Chapter11
“Are you sure I’m going to need this?” Deena asked, hesitant to take the gun that Jake was offering.
“I hope not, but you need to know how to use it. It’s really easy. You just release the safety here, then point and shoot.”
“What if I miss?”
“Don’t think about that. Just line it up like this, point and squeeze the trigger.” He stood behind her, holding her arm up at the correct level and pointing the gun at the door. “Even if you miss, you’ll scare them enough to have a chance to run.”
“Really?”
“Maybe, but I need to know you’re safe.”
“That’s encouraging. What if I accidentally shoot you?”
“You won’t, because I have a key.”
“Doesn’t the hotel have a key? Can’t they let anyone in?”
“Good point. When I leave, close the security latch.”
“And if they open the door and kick it down?”
“Shoot out the window and go out that way.”
“Can I just go with you?”
“No,” he said flatly. “You’re safer here. No one is going to come here to get you.”
“Then why do I need a gun?”
Deena had been leading him in a circle like this for almost twenty minutes. The truth was, she didn’t want him to go. Even though it would be daylight in a couple hours, she was terrified of what the world outside their hotel room held. Now that her car had been blown up, and the news had been updated with a picture of Deena, the “missing motorist,” she couldn’t separate herself from what had been going on. It was all too real, and Jake going to meet someone who was supposed to be able to help them was pushing her to the edge. There was only so much she could take, and this was too much.
Jake took a deep breath, setting the gun down on the end table and gathering her into his arms.
“Nothing is going to happen,” he said. “I’m going to go meet with this guy, and he’s going to help us. I’ll be back, and we’ll hide out here until things are safer, then we’ll leave, and it’ll be over. You can go back to your life and forget that any of this ever happened.”
“You’re a fool if you think it’s that easy.”
“I know that it isn’t, Deena, but we don’t have a choice. The more they know about you, the more danger we both are in. It’s gotten to the point that I can’t just get you to safety and help you walk away without exposing Oakfield. I can’t do that on my own.”
“I don’t understand why I can’t come.”
“Deena, this guy is shady as hell. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal right now, but he’s not the kind of person I would normally turn to for help. But I can’t trust anyone else to go after this guy. He’s too important.”
“We could go to the media.”
“And we’d be dead within the hour.”
“How is this guy going to stop it?”
Jake sighed, then kissed her forehead.
“I have to go. I have a short window of time to meet with him. I’ll be back, and I won’t leave your side after that.”
“Promise?”
“Absolutely. I still owe you a date, remember?”
“And a tropical vacation,” she teased.
“If you’ll go with me, I think a week on an island would be a great first date.” He nuzzled her neck, then kissed her tenderly. “I don’t want to leave you any more than you want me to leave. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t necessary, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
He untangled himself from her embrace, leaving the room and dutifully waiting for her to lock the security latch behind him. She stood there for a long time after he left, watching the hallway through the peephole, but in the early hours of a lazy Sunday morning, there was no activity in the hallway.
Still on edge, she took one of the straight-backed chairs from the dining nook and shoved it under the door handle until the legs dug into the carpet and wouldn’t move. It wasn’t much, but it made her feel a lot better, and that was something.
She paced the room, checking the large window on the other side of the living room area, but the parking lot was equally dead. Nothing was going on, and all she was doing was borrowing trouble. Jake was right; there was no way someone could track them here, and there was no reason for anyone in the hotel to suspect that one of the countless couples living in the extended stay hotel near Market Center was on the run from the law. They were only six miles from where her car had blown up, but it was a world away from the Deep Ellum neighborhood. Even Tamika wouldn’t think to look for Deena there. As easy as it was to let the fear override common sense, she knew that she was as safe as she was going to be without fleeing the state altogether.
“Keep it together, Deena,” she admonished herself, checking the clock for the umpteenth time.
She checked the parking lot one last time, then decided that watching TV would ease her mind. It was still really early, but she knew that there would be plenty of mindless entertainment on even at almost four in the morning.
Using the remote, she flipped through the channels, bypassing the channels that played nothing but news starting at four. She’d had her fill of seeing her little blue sedan blow up on the security camera, and the lone image of her and Holt getting into the Uber outside of the club. She’d cringed when it came up, but Jake hadn’t batted an eye over it. It was easy to guess why she’d left with Holt, leaving her car down the street in the process, but Jake hadn’t said a word.
Deena wondered if the police would be looking for Holt. If they managed to hunt him down, she hoped it was at his parents’ house in front of all the neighbors. She was still salty about him lying to her. If it wasn’t for him kicking her out when he did, she wouldn’t have witnessed a murder.
But she also wouldn’t have met Jake. Whether he ended up being worth all that remained to be seen, but at this point, meeting Jake was definitely the silver lining in this never-ending shit storm.
It was funny, because Holt had tricked her into believing that he was wealthy, then practically drove her into the arms of a rich man. Deena wasn’t sure exactly how rich Jake was, but the Berrington name was well-known to many in the Dallas area. They were definitely old money. In most cases, Jake would have been able to buy them out of trouble without too much effort, but they were up against Oakfield. It wasn’t just his wealth that made him unstoppable, it was his seemingly endless string of political connections. If Jake’s friend couldn’t help them, Deena wasn’t sure that anyone could.
She got up again, leaving the TV on and making herself a quick breakfast with their leftovers. It wasn’t how she usually started her day, but between the packaged muffins they’d snagged from the hotel dining room and what was left from dinner the night before, she had plenty to eat, and more individual orange juice cartons than they could finish in a week.
“Too bad there’s no vodka,” she mumbled, drinking one as she grabbed a blueberry muffin and removed the wrapper.
The first bite was delicious. She realized it had been quite some time since their early dinner the night before, and she was hungry. She ate the blueberry muffin quickly and grabbed another, opening all the cabinets until she found the napkins stocked by the hotel.
She was nibbling on the last of the second muffin when the television show playing in the background went silent, interrupted by a breaking news story. Expecting it to be more coverage of the car, she almost turned it off, but then she stopped. Maybe they’d found Holt and they were taking him in for questioning.
Perking up for the first time since Jake had left less than an hour before, she bounced into the living room from the kitchenette, then stopped in her tracks.
There was a familiar face on the television. Deena stood there in the middle of the room, instantly numb, the muffin wrapper falling from her hand and onto the floor unnoticed. Standing in the middle of the room, she was in disbelief as Jake’s face flashed across the screen, then the camera went back to the scene on Cedar Springs. She shook her head, forcing herself to focus on the news anchor, who was rattling on in the background about the death.
“…from an anonymous tip called into police late last night,” the newswoman said. “The deceased has been identified as Eric Price, known rival to amateur real estate investor and billionaire Jake Berrington. The only son of Sophia and Dale Berrington, Jake Berrington was caught on camera arguing with Eric Price shortly before Price was murdered.” The scene changed to a grainy video from one of the parking lots near the shopping center on Cedar Springs.
Deena gasped, watching the video in horror as Eric Price grabbed Jake’s shirt sleeve and Jake turned, punching the man in the face. Eric went down not far from Jake’s Corvette, sitting on the ground for several seconds before the video went back to the studio. “In addition to the eye witness who saw Jake Berrington fleeing the scene, police have information that an offshore account in Berrington’s name was used to pay a known contract killer.
They won’t say where this information came from, but it looks as if Jake Berrington may have paid to have Eric Price killed, not realizing that they would be at the same place when the murder happened. Things are looking bad for Jake Berrington, to say the least.”
“They are looking bad, indeed, Colleen,” the male anchor said. “We’re also being told that Jake Berrington and Eric Price bid on the same properties several times. No one can say for sure what the two men were arguing about in the video, but the fact remains that Eric Price was dead a short time later, and so far, the police are calling Jake Berrington a ‘person of interest’ in his murder. Anyone with information is asked to call the number on the bottom of the screen, and police are cautioning people not to approach him. Jake Berrington is known to be armed and dangerous. Do not approach him if you see him.”
The news story ended as quickly as it began, shifting over to the traffic report as if the last two broadcast minutes hadn’t completely shaken Deena to her core.
Why hadn’t Jake told her about the fight earlier in the evening? He had referred to him as “the man at my car” and skipped over the part about knowing who he was. If Jake knew that the man at his car was Eric Price, and he’d had an altercation with the man shortly before his murder, why wouldn’t Jake tell her that? It wasn’t like they hadn’t had plenty of time to talk about the murder, cooped up in a hotel room alone like they were.
She knew the answer, but she didn’t want to believe it. Could this man who had risked his life to save her be a cold-blooded killer? He might not have killed Price himself, but if he ordered the hit, then he was a killer, nonetheless. And what about the offshore account, and everything else they’d said on the news? When added up, all those things pointed toward Jake having Eric Price killed.
Who was he really meeting? If he wasn’t hiding anything, why was he being so secretive?
Why hadn’t he told her that he was a billionaire? There was rich and then there was billionaire. If he was innocent, why wouldn’t he just buy his way out of trouble? People like him to go to trial and deal with the courts. They paid people to do it for them. Unless they were guilty.
“If it walks like a duck,” she muttered, her mother’s old adage running through her head.
The more she thought about it, the more it all made sense. No one was after them except the police. That’s why he couldn’t go to the police for help.
Frantic now, Deena shoved everything she had into the backpack, then took the gun off the table and shoved it in the outer pocket after checking that the safety was on. She had to leave and get to the nearest police station. Jake had been gone for almost an hour, and he would be back at any moment. Deena trembled, her fear mounting as every possibility went through her head. What if he was meeting with the hitman to have Deena taken care of?
“Shit,” she whispered, going through the envelope he’d left in the nightstand and grabbing a stack of cash.
She didn’t know how much she would need to get away, but she couldn’t stay in the city. She wasn’t safe here with Jake, and if she didn’t leave, he was going to find her. She would call the police, then go somewhere safe. That was the only thing that she could do. If she couldn’t trust Jake, she couldn’t trust anyone.
Deena froze when a key card slid into the door and the lock released. She looked up at the security latch, and her heart sank. She’d opened it when she went to the door, and left it that way when she decided to grab some cash. She was halfway across the living room and too far away to lock it now.
Jake was back, and she had nowhere to go.