by Skye Warren
“Where’s Shelly?” Philip asked, undeterred.
“Inside,” Luke answered. “It’s locked. She’s armed. And she isn’t opening the door until I tell her to.”
Philip frowned. “Someone told you we were coming.”
“You aren’t the only one with friends in low places.”
“I don’t have friends. I have money. It gets the job done quicker.”
Luke shook his head. “And that’s where you’re wrong. You have a friend in Shelly, though hell if I know why. She didn’t tell a damn soul about you.”
“Not even you?” Philip asked, raising one eyebrow.
“You’re wasting your time here.”
Philip spread his arms wide. “I didn’t come here to hurt her. I’m not armed. You can pat me down if you like.”
“Not even a knife strapped to your ankle,” Luke asked, raising an eyebrow back at him.
That earned him a laugh. “Okay, so I didn’t strip down completely either. The point is, someone talked. It’s reasonable to see if Shelly may have let something slip—”
The door opened behind Luke, and Shelly stepped onto the porch wearing a tank top and yoga pants. Even now, with her hair loose and no makeup, she looked more glamorous than I could ever hope to be. “Reasonable,” she said drily. “That’s how everyone describes you.”
“Shelly,” Luke said, his voice a warning.
She shot him a look. “I let you play bodyguard, didn’t I?” Then she stepped close and enfolded me in a warm hug. She had lost some of her sardonic edge since she’d quit being a call girl and started working at the women’s shelter full-time. “God, sweetie. We heard from a guy Luke knows on the force.”
“It’s crazy. I’m worried sick.”
She pulled back with a concerned expression. “Worried about what?”
“You know, my brother.” I blinked. “What were you talking about?”
Shelly gave Philip a speaking glance. “The mess at your dorm. Him taking you out at gunpoint. Jesus, Philip. You held a gun to her head?”
Philip just stared at her, lids low. He didn’t say the safety was on. Maybe because he knew it wouldn’t absolve him. Or maybe because he wanted people to think the worst of him.
Except for me.
Luke wrapped his arm around Shelly’s waist. “Maybe we ought to invite them inside, seeing as he doesn’t plan to shoot anyone tonight. It sounds like there’s more to this story than we know.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
SHELLY’S HOUSE HAD honey-colored hardwood floors and wooden furniture with thick knobs and fat legs painted white. The sofa was made from a soft kind of corduroy, so lush I wanted to sink into it and never leave. I had always found it deeply restful.
Less so now.
She went directly to the kitchen, which opened to the sitting area. She pulled out a pot and filled it with water. “Chai?” she asked.
“Yes, please.” It was my favorite kind of tea, and Philip’s expression turned speculative. I wasn’t sure he knew we’d maintained a friendship after those dark times.
But then if he’d been watching me, he knew everything about me.
Luke turned a chair away from the kitchen table and sat, elbows on his knees, his hands steepling in front of him. “I heard that you were taken from someone who’d been at the scene, that you hadn’t been found. I was hoping Philip would do the right thing. Especially with a warrant over his head.”
Philip appeared unrepentant. “That warrant is bogus.”
Shelly came to sit while the water heated. “Raine called to tell me he may have inadvertently sent you to me, that someone was targeting Ella because you knew her. At least it made sense why you’d been at her dorm, protecting her.”
Philip said nothing to that.
The uncertainty must have been visible in my eyes, because he gave me a half smile. There was a challenge there, daring me to push him away. And there was enough vulnerability that I couldn’t.
I took his hand in mine, so large and powerful and scarred.
A sense of possessiveness grabbed hold of me, stronger than anything I’d imagined. He said that I was his, but the truth was that he was mine too. He had come to that dorm room to protect me. “Thank you,” I whispered.
After a long moment he said, “There’s too much piling up. Too many coincidences. First someone attacks me on my way to you and then—”
“So you were coming to me,” I said softly.
His expression grew dark. “Yes. I wouldn’t have let them touch you.”
And I would have been taken, I realized. Without Philip’s presence, I would have been kidnapped just like my brother had been. As much as it pained me that it had happened to Tyler, I couldn’t help my relief that I had escaped it. I had barely survived the first time. I didn’t think I’d be so lucky a second time.
“Someone knew where you were going,” Luke said quietly.
Shelly moved to the kitchen and returned with a mug for me. I inhaled the spiced aroma with pleasure and took a sip. The creamy liquid slid down my throat, warming me from the inside. Philip studied my face, almost mesmerized.
He tore his gaze away as if fighting himself for focus.
“That’s right,” Philip said finally. “It was a trap.”
My eyes widened at the implications. I was the trap. “That’s…horrible.”
Shelly sat on a plush ottoman on the opposite side of Philip. She looked him in the eye. “I have never told anyone about you except for Luke. And I never would.”
Philip stared at her for a long moment, distilling her words for truth. Then he said gruffly, “All right. I had to check.”
She nodded, not offended despite the clear insult. “There are others who could know. If you kept tabs on her, had investigators…” She offered me a small smile. “Sorry, but I know how he works.”
“Me too,” I said quietly.
And I was beginning to understand as well, both the things he had said and the things he could not. Control was about more than guns and fists. It was about desire. It was about obsession. That was what he’d meant in the car, the words he’d been able to speak.
There was more, though. Words he couldn’t say yet, about love.
“I’ve been careful,” Philip said slowly. “But clearly not careful enough. I’ll find the leak.”
“And the brother?” Luke asked. “My contact didn’t mention another kidnapping. They wouldn’t know that it’s connected.”
“There hasn’t been a hostage demand,” I said quietly. “Not yet.”
Luke’s eyes darkened with sympathy. “The cops can help setup the drop.”
“They won’t go to them.” My parents would follow any ransom demands to the letter, including leaving out the cops. They wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize my brother’s life. And they already knew how little the police could do against men like this—nothing, in my case.
I was their test run. Their throwaway. Only the people in this room had ever seemed to think otherwise. That I was worth saving, worth loving.
Only Philip had wanted me the way a man does a woman, even knowing every dark thing about me, but had the cold integrity to hold himself back. And I thought I’d always loved him for it, even when I was just a broken little girl. Always loved and hated him for it, just the way he had loved and hated me.
*
“ELLA, WAIT.” SHELLY stopped me as I was leaving.
Curious, I followed her back into the house, leaving Philip outside. I glanced back, where he stood silhouetted by the moon, his figure tall and proud like some kind of lone cowboy. And that was what he was, I realized. He didn’t answer to anyone, except maybe nature—the crux of the city. He forged his own path.
“What’s up?” I asked when we were out of ear-shot.
She glanced around, looking… guilty. Then she pulled something out of her pocket. “Maybe I should have given you this a long time ago.”
In her palm was a delicate gold necklace with a p
ale green jade stone pendant. It was innocuous and pretty, but the sight of it sent shivers down my spine. “Is that yours?”
“No.” She bit her lip, looking younger than me. She was only a few years older, but she seemed wise beyond her years. Except now, when she seemed mostly nervous. “It’s yours.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When that shit happened a few years ago… God, Ella. I didn’t want to tell you. You had gotten back safely, you were with your family. I wanted that for you. Peace. Happiness.”
I had never found peace or happiness in my adopted home, but I didn’t tell her that. “I’m fine,” I said instead, softly, knowing she still worried about me.
“It’s from your mother.”
My breath stuttered, stopped. I stared at the pretty jade pendant as if it had suddenly come alive, a snake in her hand. “Why would you have that? You met her?”
The worry on her face answered me. “She gave it to me. I met her… She was a…”
“Don’t,” I said sharply. I knew what the odds were, a mother who had given away her child, a city full of danger and sin. And it explained how Shelly had met her, either through her network or at the shelter. My birth mother was a prostitute.
That part wasn’t particularly shocking. It wasn’t particularly hurtful.
No, the hurtful part was knowing that my mother had learned who I was, where I was, enough that she could pass something to me via Shelly—and still had opted not to meet me herself.
“Throw it away,” I said.
“Ella…”
“She didn’t give it to me herself, did she? She didn’t call me up, ask to meet me. She doesn’t care about me, so tell me—why should I care about her?”
Shelly’s lower lip trembled, and I felt bad for putting her in the middle of this. She had done nothing but protect me, but this felt like a betrayal. But I wasn’t the one putting her in the middle of this. My birth mother was, this faceless woman who wanted to give me a necklace instead of love.
“I almost did throw it away,” Shelly said, her voice almost pleading. “So many times. I wanted to. But then I couldn’t. The same way I can’t throw away the stones from my mother’s jewelry. Legacy is a powerful thing, Ella.”
The necklace wasn’t a legacy. It was a curse.
But it was my curse. I took the necklace, still warm from Shelly’s hand. And I walked away, unable to respond to her whispered apology, unable to answer Philip’s questioning expression.
Of course he didn’t accept my silence.
“What did she give you? A listening device?”
“God. Are you always so paranoid? How do you live like that?”
“Very well,” he said, not the least bit cowed.
I clenched the metal and small stone in my fist until it hurt. “Not everything is about you.”
“What is it about then?” he challenged.
Family. “Legacy.”
He smiled faintly. “I thought you said it wasn’t about me.”
And because he was being so cocky, because I wanted to tear him down a notch—because I thought he would shrink away from any real intimacy—I told him the truth. “It was my mother’s,” I said, and then realized what I’d done.
Too late, I realized I had exposed a weakness to a man who would exploit it.
A man of opportunity, he called himself.
Without another word I crossed the gravel driveway and climbed into the backseat. I folded my arms and stared straight ahead, impatient for him to join me. Being Philip, he took his time. He made me wait.
When he finally deigned to join me, he climbed into the seat facing me and shut the door.
The SUV didn’t move.
“You dislike it,” he said, his voice no longer smug, no longer challenging.
And only because of that could I tell him. “I hate it. If she wanted to meet me, to know me, she could have sent a message instead. A cell phone number. An email address. But this… this is, what? A pity gift?”
Philip said nothing.
“What?” I said, angry now. “You don’t agree?”
“What I think doesn’t matter.”
“That’s a first,” I muttered.
“If you don’t want it, throw it away.”
Except it wasn’t that simple, and he knew it. “Tell me about the ring, the one you wear on a chain,” I demanded.
I expected him to refuse me, and I was looking forward to the fight. He wasn’t the person I was mad at, but he was the only one here, in the shadowed backseat of the vehicle. Luke and Shelly had gone back inside their house, doors locked, lights off. The privacy divider was up, blocking Adrian from view. We were alone.
“It was my mother’s,” he said. “Her wedding band. I keep it as a reminder of what happens if I’m not strong.”
“Oh, Philip.” My heart clenched. “It wasn’t your fault, what your father did.”
“She died because I didn’t protect her.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“God, Philip. You can’t—”
He rapped twice on the roof of the car, and it immediately glided forward. “What I can and cannot do is not the question. The question is, what are you going to do with that, now that you have it?”
And the sad truth was, I just didn’t know.
Chapter Twenty-Five
WE DROVE HOME in silence, the necklace like a hot ember in my jeans pocket.
Tension ran through Philip’s body in thick, furious waves, radiating from him. His posture was relaxed enough, body leaned back, one leg slung over the other. He might have been a billionaire playboy coming home from a night of fast money and fast women. Only if you looked at his eyes would you see the banked rage over who had targeted him—who targeted my family to get to him.
We arrived back at the house just as dawn touched the horizon, spilling yellow over treetops and distant steeples. A thick fog made everything look hazy, like being a little drunk even if I hadn’t had a drink. I wasn’t sure whether it was tiredness or the stress of the past few days. We had spent the whole night chasing scary possibilities, nightmares, and I thought it was a metaphor for my entire time with Philip—a race toward some dark finish line.
Inside the safe house I crossed the cream marble floor to the far wall. Windows stretched from the ceiling to the floor, my reflection staring back at me. Only up close could I see the trees and city lights. They seemed small from where I stood, as if I looked into a curio cabinet of little figurines. This was how Philip must feel every day, as if we were small—as if I was small.
I watched Philip as he approached me, a shadow looming over the curio-cabinet city.
“Can I call my parents?” I asked softly.
“Of course,” the shadow said.
I hadn’t been sure of his answer. He knew better than to be offended, but at least his answer was resolute. There was a fine line between being helped and being held captive by a man like him.
He held out a simple black phone, and I took it. He remained standing in the living room, watching me. Not leaving, then.
No, not much difference at all.
“Tyler?” My mother. My adoptive mother, one who had never given me a necklace, one who had never really loved me—but she had also clothed me and fed me. She had helped me pick out a dress for my middle school dance.
“No, Mom. It’s me.”
“Oh, honey. They sent us a note.” Her voice cracked. “For ransom.”
My breath caught, and Philip’s gaze sharpened. “How much?” I asked.
“One million dollars.”
God, twice as much as last time. “Is that how much Dad owes them?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sobbing now. “He came back drunk two nights ago. And then last night, he didn’t come back at all. I don’t know where he is or if he’s e-even a-a-live.”
She broke down crying, and I clutched the phone, my eyes burning and my throat tight. My brother missing, now my f
ather. Our family had ripped apart at the seams. And I had fallen into my own rabbit hole, one with mysterious creatures and everything upside down.
“Where’s the drop?” Philip murmured.
All business. Even in the midst of heartbreak, he was a rock—and I was grateful for it now. I asked my mother, and she told me the cross streets of a church deep in the city. Or at least it had once been a church with a large youth center. Budget declining donations meant the only kids nearby were selling drugs.
“St. Mary’s,” she said. “Sunday night. Midnight.”
“Two days,” I whispered to Philip. “At St. Mary’s.”
A strange expression flickered across his face, almost like worry. A second later, it was gone without a trace. Unease tightened my stomach. Nothing made Philip worry.
I spoke into the phone. “Have you called the cops?”
“They said they’d kill him if I do.” A pause, then a whisper of quiet despair, “What will we do?”
They didn’t have that kind of money. I had the faint hope that Philip could give it to me, but how could I ask him for that much? Not even my body was worth that much.
Fifty bucks a hole. Words I’d never forgotten. Philip might value me at more than that, but there was nothing about me worth a million dollars.
“I’ll go to the meeting,” I said quietly, ignoring the way Philip’s eyes narrowed.
My mother made a fretful sound. “Without the money? They could kill you.”
The words were hesitant but not a refusal. She wanted me to go. Someone had to. Someone had to show up empty-handed and possibly be hurt in retaliation. And I was the lesser daughter, the one who wasn’t really hers. “Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the cops?”
I doubted they would be able to help; even Luke hadn’t pushed the issue. He’d seemed to know we were up against something darker. God, even Philip looked wary—a strange expression on him.
“No,” she said softly. “They would only kill him faster.”
“I’ll call you after.” Hopefully I’d be alive to call.
She sounded tired now, world-weary. “Tell them we can sell the house. The cars. It won’t add up to a million dollars, but it’s everything we have. It will take time, that’s all.”