CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Jake
I’m not a spontaneous person. I don’t do things on the spur of the moment. I’ve never woken up and decided it’s a good day for an unplanned road trip, or jumped in a cab and gone to the airport on a whim.
But when I wake up in Detroit the morning after the game, faced with twenty-four hours of nothing but killing time in the gym and the bar and another endless night without Shane—the team charter plane was double booked so we’re staying over again in Motor City—I throw my shit in my bag, tell coach I’ll see him at practice on Monday, and head down to the lobby to grab a cab to the airport.
It takes a little finesse and a lot of patience, but finally I score a standby ticket on a direct flight to New York. When the Talbot party fails to show up for final call, I snag Mr. Talbot’s window seat and a three o’clock arrival into JFK.
In the moments before the stewardess closes the doors, I consider texting Shane to let her know I’ll be back early, but turn my phone off instead. I’m making a spontaneous change of plans, doing something I’ve never done before. Might as well try surprising my girlfriend while I’m at it.
My beautiful, sexy, amazing girlfriend who I will be making love to tonight instead of jerking off alone in a Detroit hotel room and feeling miserable because I’m not breathing the same air as my woman. I’m so gone on her—so gone I know it’s more than lust, or the excitement of something new. I’ve never fallen this far or this fast, but I’ve been close enough to love that I know this is it—the real deal—and I’m going to tell Shane tonight.
I don’t give a shit that it’s only been two weeks. A part of me loved her the moment I laid eyes on her, and that feeling isn’t going away. It’s only getting stronger. I may be acting out of character, but I’m still the same man I’ve always been, the kind who finishes what he starts.
I’m not going to be finished with Shane until we’ve had at least a few years together. Maybe fifty or sixty, if I’m lucky.
The thought keeps me smiling through the flight and into the cab at JFK.
I have the cabbie let me off on Madison Avenue, and I swing into a gourmet grocery store for flowers and a tin of fancy dog biscuits before heading west toward Shane’s place. I can’t remember if Shane was returning Fifi to her friend today or tomorrow, but I figure I should come bearing gifts for both of them, just in case. I drag my roller bag behind me, enjoying the sun on my face and the unusually warm early November afternoon, and arrive at Shane’s building just as rush hour traffic is starting to get hairy.
Aaron, the day doorman, waves me through without bothering to call up first. I’m on Shane’s list and I’ve got a key to her apartment. Hopefully someday soon, I’ll be coming home to our place, preferably in a building where Shane can have the dog she wants without having to hide it from the HOA.
On the way up in the elevator, I’m thinking about small dogs and how much shit my brothers are going to give me if I end up the proud co-owner of an animal that can be carried in a purse. I’m not worrying about whether Shane is going to be home, or happy about the surprise.
If she’s not home, I’ll wait for her until she gets back, and I know she’ll be glad to see me. Being apart has been hard for her, too. I could see it in the smile she forced every time we said good-bye over Skype and hear it in her voice when she told me she’d cleared her schedule so she could come with me to most of the away games between now and February.
No, my thoughts are all happy thoughts.
Smug, head-up-my-ass, thinking-I-have-everything-under-control thoughts. Right up until the moment I let myself into the apartment and see the woman lying on the floor, and the blood on the pale, cream rug.
For a split second, I think it’s Shane, even though the hair color is wrong, and my stomach contracts like I’ve taken the world’s hardest elbow to the gut. Even when I realize the woman can’t be my girl, it doesn’t stem the flood of fear and adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream.
There’s a woman bleeding on Shane’s floor, and Shane is nowhere to be seen, and I know something terrible has happened. I know it.
I drop the flowers and my bag and reach for the Buddha statue by the door to use as a weapon, moving quietly into the apartment, just in case whoever did this is still here. In just a few moments I reach the slim form lying on her side by the couch and get my first look at the woman’s face.
It’s Adeline, the sweet, shy hockey fan I met the first day in the garden. She’s even paler than I remember, and bleeding from a gash on her forehead that clearly wasn’t caused by her fall. But now that I’m closer, I can see her chest rising and falling, and her eyelids twitching as if she’s in the middle of a bad dream.
Thank God. She’s alive, and I’ll be able to get her help.
With a silent promise to be back for her as fast as I fucking can, I move deeper into the apartment, doing a quick search of the bedrooms and bathrooms, but there’s no sign of Shane or whoever hurt her friend. Setting the Buddha statue on the coffee table, I return to Adeline’s side. I’m pulling my cell from my coat to call 911 when she moans. A second later her lashes flutter and her eyes open.
She winces, clearly in pain, but she immediately pushes up into a seated position. “Help. We have to get help!”
“Careful,” I say, steadying her with gentle hands on her shoulders. “What happened, Adeline? Who hurt you?”
“I don’t know,” she says, blinking fast. “I came out to make tea and there was this woman I’ve never seen before. She had a gun. She told me to be quiet and do what she said and I wouldn’t get hurt. I tried to run back into the bedroom to warn Shane, but—”
“Shane was here?” I ask, through a throat squeezed tight.
Adeline’s face goes completely white. “She was. She’s not anymore?”
“She’s not.” I’m doing my best to hold my shit together and get as much information as I can. Anything that might help me figure out where Shane is right now. “Can you remember anything else?”
“There wasn’t much else. The woman hit me and I guess I blacked out.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
A woman with a gun. A fucking woman with a gun was here, and now Shane is gone. I tug my phone from my pocket. “What did the woman look like? Can you remember?”
“Dark hair, dark eyes,” Adeline says, squinting. “Petite, pretty. Not the kind of person you expect to break into someone’s apartment or rush you with a gun.”
I curse aloud this time. It was Keri. It had to be. “Was this the woman?” I pull up an old picture of Keri on my phone, the one I saved to show to Bash the day I went to hire help getting my ex-girlfriend off my back.
“Yes,” Adeline says, confirming that I’m the asshole responsible for the blood on her head and whatever is happening to Shane right now.
Keri was here with a gun, and she knocked Adeline out, and now Shane is gone, maybe forever. Keri could be hurting the woman I love and it’s all my fucking fault.
“That’s her,” Addie continues, voice trembling. “Do you think she did something to Shane? God, we have to find her, Jake! We have to make sure she’s okay.”
“I will,” I promise. “I’ll find her and I’ll make sure the woman who broke in here never hurts either of you again. But first, I’m calling an ambulance. You need to get your head checked out.”
Adeline insists she’s fine, but I’m not taking any chances. I call 911 and escort her down to the front desk to wait for the paramedics. Once there, I ask Aaron if he remembers seeing Shane leave the building.
“I do,” he says, nodding seriously. “She left with that woman who delivered the envelope for her the other day, the pretty one with the brown hair. Seemed a little strange to me, since Miss Willoughby didn’t look too happy about the package. She didn’t look too happy walking out the door, either, but—”
“How long ago?” I fight the urge to rush straight out to the street and start screaming Shane’s name.
“An hour?” Aaron scratches his end-of day stubble. “Maybe a little less. I can check the time on the security footage if you need to know for sure.”
“That’s okay,” I say, already backing toward the door. “But save it. The authorities might need it later.”
But I know that later will be too late. Whatever Keri has decided to do, she’s not the kind to hesitate. She’s taken Shane, and I can only think of one reason that my ex-girlfriend would kidnap my current girlfriend. She’s planning to eliminate the competition in a place where she won’t be filmed or caught or interrupted until she’s finished what she started.
It’s one of the ways my ex and I are alike—we’re both stubborn as fucking hell and determined to see things through.
Now I just have to figure out where Keri would go to feel safe and secure, before she kills the only woman I’ve ever loved.
Out on the sidewalk, I break into a run, sprinting toward the subway, mapping out the fastest route to Keri’s studio in Dumbo—Down under Brooklyn Bridge—in my head. It’s right under the train tracks, in an area where the noise from the subway cars rattling by is so loud you can barely hear yourself think, let alone notice the pop of a gunshot or the sound of a woman screaming.
I would bet my right hand that’s where Keri’s headed.
You’re betting more than that. You’re betting Shane’s life.
The thought makes me run faster. And pray.
I haven’t been to church in years, but Shane is a spiritual person. If there’s something out there listening, maybe it will take pity on me for her sake.
Or at least be convinced to take me in her place.
Keri is my nightmare. I invited her into my life. If anyone is going to pay for that mistake, it should be me.
Please let it be me, please let it be me…
I repeat the words again and again as I shove into the packed train headed south, praying with everything in me that I won’t be too late.