A Girl Called Fearless (15 page)

So when the friar cooked up this plan for her to fake her death so she and Romeo could run off to Mantua and live under an assumed name, she jumped on it. It was Exodus, Shakespeare style.

I envied how Juliet was crazy reckless brave with all Romeo's love fueling her, because unlike her, I wasn't a fictional character.

I was a plain old girl, trying to escape marriage to a heartless, controlling man, and my version of Romeo was hundreds of miles away. And instead of a sympathetic nurse helping me, my best friend was ready to rat me out. Even if my extract went perfectly two days from now, I could end up stuck in the middle of nowhere, because I couldn't get my hands on any cash.

But I guess a part of me had to be crazy reckless brave, because despite the odds, I was going for it. There was one more thing I had to do today before I left and that was say good-bye to Mom.

35

At the cemetery, a Hispanic family had spread blankets across four graves so they could picnic. The son bounced a soccer ball on his knees like he was showing his mamma his skills. Not far away, a man held the hand of a little girl, clutching a big red paper heart to her jacket.

Mom's corner was empty. After Roik checked out the area, I carried my blanket up the hill.

My heart was heavy, knowing this was the last time I'd ever see Mom, and it felt like I was losing her all over again.

A few rows over, a man kneeled beside a grave. He pulled out a trowel and started to dig. It looked oddly sweet, a big bald man with tattoos on his scalp, planting sunny yellow flowers.

I sat back against Mom's headstone. “I need to tell you that I'm going away. Father Gabriel's helping me make a run for Canada.”

I glanced at the car. Roik was completely immersed in whatever was on his phone.

“Yates was supposed to help me, too, but he's in jail. You would have been so proud of him. He got arrested for—”

A hand clamped over my mouth. Cold and callused and smelling of dirt.

I froze as a face pushed up against mine. The guy from a few rows over. “Hi, gorgeous. Let's go for a ride.”

He jerked me to my feet, and pulled me behind the tree. Down the other side of the hill, a blue van idled on the service road.

I tore at his fingers, trying to peel them off my mouth as he wrestled me toward the van.

Finally, I shoved my elbows into his stomach. His hand flew off my mouth. “Roik!” I screamed. I thrashed out of the man's grasp, but he reached out and grabbed me around the neck and flattened me against him.

A shot split a branch above us. Roik was flying up the hill.

I struggled to get away, but the hand tightened around my throat. The man fired a shot at Roik, while I dangled in his grip.

The cold mouth of a gun kissed my forehead.

Roik held his fire, poised to shoot. “Drop her NOW!”

“Like hell I will.” The guy held me like a shield and my brain emptied of everything I knew about self-defense. Roik and I had trained together at a security camp, but at this moment the only thing in the world was the gun beside my eye.

“Let her go!” Roik yelled.

I tripped on the uneven grass as the guy began to walk me backward down the hill.

“Look at me, Avie. Look at me!” Roik yelled from above us.

I focused on his face, and his lips formed a command.
Claw him
.

I couldn't.

“Avie!”

I threw my hands back and blindly tore at the man's eyes.

“Bitch.” His hand fell off my throat. I dropped to the ground as a shot smacked by me.

Then Roik charged past. “Get in the car!”

Below us, the blue van hurtled down the service road.

I crawled to my feet. Blood blackened the man's shirt from a wound below his collarbone. I rushed for the car, the ground heaving beneath my feet. I threw myself inside and slammed down the lock.

Bulletproof glass and armored panels couldn't keep me from shaking. Sirens screamed and cops swarmed the hill. An ambulance braked behind me.

If Roik hadn't stopped that guy, I'd be in that van right now. Handcuffed? Duct-taped? Ready to be someone's— Stop it. Don't go there.

Roik climbed in beside me. “The police want you to come down to the station. Your father's talking to them right now, trying to convince them to interview you at the house.”

“Okay.”

A cop knocked on the window. Roik stepped out and I watched him bum a smoke and light up. He hadn't had a cigarette in two years.

Roik could have been killed.

His phone buzzed next to me on the seat. “Dad?”

“Avie. Thank God, you're safe.”

For a second, he sounded like old Dad, the one I had before everything fell apart, and all I wanted was to go home and feel his arms around me. “The police have agreed to interview you at the house, but first, Roik's taking you to Huntington,” he said. “We need to get you checked out.”

“I don't want to go to a hospital.” A news copter rattled the air.

“Roik said he saw bruises and scratches. That man who grabbed you, he didn't do … anything else … did he?”

Dad's face sagged like a bad day on the stock market. His big investment threatened. He wasn't old Dad at all.

“No. I'm in
one piece
. No broken
anything
.”

“Still, Jessop wants you to be examined.”

“You told him what happened?”

“I had to. It's part of your Contract: I have to inform him of any significant life event.”

Dad and Hawkins ganging up on me. Well, I would fix them. “Daddy, if I go to Huntington, the place will be swarming with reporters. What story do you want on the news: this one or the one in
People
?”

Dad flinched like Biocure's stock had just dropped fifty percent. “All right. I'll meet you at the house.”

Roik hopped into the driver's seat. He gunned the engine and tore out the cemetery gates. Halfway home I realized I'd left my bag on Mom's grave. And the phone Yates gave me, the one I needed if I wanted to get away, was inside.

36

Cops followed us home and Dad arrived just after us. He went to hug me, but an officer stopped him. “Not until we get her clothes, Mr. Reveare. Everything she's wearing is evidence.”

“But she's…”

“You can wait in the kitchen.”

They told me to strip right there in the library. “In front of a bunch of men!” I cried to Roik. “Can't you do something?”

Roik held up a sheet and I peeled my clothes off behind it. The officers dropped each piece in an evidence bag, but when they demanded my bra, I refused. The guy never touched me under my clothes, I argued, but they weren't happy until they had everything.

I shivered on the stone floor as an officer snapped shot after shot of the bruises on my arm and neck and the bloody scratches on my legs where I'd been dragged through the rosebush.

I couldn't stop feeling the cold metal shoved up against my face or the panicked rush as I tore blindly at my attacker.

Claw him, Avie, claw him
.

Bam!

Roik handed me my robe, and I knotted it tight. “Can I go now?”

“We have a few questions,” one officer said.

Dad met me in the hall and wrapped his arms around me. “I'm so glad you're all right.” He looked like he had when I was ten and broke my arm on the trampoline. Like he never imagined I could get so hurt. “Jessop's plastic surgeon arrived—in case you need a stitch or two.”

Cold skittered up my legs. “Right.” Hawkins didn't want any marks. Nothing to blemish the landscape.

I felt a sheet of bulletproof glass roll up between me and the world. Everything else was on the other side.

The surgeon examined me in Gerard's office. I trembled as the man ran his gloved fingers over my bruises and the cuts on my thighs, lingering on the two deepest scratches.

Please let this be over.

“Good news,” he said, placing a bandage over one cut. “I don't think you'll scar.” He opened the door, and the detective was waiting at the kitchen table. “Shall we get started?”

I wrapped my arms across my body. “Can I at least get dressed?”

“This will take just a few minutes.”

I sat down and Dusty jumped into my lap. I held her close as I answered the detective's ridiculous questions. Why did we go to the cemetery? What time did we arrive? Was that our routine?

Then a cop showed up with my purse and I held my breath as he spilled it out on the table. First my phone fell out, then the one Yates gave me. The rhinestone Tinkerbell case sparkled under the lights, and Roik looked from me to the phone he knew wasn't mine.

The detective sensed something, because he picked it up and studied the cracked screen. “What do we have here?”

“Give me that,” I said, and he swung it out of reach.

“This isn't the perp's?”

“No, it's a friend's.”

The cop wiggled the phone at me. “You in cahoots with the perp? You set up this little drama?”

Roik took the phone from the cop and began to tap through the screens.

“What? You think I
arranged
for that guy to attack me? To shove a gun in my face?”

“You wouldn't be the first. Girl under Contract. Doesn't like who Daddy picked out…”

Dusty started to growl and thrash in my arms. Everyone turned to the sound of boots clacking down the hall. Gerard appeared at the door, flanked by a German shepherd and a hulk in fatigues and a Kevlar vest. “Jessop Hawkins sent this man to escort you to his compound.”

I leaped out of my chair, still holding Dusty. “No. No! I have to talk to Hawkins.”

“You know he's in Singapore,” Dad said.

“I don't care where he is! He can't do this!” I paced, and Gerard locked Dusty upstairs while Dad got Hawkins on the phone.

“Aveline, I'm glad you called. I was worried about you.” Hawkins' voice was oily with concern.

“Yeah, that guy you sent to take me to your house, I'm not going with him.”

“I want you to be safe.”

“I am safe.”

“You're not in a condition to decide that. You need to listen to me—”

“And you need to listen to me. I—”

“I want you in my compound where you can be watched!”

“And I want to stay here with my family!”

Hawkins' silence was long and angry, but finally he spoke. “You're obviously hysterical, so I will ignore your little outburst, but I have decided that you may remain at your house on the condition that the additional perimeter guard stays.”

Another armed guard and this time with an attack dog. What choice did I have? “Okay.”

“And?”

It took me a second before I realized what he wanted. “Thank you, Jessop.”

“You're welcome.”

I hung up the phone and grabbed mine off the table. “I'm done answering questions.”

37

I locked my bedroom door and ran the bath as hot as it would go. Then I perched on the edge, waiting for it to fill. I wanted that man's touch off me even if I had to boil it off.

The world's a dangerous place for girls.

Roik had said it a hundred times, but I never thought anything would ever happen to me. If it wasn't for him, I'd be in that van. Blindfolded. My arms and legs bound with plastic ties. Duct tape over my mouth. The kidnapper probably wouldn't even bother asking Dad for ransom, because chances are he'd have a buyer lined up. And not one like Hawkins.

More like a guy who'd handcuff me to a bed, and then—

I clutched my bathrobe tight across my chest.
Don't, you're making yourself crazy.

There was a knock at the door. “Go away!”

“Avie, it's Gerard. Can I come in?”

I turned off the water. When I opened the door, Gerard was holding a tray with Mom's favorite blue teapot and jam sandwiches with the crusts cut off. “I thought you could use a little something to settle your stomach.”

My eyes filled. Mom's Bad Day Cure. “Peppermint tea?”

“Of course. Let me set this down.”

I nodded, and he nudged the door shut with his foot. He dodged the piles on my floor and set the tray on my bed. “Sit.”

I plopped down on my quilt, and he put the napkin in my lap. “Open it.”

A stack of fifties was hidden in the folds along with my secret phone. I crushed the napkin to my chest. “Oh.”

Gerard held a finger up to his lips and leaned in close. “I told Roik I'd return the phone to the family. Don't let me see or hear or find a thing,” he whispered, and backed away.

Thank you, I mouthed.

When the door closed, I peeked and counted the bills. Eight hundred dollars.

Gerard was telling me to run. I wasn't sure I had the guts to do it anymore—not even with Yates right beside me.

I pulled
Titanic
off the shelf and tucked the bills inside the plastic case. Then I peeled back the credits card to see Yates' picture.

That glance yanked me back to the moment the cop struck him with the baton.

I'm so freaking blind.

Yates doesn't play it safe. He charges right into danger. If he'd been with me today instead of Roik, he'd have thrown himself on that gunman, trying to save me.

I couldn't let Yates anywhere near my extraction. Maybe he wouldn't get back to L.A. in time, but if he did, I had to stop him.

I wasn't like the other girls he'd helped. Hawkins would send an army of Retrievers after me and Hawkins wouldn't care if they killed Yates to get me back.

38

I slammed awake in the middle of the night.

I'll never feel safe again.

39

As soon as Roik drove me out the Flintridge gates the next morning, my heart started to race, even though Efram, the perimeter guy, was tailing us.