull over, so I could talk to you. You looked so sad on the beach, but you wouldn’t stop. You just kept trying to get away from me.” He said accusingly, waving the gun wildly again

  “Please just get rid of the gun. You’re scaring me. How can you expect me to want to go with you when you’re threatening me with it?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t trust you yet. It has to be this way. Now move to the door, and if you scream or call attention to us, I promise you someone will get hurt.”

  Heart pounding, knowing that if he got me out of this hospital it would be over for me, I slowly padded toward the door, brain racing to come up with a plan that wouldn’t get me or someone else shot. I truly believed he didn’t want to hurt me. In his delusional way, he genuinely cared about me. Not enough to let me go or leave me alone, but maybe enough . . .

  “Ah,” I cried out and hunched over, clutching my stomach with one hand, the other braced on the table just inside the door for support.

  “Riley!” Warren rushed to me, gun lowered, and as soon as he was at my side. I grabbed the giant vase of flowers on the table and swung it around, smashing it over his head. He staggered back and then fell, dropping the gun. I bolted for the door and tore it open, prepared to let out a scream to bring every doctor, nurse, security guard—every anyone on this floor—but instead crashed into a hard chest. I barely had time to look up and see James’ worried face, before he was shoving me behind him and reaching for something in in his jacket. My eyes shot back into the room, and a scream tore from my lips when I saw Warren lying on the floor of my hospital room raising his gun on James.

  “Nooooo!”

  But James was faster.

  He fired two deafening shots and Warren never even got off one. He slumped to the floor, a pool of red slowly spreading around him. A rushing sound filled my ears, blocking out all other noise and I stumbled backward into a wall. I slid to the floor, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from Warren’s now vacant stare. It was fixed right on me.

  He was still watching. I kept waiting for him to get up like in all the movies, but he didn’t move. He just stared at me with those hollow, empty eyes, even as chaos erupted around us. There were pounding footsteps and shouting, but I was trapped in Warren’s lifeless gaze.

  And then James’ face was there in front of me, level with mine. “Riley, are you okay?”

  “Riley, can you answer me?”

  “Riley?”

  “You weren’t there when I woke up.” My throat tightened around the broken whisper and I could feel something on the inside cracking.

  “I’m so sorry.” James pulled me into his arms and I fell against him. He held me tightly, but I was limp in his arms, eyes fixed on Warren over his shoulder, unable to look away. And then James was ripped away from me. I cried out and tried to reach for him, but someone else was grabbing me, forcing me in the opposite direction despite my struggles.

  “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay,” James called over the other noise to me, just before he disappeared from sight.

  It was hours before I saw him again.

  In that time, my father, along with Luis, Angela, Jayne, and Hunter all appeared. So did several police officers and doctors. I found myself back in bed in another room, being poked and prodded and grilled by the police.

  “Where is James?” I croaked.

  “You can see him soon, but first you need to tell us what happened,” the lady police officer urged.

  “It’s okay, Aves.” My dad lowered himself onto the edge of my bed and took my hand. “I’m right here with you.”

  I told them everything that happened from the moment I woke up when Warren ripped out my IV. It was so clear in my mind, like a movie playing on a loop in my head. The lady officer asked me questions, some of which didn’t make sense to me, but her partner wrote down everything I said.

  “Where is James?” I asked again when she finished with her questions.

  “We’re almost done getting his statement. He’ll be released soon,” she assured me.

  It wasn’t soon enough.

  Almost another hour passed before he appeared in my doorway. Our eyes met, and I felt a brief second of relief, before James stepped aside, and several police officers poured into my room They surrounded Jayne.

  “Miss, we’d like you to come with us and answer a few questions.”

  “What?” several of us exclaimed at once, including Jayne.

  “Why do you need to question Jayne.” I sat up in my bed, but the officers ignored me.

  “Miss, please come with us.” The no nonsense tone the brutish officer was using, left little doubt that Jayne was in trouble, but why? Why did they want Jayne?

  “What’s going on?” I practically shouted at the man.

  “Let them do their job, Riley.” James stepped over to me but wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “What’s this about?” Jayne stammered.

  “We’d prefer to do this outside, if you’ll step out of the room.”

  A very nervous Jayne followed the four officers who’d come to escort her out of my room. I shoved back the thin hospital covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed. “What the hell is going on?” I looked around at all the faces in the room, but everyone seemed as confused as I was. Everyone except James. I looked from him to the situation unfolding outside my room, and back to him. He was watching like he knew exactly what was happening.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” I demanded. When he wouldn’t, I tried to move around him, but he caught me and held me back.

  “Just stay here.”

  “What’s happening?” I gave him a pleading look, and then a sob sounded from outside my door and my gaze was wrenched to where the big brute was putting Jayne in handcuffs.

  I gasped and tried to run to her, but James held me back. I struggled and insisted he release me. “Let go! There has to be a mistake. Why are they arresting Jayne?”

  James held me tighter. “They have to take her.”

  “No,” I yelled and shoved at his chest.

  “Just stop, Riley. Stop and calm down and I’ll explain.”

  I couldn’t look away as Jayne was led away in handcuffs. There wasn’t any possible explanation he could give me that would make this okay.

  “Riley, she was helping Warren.”

  I jerked my gaze to his. “What?” No.

  “Surely that’s not possible. This must be a mistake,” Luis said exactly what I was thinking.

  “It’s not a mistake.” James guided me back to the bed, where he sat me down. “Warren had help. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The onl
y way he could have known where you would be, your hotel rooms, your cell phone number, your gate and alarm code. I’ve suspected for a while ago and had my guys start digging into all the people in your life who knew those things.”

  “Excuse me?” Luis blurted. “You were investigating us?”

  James ignored him, and I shook my head furiously. “Jayne would never have helped him.”

  “Warren had a prepaid cell phone on him, Riley. There were a lot of texts and calls on it.”

  “From Jayne?”

  “From another burner, but I got a look at them. It was enough that I had my guys dig a little harder into her specifically. Riley, Jayne has one of your credit cards, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s my assistant, she has to have one. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “We dug through your statements and we found the burner phones, plane tickets, motel rooms. It was all there going back to Seattle. That’s how he was staying under the radar. No one thought to look at your credit cards.”

  “I don’t understand.” It didn’t make sense.

  “She’s one of the very few people who always knows your itinerary, where you’re going, where you’re staying, the room number and everything.”

  “Well yes, but—”

  “And she has the security codes to your house.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “but that doesn’t mean—”

  “And she made you the cup of tea, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, but would you stop cutting me off. There’s no way Jayne did this.”

  “I know you don’t want to believe that, but she gave you the tea and then disappeared right when someone snuck Warren into the house. And tonight, she was supposed to be sitting with you, while Hunter went and got coffee, but where was she when Warren showed up?”

  “Where were you?” I retorted. “You weren’t here either!”

  “Someone was snooping around your house tonight. Security picked him up and called me. The guy fit Warren’s description. I thought it was him, so I went over there, but it was just some homeless guy who fit the same description. When I got to question him, he told me a man gave him five hundred dollars and the codes to your house to go in and steal some stuff. About an hour before that, there was a five-hundred-dollar withdrawal at an ATM on your card, and it was during the time Jayne was gone.”

  “No,” I shook my head. “There’s just no way. Why would she do it?”

  “That’s what the police are asking her right now.”

  “No,” I said more adamantly. “It’s a mistake. Jayne would not do this. I know her. I’ve known her for years. She’s been with me since the beginning.”

  “And maybe she got tired of being a personal assistant. Maybe it was jealousy or something else. It happens.”

  “Not Jayne.” I looked to Luis for help. “You know her. We have to help her because there’s no way she did this.”

  “Then who, Riley?” James asked. “Who else has your credit card?”

  “No one else, but maybe Warren got my account information when he was in my house and used it himself.”

  “What about the texts and calls? Someone was giving him information. The other phone has been turned off or disposed of, but Riley, there’s no one else. It was Jayne.”

  It couldn’t be.

  Yet all the evidence was there, and it was hard to dispute when James laid it all out. It felt like a knife twisting in my chest. I slumped back onto the bed.

  “I’m sorry,” James said and then he turned and walked from the room.

  My dad took my hand again and tried to assure me everything would be sorted, and the truth would be found out, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t make myself believe Jayne would do any of it.

  Maybe because letting myself believe any of it, hurt too damn bad. Accepting that Jayne had betrayed me, it would cripple me. I couldn’t take that too on top of everything else. There had to be another explanation. I wished they would let me talk to her, but all of my requests to were met with refusal.

  Thirty-Two

  Riley

  I was forced to stay another night in the hospital.

  Much to my irritation, everyone kept insisting I get some rest.

  “You’ve been through a shock, Riley, you should get some rest.”

  “Get some rest and you’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “After everything you’ve been through in the past couple weeks, your body needs to rest.”

  Rest. Rest. Rest.

  How did they expect me to get any rest? I watched a man die tonight.

  It could have been me. It could have been James. Or what if my dad had walked through the door instead of James? And now Jayne was spending the night in jail?

  And for what? Because of who I was? My fame?

  How was I supposed to come to terms with any of this? A man was dead who should have been in a hospital getting help, and my friend was in jail instead of at my side.

  Everything was wrong.

  And I was so tired of everyone telling me, “He’s gone now, he can’t hurt you anymore,” and “You don’t ever have to worry about him again,” and “It’s finally over.”

  Warren might be dead, but it wasn’t over, and he was still hurting me. I doubted I’d be able to close my eyes anytime soon without seeing his face.

  Sleep didn’t come easy at all, and when it did, it was anything but restful. I woke with a start, sitting up in bed, heart racing, multiple times through the night. Dad slept nearby on the cot he’d made the nurses wheel in for him, and once I must have yelled out, because he shot up and James appeared out of nowhere in the doorway.

  “It’s okay, just a bad dream,” I told them, and then laid back down, turning my back to the door. James and I hadn’t spoken since he walked out of the room after delivering the blow about Jayne. He must’ve been lurking nearby though. What was going to become of us? I didn’t know where any of this left the two of us, and I didn’t have time to worry about it. I had to find a way to prove Jayne was innocent. Until I heard her admit it to my face, I wouldn’t believe she could do this. I refused to believe I could be so wrong about someone.

  But how could I prove she was innocent when there was so much evidence to the contrary?

  I had no more answers by morning, even though I’d been up half the night.

  My breakfast soured in my stomach when I asked about Jayne and was met with reluctant silence from James and Luis both.

  “Are the police still holding her?”

  “Yes,” was all James would give me and at my scowl he stalked out of the room. It wasn’t his fault, he was doing his job, but he was wrong.

  He had to be wrong this time.

  Hunter showed up later in the morning, while I was still waiting to be discharged, with a huge bouquet of flowers and a sympathetic look on his face.

  He set the giant vase beside my bed. “I’m sorry about Jayne. I just couldn’t believe it.”

  “I still don’t,” I muttered, staring at the bouquet of assorted exotic flowers. Something about them was bothering me. Something prickling at the edge of my thoughts that I couldn’t quite grasp hold of. They were just flowers, but . . .

  Wait a second. The flowers.

  Angel’s Trumpet.

  That’s what the flower in my tea was called and I was remembering something. I grabbed my phone and brought up the Google search. When the picture appeared, I realized why it sounded familiar, and things slowly started clicking into place.

  My phone slipped from my fingers as realization of what it all meant sank in.

  “It was you.”

  “What?” Hunter asked beside me.

  “It was you,” I said louder, drawing the attention of my dad and Luis and the doctor they’d been mid conversation with. They were all staring at me now, but I was only looking at Luis.

  “It wasn’t Jayne. It was you.”

  Everyone else might have missed the flash of panic in his eyes before h
e hid it, but I caught it and I knew it was true.

  “Angel’s Trumpet. Brugmansia. It’s a South American flower. It grows where you grew up in Brazil. Mom planted it at the house to remind you of home. I remembered it.” The pink flowers were all over in her garden oasis, I jut forgot what they were called until Hunter’s flowers triggered the memory that had been so close to the surface.

  “Riley, don’t be ridiculous. Just because the flowers grow at the house doesn’t mean anything Maybe Jayne got them from the garden. We can tell the police this, it might help.”

  “It wasn’t Jayne.”

  “Then how do you explain the credit card and the phone Riley? I don’t even have a card for your account.”

  “No, but Mom did.” Something else I’d remembered once the floodgates opened in my brain. “I never cancelled that card. It didn’t even occur to me to do that.”

  “Riley, what are you saying?” My dad asked.

  “He set Jayne up, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Luis protested, but he was backing up, like a cornered animal.

  “No, it’s not. It all makes sense. So much more sense than Jayne. I can’t believe I was so stupid not to see it. You manipulated everyone, and everything, even Warren.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying Riley.”

  “No, I think she does.” My dad had turned on Luis and looked like he was about to wrap his hands around the smaller man’s throat.

  “So do I.”

  My eyes shot to the doorway, and there was James.

  “I think the police will want to hear it as well.”

  What happened next, shocked even me. Luis tried to run. He charged right at James. When Luis slammed into him, James caught him in in some kind of head and arm lock before taking him down to the ground. Luis yelled and cursed and flailed which brought the security guards running.

  “I did everything for you Riley. I did everything for you! I made you a star. I made you what you are!” Luis struggled on the ground, jerking his head back to pin me with a furious glare. James inserted a knee into his back and it shut him right up. He stopped struggling and saying anything altogether when the police showed up and carted him off.