Chapter Thirty-One
The shrill alarm of the telephone brought Hunter to full awake in a second.
Beside him, Gabi jumped, then moaned.
“Shh,” he said, trying to soothe her nerves.
He caught the call on the second ring.
“What are you doing in here?” Gabi said as she pushed away from him.
He lifted a hand as he scooted up the bed and lifted the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
The voice on the line was muffled, incomprehensible.
“Hunter!” Gabi was on her feet and glaring at him.
“Duuuude.”
“Who is this?” he asked the caller on the phone while he turned on the bedside light.
“This is some craaazy shit.”
“Remington?” The voice was slurred and sounded like it was coming from a mouth full of cotton.
“Blackwell. Are you here?”
Gabi was stewing beside the bed.
Hunter waved her off and placed a finger over his lips.
“Are you drunk?”
Remington started to laugh and then moaned. “Hurts, man. Dudes fucked me up.”
“What the hell is going on? What are you talking about?”
“Two Mexican dudes. Big fists.”
Hunter’s head calculated the information Remington could reveal. “Did you tell them about Hayden?”
“They knew about . . . aww. Fuckers broke my nose.”
The door to the room opened and Solomon stepped inside.
“Focus, Remington. What did they know about?”
“Hayden. Knew he was gone. Not the target.”
Hunter did a double take at Gabi to assure himself she was still there.
“Don’t do drugs, Blackwell. This is crazy.”
“Drugs? Where are you, Remington?”
The PI muttered a few incoherent sentences.
Hunter placed his hand over the receiver. “Can we trace this?”
“We’re working on it,” Solomon said.
“ . . . goddamn truth serum. I’m good with secrets. You know that, right, dude?”
The fact that Remington kept calling him dude was evidence enough to know that he was high on something.
“Are you at home, Remington?”
“No . . . feel sick.”
Hunter leaned over and tugged on his shoes. “Where are you?”
All Hunter got was another muttering to not take drugs.
Dennis ran into the room with a piece of paper and thrust it into Solomon’s hands. “Neil is already on his way.”
Hunter looked down at the address and froze.
Gabi came up beside him, placed a hand on his arm. “Who is it?”
“My dad.”
She bit her lip and shoved him. “Go.”
Genuine concern filled her gaze.
He leaned over, kissed her hard, once, then said, “Don’t leave the house.”
She shoved him again. “Go.”
“We’ll take my car,” Solomon said as they left the room together.
Gabi heard the gate open and close and turned her attention to the stranger in her kitchen.
“I’m Dennis.”
“One of Neil’s men?”
“Yeah.” He nodded toward the back stairs. “I gotta get back to my post.”
She’d seen men coming and going downstairs the day before, but hadn’t asked why.
“I’ll make coffee.”
“That’d be great.”
She offered a smile she didn’t feel and one-handedly set the pot to brew.
She wasn’t sure what had just happened. From the tragic expression on Hunter’s face, his dad was in danger . . . hurt . . . or worse.
Gabi filled the coffeepot with water, dumped it into the machine, and proceeded to grind the beans. The buzz of the grinder stopped and the phone rang.
She jumped.
She looked around, realized she was alone, and saw Hunter’s cell number light up the caller ID. “Hunter?”
The line was full of static.
“Is this Mrs. Blackwell?” The voice was female.
Her heart started to pound. “Yes.”
“Yeah, uhm . . . there’s been an accident. Corner of Bellagio and Sunset. Your husband, he . . . he handed me his phone.”
Gabi dropped the coffee grounds in her hand. “Is he OK?”
“He’s messed up pretty bad.”
She started to shake. “Did someone call the paramedics?”
“I hear sirens. I gotta move my car.”
The woman hung up and Gabi tossed the phone on the counter.
The keys to the cars sat in a bowl in the foyer table. She grabbed them and turned toward the door.
Dennis ran up the back stairs. “Wait.”
“No time. There’s been an accident. I’ve got to go . . .” She was already out the front door.
Dennis ran beside her and yelled for Connor, who stood at the gate.
Gabi opened the garage door and decided the Maserati would get her there quicker.
She opened the driver’s door only to have Connor push in. “I’ll drive.”
She looked at her broken arm and relented.
He sped out of the drive and down the street, avoiding the cars as he went.
“They crashed on Sunset,” Gabi told him.
Connor kept looking out his rearview mirror.
He rolled the stop sign and kept his foot on the accelerator. Thank God he was driving, because her entire body was shaking. Solomon and Hunter had sped off so fast, an accident could have been predicted. She clenched her free hand and sent a prayer that Hunter was OK.
They didn’t need this . . . not with all the chaos infused in their life.
Traffic thickened the closer they got to Sunset. Connor made a few illegal moves, had cars honking as he passed them.
Gabi held on and craned her neck to peer ahead.
Connor’s cell phone rang. She was shocked to see him pull it out and click into the call. “Yeah?”
The intersection was closing in fast.
Traffic flowed.
“Oh, shit.”
Connor slammed on the brakes and swung the car around.
Gabi lunged forward, felt a vibration up her arm, under her cast.
“Where are you going?”
“It’s a setup.”
A car slowed in front of them.
Connor twisted the wheel and sped in the opposite lane of traffic.
“A setup? So there wasn’t an accident?”
“No.”
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened.
Connor kept looking in his rearview mirror until Gabi twisted around to see what he was looking at.
“Hang on.”
He punched the accelerator as a car pulled into their lane.
The car behind them kissed the back bumper, pushing them into a full spin.
When they came to a stop, Gabi looked past the exploded airbags and up into the lights of a car glaring at her through the driver’s-side door.
Connor was pinned and she was dazed.
Someone yanked her door open. “Are you OK?”
She set her hand over Connor’s. “Connor?”
He mumbled.
“We need an ambulance,” Gabi said.
She looked again at the man at her door. He wore a suit, as if he were on his way to work. His dark fingers were holding on to her arm. “I’ve got you, Gabriella.”
She focused on his face again. “Do I know you?”
That’s when she felt the pinch and an all too familiar rush of heat move through the beat of her heart.
Her last thought, as the stranger helped her out of the car, was not again.
They were speeding through the valley toward the 101 when Solomon answered his phone. Hunter looked up from the list of contacts in his phone to find Solomon swerving to the off-ramp.
“What the—”
“Gabi and Connor just left the house.”
Hunter dropped his phone. “What?”
“She got a call, someone told her you and I were in an accident.”
“No.” No, no, no . . . Gabi on the road with Connor . . . alone. “Hurry.”
“I am.” Solomon drifted through the light, took the on-ramp too fast, bottomed out the car twice before he made speed.
What felt like forever couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, and he and Solomon were closing in on the street that turned up into the neighborhood of his new home.
A fire truck blocked the road, police cars were everywhere.
Hunter pushed out of the rolling car and ran.
The closer he came to the scene, the deeper the despair in his stomach.
The Maserati was a mangled mess of metal.
The fire department was preparing to rip the roof of the car away from the frame.
When others stood to the side to watch as if this were a spectator sport, Hunter ran into the scene in search of one person.
“Hey!” Someone called his way.
Hunter kept his feet moving.
The passenger door was open, the seat was empty.
Someone grabbed him and tried to hold him back. “This is my car!” he yelled at the uniformed man trying to hold him back. “Gabi?”
He ducked down to see Connor lying across the center of the car.
“Connor?”
“We need to clear this area.”
Hunter twisted away and knelt by the car. “Connor?”
The man focused. “Setup.”
“Where’s Gabi?”
“W-L-H-six-four-nine.”
“What?” Hunter was past the point of panic.
“W-L-H-six-four-nine.” He kept repeating the letters and numbers until someone finally grabbed Hunter by his stomach and pulled him away.
He struggled out of the police hold. “My wife was in the car. Where is she?”
The cop kept a safe distance and looked around. “We didn’t find a woman in the car.”
Hunter spun in a circle. “Someone had to see something.”
Solomon ran toward him.
Hunter grabbed him in a panic. “She’s gone. Aww fuck, Solomon, he has her.”
“We don’t know that.”
Hunter pushed away and started yelling toward the horde of lookie-loos. “Who saw what happened? Someone saw something.” The crowd parted around him, fearful of the crazy man yelling at strangers.
Finally one of the police officers was able to corral him long enough to tell him what they knew.
Gabi . . . or a woman with a broken arm and dark hair, had stumbled out of the car on the arm of a well-dressed Hispanic man. Goatee, dark hair, tall. Looked like she was really messed up but able to walk . . . kind of. Four-door car, maybe gray, maybe silver. Honda, Acura, maybe an older Lexus. Hard to say.
They sped off toward Sunset.
No one followed.
Connor was pulled from the car, heavily concussed with an unknown amount of internal damage. As the paramedics pushed him into the back of the ambulance, Hunter motioned Solomon toward the emergency vehicle. “You should go.”
“My priority is keeping you safe.”
Hunter glared. “I could only hope the man would come after me and not the people I care about.”
Solomon didn’t budge.
Officer Delgado and his partner showed up as the police on scene were finishing their questions. “Ready to talk to us now, Blackwell?”
Solomon and Hunter exchanged looks.
“Connor might have recorded something on the dashboard camera.”
Hunter looked at the cops, knew he didn’t have any choices left.
“Follow us.”
Her arm no longer hurt, her foggy head was full of color and muffled noise. Gabi was vaguely aware of the two men holding her up and leading her into a house. They could be taking her to a ditch on the side of the road and she wouldn’t care.
She remembered this. How could she have ever forgotten?
The rush, the heat . . . then the next to nothing. How much of this would she remember? She attempted to keep her eyes open and take in what was going on around her. A nagging voice in her head told her to stay aware, keep alert.
Another part told her to just feel. The floating and the power to forget everything would only last so long. Then the pain would return.
Unlike the crash she’d experienced at the hands of Alonzo, she knew this one would be harder.
Gabi wasn’t sure how she’d managed to be slumped on the floor of a nearly empty living room, but the men who took her were kneeling beside her talking. “How much did you give her?”
“We have at least an hour.”
The handsome one placed a hand on her cheek and slapped it. Where’s the pain?
“You’ve caused me so much trouble, Mrs. Picano. If you’d left my money alone, none of this would have had to happen.”
She closed her eyes, opened them when his palm slapped her again. “Not my money,” she mumbled.
“No. It’s mine.”
His hand hadn’t left her face as he stared at her.
“You can have it. I don’t, don’t . . . don’t want it.” Sleepy. She closed her eyes and heard the man switch languages.
She recognized the words but didn’t process them.
Sleep was a much better option.