She nestled into my side and crossed her legs, leaving herself wide open to me.
I shook my head. Now was the time to stay focused.
“I think we should move on from here today,” I said.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were still heavy with sleep. “But we still have at least nine days left.”
“I know. Nine days until the family comes back. But we have no idea if they might have someone coming to check in on the place. I think, to be safe, we should find somewhere else to crash tonight. It’s time to get back on the road.”
Violet turned to face me and crossed her legs. Before I stole a peek she gathered the front of the shirt and pushed it down to the sofa, covering herself. “But it’s safe here,” she whispered.
“It’s temporary.”
She bit her bottom lip and stared down at her lap.
I sighed. “I know you don’t want to leave. But we both knew we couldn’t stay here forever. And it’s better if we choose to leave rather than get forced out. Yes?”
She nodded slowly.
I rested a hand on her knee. “I know you don’t want to keep running. We’ll figure something out. But right now this is our best bet.”
“You’re right,” she whispered.
At least she was meeting me halfway. “Come on. Let’s go through some drawers and pack some bags of clothes and see if we can find any cash lying around. It’ll come in handy.”
She stared wide eyed at me. “What?”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “Are you going to draw the line at theft?”
She licked her lips. “No. But these people didn’t do anything to us. They don’t deserve to have their stuff stolen as well as come home to a house that’s very clearly been lived in by strangers.”
“Would you rather we leave empty handed?”
She frowned. “No.”
“Then it’s settled. We pack and then we hit the road.”
“What about a car? We shouldn’t take the SUV right? The police will be looking for it.”
“Leave the car to me,” I said.
* * *
Violet and I reconvened at the front door at noon. The sun was shining and the air was brisk. We each had a full bag of clothes over our shoulders as well as pockets full of bills and loose change. I had no qualms about it. We needed the cash and the family probably had insurance.
We were being hunted down and probably had a hefty reward on our heads. I could only imagine what the Shades were willing to pay the assassin who finally took care of me.
Hundreds and hundreds of thousands.
Hell, it might even be around the million dollar mark.
“What car are we taking?” Violet asked, after we closed the front door behind us.
I nodded at the gold Volvo in the next door neighbor’s driveway. “That one. I’ve had an eye on the house all morning. Nobody’s home.”
“Okay.”
“Wait here. I’ll bring it around.”
Violet did as I asked and waited with the bags at the front door. When I brought the car around, she threw them in the back seat and hurried around to get in the passenger side. As soon as she closed the door, I pulled out onto the street and picked up speed. I went only two miles over the speed limit so as not to draw attention as we made our way out of the residential area.
Violet sat with her knees pinched together and her hands resting flat on her thighs. “Where are we going?”
“Quebec.”
“And then?”
I feathered my fingers on the steering wheel. “I don’t know yet.”
Violet stared out her window. I could see her reflection in the glass, the lost eyes, furrowed eyebrows, downturned lips. She looked down at her hands. “Xavier?”
I waited a beat. “Yes?”
“Do you think I’ll ever see my family or friends again?”
Well, shit. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. At all.
We came to a stop at a red light. I kept my gaze fixed on the stoplight and waited for it to turn green. “Honestly, I don’t know, Violet. I wish I had a better answer for you.”
She ran her hands down her thighs and nodded slowly on a deep exhale of breath. “Right. No. It’s okay. I know you can’t answer that. I just—” she trailed off and shook her head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
I didn’t push her to explain, and we spent the next few hours driving in comfortable silence. Well, it was comfortable for me. There was no way to tell whether or not Violet would have preferred if we were talking. But, if I had to guess, I would assume she didn’t want to talk. She never looked my direction, never reached for the radio, and never made a sound. Her thoughts were probably racing a mile a minute and in my experience it was sometimes better to let them run their course than to interrupt them.
That is how I navigated the storms in my mind, anyway.
We drove until shortly before midnight when we arrived in Quebec City. I pulled into a run of the mill motel off the highway attached to a rundown looking restaurant. I parked the car in front of the lobby and told Violet that no, she could not wait in the car, when she asked if she could stay behind. We booked a room with a queen sized bed at her request, and five minutes later had packed our bags up the stairs to the second floor and let ourselves into our room.
I went in first and checked it over to make sure the coast was clear, then Violet closed and locked the door behind her as I flicked on one of the lamps by the bed.
The place was the definition of average.
The walls were plastered with olive green leaf printed wallpaper, and trimmed in cream colored crown molding that probably used to be white at one time. The carpets were a thin beige, and the furniture was pine. An old TV sat on the dresser at the end of the bed by a mini fridge with a piece of paper taped to the door listing the prices of the contents inside.
Violet set her bag down on the end of the bed, unzipped it, and pulled out a pair of pajamas she’d packed back at the house. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said softly.
She slipped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
I lay on the bed with my hands clasped behind my head and listened to the rush of water on the other side of the bathroom door.
Wondering what she was thinking about in there, I hoped she wasn’t crying over the people she missed.
When she came back out of the bathroom, her hair was wrapped up in a towel and she smelled of lemons. She pulled the blankets down on her side of the bed, slipped under them, fluffed the pillows at her back, and reached for the TV remote on her nightstand.
Before she turned the TV on, she looked down at me. “Should we fly away somewhere? Like off this continent? Somewhere they would never find us.”
I looked up at her hopeful face. “No place is a guaranteed safe place, Violet.”
“I know that. I’m not asking for a guarantee. But it has to be better than just driving back and forth all over the country until the end of time.”
She had a point there.
We weren’t going to keep this up forever. At some point or another, the Shades were going to get smarter and they would catch up with us. Or there was always the possibility that the police or Jonah Wynn would beat them to it.
All of those options were bad.
“I’ll think about it.”
Violet turned the TV on. The channel guide popped up and she scrolled through the listings as I sat up slowly and rolled up the hem of my shirt to inspect my side.
“How does it look?” she asked.
“Looks like I’ll be good as new before I know it.” I got up and padded to the bathroom to take a shower as well. I paused in the doorway and looked back at her.
I should tell her it will all be okay, I thought. I should say something reassuring. Something that will make her feel safe.
But I was no liar. And I didn’t want to over-promise anything.
So instead, I said, “I’ll think about it.”
S
he muted the TV. “About flying somewhere?”
“Yes.”
Chapter Ten
Violet
I woke to the sound of birds chirping outside.
The hotel room was still nearly pitch black. The thick curtains on the window beside the door were drawn save for a half inch sliver where they met in the middle. A strip of gray light shone through the opening and cast a line across the bed. It landed across our hips.
Rolling over, I faced the man sleeping next to me.
For nearly the hundredth time in the last couple of weeks, it struck me how odd it was to wake up beside someone like Xavier.
So much had changed in such a short amount of time.
Less than a month ago I was attending high society dinner parties and fundraisers, and now I was jumping between sleazy motels and average lodges, or even squatting in other people’s homes.
I’d become an entirely different person it seemed.
Because of him.
I tucked my hand under my cheek and watched him sleep.
He was on his back. I hadn’t seen him sleeping on his side since before he was shot. I assumed it must be uncomfortable on him. Maybe it applied pressure or weight to his side or hip.
His chest rose and fell with deep, even breaths. One side of his face was cast in darkness while a soft veil of light fell upon the far side. The longer I stayed there looking at him, the more he came into focus.
He hadn’t shaved in a while. Since everything went down, actually. There was thick dark stubble along his jaw and cheeks. I thought it suited him. I also thought it was probably wise of him to leave it for disguise purposes.
Disguise purposes, I mused. My own internal thoughts were starting to sound like dialogue from shitty action movies.
Sighing, I snuggled in a little closer so my knees rested against the ribs of Xavier’s left side. His uninjured side. I could feel his steady heartbeat. His flesh was hot and reassuring. Safe.
I was in this mess because of him.
Yet, I harbored no real resentment toward him. I harbored gratitude. He could have ended my life a hundred times over, as he had been assigned to do, making things far easier on himself. He could have checked out ages ago. He could have simply disappeared. But he was still here seeing it through to the end.
I couldn’t fault him for that.
Ten minutes or so passed, and my stomach started growling. I sat up, rolled off the bed, and padded over to the mini fridge.
There was nothing inside but bottles of water, soda, and a folded little card with instructions to the vending machine.
“Classy,” I muttered, closing the fridge.
There was no telling how long Xavier was going to sleep, and I didn’t want to be the reason he woke up. Sleep was crucial in his recovery. I knew that. I also knew he didn’t come by sleep very easily. He tossed and turned, and there were plenty of times during the night that I woke to find him sitting by a window or lying on his back staring up at the ceiling with a hard, angry look on his face.
I suppose if I were him, I’d have plenty of anger stirring inside me as well.
Treading upon silent feet, I crossed the room, got dressed, and padded to the door to slip out and head down to the restaurant. I was perfectly capable of grabbing us each a coffee and something for breakfast, then bringing it back up to the room while he rested.
When he woke, we could eat and hit the road and not lose any time.
Maybe he’d appreciate me being proactive.
Or, maybe he’d yell at me again. Time would tell.
There were more cars in the parking lot this morning than there had been when we arrived around midnight. I took the stairs as casually as I could manage, hoping I looked the part of a sleepy spouse making her way down to the restaurant to bring breakfast back to her sweetheart. I tucked my hands into the sleeves of my sweater and kept my chin buried in the neck to ward off the cool air and hide my mouth.
There was no harm in being cautious.
The restaurant attached to the hotel was a sorry excuse for a professional business establishment. The floors were sticky, for one thing, and there were three burnt out fluorescent lights in the ceiling that hummed obnoxiously.
I took a seat at the counter that reminded me of a fifties diner and waited as the waitress made her way toward me. I ordered two coffees and two breakfast sandwiches to go and paid in cash, then proceeded to watch her bustle around trying to tend to all the customers around her.
There were two middle aged men at the opposite end of the counter chatting about politics over the morning newspaper. A couple booths back from them was a young family, probably stopping at this hotel overnight while on their way to a more glamorous destination. The wife was wearing nice shoes and the husband had a very nice jacket on. The child, a little girl no more than six, had a beautiful little doll tucked under her arm, and she was picking at the waffle in front of her.
There were couples and singles and all kinds of people scattered throughout the place.
Which is why I didn’t notice the two new men who had just stepped into the bar and sat down four stools down from me. Between us was a big guy listening to his headphones. And thank God for him, because these men were dressed in full black suits, had several scars on the visible skin of their necks and hands, and looked like they were there to do business.
I averted my eyes to the counter and tried to control my breathing.
Shades.
How did they always manage to catch up to us so quickly? What the hell were Xavier and I doing so wrong that was making it so easy for these assholes to track us down?
The waitress came to greet the men in suits. She asked what they wanted to eat.
One of them ordered a coffee. The other a glass of water with a slice of lemon.
The waitress went to put their orders in. Then, to my horror, she took my bags of food and my two coffees off the back counter where they’d just been pushed forward by the kitchen staff, and brought them to me.
“There you are, sugar,” she drawled with a lopsided smile.
“Thank you,” I said softly, trying to blend in to the red leather of the stool upon which I sat.
I turned away from the counter slowly, careful to not make any sudden moves that might draw attention, and began walking to the door.
As I went, I overheard one of the men say Xavier’s name.
“I don’t care what Arman says. When I get my hands on him, he’s dead. All the brothers have agreed. Dyer deserves what’s coming to him. He’s just prolonging his fate.”
I swallowed and pushed open the door. I didn’t want to hear what the other man had to say. I didn’t want to picture what they would do to Xavier if they caught up with him. Or what they’d do with me when they found me in his company.
As soon as I was past the windows of the restaurant, I broke into a run.
I took the stairs to the second level two at a time, despite the fact that I didn’t have exceptionally long legs. I hurried to our room, shouldered open the door, and pushed it closed behind me. Once I’d done up all the locks, I went to the bed, grabbed Xavier by the shoulder, and shook him awake.
“Bloody fucking hell,” he growled, shrugging out of my grip.
“Get up.”
“What’s going on?” He sounded disoriented. Confused.
I was right. He still needed his rest. He wasn’t fully healed and he was definitely sleeping heavier than he used to before his injuries.
“I went down to get breakfast—”
“You what?” He sat up straight.
“I was hungry. It doesn’t matter right now. I saw Shades in the restaurant.”
Xavier swung his legs over the side of the bed and moved faster than he had in days. He got dressed, packed our shit up in a hurry, and turned to me. “How many?”
“Only two. There might have been more. I didn’t stay to find out.”
“And you’re positive they were Shades?”
“They sai
d your name. Is that proof enough for you?”
Xavier nodded. “Yep. Let’s go. Do you have everything?”
“I think so. How are we going to get past them? The car is out front. They’ll be able to see us from the restaurant. And if more of them are coming we’re—”
“Give me a minute to think.”
I shut my mouth.
Xavier paced the floor. Back and forth. Back and forth.
My heart hammered so hard in my chest I could feel my pulse in the tips of my fingers. I shook my hands out as they started to tingle and my stomach rolled over with nerves. “Xavier?”
“A minute,” he said, holding up a finger to me.
I clasped my hands together and rocked back on my heels as anxiety crawled up my spine. We didn’t have a minute.
“One of them ordered a coffee. In a ceramic mug. We have at least five more minutes. Realistically,” I said.
Xavier stopped pacing. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
He slung his back over his shoulder and I followed suit with mine. Then he put his hand on the door and unlocked the bolt. “Let’s go. Stay behind me. Do what I say. Got it?”
I nodded.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I need to hear you say it out loud.”
Now was not the time for me to make a fuss even though I wanted to tell him he was the one wasting time. I nodded again. “Yes. Got it.”
“Good.” He jerked the door open and I plunged outside after him, rushing into the cool gray light of the morning.
Chapter Eleven
Xavier
I held out an arm to stop Violet from dashing past me to make for the stairs down the hallway. She gripped my forearm and fell into step behind me as I leaned toward the railing to peer cautiously down to the parking lot below.
There was a black sedan parked in the stall nearest the base of the stairs, which let out just around the corner from the restaurant. If our timing was off and the Shades in the diner sipping their coffee happened to leave as we descended the stairs, we were screwed.
Dark Lover: Sins of the Night Page 6
