Table of Contents
Title Page
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD
Lost In Oblivion: Introduction
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BULLETPROOF WEEKS
When You’re Gone Trilogy – Book 2
by Taryn Elliott
COPYRIGHT
EBooks are not transferable.
They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
BULLETPROOF WEEKS
© 2015 Taryn Elliott
ISBN: 978-1-940346-15-1
Cover by LateNite Designs
All Rights Are Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Rainbow Rage Publishing e-book edition: January 2015
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DEDICATION
For Cari who never says no, even when I ask the impossible.
CHAPTER ONE
Isabella Grace watched a fat snowflake fall into the rapidly growing mass at the corner of the massive window. The murmur of passengers and distant cry of a child fuzzed at the edges of her brain.
She longed for the padded silence that the oncoming storm promised, but there was nothing silent at the airport. Not the busy tractors and snowplows outside, nor the booming speakers with directions to ticket counters to re-book flights, and most especially not the overtired children and adults.
If she’d been home she would have watched through the skinny windows and let the blanket of silence ease her. But that was just a wish. Home was filled with just as much noise. Strained small talk and sympathetic stares were even louder there.
So she’d escaped into work. Her once endless list of requests was dwindling with every trip. In fact she’d added personal delivery to the rarer finds on request. Between the Lines was expanding again, and far ahead of her own accelerated schedule. She glanced down at the steel reinforced leather briefcase between her feet.
She was traveling to Seattle with a first edition “Little Prince” then moving on to Vancouver. One of her favorite researchers wanted to sell off some of his books to make a garden oasis for himself.
For the last six months she’d amassed a hefty bank account, so it was time to spend it on some new acquisitions. If her personal life was going to shit then it was nice to know that her business could benefit. Their reputation was growing and the word of mouth from their high end clients made for a rather nice nest egg.
The way they were going, Nic and Adam would have their dream house way ahead of schedule. And for now Bella was happy to build her bank account and keep busy.
Five months of the road had given her the time to get her head on straight about the summer. People no longer recognized her from the newspapers and Logan had been keeping a relatively low profile. It was a relief not to see his face every time she walked through an airport.
For the first month after the festival he’d been on the cover of every celebrity magazine and music journal. Their photo was too unimportant to make the national magazines. She was a nobody in the land of music and fame, but Aimee? Oh yes, Aimee Collen was mentioned often. And Lindsey York. And any other woman that breathed in Logan’s vicinity.
And she’d felt like an idiot. Still did.
Months later, she could feel him in the darkest parts of the night. The way he touched her hair, the nape of her neck, the calloused tips of his fingers tracing over her skin…all of it was as clear as if he was lying beside her.
It didn’t seem fair that a week could do that much damage to her. That his touch had become a phantom tattoo with all the permanence that entailed. Hell, she’d even tried a random hook-up the month before.
Disaster of the ages.
The minute she’d let him touch her in the elevator she’d known. All she could do was compare his touch to Logan’s. And the stranger had been lacking in every way. Fumbling and nervous where Logan had been sure and gentle, then alternately rough and determined. Logan had taken cues like a longtime lover and held her like he couldn’t bear to let her go.
The stranger was nice enough, but he wasn’t going to be the one to erase Logan’s touch. It would have had the opposite effect. So she’d extracted herself with as little drama as possible. The guy had been affable enough to know it wasn’t happening. She’d gone back to her room and got drunk on the offerings in her mini bar.
An expensive lesson, but it had reinforced her need to put the business first. Airports and auction houses were her home right now. Estate sales were her trip manifest and exhaustion was the only thing getting her through the night.
Standing there at the window where the filmy snow clung to the glass in fatter pieces left her weary. Too much time to think and she was so flipping tired of thinking. She lifted her briefcase and carry-on and escaped to the newsstand.
She avoided the racks of magazines and went right for the spicy Chex Mix and Diet Coke. Dinner of champions. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a woman wearing a white dress blouse with a familiar windbreaker.
Familiar because she’d noticed the woman before. The jacket seemed far too thin to wear in Chicago. She knew the Windy City habitants were a hearty people, but parkas were the clothing of choice in January. Even more disturbing, she’d seen that windbreaker in San Francisco last week. Remarkable in its truly terrible fashion sense, especially when paired with a Michael Kors blouse.
She turned and the flash of midnight blue over white disappeared.
One too many flights this week?
Or was she on the same schedule as another poor traveling idiot?
Bella was getting to know the stewardesses on the flights, why wouldn’t she see familiar faces in the airports? She shook her head and pulled out her wallet to stand in line with the rest of the bored passengers.
She went back to her gate and settled into a corner chair, tucking the briefcase between her booted feet and fished out her e-reader. According to the booming voice that owned her evening she wasn’t going anywhere for the next six hours.
The dark, erotic thriller she’d been pining for had finally been released. The books were her new addiction. They transported her out of the noisy airports and into a world where someone else’s problems made hers feel insignificant. Where passion and choice wasn’t always easy to navigate. She could empathize and find answers within the pages, and she could follow a red herring in the mystery and allow the characters to sweep her into their fucked-up world.
Hers could remain simple, the way she liked it.
By the time she came up for air—or more like her bladder made itself known after a twenty-ounce soda—she’d lost two hours and finished sixty percent of the book. She quickly took care of business and checked the arrival and
departure boards on her way back to her corner of Gate C2.
Her flight had been bumped back another two hours, leaving her yet another six to get through. Part of her wanted to dive back into the book, but she didn’t want to finish it quite yet. She’d save it for the last two hours.
Bella wandered down to the shopping area. She bought Nic a ridiculous penguin wearing a life jacket and Adam an ugly hat. Lime green herringbone seemed about as perfect as could be for him.
Windbreaker girl came out of an aisle and stopped, dark eyes locked with hers. Bella tipped her head. The woman may have been trying to downplay her innate sense of style, but some things just couldn’t be hidden.
“Excuse me?”
The woman bolted down the aisle and over three. Bella shot forward. All right, what the hell? She caught sight of her in the beer aisle, then a moment later the woman disappeared completely.
“Bella, you are reading one too many spy thrillers.” She turned down the beginning of the wine aisles. The windbreaker she’d seen a moment ago hung on the shoulders of a woman wearing a simple oxford shirt.
The woman looked up at her with a friendly smile. “Shiraz or Riesling?”
Bella blew out a breath and her bangs ruffled against her forehead. “What?”
The stranger held up two bottles.
“Oh. Um, Riesling all the way.”
The woman nodded. “Agreed. Thanks.”
Bella leaned on the wine rack. Same outfit—almost. But this was an older brunette where the other had been blond and under thirty. “Oh yeah, way too many thrillers.” Sleep. What she needed was about six hours horizontal without dreams, without her too active brain, and most definitely without an airport.
Her bed.
Her space.
She’d take a few days and go home after this trip. Maybe even hole up and hope no one noticed her arrival.
The thought of going back to her gate held little appeal, but it was better than driving herself nuts at a newsstand or duty-free shop. Obviously that wasn’t good for her either.
She spun on her heel and bumped into a cardboard display. Little envelopes spun across the tiled floor. “Oh, crap.” Her shoulders sagged and she was fairly sure she was going to just sit down and weep at this point. She crouched, tucking her bags into her side and out of the way.
“Are you okay, Miss?”
She looked up at the man sprinting to her side. She held up a hand. “I am just not fit for human consumption today.”
He laughed and crouched beside her, gathering a handful of the environmentally friendly CD cases that seemed to be all the rage. Her heart stopped and she snatched one off the floor.
“God, you’ve got to be kidding me.” She flipped the case over and pair of eyes stared back at her. Eyes that were haunted and so obviously enhanced by a photo program. But that wasn’t the part that made her breath stall.
All the King’s Men.
The font was unmistakable.
“Have you heard it?”
She blinked. “What?” God, she sounded like an idiot today. She shook her head. “No. I—” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t know they had a new single.”
“God, how could you have missed it? World release today. And let me tell you, it’s been on all day.” He rolled his eyes. “Lucky me, it’s on a loop in the duty-free shops.”
“I’ve been on and off planes all day.”
“Well, you’ll hear it. Don’t you worry.” He stood and righted the display. Logan King and his band hung crookedly before the store clerk slid the top back in place. Logan’s usual smile was missing. The carefree smirk that lined up people at his concerts even twenty years into a career had been his trademark.
This Logan was darker. His beard was heavier. Not the usual sexy scruff, but a full blown beard now. His eyes were shadowed and held a world of secrets. The band had followed suit. Instead of the colorful array of vintage t-shirts and vests she was used to, they all wore Logan’s signature black.
And they were just slightly separate from him.
Not the band of puppies that were usually hanging off each other with laughs and sexy grins.
Logan stood in the center of them, his arms crossed, black linen shirt rolled up to show his tanned forearms and signature stack of leather straps that climbed his wrist with their silver clipped edges. His vivid green eyes stared out as if he was looking right at her.
Marketing ploy.
An effective one. God, far too effective. She swallowed down the need to tear apart the cardboard likeness. With shaking fingers, she set the CD into the display.
“Sorry about that,” she whispered.
“No worries. Oh, there it is now. At least it’s a bit darker than his poppy bullshit. Makes you wonder what he did to break her heart.” The guy lifted a shoulder. “I like it.”
She stood and moved down the aisle. The exit in her sight. She was just starting to get his face out of her dreams. Now, those dark, sad eyes were burned inside of her again. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears.
The song was soft and hazy like a dream to start, then went darker and grittier with each verse. The guitars were layered and the bass thrummed into her chest as if she was standing beside a speaker at a show. But it was Logan’s voice that shredded her.
Those topaz eyes are my addiction.
Those topaz eyes are my destruction.
Topaz eyes, won’t you be my absolution?
She escaped the store, but his voice chased her out the door and filled the speakers of the hallways. She blindly followed the signs for the C section of gates. And as she made the turn for her section, the woman from the newsstand with her fitted white dress blouse appeared before her.
They were a similar height and the detached blankness to her gaze was gone this time. Surprise and a hint of worry colored the other woman’s dark eyes.
“Who are you? Why do I keep seeing you?”
The woman smiled. “I must just have one of those faces.”
Bella transferred her briefcase to her other hand and snagged the woman’s arm before she could pass her by. The way she instantly slipped out of her hold and reached for her hip made Bella back up a step. Both bag and briefcase thudded to Bella’s feet. “What the hell?”
“You’re the one that grabbed me, lady.”
Bella’s gaze shot down to the woman’s hip and some sort of radio chirped.
The woman touched her ear, then met her gaze with a sigh. “Compromised.”
“Compromised?” What the hell did that mean? Bella looked around. People were starting to stare, but she was just angry enough not to care. “You’re going to tell me what the fuck is going on. Now.”
“Ms. Grace, please calm down.”
Bella’s hands fisted at her sides. “How do you know my name?”
“I know all about you. And I gotta say, you are one big pain in my ass.”
CHAPTER TWO
Isabella frowned as a man came toward them. He wore a navy blazer over khakis and a white dress shirt. He looked like any other business man that was traveling in semi-casual clothes. Unless you looked a little closer and saw his eyes sweeping the hallways and that his stride was just a little more purposeful than the average traveler. Oh, most of the people in the airport walked almost the same way. Flights to catch, cabs to find, baggage to claim—that sort of thing. But she rarely saw that gaze on anyone other than the soldiers that hitched a ride on commercial airlines.
His eyes had that flat, assessing quality. Much like the woman that stood silently beside her, no matter how many questions she peppered at her. Well, at least since Resting Bitch Face told her she was a pain in the ass anyway.
“Why won’t you just tell me who you are? Do I need to contact security?”
RBF, as she was becoming known in Bella’s head, simply raised one eyebrow.
“Is this guy with you?”
RBF nodded.
Bella nudged her bag at her feet and crossed her arms. People were stil
l staring, but she was pretty sure it was because of the man making his way across the airport straightaway. Chicago was a hub, and even with most flights grounded, it was very busy. And he was a little scary.
She had to fight the urge to gather her bags and get the hell out of there. But curiosity was clamoring in her head. Questions and confusion—with a touch of jangling nerves—were never a good mix.
“Please tell me who Gigantor is.”
RBF didn’t say anything, but she did press her lips together in a tight line. Disapproval? Or was that laughter she saw in the woman’s eyes?
The man touched his ear as RBF had, then pulled a phone out of his blazer as he walked up to them. “Ms. Grace?”
“I’m getting really creeped out that everyone knows my name. Who are you? Or better yet, who do you work for because I don’t know anyone else in the world that looks like the two of you that isn’t law enforcement or…” She trailed off. “Have I done something wrong? Are you with security?” Bella glanced down at her briefcase. “Look, I’m not doing anything hinky. I’m a—”
“Rare book collector. Yes, I know. And you are a very busy one at that. I had no idea people actually still cared about books.”
Bella lifted her briefcase and backed up a step. Her current purchase for a client was worth a cool seventy thousand dollars. There had been a few instances over the years where a courier had been targeted for robbery, but those were books from a Christie’s or Sotheby’s auction. Not a first edition Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was very valuable, there was no doubt about that, but not even close to this craziness.
Bella’s back went straight as she met the nearly black eyes of the man. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but those eyes didn’t seem to match the rest of him. His buzz cut with deeply tanned skin spoke of the outdoors, but the blond hair generally went with light eyes.
The deepest walnut brown stared her down without a hint of remorse or friendliness.
She lifted her chin. “Do you have answers, or am I going to be tossing questions out into the wind again?”
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