Outside the Lines

by Lisa Desrochers

  If they find him there, they’ll kill him.

  Lee’s words keep crashing through my mind, obliterating any other thoughts and most of my common sense. I don’t even know who they are. I have no idea what I’m walking into. All I know is I have to get Rob out of there before anything bad happens.

  That will be too late.

  It’s almost ten when the cab finally pulls up to the front of a hotel near the water. I jump out, throw a wad of money at the driver, and sprint to the front desk. There’s a man in a suit already talking to the only clerk. I try to wait, but he’s asking sight-seeing questions and it’s taking forever.

  “Excuse me,” I say, edging closer to the desk. “Is there anyone else who can help me?”

  “I’ll be with you in just a moment,” she says, gesturing that I should step back with a flick of her eyes.

  “I’m really sorry, but it’s an emergency,” I hope the fact that I’m nearly hysterical might convince her.

  It doesn’t.

  She pulls her glasses off. “I’m sorry, but it will be just a moment before I can assist you,” she says. It’s clear from her tone that she’s anything but sorry.

  “It’s okay,” the middle-aged man she’s helping says, smiling at me. “Go ahead and help the young lady.”

  “Thank you so much,” I gush, then turn to the clerk. But when I open my mouth, I realize I have no idea who I’m asking for. Then I remember the photo I took of him on the manatee trip. I pull out my phone. “One second.”

  “I’m very busy,” the clerk says, turning back to the man. She’s snippy and rude, and I decide her bun must be pulled too tight.

  “I’ve got time,” he says with a smile and a wink at me. “No rush.”

  I smile back when I see that he finds the clerk’s irritation amusing. I find the picture and turn my phone for her to see. “Is this man registered here?”

  She barely gives the screen a glance. “We have hundreds of patrons. If I wasn’t on duty when he registered, it’s unlikely that I’ve ever laid eyes on him.”

  “But do you recognize him?” I ask, shaking my phone. “This is extremely important. Please.”

  “Nice-looking young man,” the guy says from over my shoulder, and I realize he’s looking at the picture.

  I nod as the woman behind the counter shakes her head. “He looks familiar, but I see hundreds of faces,” she says. “If you have a name, I’ll look him up in the registry.”

  My heart stalls. He’s here. “It’s Robert—” What? I know he’s not registered under Davidson. If what Lee said is true, and people are truly trying to kill him, I’m not sure it’s smart to be throwing his name around. “Never mind. Do you have a room available?”

  She bangs on her keyboard. “Just one night?”

  “Yes.”

  She pounds some more. “All I have is the honeymoon suite, on the top floor overlooking the lake.”

  “That might come in handy if you ever find your man,” the man says with a nudge of his elbow into mine.

  “How much?” I ask.

  “Four ninety-five, plus tax.”

  My stomach sinks to my toes. There goes Frank’s new crankshaft. “I’ll take it.”

  I look around the lobby while she’s registering me. I can sit down here and wait until Rob comes down. He’ll have to eventually.

  “Here you are, Miss Wilson,” the clerk says, handing me a folder with two keycards and a room number scrawled across the front. For someone so uptight, her handwriting is appalling.

  I take it, then start to move to a grouping of couches near the fireplace, but I look back to see the man at the counter watching me. He seemed nice at first, but now he’s coming off a little creepy. I turn instead to the alcove where the elevators are and breathe a relieved sigh when I’m out of sight of the desk. I slip onto a velvet-covered bench between two elevator doors and rub my eyes.

  “Adri?”

  My head snaps toward Rob’s voice as if my neck is spring-loaded. Under his shock, he looks terrible: black leather jacket over rumpled clothes, dark rings under his eyes, and the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders. But he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. All I want to do is hold him and know he’s safe. But there’s something wild in his expression as he approaches that makes me stop short of throwing myself into his arms.

  He snatches the key folder out of my fingers and looks at it, then grasps my arm and drags me into the elevator he just stepped out of. He stabs the button for the top floor, then spins back to me. “Jesus Christ. What are you doing here?”

  It takes me a second to register that he’s angry with me. I only realize how close to losing it I am when I do. All the emotion that’s churning through me, eating me alive from the inside out, erupts out of me. “Why would you come back here if someone’s trying to kill you?” I hiss, throwing a hand at him.

  His eyes scour my face. “Why would you think that?” he asks in a measured tone.

  “Lee was beside herself. She was sure you were in danger.”

  His eyes snap back to mine, and for the first time, I see true panic in them. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s worried about you.”

  His honey eyes darken as his jaw tightens. “Lee wouldn’t have sent you here.”

  “Damn it, Rob!” I say shoving him. “She said someone wanted to kill you. What was I supposed to do?”

  The elevator door opens on the twenty-ninth floor, and his hand clamps around my arm so hard I’m sure I’ll have a bruise. He yanks me up the hall and shoves the plastic card through the slot to my room. His jaw is tight and he doesn’t open it again until we’re behind my closed door, where he throws me on the couch in the large sitting room of my suite. “What the hell were you thinking, coming here?”

  “What were you thinking, coming here?” I spit back.

  He paces to the window and stares out over the city below. “I want you on the next flight home.”

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  He turns from the window, his expression deadly calm. “You shouldn’t have come after me, Adri. You should have left it alone.”

  “How was I supposed to do that?” I ask, desperation rising up on a wave and choking out everything else I’m feeling. “How was I supposed to let the only man I’ve ever loved go off and get himself killed?”

  His eyes flare and the vein in his forehead pulses as he loses his composure. “I told you I’m dangerous!” he shouts, ripping me off the couch by the shoulders and shaking me. “I warned you to stay away from me!”

  In his outburst, I see it—all the passion he’s trying so desperately to hide. He lets me go as if I’ve burned him, and my heart pulses in my throat as we stand here staring at each other. But as I watch, his eyes harden to stone as he gets himself back together.

  “You’re making this something it’s not,” he says, backing away a step and moving his hand in a circle between us. “I thought I was clear in my bedroom. I don’t love you.”

  My heart contracts into a tight knot. “You do. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Look closer, Adri,” he says, leaning near, his sharp gaze cutting through me, “and I’m sure you’ll discover you are mistaken.”

  I stare into those honey eyes, now as hard as the topaz in his ring. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I told you from the beginning that I wasn’t who you thought I was. I told you I’d ruin you. You should have believed me.” He turns for the door, slipping my key into his pocket. “Do not leave this room. Do not open the door for anyone. When I get back, we’ll figure out how to get you on a flight home.”

  I move quickly, slamming my palm into the door as he starts to pull it open. “Where are you going?”

  He grasps my wrist and removes my hand from the door, his stony gaze drilling through me. “To my apartment. If I’m not back in an hour, get your ass to the airport and get yourself out of here.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but he silences me
with a look.

  “This is no joke, Adri.”

  I want to follow him. I came here to stop him from doing whatever it is he thinks he needs to do. But all I can do is stare at the door after he slams it in my face.

  I look around my honeymoon suite. On the wall next to me is a fully stocked bar, with rows of top-shelf spirits on the granite countertop. Near the window is a small dining table with a vase of fresh roses. The couch faces a flat-screen TV on the wall, and there’s a door to the right that must lead to the bedroom.

  I go to the bar and read the labels, pulling the scotch from the shelf and pouring a shot. It burns all the way down and I stand for a second waiting to see if it’s going to come back up before pouring another. I have to think. How can I stop Rob from whatever it is he thinks he has to do if I don’t know what it is?

  After the second shot, the shaking in my hands slows and my thoughts start to untwist.

  He said he’ll be back in an hour. I dig my phone out of my bag and start to dial the airline, but realize I can’t buy a ticket for Rob. I’m sure there’s a reason he’s not travelling under the name Davidson, even though I can’t begin to imagine what it is.

  As my whirring thoughts settle, the things he said start to come into focus.

  I thought I was clear in my bedroom. I don’t love you.

  Am I wrong? Have I just been fooling myself that what I was seeing in his eyes was love? Because I’m pretty sure what I saw there before he walked out of this room was the opposite of love.

  I want you on the next flight home.

  This was crazy. He walked away from me after he had what he wanted. I am stupid and naïve to think that because he wanted to sleep with me, that meant he loved me.

  So stupid.

  I back away from the bar and stare out the window for a long time, trying to sort through the chaos of my thoughts. Searching for one thing I know in all the bits I believe.

  I believe he’s Robert Davidson, but I don’t know that. And with everything that’s happened in the last few hours, I’m finding that less likely to be true. I believe he’s a good person, but the look in his eyes before he walked out of here was dangerous, just like he’s always said. I believe he loves me. I want so desperately for that to be true. But I definitely don’t know it is. The only thing I’m relatively sure of is that he loves his family and he’d do anything to protect them.

  I pull out my phone and dial Lee. She picks up on the first ring.

  “Adri! Is everything okay?”

  “I’m in Chicago,” I say. “He’s here.”

  A relieved sigh bellows through the phone. “Thank God.”

  I swallow. “I need you to tell me what’s going on. Why did he come here?”

  There’s a long pause. “Is he okay?”

  “He stormed out of here a half hour ago. Said he was going to his apartment and he’d be back in an hour. If he’s not, I’m supposed to get myself on a plane. How much danger am I in, Lee?”

  “Damn,” she hisses under her breath. Another pause. “I don’t know, but you should probably do what he says.”

  “Who wants to kill him?”

  She blows out another sigh. “We have plenty of enemies.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just do as Rob says, Adri. If he’s not back soon, come home. If Rob makes it through this and something happens to you, he’ll never forgive me.”

  I disconnect and stare out the window some more. “Please,” I whisper, tipping my head into the glass and pressing a palm to the window. “Please come back to me.”

  When I finally push away from the window, I look at the clock and find nearly an hour has passed. I don’t want to leave without him, but I’m so confused.

  I move to the door, pull it open, not sure what I mean to do—leave, or try to find Rob.

  The last thing I expect is to be shoved back into the room. I stagger a step, my arms flailing as I try to stay on my feet.

  A firm hand grasps my shoulder to keep me from toppling, and for a second, I’m sure it’s Rob. But the voice is off when he says, “Hello, my sweet. Did you miss me?”

  When I look up, it’s the middle-aged man from the counter downstairs. A younger man steps in behind him and closes the door. My confusion turns to terror when he pulls out a gun and aims it at my forehead.

  “We didn’t really have a chance to get acquainted downstairs,” he purrs. “Let’s talk.”

  Chapter 25

  Rob

  When I step off the elevator into the lobby, there is a pair of guys that I don’t like the looks of with their heads together near the front doors. As I slip back into the elevator, I think again that choosing the hotel my family owns wasn’t the best strategy. There are eyes everywhere.

  But this is where is started when they killed my mother, so it feels right that this is where it should end.

  I take the elevator down one level to the parking garage, then skirt back around to street level at the back of the hotel, where I wave down a taxi. But my head still isn’t in the game when the cab rolls up to my apartment building in Lincoln Park. All I can think about is Adri, back at the hotel. I scan the grounds warily, knowing there’s every likelihood the Savocas have had guys here since the botched hit. I’m certain they’re watching the house, which is why I couldn’t go there for my Maserati. If I’m alive at the end of this, the Ducati will provide a cleaner getaway anyway.

  There’s low cloud cover tonight. The streetlight in front of the building is out, so once the cab pulls away, I’m plunged into darkness. I case my windows on the eighth floor and find them dark. That doesn’t mean it’s safe. I haven’t lived in this apartment full-time since everything went down with Pop’s arrest two years ago, but I kept it. I guess I hoped when the smoke cleared, I’d be able to have my privacy again. I never did business here to keep it off the radar, but I never did anything to hide it either. It wouldn’t have been too hard for Savoca to track it down.

  As I reach the glass doors, the doorman is holding one open for a couple, arm-in-arm on their way out. The man is laughing at something his woman said. I ignore the burn in my chest when Adri’s face flashes into my head, but the prickle under my skin confirms everything I’m trying to deny. I love her. If anything happens to her, they might as well kill me too.

  “Mr. Delgado,” the doorman says once the couple has passed. “It’s good to have you back.”

  “Thank you, William.” I draw a breath, move past him into the lobby, my hand wrapped around the butt of the Glock under my jacket. I step into the elevator. When it stops on the eighth floor, I wait before stepping out. When there’s no barrage of gunfire, I move quickly up the hall to my apartment. I give one last look around, turn the key, slip through the door.

  I take a quick inventory of the room. Everything is just where I left it. It doesn’t look like the FBI or anyone else has tossed it. The shades are drawn over the two large windows that look toward the lake. To the left, the kitchen is stainless steel and black granite. The counters are bare except for a roll of paper towels next to the sink and a knife block by the stove in the island. On the wall over the stone fireplace is an enormous flat-screen TV. A brown leather sofa sits in the middle of the room, facing it.

  I stride to the office, open the safe, pull out a stack of cash and the Italian passport that will get my alter ego, Roberto Scarpelli, on a flight out of Chicago if necessary.

  As I yank open my desk drawer to grab the keys to my bike, my eyes flick over the newspaper I left on my desk months ago, the day we all moved back to Pop’s during the trial. It’s a Chicago Tribune folded back to the page with an article about the governor’s literacy ball. I glance over the picture of Sophie and me standing next to the governor and his wife, then toss it in the trash. That was a lifetime ago. Everything has changed.

  I pocket the key and head for the door. Stupidly, I don’t look through the peephole before I rip it open. If I did, I would have seen my welcome party.

  His hands
are in the air and my Glock is trained on his face in a heartbeat.

  “I’m unarmed, Rob,” Oliver says, holding his ground.

  My finger tightens on the trigger as I press the muzzle against his forehead. “That was poor planning on your part, then.”

  He takes a deep breath, seemingly more perturbed than afraid. “Can I come in?”

  His hair is longer than it was last time I saw him, dark waves down the sides of his square face. Impeccably groomed, as usual, he’s in a dark gray suit and slate blue button-down with the collar open, looking every inch the refined businessman.

  “Everyone knows you don’t have the stomach for your own dirty work, Savoca. You might be unarmed, but what about the army you have waiting on the street?”

  He shakes his head and I push the muzzle tighter against his skin. “No army. Only me.”

  I breathe out a sardonic laugh. “And you’re also known for your honesty.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Because you’d tell me if you were lying? Nice try. How did you know I was here?”

  A smile ticks his mouth. “Your doorman’s on my payroll. Has been for years.”

  I shake my head at myself. I should have known.

  “Let me in, Rob. We need to talk.”

  “Talk,” I say, shoving the gun and forcing him back a step.

  “We didn’t contract the hit on your family.”

  “Why should I believe that?”

  “Because I know who did.”

  Now he’s got my attention. I back up, keeping my Glock trained on his face. He follows me through the door and closes it.

  “Spill it,” I say, gesturing with the gun toward my sofa.

  He sits. “First, I’ve got terms.”

  “And I’ve got a gun. Who do you think wins?”

  “Hear me out,” he says, leaning deeper into the cushions. His casual confidence tells me he’s lying either about being unarmed or about the army outside, because the other alternative is he’s a moron, and I know better.

  Oliver is a strategist. If he’s got a flaw, it’s that he overthinks things. He’s slippery and dangerous, and I’m not going to make the mistake of underestimating him.