“You were nearly shot in the street back there,” he explained. “That’s why I had to take that guy out and get out of there fast.”
“Wait, what? I was…shot at?” She gave a hollow little laugh. “Don’t be stupid. I mean, I felt something go past my ear, but it wasn’t—”
“It was a bullet. Forty five calibre hollow point. A millimeter or so to the right and you would have been dead.”
She said nothing, but he could feel her staring at him. “Someone was in your apartment, Vivi,” he went on. “Someone who shouldn’t be there. That’s why I was carrying you and that’s why we’re heading out of town.”
There was another long silence.
“I don’t understand,” she said, sounding blank. “Someone was in my apartment? Who? Why? How do you know this? And why was someone s-shooting at me?”
You should tell her.
No, he couldn’t. There was a time and a place for that explanation but it wasn’t now and it wasn’t here, not when he had a shitload of driving to do and a tail to keep an eye out for. Plus she already sounded like she’d had more than she could handle already, no point in piling on anything more. She was already terrified.
So all he said was, “I’ll tell you all about that when we get to where we’re going.”
“And where exactly is that?”
“Big Bend.”
“What?” Finally there was something other than fear in her voice. “Rhys, that’s six hours away!”
“I might get us there faster since there’s no traffic at this time of night. So why don’t you catch up on some sleep?”
“Sleep? After that? Are you insane?”
He flashed her another glance.
She was staring at him and she wasn’t white now. There was a flush to her cheeks and a definite green spark in her eyes. The green spark that lit up only when she was really mad. The streetlights caught the glitter of the genuine diamonds in her necklace, her name in lights.
He knew it was a cliche but Vivi genuinely was beautiful when she was mad. And he wanted to keep on staring at her, since she didn’t get mad that often and almost never with him. So this was kind of a novelty. Then again, not crashing was also important so he had to drag his gaze away from her and back to the freeway. “No,” he said. “I’m not insane.”
“Rhys.” She said his name hard and flat. “You just shot someone right in front of me. How is that not insane?”
Rhys tightened his hands on the steering wheel, the accusation in her voice threatening the wall he’d built around his emotions. It made him angry, made him want to pull over, grab her, show her exactly how insane he really was, show her who he really was right down deep inside…
Fuck. That was adrenaline talking. There was something about the rush that made him hard, and whether it was a celebration of life or of one of death, he didn’t know, but either way, he wasn’t going to celebrate this one with Vivi.
She’d run from him in horror, that was for-fucking-sure. He liked it rough and he liked to leave a mark, and although the thought of doing both to her made him harder than steel, he wasn’t going to do either. Hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do.
Part of protecting Vivi was protecting her not only from his past, but from himself, too. From the dark thing that lived inside him, the thing he’d tried to keep locked down for the past couple of years he’d been trying to live this normal life of his. The killer who wanted her on his terms.
“Get some sleep,” he repeated, since that was the only thing he could say. “It’s going to be a long drive.”
Another silence fell, thick and full of tension. A tension that had never been there before between them.
“I want to go back to my apartment.” Beneath the fear in her voice, ran the current of Vivi’s strong, stubborn will. “Take me home, Rhys. Now.”
She was a woman who liked having her own way, who liked being in control and he respected the hell out of that. Sometimes she tried to impose her will on him and sometimes he let her - they wouldn’t have been friends if he hadn’t after all. Mostly though, when she was being stubborn about something, he ignored her and did his own thing because there were less arguments that way. Well, maybe not entirely for the sake of argument.
Vivi still saw him as the lonely teenage boy he’d once been, the boy she’d adopted as a friend in much the same way as she’d adopt, say, a stray puppy or kitten. But he wasn’t a puppy or a kitten. He used to be a killer, hardened by the years of contracts he’d taken on and by the shady world he’d inhabited, full of other killers and drug dealers, abusers and mob bosses. He’d been changed by that, just like he’d been changed by the death of his little brother. And one thing was for sure; he hadn’t been that lonely teenage boy for a long time.
For a moment he stared at the road ahead, not wanting to completely destroy the image of him that she’d built up in her head. Because he knew that once he did, she’d never look at him the same way again.
She’s not going to anyway. Not now.
No, she wouldn’t. Which meant there was no point in continuing to pretend.
“No,” he said coldly. “You’re not going home, Vivi. You’re coming with me.”
“Bullshit, I am! You take me home, right—”
“No,” he repeated and this time he looked at her, giving her a glimpse of the killer inside the friend she knew. “You’re not going anywhere. Understand?”
Vivi stared into Rhys’s cold, dark eyes, her insides slowly freezing solid.
He’d never been a man to show his feelings and even as a teenager he’d been very reserved. And then after he gotten out of the army and they’d reconnected, she’d thought he seemed even more reserved than he used to be. She’d put that down to war being hell, so she hadn’t worried too much about it, other than to tell him that if he wanted to talk about his time defending the country and doing whatever it was that army people did, then she was there for him.
He’d never talked to her about it, though, and she’d respected that. And if there had been times when she’d seen something cold and bleak in his eyes, she made no comment about it, figuring he’d talk to her when he was ready. If that day ever came.
But the look in his eyes now wasn’t cold and bleak. It was that same metallic, dangerous look he’d given her out on the sidewalk just before that bullet had gone past her ear.
Just before he’d taken out the gun he’d apparently been carrying and shot someone right in front of her.
Vivi didn’t know how to process that. Not the fact that he’d shot someone, bundled her into the car to take her on a six hour drive to Big Bend, refused to explain anything to her, and now was acting like a complete stranger. Not any of it.
She felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, yet instead of being in Wonderland, she’d fallen into some weird version of reality where everything looked normal but wasn’t. Where her friend of fifteen years had causally pulled out a gun like he used one all the time, shot a man then kidnapped her.
She wasn’t sure she could deal with it.
Newsflash: you’re not dealing with it.
No, she wasn’t. And now the look on his face was a stranger’s and he was saying no in that hard, flat cold voice. He’d never refused her before, not flat-out like that.
She swallowed, clutching her blanket pathetically. “You really need to explain what’s going on, Rhys,” she said, trying to sound strong and in control, and not like a scared little girl. “Because I don’t understand any of it.”
He turned his attention back to the road. “Like I said, I’ll tell you when we get there.”
Anger twisted inside her and she clung on to it since it was easier to deal with than the fear. “Stop the car,” she snapped. “I mean it. I don’t want to go anywhere with you right now. I want to go home.”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t stop the car either. He didn’t even look at her. And she had the strange, dizzying feeling that no matter what she said, no matter if she s
creamed at him or even begged him, he was going to keep on driving to Big Bend National Park six fucking hours away. And there was nothing she could do to stop him.
A small tremble went through her, her knuckles white on the blanket she was still clutching. There had been many times in her life when she’d felt scared or at least worried; not getting straight A's, not being sure she’d get the score she needed on her LSATs, saying goodbye to Rhys as he went off to the army. Making her parents happy, all that kind of stuff.
But she’d never felt scared like this. The one person she trusted in all the world had turned into someone else and she was completely powerless to stop it from happening.
Her mouth was dry, her heartbeat racing, and she was suddenly conscious that she was hurtling into the dark, going into the middle of nowhere, with an unfamiliar stranger..
“Please,” she said thickly, hating how weak her voice sounded. “You’re scaring me. Can’t we just go home? And you can tell me all about it there?”
His profile could have been carved from solid steel for all the expression he gave. “No, we can’t.”
She swallowed again. “Okay, I get it. So for some reason you had to shoot that guy. But surely now he’s d-dead,” she stumbled helplessly over the word, “we can’t go home and—”
“He was aiming for you, Vivi.” Another one of those hard, cold glances. “That’s why I shot him. And that’s why we’re going out of town. Because the only way I can be sure of your safety is if you’re with me and we’re out of Austin.”
Oh Jesus. He’d been protecting her. He’d shot someone for her.
You kind of like it.
No, God, she didn’t like it. Her best friend had killed someone in order to protect her and it had been horrible and now she was absolutely terrified.
Now it was like the safe little world she’d known had exploded right in front of her and there was nothing she could do to get it back.
There was nothing at all to like about that, nothing.
She tried to latch onto something familiar to ground herself. “What about my job? They’ll fire me if I don’t go to work on Monday. You know that, right?” She had no idea how long Rhys was intending to ‘get out of Austin’ for, but she couldn’t afford to take time off, not if she wanted this partnership, and certainly not without at least giving her firm at least a month’s notice. Her dad would be so disappointed and she’d be lucky if she wasn’t fired.
“They won’t fire you,” he said with maddening calm. “You’re too valuable to them.”
She couldn’t help scowling at his irritating confidence. “It’s not just about the job. It’s about the partnership. I want it and they’re not going to—”
“Do you want to make partner or do you want to be dead?”
The cold words sliced through her like a scalpel, cutting away the anger she’d been clutching at to protect herself with and the reassuring familiarity of her work, leaving her with nothing but her fear.
That and the icy presence of the man who used to be her friend.
“Please, Rhys,” she said, as if by saying his name she could turn him back into the person he’d been before he’d taken out that gun. “I’m scared. I want to go home.”
He said nothing, his attention back to the road again.
“So you’re just going to be an asshole and ignore me?”
He didn’t reply.
“If you don’t stop the car, I’m going to open this door right now and throw myself out.”
He kept right on driving.
Her throat tightened, the feeling of helplessness deepening. She found herself studying his strong, implacable profile, searching for what she didn’t know. Maybe for a sign of the friend she knew, the friend she had a sneaky suspicion wasn’t there anymore. Because she couldn’t see him. There was only that hard jaw and the dark stubble that highlighted it, the high, carved cheekbones that gave him the look of an arrogant aristocrat, and the straight nose that she’d once been severely jealous over after her own had been broken and got a bump in it.
Definitely the face of a stranger.
The face of a killer.
The thought made her feel strangely dizzy and she had to drag her gaze away and stare out the window of the passenger side instead.
Shock. She was in shock.
“But it’s my birthday,” she murmured stupidly. “You can’t even do this for me on my birthday?”
Finally, he answered. “It’s not your birthday anymore.”
She bit her lip, a sudden wave of exhaustion going through her. She’d been tired when she’d gotten home that night and what with being woken up after having just gone to sleep, being shot at, watching someone be shot, being kidnapped, and then having her best friend turned someone else, she now felt as if she wanted to sleep for a week.
So why don’t you? It’s not as if you can do anything else.
She stared hard into the darkness outside the window of the car, trying to get her brain working, trying to think of ways out of this. But there wasn’t much she could do short of actually leaping out of a car going eighty on the freeway, or making a desperate grab for the wheel and somehow forcing Rhys to pull over. Neither of those were good options since smashing herself to bits on the asphalt or rolling the car didn’t feature highly on her to-do list.
Maybe she could call someone? Except…she had no phone, did she? Because Rhys had taken her out of the house in only her pajamas and…. She looked around her, down in the footwell of the car….no, she couldn’t see her purse anywhere.
So, great. She was here without her purse too, which meant no phone and no money.
A shaken breath went out of her, the helplessness of her situation beginning to set in.
It had been a long time since she’d been a foster kid, but she still remembered the uncertainty of it. The feeling of not belonging anywhere, of not being important. Of not being able to connect with anyone because nothing was permanent. Of not being able to do anything to change her situation, of being helpless in the face of an uncaring system.
She’d only been five when her mother had given her up because apparently heroin had been more important to her than her own daughter, eight by the time she’d been formally adopted by her family. But even so, the unhappiness of those early years had imprinted themselves into her bones.
She hated being helpless. Hated feeling as if what she wanted didn’t matter. Which made the situation that was happening right now like a sucker punch straight to the gut.
And what made it even worse, was the fact that the person making her feel this way was the one person in the world who was supposed to understand her.
A sense of betrayal wound through her and she had to set her jaw to not let out the sudden flood of outraged words that sat in her mouth. There were some things about himself that Rhys had obviously not told her, and demanding he tell her all about them probably wouldn’t help. Especially when he’d been very clear he wasn’t going to give her any explanations right now.
Abruptly, she wanted to reach up and take off her necklace, throw the thing in his face in a fit of petulant rage. But of course that wouldn’t help either, except give her some satisfaction that would probably last all of five seconds.
Maybe Rhys sensed her agitation - hell, he’d have to be completely insensitive not to - because he said in a quieter, more gentle voice, “Sleep, Vivi. We’ve got a long way to go.”
And because she was tired and there was nothing else left to do but battle her fear and anger and helplessness, she leaned her head against the window and did exactly that.
5
Rhys stopped once for gas, also grabbing a couple of packets of chips, a couple of chocolate bars, and a coffee for himself while he was at it. Food and other supplies he already had in the little vacation home he owned, and anything else he could probably get on a day trip out once they were there.
Vivi had gone to sleep not long after they’d left Austin behind them and she was still fast aslee
p as he got back into the car with his purchases. She was slumped against the passenger door, glossy chestnut hair all over her face, and she didn’t look at all comfortable. But he didn’t wake her up, because there was something about having her fast asleep and in his care that was deeply satisfying to him.
She was always so in control and in charge. She always had a direction, always had a goal, and she was always working towards that goal no matter what. He respected that about her, definitely admired it since that kind of work ethic had been pretty scarce in his own life. It also made her a person he could count on because Vivi was nothing if not predictable, and that was also something he needed in his life.
But she also didn’t like him protecting her or taking care of her, and got impatient when he did things for her. She was never dismissive, always thanked him, but nevertheless, he knew she was much more comfortable taking care of him. And he let her because it made her happy.
This time, though, was different. This time she was dependent on him and yeah, he liked it. He liked it very much.
Don't get too comfortable. She's going to hate you when she wakes up.
Oh, she would. He had no doubt about that. But until that happened, he was going to enjoy it while it lasted.
He drove on into the night, sipping his coffee and checking every so often out the rearview mirror for any tails. But Jason – because it had to be Jason Lee who'd chased them as they'd driven out of Austin - was long gone.
The effects of adrenaline and coffee kept him awake until he finally pulled off the main highway and along the dusty road that led to Terlingua. The sun was starting to come up, turning the bare, rocky mountains that reared above them pink and red and orange. A beautiful sight, if he’d been the kind of man who appreciated natural beauty.
But he hadn’t chosen his Big Bend house for that. He’d chosen it for its isolation. There was no internet, no cell phone coverage, and with only one road and lots of bare, open ground around it, he could see any visitors coming from a mile away.
The Hitman Next Door Page 6
