Aliah!
This is all his fault. He’s put her in danger and now he’s left her all alone when she’d felt the threat and begged for nothing but his company. Even she felt the need to follow her hunch. She wanted him to stay; even while he was probably the last asshole she wanted to look at right then.
A bad feeling has him glancing at his phone a few more times, as he races back to their hideout. When he reaches a red light, he makes a grab for his phone. He dials up his voicemail to check the message that appears once he returns to an area with good service. Call display tells him the missed caller was Jillian.
Hey Harley. You’ve been busy, I suppose. You didn’t make it in today. I’m kind of getting worried. I haven’t checked your line for messages, but I know there are a few on there. You might want to check them when you have a minute. Anyways, I hope things are going okay and I hope to see you real soon.
Something about the change in her tone has him hanging up and dialing his office in an instant. He blasts through a red light and picks up speed, until he’s driving like a maniac to get back to the beach house.
He skips past the first few messages. Two are from clients and one is an old one from Hannah. The next one has him reeling.
The woman’s voice is disguised, and to the untrained ear it might have even sounded normal, but he knows better.
After the woman retraces his footsteps from the day, she gives him the threat he has been avoiding.
“Stay away from Aliah. That is a threat. If you don’t, I will kill her myself. Oh, and David? Or Harley. Whatever name it is you’re calling yourself today. Don’t go to the police. I will know if you do, and it’ll be like you’re pulling that trigger yourself.”
He tries to call Aliah, to warn her, but the landline is dead. He tries the spare phone he’d given her, but it goes straight to voicemail.
Why didn’t she keep the cell on like I’d instructed her to?
As he speeds back to the beach house as fast as his vehicle will carry him, he considers how much this unstable woman knows. She knows where he’s been all day. He was careful to check all of their luggage and everything was clean. He recalls standing at the bar the other night, and placing his phone on the counter for all of one minute, while he tried to seduce Aliah.
When he slams on his brakes, his beast of an SUV slides down the gravel road. Before it even comes to a stop, he pries open his cell and nearly crashes when he focuses on the chip tagged onto it, for one second too long. It feels like someone has made a grab for his heart. The painful squeeze has him gasping for a breath.
He’s been bugged, and no doubt tracked by his cell phone. He digs his foot into the gas pedal, but feels no comfort from the rev of his engine. He quickly pockets his SIM card and wheels the damn phone out his window, watching it break into a million pieces on the road behind him. Then he takes the corner on two tires, nearly rolling his high-end machine into a bottomless black ditch.
Aliah had better be okay, or he’ll never forgive himself.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Harley leaves her all alone. What was he thinking? There are men after them, and they have guns. All Aliah can think about is the lengths to which Harley has gone to bring her to safety and then he just takes off without her. What the hell?
She supposes she hadn’t told him, and he couldn’t possibly know, how scared she is. She likes to keep up a stony front, after all. But she is downright terrified and she wishes she’d had the guts to share that with Harley. Instead, now she finds herself swimming in her deranged thoughts, alone in this woman’s beach house, who’s likely Harley’s ex-lover.
So now, not only is she worried for her life, but she’s fuming with jealousy.
Aliah searches the flat surfaces for something – anything – to show Harley’s involvement in this woman’s life. She finds but one picture that says it all. At least he hadn’t lied about one thing. He has a sister. One of the women in the picture looks like an older, more mature version of Hannah, with softer eyes and a deeper smile. But put her next to Harley, and you can see the resemblance.
Everything in the place screams femininity; from the softness of the drapes, to the blanket thrown across the sofa. It’s well-kept and well-decorated, clearly a home of wealth. Why wouldn’t he just tell her that it’s his sister’s place and save her the agony? Clueless, that man is.
Aliah, now satisfied that her jealousy is unwarranted, still cannot shake the eerie feeling in her blood. She had hoped finding her answer would put her mind at ease, but the hairs on the back of her neck still stand on end. She shrugs it off, and chalks it up to aftershock from the unexpected attack at the hotel.
Her stomach growls, while she notes her surroundings. It’s a nice place. Quiet. But nice. Though the rumors seem to indicate that David H. Gates is a self-made millionaire, it is clear that he comes from a family of wealth.
Family. When Aliah starts to think about Harley’s daughter, she gets a little worried. Don’t get her wrong, she’s always liked how she can just up and do whatever she wants as a single girl, but she’s starting to understand what it’s like to care about people other than herself.
She hurries to the bag of things Harley has left her with and digs out his phone. She searches the call log and finds the number she’s looking for. She picks at her fingernails as she waits for the girl to answer her phone.
“Dad?” Hannah answers.
“No. It’s me. Aliah.”
“Oh, no. Now I know something’s wrong, if he’s given you his spare phone. What’s going on?”
Aliah tries to clear the fear from her voice. “What do you mean? I was just calling to see how you’re doing.”
“You lie like a rug. No one abandons such a mint car with a teenager and takes off like that. My dad isn’t that careless, though he might lead you to believe that. You’ll be happy to hear that I locked your car up in my dad’s garage.”
“Thank you,” Aliah says, stunned that she hasn’t thought twice about the state of her most prized possession. When you’re running for your life, possessions don’t seem to have the same importance.
“Now tell me the truth. What kind of shit has my dad gotten into now?”
Aliah can’t believe the mouth on this girl, but it makes her trust that she can handle the truth. “I don’t know. I just know that it’s bad. Like guns and knives bad.” She hears Hannah’s voice change.
Shit. She’s just a kid. Maybe telling her that wasn’t the brightest idea.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No. I need to know these things. My dad doesn’t tell me shit. He treats me like a child. I need to know these things,” she repeats. “I wouldn’t have snuck out tonight without telling him if I’d known. Looks like tomorrow night’s going to be a Twilight marathon for me.”
Hannah sounds a little disappointed, but mostly because she’ll have to sit through the marathon alone. It sounds like their conversation is over, but Aliah waits quietly to see if Hannah’s already hung up the phone.
She takes a moment to glance at the clock. It’s after two o’clock in the morning. She starts to feel guilty for dragging Hannah into this at such a ridiculous hour.
“Aliah?” Hannah asks, out of the silence.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for being real with me. Please take care of my dad.”
“Okay,” Aliah answers, not knowing whether she can even do that.
“Promise?” Hannah asks.
Aliah licks her lips and swallows the lump from the back of her throat. “I promise.”
When Aliah ends the call moments later, she feels significantly worse. Now she’s made a promise that she’s afraid she can’t keep. Unlike Harley, Aliah doesn’t lie. She is now going to make it her full time job to cover Harley’s ass. She powers down his phone and peers outside. He doesn’t appear from the shadows, like she’s been dreaming of all night.
Her stomach growls again, and it sounds like it’s going to star
t gobbling up the rest of her insides if she doesn’t find something edible real soon. She slides open the back patio door and slips outside. The waves are loud and the wind is harsh. A storm seems to be brewing.
She scoops the hair out of her face and hurries down the steps to take a walk through the dying garden. It’s the end of the season, but there are a couple of blobs of color that catch her eye. She has to get on her knees and squint just to see in the dark, but it’s not until she’s getting back up that her nerves catch up with her. A chill skips across her skin. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a flashlight?
Aliah swiftly plucks a bright red pepper from a plant and hightails it inside.
Her thoughts start reeling, but she welcomes anything over the dose of anxiety that has just began to plague her. She still can’t believe how she’d forgotten about her car. Her car! Her pride and joy. What else is she forgetting?
Whoa. She hasn’t seen her massage therapist in weeks.
What is up with that?
She certainly prefers Harley’s type of massage over Michael’s any day, but the fact that she’s skipped the spa entirely has her shaking. She pops a slice of red pepper into her mouth and tosses the rest into the garbage. She can’t eat. Not until Harley steps foot back in that door.
Aliah stands there silently for a moment and refocuses on the unfamiliar beach house, now eerily quiet. The tree branches cast shadows across the room and appear to be clawing at her with long scratchy nails and a black foggy night. The night seems to come alive around her. Every creek in the house has her glaring in its direction.
She can’t manage anything better than a grimace. She decides a bath is what she needs to settle her shaky muscles and overactive imagination. She heads straight for the bathroom, locates a towel, then gives the door a shove until it clicks shut. It takes a second, but before she knows it, light is flooding the room.
Aliah checks the shelves and finds a small cylinder of bath oils there. She starts up the water, plugs the bottom of the tub and drops in a few pink balls of oil.
After placing a clean towel on the counter, she drops her clothes to the floor and slips inside of the small claw foot tub. She has to whip the curtain around it, to keep in the heat. After a few steady breaths, she finally feels herself relaxing, letting the steam calm her nerves and the hot water to work away her aches. She closes her eyes and slips beneath the water completely.
When she resurfaces, she thinks about the man who has saved her life on countless occasions in a matter of days. Harley can still make her smile. Just the image of him diving head first into a mud puddle has her mouth widening across her face. With a little added imagination, she pictures what would have happened if she wasn’t completely mortified and he hadn’t just been shot.
Aliah falls into a much needed slumber until Harley has her moaning in her dreams. She has no idea how much time has passed when her eyes suddenly flash open. She hears a thump in the next room over. She hadn’t heard the door open, or Harley’s imposing boot steps, so her nerves have officially sky-rocketed again.
Deciding to err on the side of caution, she escapes the tub and wraps herself in a towel without making to dry herself. The room has lost its steam and the water has cooled, so there’s no telling how long she’s been asleep; though the deep wrinkles on her fingers and toes suggest it was for a while.
When she inspects the door, she notices how it creeks open and remains held ajar, just a crack. She hears the front door click shut and a wave of air opens hers even further yet. She listens carefully, but she can’t hear anything until heavy boots step slowly across the wooden floor.
Someone is in the house!
Biting a lip, she turns the door handle and closes the door, without pressing the lock. She doesn’t want anyone to know that she’s onto them. She rushes across the room, on tip toe, and is startled by her discovery. She covers her mouth to muffle her shriek.
Any thought of Harley being the person in the other room is immediately stifled by the greasy handprint pressed onto the other side of the window. Lucky for her the window was locked. There’s no saying what might of happened if it hadn’t been.
Aliah presses her lips together, trying to calm her trembling limbs, that shake partly from the cold but mostly because she’s terrified for her life. She eases the window open, pausing half way to take a breath and listen whether anyone has heard her. Satisfied that no one has, she peers out the window, praying that she doesn’t have any company.
The back yard is dark, but there’s no one there. She looks down. The ground has got to be a good ten feet from where she is, and there’s a good sized rose bush decorating the house beneath her. There’s a trellis on the wall, a mere five feet away, and it has crushed roses and broken stems hanging from it. That only confirms her theory that the man inside the house didn’t enter under lawful circumstances.
This is the only way out.
Aliah lifts herself into the smallish window and sits on the sill. She decides that taking a leap feet-first would be smart, since she doesn’t think hurdling herself at the thorny trellis is much of an improvement. But when the bathroom door swings open, her plans are made for her.
A lanky man is standing there, with a snarky smile on his face. He appears to take pleasure in the fact that he’s found her naked beneath her parted towel. He makes a dash toward her, and Aliah takes a dive head-first out the window.
She crashes into the bushes, soiling her now bloody hands and rolling onto her back. Her towel does little to save her flesh from the prickly thorns. She cries out as she crawls away from the house and takes the millisecond to retrieve her towel from the shrubs.
She considers going to the lake, but the dark murky waters don’t look very inviting. She huffs on the air that’s rushing into her lungs and forces it back out, to the beat of her heart. She doesn’t have time to think on it. The man follows her out the window.
What a dumb ass.
Hoping he’s there alone, she runs around the house, clutching the towel in a bloody palm. His partner is standing on the doorstep. She hangs onto the corner of the house, calculating how much time she needs to get to the vehicle left parked in the driveway. She is closer to it than him. He is a fatty, but she is barefoot.
She hikes up her towel and clutches it to her chest, knowing that if she worries about it for one second too long, it could be the death of her.
Aliah doesn’t need told what they want. Clearly it’s her. And everything she has seems to be free agent at the moment. She drops the towel and takes a deep breath, as the scrawny goon reaches out for her.
She takes off in a sprint toward the car, completely naked. The guy standing at the doorstep, just watches for a second, enjoying the view, as her breasts bounce freely. Then he quickly snaps out of it, when he realizes that she’s making a run for their car.
Aliah gets in the car and hits the lock, forgetting about one important thing. A key. The ignition is empty, so she flaps down the visor to look for one. Papers fall onto her uncovered lap, but there’s no key. The skinny guy starts knocking on the window and hollering at her. The other guy rounds the car and stares at her from the passenger window.
“Come on, lady. We aren’t going to hurt you.”
“Yeah,” the skinny one agrees, with a cackling laugh that no one trusts. “We aren’t going to hurt you.” He waggles a long, slimy tongue at her. “The boss lady wants to do that.”
With a pained look on her face, she whips open the glove box.
Please… please be in here.
Again, more papers. And whoa! A gun. She takes it and immediately releases the safety. Both of the men jump back from the car when she checks to see whether it’s loaded.
“You left the gun loaded? You dumbass!” the big guy shouts.
“At least she hasn’t found the key.”
Aliah glances out at the skinny guy and smiles. His eyes show his fear. He’s in trouble now. He’ll get a beating later for sure. But she doesn’t care about h
im. She still has to find the damn key if she’s going to save herself from the wrath of fat-ass and slimy tongue.
The car is surprisingly clean, but she doesn’t waste time thinking about it. She opens the compartment between the two seats and instantly finds what she’s looking for. She digs out the big key and drives it into the ignition. The expensive car purrs to life.
“You’re not going anywhere, doll,” the big guy shouts, as he pulls out a handgun and points it right at her.
The dumb one manages to stop him from pulling the trigger. It gives her the second she needs to slam the car into reverse.
“But she said she wants her alive!”
Aliah puts the pedal to the metal, shooting stones at the two men standing there. She thinks she’s home free, as she cranks the wheel and whips the car around, until it’s facing the open road. She starts hollering in triumph as she heads forward again, but screams when the back window shatters from a bullet. It’s hard to drive when you’re ducking, but the bullets continue to fly.
Still terrified, long after she’s out of range to be hit, she stays hunched in the front seat, until she sees headlights approaching. It could be Harley! It could also be backup coming to murder her good this time.
She reaches for the gun, with tears in her eyes, and releases the steering wheel to cock it. The SUV that’s coming looks like Harley’s, but her eyes are too watery to tell for sure. She squints her eyes and slams her breaks, willing to take the chance. She can’t let Harley walk in on an attack.
As the vehicle passes, its brake lights instantly flash red. She jumps out of the car and points the gun directly at the driver’s door. Harley flies out of the vehicle and sprints to her side. Aliah’s crying when he rips the gun out of her hand and drops the mag of bullets into his pocket.
“It was loaded,” she gasps. “They were trying to kill me. I thought they would get you too.”
He pulls her into his arms, crushes her against his chest and kisses her forehead. “You take the SUV. I’ll take care of this one.”
Twisted Desire (The Twisted Series) Page 17
