Hailey’s silent the entire, snail-paced drive back. Staring out the window, her fingers seem to be writing on her thigh. Three fingers bend around an invisible pen, the tip scraping an invisible sheet of paper.
I don’t interrupt. It’s easier this way. It keeps her occupied, giving me time to chase my own thoughts and conclusions. I’m recreating her past with this new information, filling in the blanks, altering the chain of events to fit the narrative.
My hands squeeze the living shit out of the steering wheel and it’s all I can do not to rip out the steering column.
White shirt—top button popped.
Black shoes—Italian leather with a disguised steel toe cap.
Gray pants—always an inch too long to cover the heel.
And a brown coat—the collar raised.
Rhett Willard in the fucking flesh.
There’s another detail Hailey hasn’t mentioned: a gold ring—a signet with an engraved eagle. Identical to mine. The only token of acceptance Rhett ever gave me. The same one I slipped in my pocket once I’d tucked Hailey inside the car.
I barely stop myself from hacking the dashboard until it falls apart under my fist. This is bad. Worse than I imagined. Ten times fucking worse.
Hailey jumps when my ringtone pours out of the speakers. We’re back at Lakeside and I’m throwing the car into my usual parking spot just as Broadway’s name flashes on the screen.
I press a button, answering the call. “I’m not alone,” I say, reaching over to take Hailey’s hand.
“Then call me when you are,” he shoots back.
“Um, it’s okay, I’m leaving,” Hailey says, her voice small, hands shaking, eyes mindlessly flickering every which way like she’s still trying to access the memory. “I want to write while it’s still fresh.”
Thank fuck.
Whatever Broadway wants can’t be as important as what I need to tell him and Dante, and I can’t do it while Hailey’s listening.
“Go, pretty girl, but stay in your room, okay?”
She leans over the middle console, briefly pressing her lips to mine. “Okay.”
I watch her exit the car, slamming the door. I watch as she rushes away, disappearing into the night, not far off sprinting across campus like there’s someone behind her.
The memory hit her hard, her fear lingering longer.
Or maybe she’s impatient.
Once she’s out of sight, I let out the wrath gunning through me… I batter the dashboard until it snaps under my fist.
“What the fuck is that noise?” Broadway asks, still on the line. “Is she gone?”
“Yeah. Whatever you want can wait.” I cut the call, grab a burner from the glove box, and exit the car, heading into the woods, far from my phone and far from the Pontiac in case it’s been bugged as well.
I dial Broadway’s burner once I’m past the line of trees. “Get in your car right now and find Dante. Call me when you’re with him.”
“But—”
“Just fucking do it!” I boom, nearly jabbing the end call button through the phone.
With a shaking hand, I light a cigarette, and wait for Broadway to haul ass across Chicago.
Everything inside me shakes harder as the minutes pass and my mind connects more of the dots. I pace a thirty-foot long path, deep enough in the woods that the asylum lights are barely visible. Cool evening air raises goosebumps up my arms, but does jack shit to steady my nerves.
Neither does the smoke filling my lungs.
Nothing does.
Nothing will for hours.
Broadway calls back thirty agonizing minutes later. “We’re here,” he says, sounding out of breath. “Give us a minute.”
The faint tapping in the background tells me Jackson’s there, probably checking the connection’s secure.
“What’s going on?” Dante asks a moment later.
“I need to get Hailey out of here,” I say taking a long drag of my third cigarette in thirty minutes. “I need a safehouse and my men with me.”
“What have you found out?” Tension fills his voice, taking me aback as it doesn’t make an appearance often.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, Dante’s the personification of carefully maintained control. Whenever he’s not… God fucking help whoever shatters his calm.
“I told you about the flashback with the gun,” I say. “She’s had another.”
I keep going, explaining Hailey’s plan and the long drive we took to shoot a fucking tree.
“That’s Rhett she saw. It fits. The memories came back in the wrong order but it fits. The blood’s first. He tortures people for hours and ends up looking like he’s bathed in it. Then, he shoots. One bullet straight between the eyes. That’s what Hailey saw. A fucking execution.”
“It doesn’t fit, Carter,” Broadway drawls. “If she saw Rhett torturing someone, he wouldn’t have let her walk away.”
He’s right. Vaughn’s daughter or not, Hailey wouldn’t get out alive if Rhett had spotted her.
She’d be dead before she could say sorry.
“He didn’t see her.” I flick the cigarette onto the ground, watching the cherry burn out. “I don’t know how Hailey got there. I assume she followed Alex, but I’m certain Rhett has no idea she saw the execution.”
After the first flashback, she said she was running through mud, that she saw lights in the distance. Streetlights. Houses. The warehouse Rhett uses for his dirty work is an abandoned watch factory. It’s surrounded by nothing much. Patches of unused land, but there’s a neighborhood nearby.
“She ran away, remember?” I tell them. “I don’t know who was being executed, but that doesn’t matter right now. I need a safe house, Dante. I need to get her out. Rhett knows where she is. If he has Vaughn’s phone tapped and she mentions this, even in fucking passing, if Rhett realizes she saw him—”
“Carter,” Dante cuts in. “If you lift her out of there, you’ll be sending a very clear message.”
A message that I care deeply about Hailey Scarlett Vaughn. That I’ll do anything to keep her safe.
“The word will spread,” Dante continues. “Fast. People might even assume you have the evidence and you’re about to knock down their world.”
“She is the evidence,” I grit out. “She’s it. Maybe there’s a file somewhere, who the fuck knows? But Hailey’s an eyewitness. The first one Rhett’s ever overlooked. If he finds out, she’s dead. I have to get her out. I can’t protect her here. I can’t keep an eye on her twenty-four seven.”
“Plenty of people will think you and Rhett are in on this together,” Broadway says, weighing every word. “She’s a cop’s daughter, Boss. They’ll assume Rhett’s about to sell them out in exchange for a plea deal.”
“You’ll be painting a big, red X on his back,” Dante adds. “His, yours, and Hailey’s. You get her out of there and it’s a declaration of war.”
“Hailey’s mine, Dante. Mine to protect. If keeping her safe means war, then you better pick a fucking side.”
My heart pumps so fast that the blood whooshes in my ears. Silence falls heavily between the three of us but doesn’t last long.
“Broadway,” Dante says, his tone heavy. “Get Ryder to block Hailey’s phone. She calls Vaughn every evening, and we can’t risk her slipping up. No in or out calls until she’s at the safehouse. I want the three of you on the road within the hour.”
A small commotion in the background tells me Broadway’s rushing out. The muffled clap of closing doors confirms it a moment later.
“Use the safehouse you took Layla to two years ago, Carter. Get Hailey out and then tell her the truth. Time’s up.”
It is… I have twelve hours before Koby, Ryder, and Broadway arrive. The last twelve hours of Hailey’s obliviousness.
My last twelve hours of her fragile trust.
◆◆◆
My emotions don’t subside as I pull suitcases from the top of my closet, then lever them open in the middle of the floor, and throw things in.
Rationally, I know Rhett’s in the dark. He has no idea Hailey’s a witness, that she saw him torturing some poor fucker. I know he won’t show up here out of the blue to put a bullet in her head. I know she’s as safe right now as she was this morning before I figured this out.
But the fear coursing through me, knowing she’s exposed, that the shit might hit the fan at any given second, pushes me to act.
It’s too fucking hot already with Noretto looking into Alex’s involvement with Rhett. If Rhett found out Vaughn hid her at Lakeside, anyone with an agenda can track her down.
Fucking Rhett and his careless business strategies.
I told him a warehouse in Columbus is not the place for executions, but he never listened. It was only a matter of time before someone stumbled upon one. Some have over the years. They’re all dead now. Rhett always has men strategically placed outside as lookouts…
He didn’t that night otherwise someone would’ve spotted Hailey peeking through the window or wherever.
Another fucking mystery.
Why no lookouts? Who did Rhett kill? How did Hailey end up at the warehouse in the first place? When did this happen?
Was it the night Alex died or earlier?
I pause when my phone vibrates in my back pocket. It’s an email from Ryder, the subject line kicking up my already dangerously high adrenaline level.
Hailey’s phone records.
“Fuck,” I huff, pausing halfway across the room.
As tempting as checking Alex and Hailey’s messages is, as hard as the rational part of my brain tries to take the reins, this is not the time.
The unease seeping into my bones won’t settle until I’m with Hailey. It’s already been forty minutes since she went to scribble in her diary.
Too long.
The phone records can wait. I’ll have plenty of time once we reach the safe house. No matter what I find in them, it won’t help me right now. Alex wasn’t an idiot. He wouldn’t have texted the evidence’s location to Hailey.
I’m pretty fucking sure I’d only find more reasons to murder a dead man.
