CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

NICK

“Alicia, are you sure you’re okay?” I asked into my headset. I knew she could hear me because I’d hooked up her headset myself before we took off, and she jumped a little at the sound of my voice in her ear.

She’d been uncharacteristically quiet on the helicopter ride to the backup location that Warren had arranged weeks ago, a remote bungalow on the beach in Nantucket. At first, I thought it was just the shock of having been shot at, but nearly an hour later, we were about to land, and she still hadn’t said a word.

She was lost in thought, staring either at the countryside below or the sunset ahead. The sun was just starting to dip. It was stunning. I couldn’t blame her for staring at it. I just wished I knew what was going through her mind as she did.

“I’m fine,” she said, an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before. When she glanced over at me, the look in her eyes had changed as well. It was same way she’d looked at me that morning when I’d agreed with Warren that she shouldn’t go to the party. Only so much more intense.

She’d been pissed off then, but she was fucking furious now. Her lips were pursed into a thin line, and her shoulders were rigid.

Ah yes. The shock had definitely given way to anger.

I was the lucky winner of being right in the line of fire. Although I wouldn’t have minded taking the brunt of her anger. I wanted all of her, even the unpleasant fury that was simmering right beneath the surface.

I expected her to start yelling at me, but she didn’t. Instead, she turned in her seat so that her back was facing me, crossed her arms over her chest, and didn’t say another word.

I navigated the landing at the small, private helipad on the island easily. I unbuckled myself quickly and watched as Alicia fumbled with her harness. I leaned over to help her when I realized that she was shaking too badly to get the job done.

“You can leave the headset on the seat,” I told her, jumping to the ground a few feet below. I rounded to her side, ready to help her out.

She let me, but pulled away from me as soon as her feet touched the ground and marched to the fancy, gleaming Bentley that was waiting for us just off the helipad. Grabbing the go-bags I’d packed days ago after that conference call, I followed her.

I stashed our bags in the trunk and slid into the driver’s seat. Alicia had already turned so that she wasn’t facing me. I didn’t like it. Not one fucking bit.

“Talk to me, Alicia. What’s going on in your head?” I got the wheels rolling and followed the instructions that had been preprogrammed into the navigational unit of the luxury car.

“I thought you had such a good read on me,” she practically spat at me.

“I do, but I told you earlier that I couldn’t read your mind. So, you’re going to talk to me. What’s wrong?” My voice was gentler than I’d ever heard it. It was completely unlike me to be tender with a client, to care about what a client was thinking, but I did.

Probably because Alicia was unlike any other client. What I felt for her certainly was different.

She swiveled in her seat, her voice breathy and incredulous. “What’s wrong? Are you kidding me? I don’t even know where to start.”

“The beginning?” I suggested. I wanted to help her deal with everything that had happened, and talking through it was a good start.

Alicia rolled her eyes, grinding her teeth together. “Fine, you want me to start at the beginning? I was attacked in my own fucking home. I barely managed to escape. I’ve been locked up, shut out, and now shot at, and I still have no idea why.”

“I—”

She cut me off. “Save it Nick. I’m getting really fucking tired of being treated like a damn child, of getting told that I can’t know why these things are happening. Everyone knows what the hell is going on except for me, and yet, somehow, it’s my life that’s constantly on the line.”

Alicia slumped in her seat but kept her eyes on me. “I want to know, Nick. I’ve spent the afternoon dodging bullets instead of dancing at two of my best friends’ birthdays. I helped you during the car chase, didn’t I? Haven’t I proven that I’m not a naive kid who needs to be kept in the dark?”

“It’s not up to me to tell you. Trust me, if it were, I would’ve told you in a heartbeat. These are your father’s orders.” It fucking killed me to keep it from her, purely because I could see how much it hurt her. I never wanted to be complicit in anything that hurt her, but I was.

“What about the second rule, Nick?” she seethed. “So, everyone gets to go in with their eyes open except for me, is that it?”

I sighed, running a hand through my hair in frustration. “If I’ve told you this once, I’ve told you a thousand times. Those are my rules, Alicia. They’re in place to keep you safe. Even if they did apply to you, too, this isn’t up to me. I can’t be the one to open your eyes to this.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s on my dad. I mean, I sell jewelry online. No one is going to go through all this effort to kill me because they don’t like the detail on a bracelet. I know that this is my father’s fault, that it’s related to Graystone International somehow because he has zero personal life outside of spending time with me. And I know that he’s the one who wants to keep this from me. If he were here, I would be yelling at him, but he’s not.”

“So, you’ll settle for yelling at me?” I finished for her.

“Exactly.”

My phone buzzed against my leg in my pocket. “Okay, if that’s what you need to do, then yell away. I understand your anger, so I’ll just sit here and take it, but you’re going to have to give me a minute first.”

I fished my phone out and nodded to it.

Warren Graystone calling, the display screen told me. I swiped the screen and pressed the phone to my ear.

“We’re on the ground,” I told him as soon the call connected.

“Thank god,” he said, blowing out a deep breath that he must have been holding for ages. “How is she?”

“She’s fine. We escaped without injury.” Physical injury, anyway. Alicia was bound to carry this around with her for a long time.

“Thank god. Thank you for getting her out of there safely. My team went in. They said that it looks like a miracle that you managed to get her out by yourself. The place is wrecked.”

“Yeah, there were at least six shooters. Probably more.”

“The good news there is that between my team and the police, most of them have been caught. They have them in custody, and the situation in East Hampton is contained for now.”

“That is good news.”

Alicia glanced at me curiously, leaning closer as though she was trying to overhear what her father was saying. I switched ears, just in case she could.

She narrowed her eyes at me, mouthing a silent “fuck you.” I smiled at her in return. She was kind of cute when she was angry, not that I was going to risk telling her that out loud.

“We’ve got everything in hand here. Your job now is to keep Alicia safe and to secure the backup location.” On that note, the disembodied voice of the GPS told me to turn left. I did.

In the darkness that was quickly closing in around us, I couldn’t make out much of the scenery. Only jagged cliffs and the expanse of the ocean beyond. The road we had turned onto was smaller than the one out of the airport and seemed to be carrying us away from civilization. Warren hadn’t been kidding when he’d told me once that the location had been chosen for its extreme remoteness. Apparently, there was no one around for miles.

“When will you be getting in?” I asked. “If I know to expect you, I won’t be liable to shoot you by accident.”

Warren chuckled humorlessly. “That would probably be for the best. We’ll be there in three days.”

What? “If you don’t mind my asking, why the delay? What’s happening there?”

“Nothing. Like I said, it’s all taken care of. I’m going to be feigning trips to different locations to confuse anyone that’s potentially tracking me. Throw them off your scent, so to speak.”

“That’s a dangerous game, Mr. Graystone. I wouldn’t advise it.”

“I know it is, and I’ve been told that, but it’s one thing for me to die. It’s completely another if one hair on my daughter’s head is hurt. That’s twice now that they’ve gone after her. It’s not happening again. If it means drawing them to me, then so be it.” The inflection of his voice changed. Determination mixed with anger and a dash of panic.

There was no chance that I was going to talk him out of it or convince him of a different route to take. “Understood, sir.”

“Good. You have precious cargo, Nick. Take good care of her.”

My eyes darted to Alicia, illuminated only by the lights of the dashboard and the pale glow of moonlight from outside, I was reminded of my first impression of her. That she was untouched and unspoiled, a whimsical fairy princess in a jar.

It just so happened that she didn’t want to be in said jar. She wanted to be free to live her life, and I was going to make that happen for her. One way or the other.

“I’ll protect her with my life,” I answered him sincerely.

Alicia was quiet for a while after I hung up the phone. She seemed to have calmed down considerably during the phone call and was deep in thought. I wanted to know what she was thinking about, but I had a pretty good idea.

It turned out I was right. She turned in her seat so that she was facing me with the entire front of her body, tucking one leg on the seat underneath her. The road was quiet. We hadn’t passed another car since we’d made the turn, so it was safe to really look at her.

When I did, I immediately wished that I hadn’t. The torture that shone in the eyes that haunted my dreams broke my fucking heart. It made me want to slay dragons and take on armies of Vikings if that was what it took to extinguish that look.

“What’s going on Nick? I know you’ve been ordered to keep it to yourself, but think about it from my point of view. I’ve come this close,” she raised her thumb and index finger and brought them together until they were only just apart, “to dying. Twice. The likelihood of us being attacked again seems high. If I’m going to die, don’t I at least get to know why?”

Fuck.

And there it was. The dragons and Vikings weren’t necessary. The only thing she wanted from me was the truth. It was that simple, and that complicated.

“I want to tell you. Really, I do. But you know I’ve been ordered not to.”

I ripped my gaze from hers, because for the first time in my life, I was feeling conflicted about whether to follow a direct order or not. If I kept looking into her anguished eyes, I was going to break.