Prisoner of Love

by Cathy Skendrovich

  Jake sat back on his heels, staring out the gaping window. He’d taken precautions in this place, had kept the windows locked shut, the blinds pulled. He’d told Lucy to do the same. The guy had wanted in bad. He’d come prepared with the right tools to gain entrance.

  So Jake contemplated their next move. Because they had to move. Now that someone had found him here, with Lucy, neither of them was safe. So he had to come up with a new plan. One he’d formulated last night. But, in light of what just happened, he wouldn’t be doing it alone.

  Rolling to his feet he turned his attention to Lucy with the now dangling gun.

  “I’m gonna call the cops.”

  His head snapped up at the stupidest comment he’d ever heard. Unfortunately, it was coming out of the mouth of the girl he had the hots for.

  Turning his head to look at her, he summoned his reserve patience. “You can’t call the cops, unless you plan on telling them everything. Besides, you little fool, I am the cops.”

  “Stop calling me names. I’m sick of being called names.” To his horror, Lucy broke down and began crying that foghorn cry he’d been subjected to when he’d first kidnapped her. She huddled up into the corner between the bathroom and bedroom doors, slid down the wall, and dropped her face to her drawn-up knees, wailing.

  Robot-like, Jake rose to his feet and stared at her in the corner. He felt his heart drop. Instead of her blubbering annoying him like before, now her tears wounded him to his very core. His words were the cause of her grief and he didn’t like that realization. All he could think of was alleviating her anguish and fear.

  He walked over to Lucy and hunkered down before her. After a brief hesitation, he sat beside her and pulled her into his lap. She resisted momentarily, but then leaned into him. Still sobbing, she buried her face against his chest and wept. His arms found their way around her.

  “He—he cut me. He—he said he would c-cut my eyes out.”

  An icy cold sluiced over Jake. Gently he pushed her back from him so he could look into her face. It was hard to do, since she hiccupped every once in a while and tears still tracked down her face. But there it was: a thin, thin line of blood, pink now that it had mixed with her tears, slicing down the side of her face like a scalpel cut.

  Rage, deep and sick and thick, boiled up from the depths of his angry soul as he studied the mark. Someone would pay for this, he vowed. Someone would pay dearly.

  However, a lot of that blame belonged squarely on his shoulders, since he was the one who first involved her in this game of deceit. The admission was hard to accept. He took a thumb and gently wiped at the streaks of blood.

  “I’m sorry, Lucy, for involving you. For scaring you. For getting you cut. It won’t leave a scar. Not on your face, at least. But I’m afraid it’s left one on me.”

  As her wet, brown gaze met his, he felt his insides start to crumble. Jesus, those out-of-focus doe eyes slayed him with their misery. He felt like the most worthless piece of shit on the planet for causing her this distress. To comfort her, and to hide his guilt from her wide-eyed innocence, he pressed her head back to his shoulder and began rocking her in his arms. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

  “H-he called me a fat cow. That h-hurt more than the kn-knife.” This came muffled against his shirt, but Jake heard the comment plainly and once more a dark, filthy anger rose up, nearly choking him in its intensity. Fat? A cow? Was the asshole blind?

  By Jake’s expert assessment, Lucy possessed the old Hollywood style of body, before they all became emaciated. No, Lucy wasn’t fat, or bovine. She was soft where she needed to be soft, and, damn, right now he was hard when he didn’t need to be hard.

  Pressing a chaste kiss on the top of her head, he attempted humor. “The only one remotely like a cow, Lucy, is that douchebag, because when I hunt him down, I’m gonna butcher him like prime beef.” He felt her smile against his chest, and it was like she’d exonerated him. Since when had his moods become dependent on hers?

  The thought niggled at him, a warning he couldn’t take the time to dissect. Instead, he looked at her downturned head. “You know, we have to leave. He will come back and he’ll bring reinforcements. We don’t have much time.”

  She stiffened in his arms.

  He’d broken the spell.

  Lucy slid off Jake’s lap as she digested his words. Leave? Leave her home, her belongings, and just run away? Could she do that? Didn’t she have to? Did she want to stay behind and risk another attack?

  She shuddered at the memory of that man lying on her, knife to her face, and she realized she would do what Jake told her because it was her only choice.

  “What do I have to do?” she asked slowly, wrapping her arms around herself after realizing she was sitting near him in nothing but boy shorts and her thin tank top without a bra. His eyes dropped to her chest and then bounced back to her face.

  “Get a duffel bag or backpack, pack it with important papers you don’t want to lose, get some clothes and underwear and shit, and be ready to rock and roll in five. Someone could have heard all this. Okay?”

  She stared at him a moment before turning to the closet and grabbing some clothes and the other items he’d mentioned. When he left the room to give her privacy, she paused. This was really happening. She was running for her life, leaving behind everything familiar to her, running alongside the very man who’d brought this all crashing down on the two of them. The thought was not encouraging.

  “We’ll hit the bank a couple times, but it’ll have to be at various branches,” he said, reentering the bedroom as she came out of the closet. She’d put on a gray sweatshirt and black jeans, and pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

  “H—how long will we be gone?”

  He held her gaze, visibly tamping down his impatience to blow this place. After all, he’d been living this life since he’d escaped from prison. “Sweetheart, kiss this place good-bye.”

  Her chin trembled as she glanced around the space she’d occupied the last few years. The place she’d called home. Their eyes met again.

  “Will—will it get blown up?”

  He gave a short shake of his head. “Probably not. But it’ll get tossed pretty seriously. Don’t know if you’d want to move back in afterwards. That asshole wanted to use you to get to me. Must have had a tail on me, which brings up some interesting questions.” He went silent, his gaze distant.

  Lucy didn’t care about the questions or the tail he mentioned. She wanted nothing more than to wake up and realize this was all a bad dream. But she knew it wasn’t a dream. It was a living nightmare, and the only solution was standing in front of her in jeans and a cotton t-shirt, with two-toned hair and a scruffy chin.

  “L—let me get a jacket and I’ll be ready.” She ducked into the closet and returned with her black coat. Meeting his eyes once more, she stopped when he put a hand on her upper arm.

  “Lucy.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I’m sorry like hell for dragging you into this. I mean it. I wasn’t thinking beyond myself when I ran off that work crew that day. All I knew was I had to get out of there. I never thought how it might affect other people. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for kidnapping you, terrorizing you, and most of all, for tonight.” He reached out and once more touched her face, where the slightly puffy line still ached.

  In that moment, Lucy knew that she could fall for this man in a big way. Maybe she already had. She could ignore the facts, even fight the attraction. Or she could accept the Lucy Parker curse of always finding an ineligible male and follow this attraction as far as it went. Probably to a lifetime behind bars, at least for him. Mentally shaking her head at the irony of it all, she inhaled sharply and took the plunge into the symbolic deep end that yawned before her.

  “What’s done is done, isn’t it? We’d better go while we can.” She moved around him and headed for the apartment’s front door, never looking back.

  Jake parked Lucy’s car at the bus station before dawn, and they stripped it clean.
Not that it needed much. Accountants were tidy people by nature, he’d discovered. As they locked the little car, their eyes met and she asked, “What next?”

  He’d been lost in thought as they had driven first to the post office, where he went in and this time successfully opened the PO box Jerry had insisted on getting despite Jake’s protests. The scrap of paper inside had an address and code written on it. Also in the box was a single key on a ring. The items only gave him more questions.

  Then they’d gone to an ATM and withdrawn the maximum amount Lucy could for the day. Coupled with his meager stash in his backpack, they had enough to live on, if that living was frugal, because he was pretty damn sure his as well as “Nicky’s” bank accounts were being watched, if they weren’t already frozen.

  Once more he gazed over at Lucy. She looked cute in her sweatshirt, jeans, and pink baseball cap with her ponytail drawn through the hole in the back. She really turned him on, from that innocent vulnerability that had him wanting to slay dragons for her, right to those glasses that slid down her nose when she cried. He’d never dated a woman who wore glasses. He wondered if the lenses steamed up when she kissed, if she kept them on while she had sex…

  Shit. They’d both been beaten up this morning, and now he was thinking of steamy sex? His priorities were definitely skewed. Making out was probably the last thing on her mind right now. He wrinkled his nose and came around the car, careful to keep his wayward hands away from her, lest they start roving all over those bumps and curves she camouflaged under baggy clothes.

  He led her away from the deserted bus station. And heard her scramble to catch up. When she came abreast of him, he replied to her earlier question.

  “Next? Next, we walk.”

  “No buses?”

  “Nope.”

  She had to trot to keep up with his determined strides.

  “Well, where are we walking to?”

  Jake looked down into her face and grinned slowly before pointing at the U Store It sign a block away on the same side of the street. “We’re going right there, sweetheart.”

  He turned to continue, but she ground to a halt, pulling on his hand. “Why?”

  Oh, hell. Wasn’t that usually the way with intelligent women? They always had to slow the process down with questions instead of just trusting the man. But the thought that he might owe her some explanations had him pushing her back into the shade of a brick building.

  “A few months ago,” he said, “Jerry told me he’d gotten a PO box under a fake name. I think I mentioned that to you already. Anyway, I advised him it wasn’t a good idea. No paper trails, but he told me to stop being his dad. That he knew what he was doing.

  “He insisted on giving me the number of the box, since I wouldn’t take the key. Told me there might come a time that he wouldn’t be around to have my back. That’s when I would need what that box holds. I told him to stop talking crap. When I escaped I remembered that conversation and found the box, but I couldn’t get into it at the time. That’s why we just went to the post office. I managed to pick its lock.”

  He didn’t add that he’d studied how to do it on YouTube while sitting on her sofa. That skill wasn’t exactly one taught at the academy. “This is what was inside.” He held up the key ring with the U Store It logo as well as the piece of paper.

  “Since this is the only U Store It facility in town, chances are we’re in the right place. If ever there was a time we might need some extra help, now would be it.” He hoped to God that his cop instincts were correct: that Jerry had left a clue, perhaps evidence that he’d stumbled upon outside of their investigation that might give Jake an edge.

  Looking up, he found Lucy staring into his face. He’d piqued her curiosity, apparently.

  “Do you think it might be money?” she asked.

  “Could be.” He guided her across the street up to the storage yard perimeter gate. He punched in the code that was written on the paper and, after an ominous clink, the wrought iron gate started sliding open. One step closer to some of the answers to his questions. His pulse sped up at the thought that within minutes he might know why he’d been set up. Maybe even by whom.

  Advancing into the storage unit area and glancing at the number on one side of the key, he adjusted their direction to follow the numbers on the corresponding units.

  “Why rent such a big space?” she asked. “He could have used a safe deposit box for money.”

  “Good question.” Their feet crunched on the blacktop, the only sound in this maze of identical, orange garage doors. She sidled closer to him, and he angled himself behind her slightly in case of a rear attack.

  “Ah-ha, here it is.” He stopped in front of unit 165 and paused, reached under his shirt at his back, and withdrew his Beretta. Lucy’s eyes grew wide.

  “Wh—why do you need that?” She looked around the empty area, then back at him.

  “Hopefully I don’t. Need it, that is. But with Jerry’s apartment and the attack at your place, that means we have a tail. If there’s a welcome party for us, I’d feel a helluva lot better if you waited over there in the shadows than right beside me.”

  “You really think—”

  “Just get out of the way, Lucy, and run like hell if something happens. And here, take this.” He shrugged off the backpack and handed it to her. She took it like an automaton, still in shock at his words. But, shit, he really didn’t know what to expect in the next few minutes. He hoped he was just being overly cautious.

  After all, they’d hit the ground running after Lucy’s attack, and he’d made sure to cover their trail by looping through the city before coming here. But he couldn’t rule out that someone had followed them and was just waiting for him to open the door. His only hope (their only hope) was that Farelli thought he knew the whereabouts of his stolen money, so that killing him was not an option. Yet. His heartbeat tripled.

  Seeing that Lucy had done as he’d told her, he directed his attention to the lock. Put the key inside and turned it. Then he took a deep breath, tightened his hold on the Beretta, and rolled the door up, jumping to the side once it cleared the level of his head.

  Lucy gasped.

  Chapter Ten

  Before him, illuminated by the lighted driveway markers, sat the newest, shiniest, blackest Porsche 911 Turbo S he’d ever laid eyes on. A serious driving machine.

  It begged him to take it for a spin.

  Entering the unit, gun still at the ready, he circled the Porsche, trailing a hand along its sleek lines, shaking his head at Jerry’s choice of car, his extravagance. It was a testimony to how his friend had lived his life, and a testimony to their past friendship, that this vehicle sat here now, waiting for Jake.

  He stepped back and simply stared, mind tunneling back through his and Jerry’s relationship, all the way to the early years, before duty and greed and dishonor destroyed their friendship.

  “A car? Are you serious? He left you a car?”

  Jake snapped back into the present. He swung around while shoving his gun into the back of his pants, thoughts of what he and Jerry could have accomplished together disintegrating.

  Seeing that he was still in one piece, she had followed him into the unit and was now standing before the car with an unimpressed look on her face.

  “It’s not just a car, my dear woman,” he tried to explain. “This is a Porsche. A highly tuned, extremely sensitive piece of equipment made for only the most serious of drivers. Calling it a car is like calling the…the Hope Diamond just a diamond.”

  She wasn’t buying it. He could tell by the way she frowned, by the way she cocked her head. She didn’t agree with Jerry’s choice of repayment for his past transgressions and mistakes. But hell, what did she know? Cars were for men what shoes were for women.

  “At least the Hope Diamond doesn’t lose its value. Didn’t this—this Jerry know that a car depreciates in value as soon as you drive it off the lot? That no matter whether it’s a Honda or a Porsche, it will lose fi
fteen to twenty percent of its value in just the first year, and in subsequent ye—”

  “Enough. Let me bask in the moment here without your financial mumbo jumbo that’s sure to bring a dark cloud along any minute. Besides, it’s a Porsch-a, not a Porshe.”

  “Whatever,” she mumbled, shuffling back and tilting her head at him. That’s when he noticed the shadows beneath her eyes, the tightness of her mouth. She looked ready to drop from stress and lack of sleep, and here he was, her would-be hero, practically making out with this car.

  Yeah. Time to go.

  He knelt by a tire. Felt up into its wheel well and then moved to the next wheel to do the same when he didn’t find what he wanted. Before she could ask what he was looking for he stood and grinned in satisfaction, brandishing a key. He clicked the fob, and the car chirped twice, flashing brilliant headlights.

  Whatever else Jerry had become, he’d had good taste in automobiles. As Jake opened the driver’s door, the new car smell assaulted them, and they both involuntarily breathed deep. Lucy crept up to his side.

  “Couldn’t resist, could you?” he asked mischievously.

  She rolled her eyes. “I never said I didn’t like the car, or its smell. It’s just, if Jerry was going to help you in the future, why didn’t he buy a restaurant, or a building with this money? Why a fancy, sporty car that can be traced?”

  Good question, Jake said in his head. But then, Jerry probably hadn’t figured on dying. He’d probably wanted to keep the car for himself, since Jake wasn’t supposed to know about it unless something happened to Jerry. Jake shook his head. There was only one thing he was completely sure of, and that was that his long-time friend and partner had gathered the money for the car by stealing from Farelli. A good cop would never have had the money for a Porsche.

  But to Lucy he said, “Jerry always was a sucker for Porsches.”

  “Well, besides driving it and drawing attention to you in the process, I don’t see a lot of good it will do.”

  Frustrated and tired, he said, “Hell, I don’t know what he was thinking, Lucy. I’m just as puzzled as you.”