Chapter Four
Paige woke to loud, frantic knocking on the door. “Paige! Let me in!”
Half asleep, she rose up on an elbow. She did a sweep of the bed with her leg. Empty. Had Eli somehow locked himself out? Smiling, she got out of bed and drew on her robe.
She’d barely turned the lock when the door swung open and a man rushed inside.
“What took you so fucking long, Magoo?”
“Don’t call me that,” she murmured, but at the same time feared he’d heard her. Her heart pounded in her chest. Old familiar demons brought the hairs on her arms up on end.
The intruder slammed the door and brushed past her. Daisy barked her alarm from somewhere in the kitchen. Her toenails ticked against the floor, the barks growing louder. She’d probably been eating. From where Paige stood paralyzed with dread and uncertainty, she heard her unwelcome visitor make a left into the guest bedroom. The closet door’s telltale squeak and the tumbling of boxes followed by a curse made the hairs rise up on her neck. This wasn’t happening.
A few seconds later, he returned. “Dammit! Fuck! Shit! Where is it?”
Paige inched backwards toward the door and away from the lunatic ranting and raving a few feet away.
“Where is it?” he bellowed.
“Where is what?”
“The safe deposit box key, numbnut! And look at you standing there like nothing at all happened! How did you survive that boat explosion, Paige?”
The familiarity of his voice, back to its usual clipped cadence, the hoarseness gone, cloaked her in a ten-ton mantle of gloom. She grew light-headed as her entire world flipped upside down.
“I-I don’t remember. I woke up in the hospital. I barely remember anything before that, it all happened so fast—the boom, flying in the air, hitting the water, choking and then nothing until someone was shining a bright light in my eyes.”
He had closed the gap between them. Daisy moved to her side like a ghost and leaned against her leg, growling softly. “That dog is the worst excuse for an animal I’ve ever seen. I should have let you bring her. She might not have been so lucky.”
Paige swallowed and took a deep, calming breath. “Eli? What happened to you? Where’ve you been?”
Eli drew in a breath. “You didn’t die and I didn’t get to presumably die with you. That’s what happened. Now, where the hell is that damn key?”
“What key? What are you talking about?” Tears pooled in her eyes, but she blinked them away. He would not see her cry. Not ever again. She reached down to calm Daisy, who continued to voice her displeasure, hackles up, but remained dutifully at Paige’s side as trained.
A key in the front door caught her ear and a slight rush of air caressed her skin. Daisy stopped growling. Her wagging tail slapped Paige’s leg. Confused, Paige backed away.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Mark Swenson? Never thought I’d see you again,” a second familiar voice said.
Paige’s breath hitched. “Eli?”
****
Eli glanced at Paige and at her devoted canine guardian. She was frightened, dammit. He had to fix this and fix it now and for good.
Their very unwelcome visitor, “Swenson,” laughed. “Really? You left me to die in that hellhole and now I find you here, letting yourself into my apartment like you live here or something. What the fuck? And drop the Swenson theatrics. The phony ID shit is over.”
Paige’s eyes flew open and the color drained from her face. Her head rotated between the two men. “What’s going on? Do you two … know each other?”
Swenson cast a sneer at Paige and huffed. “She called you Eli. Why would she call you that?”
“Paige, take Daisy and go to the bedroom while my former roommate and I catch up,” he said. The less she witnessed from this point on the better.
Swenson angled his head and squinted as he looked Eli up and down. “I supposed there might be enough of a resemblance to fool a blind bat like her, but I know better, don’t I?”
“She called me Eli because that’s who I am.”
“The fuck you are!”
“Go on, Paige.” He held his tongue while Daisy and Paige walked back to the bedroom. She cast a worried glance over her shoulder before closing the door. “For her sake, I’ll give you twenty minutes to gather whatever you can carry and leave this apartment, this town. Thankfully, your friends and associates have stayed away because, to their great relief, they think you’re dead, as you intended. So, do everyone a favor and disappear again, permanently.” Perhaps he shouldn’t have riled the little shit, who he noticed had removed a gun from his pants waistband.
“Why should I? This is my home, not yours,” Swenson said, pointing his gun at Eli.
“In case you forgot, Raphael Carpio and Marco Spinelli are out there looking for you. They don’t like loose ends. Besides, Spinelli’s money’s gone. That’s what you came back for, right?”
The man’s eyes narrowed and he lowered the gun. “What happened to the money?”
Eli shrugged. “I used it to bribe one of Carpio’s guards to let you escape.”
“You what? Bullshit! Why would you do that? How do I know you don’t have the money?”
“I had a reputation to protect. Besides, if I had the money, why would I still be here? But if you still don’t believe me, shall I tell you how you were lucky enough to escape?” Swenson cocked his head, but kept silent. “Your guard accidentally,” Eli said with an exaggerated wink, “dropped his keys in your cell when he brought your dinner. Sound familiar?” Eli tsked when Swenson didn’t answer. “Some gratitude.”
“Gratitude? I paid you twenty grand to make me disappear. Instead you got us both shanghaied and held prisoner by some Venezuelan mobster named Carpio. Never even heard of the guy! Nearly three months I was in that stinking prison. I never should have been there in the first place!”
“I was locked up, too, asshole. I listened to you deliriously blubber your stupid stories night after night while you were drugged up on painkillers healing from what was supposed to be a faked death. But you botched it so badly it nearly worked. I saved your life, not once, but twice.” Eli tilted his chin in the direction of the bedroom where Paige was tucked away. “I saved hers, too.”
“How did Carpio even know I had that kind of money? Why did his goons snatch us in the first place?”
“Spinelli put a price on your head, remember? Isn’t that why you needed to disappear? But think for a second. Soon as you were lucid, Carpio’s men were going to torture you until you told them where the money you stole from Spinelli was and then turn you over to Spinelli for the bounty. I escaped and got you out of there before any of that could happen. Consider us even.”
Swenson’s forehead furrowed. His gaze drifted off, giving Eli the opportunity he needed. He lunged forward and rammed his shoulder into Swenson’s gut, seizing his gun arm above the wrist. Using his body as leverage, Eli flipped his adversary over his shoulder and onto the floor while still holding on to his arm. A bone snapped and the man howled in pain. The gun fell to the floor. Eli scrambled to collect it, delivering a swift kick to the head to give Swenson something else to focus on.
Eli sat calmly on the sofa and gave the man a few minutes to recover. After a while he grew impatient and tossed a glass of water in his face. It did the trick because after sputtering and catching his breath, he focused on Eli.
“Now. Let’s start over and go over the revised plan,” Eli growled. He reached in his hip pocket and withdrew his wallet then tossed two laminated cards and a folded up piece of paper on the man’s chest. “Here’s the second half of our original deal: a new driver’s license, credit card, and birth certificate.”
Through his pain and grimaces, the man managed to push into a seated position, his broken arm lying limp and distorted on his lap. With his good hand he reached for the license and read it. “David Smith.”
“As per our original deal to give you a new identity. Get used to it.” Eli shifted on the sofa and crossed his ankle over his knee. “Word on the street has it a Mark Swenson escaped the infamous Raphael Carpio’s clutches, but met with a gruesome end when he was recaptured in the desert. Body was burned beyond recognition. You’ll appear at least five hundred miles or two states away from here as Mr. David Smith. You’re welcome to any of the clothes and shoes in the apartment as your parting gift. We wear the same waist, shirt, and shoe sizes, lucky for you.”
David Smith’s features twisted and warped with barely concealed fury. “You can’t do this.”
“I can and I am. Doing exactly what you paid me for.”
“I didn’t pay you to take over my identity!” Swenson winced from an aborted gesture and cradled his arm. “What if … what if I don’t agree with your terms?”
Eli pursed his lips for a second, gave the gun a spin around his trigger finger. “You are more than welcome to negotiate something better with Mr. Spinelli or Mr. Carpio. But this is your best deal and you know it.” He twisted his wrist and checked his watch. “You now have ten minutes to collect and go.” Eli pressed a series of buttons to launch a countdown timer on his watch. “Giddy up, cowboy.”
****
Paige heard sounds of fighting, yelps of pain and then a boom on the floor. An ominous silence followed. Torn between running out to investigate and staying safely put with Daisy, she pressed an ear to the wall that separated the bedroom from living room and waited and listened.
She jumped back when the bedroom door opened.
“Paige?”
“Eli! Thank God!”
Eli edged closer, his familiar male scent relaxed her immediately. “I can explain…” he began.
Paige pressed a finger to his lips. “I may be nearly blind, but I’m not stupid. I realized you were a different man a long time ago, but I wanted you anyway. If keeping you meant sinning right beside you, then I was willing to be damned to hell.”
Eli kissed her. David Smith entered the bedroom, and like he had hundreds of times before, pulled out a roller bag from beneath the bed. He unzipped the bag and dumped the clothes he carried into the main compartment. Without another word, he walked to the chest of drawers, withdrew more items and shoved them inside as well.
“Two minutes,” Eli said, his tone full of menace.
Paige heard zipping and the metallic sliding and clicking of a roller bag handle locking into place.
“Goodbye, Paige, you two-timing whore. May you get what you deserve with this scumbag imposter.”
Daisy let out a low throaty growl.
“Goodbye, Mr. Smith,” Paige said in a firm voice. “May our paths never cross again.”
David Smith, briefly known as Mark Swenson and formerly known as Eli Logan rolled his suitcase out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
“I know you have questions,” Eli began.
“I do, but only one I need an answer to now.”
“Ask me anything.”
“Who are you, really?” She hoped he realized she wasn’t after a name, because a name didn’t define a person.
He smiled. “That’s an easy one. I’m the man who loves you, Paige Dancey.”
Paige nodded and rubbed her eyes before smiling. “I think … I can work with that.”
“I’ll explain the rest over lunch. You and Daisy and me. A picnic in the park.”
Paige nodded. “I’ll go get ready.”
Eli smiled and said, “I’ll be waiting.”
When he heard Paige singing to herself in the bathroom, he picked up the cell phone David Smith had left behind. After turning off the GPS, he sent a text to Marco Spinelli, guaranteeing his undisputed right to the woman in the other room, and then he destroyed the phone. All of the real Eli’s stories about Paige during their staged imprisonment in Raphael Carpio’s jail had been told with brutal contempt, but he’d seen beyond the man’s narcissistic bluster. The flesh and blood Paige had been all he’d imagined and more. Too bad the real Eli Logan hadn’t been smart enough to figure out there never was a Venezuelan mobster—that his jailor had been nothing more than a wannabe actor who owed the new and improved Eli a favor. A few weeks’ ruse to wheedle the location of Spinelli’s money had paid handsomely, but that hadn’t been the real prize.
Eli Logan might have returned for the money, but he stayed for the woman.
The End