by Lannah Smith
“What?” he asked her, distracted by how beautiful she looked and how sweet she smelled.
She jerked a chin to the direction of the door. “Who were you talking to?”
“You wouldn’t know if I tell you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Try me.”
Closing the door, he said, “Alec. Alec Jackman.”
Now her brows were drawing together. “Alec Jackman?”
The recognition in her gaze made him brace.
“Why were you talking to Alec Jackman?” she asked, bewildered.
“Because he’s a friend?”
“A friend? Do you know the kind of people his parents and brother are?”
He shrugged and pushed his phone into his pocket. “Like I said, we’re friends.” Then tilting his head to the side, he said, “You know him?”
“Know him?” she sneered. “Let’s just say his family are not very good people.”
Of course they weren’t. His parents and older brother were trash. And Alec was born into that family of trash. But he was smart. He worked himself out. Meeting John then Christopher, he asked for their help to get him out of that shit and they did. And Alec did.
“He’s a good guy,” Christopher said with a shrug.
“And he works for you now?” she asked in the same bewildered tone.
“You look like you’re about to fall on your feet,” he frowned when he saw how tired she looked. “Get back to bed.”
Skirting past him, she walked to the bed and sat down or rather, slumped down.
“He’s a criminal,” she insisted.
His lips twitched. “Are you concerned for me, April?”
Her brows drew together. “Why would I be? You’re nothing to me.”
That would have hurt him if it weren’t for the fact that she just glanced at the door with a dark look on her face.
“I know I’m nothing to you.” He made his way to the closet and pulled it open. “But why are you asking me about Alec, April? Do you know something that I don’t?”
“No, I - what are you doing?”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”
She lifted a finger and pointed at the clothes he was taking out. “Is this your bedroom?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to change your clothes here?” her voice had a hysterical note in it.
“No. I’m going to take a shower first.” He smirked at her. “Do you want me to change here after or...?”
Immediately, her finger went to the direction of the bathroom.
“Rest,” he said as he moved towards it with the clothes he would change into. “I’ll be back and let you have a tour of the house when I’m done.”
“I don’t need it,” she mumbled and he paused by the door to look at her. Getting into the bed, she let out an exhausted exhale and pulled the covers over her. “If you can’t take me home then just leave me alone.”
Her expression was set to sad again. And something else.
Grief?
Confused, he stared at her some more.
Then she closed her eyes, dismissing him from her sight once again.
“April,” he stepped towards her and sat on the bed. “April, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer.
“Tell me,” he put a hand on her shoulder and felt her tense. “You can tell me anything. Ask me anything. Ask me for anything.”
For a long minute, she didn’t reply.
Then she said, “I would like to be alone.”
Her voice was whisper soft, devoid of all emotion. A sense of sudden foreboding overwhelmed him.
Christopher had known April for a long time and since the first day they’d met she had made quite an impact upon him. As a child, she was a strong, opinionated and energetic girl. And as she grew up, she gave the word elegance a whole new meaning. She used to be a tough girl. Like nothing could break her or her walls.
Which was why this change had been weighing heavily in his mind for days.
Did her father finally break her? Or did something else happen to her?
He was suddenly filled with dread.
What the hell exactly happened to her?
He clenched his jaw. “April. How did... how did your father found you?”
Her mouth trembled and she rolled away from him, covering her head with the sheets. She wouldn’t even allow him to give her comfort.
The truth hit Christopher all at once.
A heavy weight dropped on the pit of his stomach and he clenched his jaw to keep himself from letting out a curse.
Something had happened.
And someone had died.
Chapter 17
Martha was giving April a thorough health check-up when Christopher left his bedroom. Quiet and unresponsive, April had allowed Martha to attend to her. So when he saw that Martha won't have trouble, he left to find Alec.
Alec was downstairs, drinking a mug of coffee while watching TV.
"Any news?" Christopher asked, taking a seat beside him on the couch.
Alec glanced at him. "Nothing that would concern you, that's for sure," he replied in a tone dripping in cynicism.
"How so?"
"Because your only concern for the moment is the woman upstairs," he mumbled, taking a sip of his coffee.
Christopher's lips twitched. "Are you going to bitch about April again?"
"If you'd let me."
He let out an irritated exhale. Then he leaned over to grab the laptop from the coffee table and flipped it open on his lap.
"Oh, you want to work now?" he heard Alec mutter sarcastically and despite feeling pissed at his right-hand, he chuckled.
He lifted a hand up and almost immediately, a pair of glasses landed on it and he slipped them up his nose.
"You want my foot in your mouth, Alec?" he murmured, his gaze trained to the screen.
Alec was giving him a side-glare when he glanced at him. "I'd rather have your head in the game. You created this mess. You fix it."
Oh, he was fixing it alright.
Christopher read the contents of the website that popped out once the screen lit up. Alec had been reading the news. Four dead in Chicago. One in New York. And two in their hometown.
"They've been busy," he mumbled.
"They need you."
"No." He closed the laptop with a sigh and removed his glasses. "They need to fucking wake up. This isn't the 60's anymore, for fuck's sake."
Alec shook his head. "They need someone to tell them."
Christopher gave him a sharp look. "And I don't need you to remind me."
Shrugging, Alec returned his attention to the movie that he was watching. Christopher turned his gaze towards it. The Boss Baby. Alec was being fucking ridiculous.
"Call." Alec pointed at the table without removing his gaze from the movie. "Answer it."
"Yes, boss," Christopher sighed, leaning forward to look at his cell phone. "On second thought, maybe you should answer it," he offered when he saw who was calling.
Alec didn't even need to glance at the screen when he said, "I'd already stalled Rohan long enough. You don't want to have an angry hacker in our emails."
Damn it.
Grabbing the phone from the table, Christopher knifed up the couch and made his way out to the porch. It had snowed last night and the temperature had dropped to freezing. Still, wearing only a shirt and a pair sweatpants, Christopher barely felt the cold. His focus was on the phone in his hand that had quieted on his way out of the house. And no sooner that it did, it rang again.
Leaning a hand on the wooden rail, Christopher answered the call.
"Hey, Rohan," he greeted, looking out at the snow-covered ground. "Why are you calling?"
"Why aren't you calling?" came his friend's angry and impatient reply. "You said you would."
"Jesus, it hasn't even been a week since we last talked."
"And where are you? You said you'd give us an update on April."
/> He did say that when Rohan called to tell him about his engagement with Emmy and about Leon telling them that April had been found. But Christopher had been angry and exhausted then, watching over April fight her fever. So he had just gave Rohan an excuse that he was in a meeting with a client which was why he needed to make the call short and ended it quickly.
"Haven't found her yet," Christopher lied straight through his teeth. "Either her father is hiding her or she has really disappeared again."
A short pause, then, "That sucks."
"Yeah, it does," he said with an exhale through his nose. "So? Are you calling me to become your best man? You didn't get around to asking me about it."
The abrupt change in topic was deliberate, of course. He wanted to end the discussion
"How could I when you couldn't be fucking reached?" Rohan snapped. "I swear to God if Alec keeps answering your phone for you might as well just throw the damn useless thing away."
"Are you going to ask me or not?"
Rohan took a deep breath then on the exhale, asked, "Are you even coming to my wedding?"
Christopher resisted the urge to laugh. He knew immediately that Rohan had turned surly.
Staring at the snow, he briefly wished he could have taken April here in the summer. The view had been rather magnificent with the flowers in full bloom when he came to check on the property. Now, the scene was desolate and too white. There was a lot of barren trees below the slope with branches coated with white, drooping with the snow that clung to them. Their hometown, where he and April grew up in, didn't snow. But here, just a few states up north in America, it did. A fuck of a lot.
The house and the land from where it stood down to the tree-covered slope in front of it were one of the many properties Christopher had inherited from his great grandfather, one so remote that he'd never visited before until this year when he had come to check up on it. A retreat, his grandfather had called it while they had been going over the properties Christopher was set to inherit a few years back. Christopher had been incredulous at the notion. A retreat as large and as grand as this house was not merely a retreat. And he was right.
In this remote location, the house was too far and too hidden for anything. It had actually served as a rendezvous point where he met his mistress who he had set up briefly here.
He also didn't understand why his grandfather had this built on a cliff either, and close to the sheer vertical drop to the sea. But the magnificent view made him realize that his grandfather might have done something incredible. If he turned and looked into the windows, he could actually see through the house to the scenery of the sea and horizon beyond.
"Are you still there, dumbass?" Rohan's voice now sounded incensed.
"I'm here and I won't miss your wedding, Rohan," Christopher assured his friend. "It's my last chance to steal Emmy from you, you know."
A chuckle broke briefly from Rohan. "On second thought, maybe you shouldn't come."
"So?" Christopher glanced over his shoulder to see Alec coming into the porch. "The question?"
Rohan let out a sigh.
Then he said, "Will you be my best man at my wedding, you numbskull?"
He grinned at a blank-faced Alec. "I do."
"You're so full of shit," Rohan mumbled and Christopher barked a laugh.
"Does Emmy want a pony?”
“Make sure you build us a stable too.”
“Done.”
Alec was wanting his attention. He was pointing to the cell phone in his hand. Christopher held two fingers up, indicating two minutes and Alec nodded before he went back inside.
Rohan was quiet for a moment and Christopher detected his unease.
"Skull, you know I'll do—."
Christopher broke in, knowing what he was about to say. "Let me do this on my own, Rohan. Concentrate on Emmy. Concentrate on making your fiancée happy."
Rohan's voice was firm when he said, "Like I was saying, I'll do anything for you, Skull."
Something unpleasant settled in his gut hearing those words.
"I don't intend to play clean, Rohan," he warned, hoping to sway him.
But Rohan would not be swayed. "I'll still do anything for you."
The unpleasant feeling in his gut was now burning its way into his chest and he clenched his jaw.
"Right," he whispered. He was trying to keep his temper controlled, but the urge to shout at his hardheaded friend made his throat ache. "But I—."
"Rohan!"
The enraged scream of Emmy's younger sister, Abby, cut through the line.
"What the hell did you say to my boyfriend! He said he's not coming over for dinner!" she continued to shout.
"shit," Rohan mumbled. "Gotta go deal with Abby, Skull."
Relieved that the conversation was over, he said, "Yeah, good luck with that."
Saying a quick goodbye and as soon as Rohan disconnected, Christopher dropped the phone from his ear and moved into the house.
Shaking his head in disbelief over his friend’s loyalty that might get him fucking killed.
The screams began in the middle of the night again.
Christopher removed his glasses, tossed them on the table next to his laptop and got up from the chair.
He didn't panic. He was already familiar with the tortured sound.
April was having another nightmare again.
Moving to the bed where she lay, he sat down next to her and took her into his arms.
"It's alright, April," he whispered, stroking her back. Her body was trembling and he held her tighter. "It's all right now. You're safe."
Her screams turned to sobs. She was clutching on his shirt tightly, her face shoved into his neck. She didn't know what she was doing. She never did. In her sleep she wasn't hostile towards him. In her sleep, she needed him.
"What happened to you, April?" he murmured, placing his chin on top of her head.
She didn't have any answer for him. She kept crying, until he felt her shaking subside, until he heard her breathing calm, until her tears were no more. When she did, he laid her gently back to his bed, pulling the sheets over her body, and went back to get some work done on his laptop.
The bloodcurdling screams started all over again an hour later.
Christopher returned to her side again and held her. Sitting on the side of the bed with her in his lap, her body weighing almost nothing in his arms, he waited once again for her tears to stop flowing. Her head was on his shoulder and she was so soft cuddled against him. Christopher might have liked having this close to her but not like this. Never liked this.
She had wondered why her throat kept hurting in the morning. And like her, he wanted her throat to stop hurting. For her to stop being trapped in her nightmares.
He was putting her back into the bed when she said something.
"What?" he asked, his brows furrowing together.
She let out a shaky sigh but didn't say anything. Christopher shook his head, thinking he had just imagined her speak. He was making his way back to his laptop when he heard her speak, loud and clear.
"Dan."
He swung around to look at her. A tear was falling from her eye to the side of her face.
"I'm so sorry, Dan."
His body slowly stiffened.
April quieted, her chest rising up and down with each breath as she slept.
He closed his eyes and felt them then. The anger swelling within him. The trembling in his hands. The burn inside his chest.
He took a deep breath.
Then he returned to sit on his chair.
Blessedly, April's nightmares left her alone for the rest of the night. But he sat there, staring at her, his work forgotten, living, breathing in the nightmare that had his mind trapped in.
When dawn broke, he went out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Alec was already up, pouring himself a coffee from the coffee maker in the kitchen. The moment he sensed him, Alec searched for the laptop that was missing from his hands and when
Alec realized that, his face became surly.
