by Scarlet West
He looked at me. Again, there was no emotion there. He looked only mildly annoyed.
“Please!” I pleaded with him.
He shook his head at me, his expression that of a man with little patience.
“Listen,” he said. “If the boss wants you to know, you’ll know.”
“But at least tell me why I’m here?”
He sighed. “You’re here as insurance.”
“Insurance?” I gulped.
“Yeah,” he said. He started closing the door again. I jammed my foot in it, wincing as he pulled it tighter.
“You can cut my foot off,” I whispered. “I don’t care. Just tell me.”
He rolled his eyes.
He jerked the door again. I realized in that moment what was going on. I was insurance. Insurance that Brady would pay the Mob what he owed them. He wasn’t delivering what they wanted, so they had taken me as leverage. I was screwed.
“Please!” I shouted. “This isn’t going to help you. My brother doesn’t have the money. I was trying to help him get it.”
That seemed to change something, and I felt the door open a fraction. My foot throbbed. I swallowed hard. I had only one chance.
“I was helping him get the money,” I said. “That’s where I was yesterday. This morning. When you followed me. I can get it for you. You have to let me go. I can help you.”
“Sure,” he sneered. “And why am I gonna believe that?”
“Because it’s true. I was helping Brady get the money the only way he can! He needs me to pull it off!”
I was terrified. If they had me, and they were trying to threaten Brady, what the hell would happen?
Either they would kill Brady, or they would kill me, to prove a point. And then they’d have to kill him anyway because he didn’t have the money! Either way, we’d both be dead.
Adam, damn you! I thought. If you’d listened, we could have been planning by now.
“Listen,” the man said gruffly. “If your brother gets the money, we’ll let you go. That easy.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Let’s both hope he does,” he said after a long pause. “I don’t want to kill you if I don’t have to.”
He pushed me backward and I stumbled, clearing the door jamb so he could close it.
The last thing I heard from him were his footsteps.
I had no idea what was going to happen. I knew that threatening Brady was useless – he had no money for them, no matter what they said they were going to do.
I had some money – we could pay them with that – but it was all I had. And it wasn’t anywhere near what they asked for.
“Brady?” I sobbed. “Why didn’t you just ask?”
If he’d trusted me enough to come to me from the beginning, we could have sorted this thing out before ever got this far. Why hadn’t he trusted me?
“He just didn’t,” I said briskly. “And now you’re going to die.”
I had no doubt in my mind that the man would kill me. He had those eyes – the hard, dead eyes of someone who had killed already; more times to take joy, or pain, from it. He had seen death and faced death and none of it moved him.
He’d kill me without a second thought.
I had to get out of there myself because nobody was coming to save me.
20
Adam
“Come on, Adam. Drive!”
Brady’s voice, hissing and insistent, spoke in my ear. I shook my head impatiently.
“Damn it, I’m trying. It won’t do any body any good if we have an accident.”
I swallowed hard. It was bad enough trying to think, without him having fits next to me. I gripped the wheel of the Cadillac and focused as hard as I could on the road ahead.
“So,” I said as we drove. “Talk me through this again.”
“We have to go to the warehouse,” Brady said. “I have to talk to Burke. He knows these guys. He might know where they are.”
“And then?” I frowned, trying to concentrate. Something about this plan didn’t add up.
“Then, he can lead us to them. We can get together a group of guys from the docks, and…”
“And arm them with what?” I asked.
I heard him swallow hard. “You’re right,” he said. “We’re dead.”
I sighed. We were in the middle of the highway and I got over to the edge, pulling onto the shoulder and turned to face him.
“What, why are you stopping?” Brady asked, voice rising in alarm as we stopped. “Adam, we have to go! We’ve got to get there.”
“We need another plan,” I said swiftly. “Listen, Brady. I know you love your sister, and you want to save her. But if we go in there, even if we can get guns – and I don’t know where from – we’ll get ourselves killed. And they might kill her. We can’t just go in there half-cocked .”
“I know,” he whispered. “I can see that, now.”
He was about to cry – I could see his eyes welling up with tears. I reached out and rested my hand on his.
“Look, Brady, I know. You’re desperate to help.” I sighed. “But…”
“You suggest something,” he spat. “If you think you have all the answers? You do something.”
I closed my eyes. He was right. Of all the things we could do, his plan was at least something – a plan. “How much do they need, again?” I asked.
Brady told me and I whistled.
“We can’t make that in a day.”
“You’re telling me?” He gave a mirthless grin. “You think I wouldn’t be doing that, if we could?”
“Yeah,” I nodded, feeling bad. “That’s true. Sorry.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said.
I frowned. “Do you think they’d take installments?” I asked.
“Adam! If you think we can pay them – if you have the capital – then we can do this! I’ll pay you back. I’ll work for you for free for the rest of my life. I mean it. I’ll do anything to make it up to you.”
I sighed. “I know you would, Brady,” I said sincerely. I gripped his hand.
“I might be a piece of shit,” he said. “But I love Cassidy; she’s the most important person in my life.”
“I know.” I smiled at him wryly.
We sat silently together. I knew Brady had gotten himself mixed with all kinds of bad stuff. But in that moment, when I looked into his eyes – the image of Cassidy’s own – I remembered who he was. He would never intentionally cause harm to anyone. “I would pay it all right now if I could do it,” I said, meaning it. “I just don’t have that much in liquid assets.”
He was silent for a long while.
“I could use my investors’ money,” I considered. “I might be able to raise that much, if I put in a lot of work. But that would take a few days and we don’t have time.”
“Not to mention that’s illegal,” Brady added swiftly. “You’d go to jail if they found out.”
“I don’t care.”
He stared at me.
“Adam…”
I closed my eyes. “I would do it,” I said. My throat was tight with sincerity. “I would. I don’t care if they caught me after. I’d do anything for her.”
Brady was staring at me when I opened my eyes. He looked impressed.
“I love her,” I said simply.
“I’m an ass,” he said, honestly. “I can’t believe I said that to her.”
I gripped his shoulder, but he tensed, shaking me off.
“I’m sorry. I should have seen it – in both of you. Can you forgive me for what I said?”
“You mean, about her forcing herself to sleep with me? Because of you?” I raised a brow.
He swallowed. “About that. Yes.”
I nodded. “I forgive you,” I said. “I understand you weren’t expecting your sister to take a shine to a guy like me.”
Brady shook his head. “Adam,” he protested. “I didn’t mean it. I was being dumb. I was seeing Cassidy as my
kid sister; a little girl still.”
“Girls grow up,” I said swiftly. “And they can make guys act really fucking stupid.”
As I said it, I remembered a time, almost twenty years ago, I was in the garden at her parents’ house, and we were laughing together. The sun shone on her hair and she was happy.
My heart ached as if a fist tightened around it.
“Damn it, Brady,” I whispered. “We need a plan.”
Brady nodded. “We do.”
We sat silently for a while. I tried to think of something, but my mind was full of Cassidy. Her kiss, her warmth, her smile. I sniffed and tried to forget what it felt like to hold her in my arms and have her kiss me. After a moment, Brady cleared his throat.
“Adam?” he asked. “How much is your company worth?”
I told him. He was silent for a moment. Then he shrugged.
“How much is it listed as?”
“Its net worth? In Forbes or something?” I frowned.
“Yeah.”
I told him.
He nodded. “What do you bet that they’d believe you had the cash?”
I stared at him. “Me?”
“Yeah,” he said earnestly. “You know, I came to ask you for the money, and you actually had it, and planned to make a deal. Almost like it really happened, except that, in the story, you have it.”
I nodded. “You mean, a bluff?”
“Yeah,” he said earnestly.
I frowned. What he was asking me to do was deadly. If I lied, and said I had the money, I would be courting the Mafia myself. They would then transfer their vigilance to me. I would never get out of it – I either paid or died. But if it meant keeping Cassidy safe…
“Okay,” I shrugged.
“You mean it?” Brady stared at me.
“For Cassidy, sure,” I said. “Now, we’d better pray this works.”
Brady was looking at me as if I had just grown another arm. I shrugged.
“What?”
“You’re really going to do this? Lie to the Mafia? For us?”
“For Cassidy,” I said quickly. “And you,” I added.
I told him the outline of my plan. At the end of it, he was grinning.
“Yeah,” he said. “It could work.”
“I sure hope it could,” I said grimly, taking his phone as he handed it to me, ready to call. “If it doesn’t, we’re all dead.”
I dialed.
21
Cassidy
I leaned against the wall and looked up at the sky. I could see a patch of it through the boards across the window. It had become my touchstone for sanity.
It was getting dark.
I had watched the piece of sky from some time in the afternoon; seeing it go from cerulean to sapphire and then, slowly, to black. Now, it was too dark to see anything around me. Only that piece of sky shone – iridescent navy against the blackness of the room.
I’m going to go mad, aren’t I?
I closed my eyes.
I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything. I had long since stopped feeling hungry, which was scary in itself. I had no idea how long I had been in this room, all I knew was that it was getting to me.
Since the man in the gray jacket came in, I had seen nobody, heard nobody. I had no idea how long I had been in the silence, besides the fact that it must have been about ten hours. I had been kidnapped sometime around nine in the morning, and it was at least seven o’ clock now.
How long was I going to be in here?
I couldn’t answer that. I had no idea what was going on out there. All I knew was that whatever happened could mean the difference between me living and me dying.
Oddly, that doesn’t make me afraid.
It was weird. I had gone through a moment of pure undiluted terror, sometime between when I the man came in and I understood what was happening, and when I started watching the sky. I guess there is only so much fear a human body can handle before it gives up on feeling scared, and just goes numb.
Right now, I was numb.
“Damn it, Cassidy,” I said to myself. “Do something.”
It struck me as a ridiculous irony. All my life, I had been working hard, stressing hard; chasing the next level, the next paycheck, the next promotion. Now, I had spent a whole day doing nothing. I finally had time off, and I had nothing to do.
I suddenly had an image of Adam. I could have been spending the day with him. I’d woken up with him, after all. I wondered what he was doing, right then. How he was spending his Saturday? Alone?
I hadn’t cried all day, but I wanted to cry now.
“I could have stayed there,” I chided myself angrily. “I could have faced him down and argued with him. I didn’t need to storm off.”
I snorted. Yes, I did. I was hurt. And I had every right to be, now that I thought about it.
“He didn’t know.”
That was the worst part – the thing that hurt worst. He had absolutely no idea, none whatsoever, that I actually felt something for him. If he had thought that, he would have known at once that I was there, with him because I wanted him.
I had spent my whole childhood hating Adam Stern; or most of it. He was infuriating.
When I get out, I told myself, I was going to tell him that. And then, I’m going to tell him that I love him, and to hell with what he thinks. He can try and figure that out for himself for a change.
I tensed, as I heard someone coming.
I could hear footsteps echoing down the hallway. I looked around. What could I do? My first instinct was to hide myself. I went to the wall, flattening myself against it. In the darkness, perhaps they wouldn’t see me.
The footsteps stopped and I waited for the door to open. When it didn’t, I considered screaming for help. What if it wasn’t the Mafia guys back, at all? What if it was some bystander?
I drew a breath. The door shot open.
“Get her,” a man said.
“Where is she?”
“She couldn’t have gone anywhere!” he shouted, impatient. “Just find her.”
I ran for the door.
I felt someone grab for me and I screamed. I felt arms tighten around me. I went limp, letting my weight drag them down. The person lunged forward, almost overbalancing, then hauled me up.
“Get up,” a harsh voice said. “On your feet.”
Frightened, I did what it said.
“Where are we going?” I asked, as he pushed me to the door. I panicked. They might be freeing me. They might also be driving me out into the middle of nowhere to kill me.
“Shut up,” the other man demanded. I recognized his voice as the man who’d been in my prison earlier; the one in the gray overcoat.
I was in a hallway now and I could see a light ahead. I heard more men, further along. I whirled around and I tried to break away.
“Hold her, for Christ’s sake,” the man said laconically. My captor gripped my wrist, twisting my arm until I gasped.
“There,” he said. “I’ll break your arm if you do that again.”
I nodded. I knew he could carry out the threat.
I let him drag me toward the light. I heard footsteps behind us and turned my head to see the guy in the grey jacket.
“Where are you taking me?” I demanded again.
“Get in the car,” he said.
We’d reached a door now, and I could smell cool night air flowing in. It was dark out there, lit only with a harsh neon from an overhead light. I gulped in a lungful of fresh, clean air, amazed at how good it felt, and smelled. It was so much better than being in that room.
I considered trying to run, but there were four men around me now. My captor let go of me, and another man opened the door of the car. A third man shoved me inside.
“Where are you…”
The blow to the back of my head silenced me. A man got into the car through the other door, and the other man, standing around the back of the car, followed me in. My captor and the man in the grey jacket got int
o the front seats.
“Let’s go,” one of them said.
They started the car and we shot off into the dark road.
We must have been quite far on the outskirts of town, I realized. The road was almost deserted. I heard one car pass us, but otherwise the road was empty.
“What’s happening?” I demanded of the man beside me. He said nothing.
I twisted around to look at the other one, but he was as inscrutable as the first. They had me between them – blocking, presumably, my access to the doors – and I could smell the scent of cologne and leather.
“You never shut up, do you?” the guy in the grey jacket asked.
“Why should I?!” I exploded. My anger overcame my fear. “If I’m going to die, you could at least damn well tell me why.”
He laughed grimly. “If I was going to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
What did he mean by that? Were they taking me somewhere else? At this point, the only important thing was that I wasn’t being driven off somewhere to die.
“As it happens, this could be your lucky day.”
“My lucky day?”
“If she speaks again, hit her,” he said to the man on my left-hand side. “I can’t focus with all this crap going on.”
I went silent.
Inside, I was a turmoil of feelings. Lucky? Why lucky? Where were we going? While we drove – and it seemed like we were driving for a long time – I tried to figure out what was happening.
They might be taking me to another hideout. They might be leaving town to avoid the cops. Or – and I didn’t even want to think about it, for fear of falsely getting my hopes up – they might be freeing me.
“Here we are.”
We were pulling up and I looked around me in dismay. We were in the middle of nowhere. I could see what looked like some sort of a warehouse. I felt my heart stop. It looked like exactly the sort of place you might take somebody to shoot them.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Gray-jacket turned around and looked at me. I swallowed hard and decided not to say anything further. He got out of the car and, a minute or two later, the men beside me followed him. One of them hauled me out.
I stood up, swaying on my feet. I was lightheaded. I hadn’t eaten all day and my head throbbed from the repeated blows. The night pulsed around me; blue darkness seeming to press on me as I leaned against the car, trying to stand.
