Escaping Vegas (The Inheritance Book 1) (6 page)

“What can we do?”

He glanced back. She sounded fretful, worried, her expression mirroring the emotions. Her eyes, so pale blue, were luminous in the diffused glow of light through the blinds. For a surprising moment, he wanted nothing more than to pull her in and give her shelter with his body. To wrap his arms around her, let her know it would be all right. He said, “Right this second, we’re staying put.”

“But we can’t stay here forever.”

“No, we can’t.”

“How are we going to get your car back without them seeing us? They’ll probably be watching, knowing you’ll return for it at some point.”

Cole grunted. Yes, someone would be watching the Jag the whole time. Suddenly, he had an idea. Pulling out his phone, he dialed
911
.

“Yes. I’d like to report a break-in.”

C
HAPTER
S
IX

M
adalina didn’t want to leave the For Sale house. She balked at the back door, suddenly terrified to step outside. Even though she knew they couldn’t remain there, exposing herself to the elements, to the men in the car, was almost more than she could handle.

Standing on the awning-covered back porch, Cole tugged gently on her hand. She met his eyes, then scanned the yard for the fifth time.

“The police are probably already on your street. We need to be there when they are, because the Chinese agents won’t dare do anything with the cops on the scene. We can leave a report, then take my car and get out of here,” he said.

“I know, I know.”

“Remember, don’t tell them about the incident on the freeway.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to have to explain why I shot at the car. Stick to the basic details. We don’t know what happened to your house or who might have trashed it.”

“But don’t I
want
them involved? Won’t they protect me?” Madalina rubbed her forehead. She finally allowed Cole to coax her onto the porch and around the side of the house to the street. She wasn’t a jogger by nature, but she didn’t protest when he drew her into a slow trot down the sidewalk. Her body ached from tangling with the fence and the hard landing on the other side. In that particular moment, though, she ignored the pain in favor of staying one step ahead of their adversaries.

“Look, Madalina. Let me give you a hypothetical. Let’s say you tell the police everything. There’s a good chance they’ll take me in for questioning after they discover that I shot at a car full of people. Even if I’m gone for a few hours, that leaves you exposed and vulnerable. The agents will probably make an extreme effort to get their hands on you while you’re unprotected, and I won’t be able to do anything about it. Once the agents find out we’ve brought the police into it, they’ll start looking for any kind of leverage to use against the chief, which might have a trickle-down effect. Right this second, we have the advantage of surprise. Let’s not give the agents the ability to trump up fake charges against me or you, or to lean on the local police. We’ll have to give a statement, but let’s get in and out as quickly as possible.” He glanced sidelong, then scanned the street as they reached the corner.

Madalina finally understood, or at least accepted, Cole’s version of what-ifs. She said, “All right. Okay. So, we just came home from Vegas—how do I explain you?”

“Tell them I’m your boyfriend. We’ve been dating for three months.”

“Where did we meet?”

“I came into your store—”

“We sell clothing and accessories for women.”

“I was buying for a coworker? They don’t need to know what I was doing there to begin with.”

“But you don’t live here.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Madalina puffed through another few breaths as they turned another corner onto her street. Tension tightened her shoulders. The agents could be anywhere. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Okay, so you’re my boyfriend, and we met at my work. We’ve been going out for three months. We came home and found my house a wreck.”

“Right.”

Ahead, Madalina saw a police cruiser pull in behind Cole’s Jaguar.

Cole slowed to a walk in front of the house before her own. Grateful to slow down, winded from the jog, she went over the details one more time in her mind.

“Hello, Officer. I’m Cole, the one who called,” Cole said to the two officers. The cops had their flashlights drawn. Both were men, one in his late thirties, with dark hair, the other younger by a decade. The younger officer’s pale complexion, which all but glowed in the night, was offset by blond lashes, red-tinged brows, and a hint of auburn hair under his hat.

“Hello, sir,” the older cop replied.

Madalina didn’t miss the perplexed looks on their faces and realized they probably wondered what she and Cole were doing jogging up the street.

“We waited down the street. She was too afraid to stay here until you arrived,” Cole said, smooth as butter.

The officers nodded and glanced at Madalina. “This is your house?” one asked.

“Yes. It’s . . . it’s a mess.”

“All right. Let’s take a look. Wait out here, please. We’ll have some questions when we’re done.” The officer spoke into the radio attached to his uniform. Another patrol car pulled up, and two more officers got out.

Madalina scanned the street, then greeted the cops as she’d done with the others.

“Okay, so tell us what happened.” A female officer, blonde hair scraped back into a tight bun, pulled out a pad and a pen.

“We were just returning from a short getaway. Cole stepped into the house and . . . discovered someone had broken in. We went to wait at the end of the street, afraid the thieves would come back.” Madalina couldn’t help but cast looks over her shoulder, despite the presence of the cops. She felt safer, by far, but was too paranoid now to
not
perpetually check her surroundings.

“Do you have any idea who might have done it?” the female cop asked.

“No. Not a clue.”

“Did you notice anything stolen?”

“It’s . . .” Madalina paused to swallow. She found it difficult to reply. Cole, whose warm hand still enveloped her own, came to her rescue.

“It’s more than a break-in, Officer. They decimated the place.”

“Ransacked it?”

“Yes. Broke dishes, punched holes in the bedroom walls and the closet, ripped into cushions, that kind of thing.”

Madalina rubbed her forehead again, as if that might reduce the sting of tears. Or the growing headache behind her eyes.

“Do you have any idea why someone would want to do that, Miss . . .”

“Maitland. My name is Madalina Maitland. And no, I don’t know why it happened. As far as I can tell, I haven’t upset anyone, I don’t owe anyone money, and I haven’t had a bad experience with customers or other owners of businesses near mine.”

“What type of business do you have?”

“A women’s clothing boutique in town. We’ve never had any trouble.”

“You say we—do you have a manager or a co-owner?” the female cop asked.

“I do. She’s my best friend, Lianne. We haven’t had a falling-out or anything,” Madalina said.

“Do you know if
she
has had a run-in with anyone regarding your business? Someone who might be targeting her, but targeting you, too, simply because you’re in business together?”

Madalina hadn’t thought of that. “Honestly, I don’t know. I haven’t heard Lianne say anything. She’s not the sort to start trouble. I’ll call her in the morning and ask.”

The other two officers exited the house, flashing their lights over the yard.

“Yeah, it’s really bad. There isn’t anything left in one piece in the whole place,” one officer reported.

The female cop said, “Let’s go over it again, Miss Maitland.”

Madalina was relieved to climb into the Jaguar with Cole. The questioning had taken more than an hour—an hour of tension and looking over her shoulder and fretting that it was taking too long to leave. The Chinese agents were going to show up, she just knew it, and all of it would be for naught.

“You did great,” Cole said, sliding into the front seat. He started the car and drove away, minding his speed with the cops still parked in front of the house, but also wasting no time. He checked the mirrors often.

“Thanks. I have no idea what to do now.” It was early, perhaps four in the morning, and she felt gritty-eyed and exhausted. She didn’t know what to expect at any given turn, where the threat would pop up next. Cole, taking the opportunity of evading the assailants seriously, performed several maneuvers with the car to aid in ditching a tail. He sped into turns, cut it close at the stoplights, and veered into an alley at the last minute.

“Why don’t we hit a hotel? If I’m confident that we’re not being followed, we can rent a room and get some sleep. You don’t have to go to work, right?” he asked.

“No. I’m supposed to be in Vegas for another few days. Lianne won’t expect me back for a while.” She checked her side mirror often. As tired as she was, she wouldn’t let her guard down until she was positive they were safe. And she surely wasn’t so tired that she misunderstood Cole’s singular use of room. Not plural. Maybe he thought it was safer to stay together, just in case the agents somehow discovered their location. And it made sense, from a defense point of view.

“There’s a hotel about a quarter mile down on the right,” she said, indicating the street he’d just turned onto. “Do you think they’ll expect us to do that and check the parking lots for your car?”

“I think they’ll expect us to get farther away from the house than that. I haven’t seen a tail at all yet, so we should be safe enough.” Cole pulled into the Whittier Inn and parked next to a long SUV. “This should block the car from the street. It’ll help, anyway, if they
do
scan the lot.” He tucked his gun into the back of his jeans and covered it with the thick material of his shirt.

“Good thinking.” Madalina disembarked and met Cole at the back of the car. Strangely, she missed the connection of their hands. She’d drawn comfort from it while they’d been on the run.

Cole held the lobby door open and followed on her heels.

The Whittier Inn was about as standard a hotel as one could imagine. Flat brown carpet in the halls, nondescript wallpaper, generic print paintings of Southern California hot spots. At least it was clean.

Taking charge of renting a room for the night, Cole paid with cash and said little more than necessary to the chatty, too-happy clerk. Before Madalina knew it, they were in an elevator on the way to the third floor. Shortly after that, Cole opened the door to their room after scanning the hallway, ever on alert for unwanted company.

Madalina expected to find a set of double beds, plain furniture, a television on a dresser, and a small white-tiled bathroom, which is exactly what greeted her when she stepped inside. The color scheme was brown and sage green, the curtains parted to give a view of the parking lot in front of the lobby. She set her purse on the dresser and sank onto the edge of a bed, staring down at her booted feet. The sense of melancholy over the destruction of her home, of everything she owned, became a great weight that slumped her shoulders and bowed her spine. She didn’t know where to go from here or what to do next. Living in the hotel for longer than a few days wasn’t an option. She needed clothes—which she intended to get from the sale racks at her own boutique—shoes, shelter, and a plan.

“Hey.”

She glanced up when Cole came to stand next to the bed. He towered above her, tall and strong and handsome in the single light burning from the nightstand. “Hmm?”

“Did you leave your grandpa’s keepsake in the safe deposit box? Because if it was in the house, it’s either gone or destroyed. I think that’s got to be our best lead about what’s happening to you.”

Madalina studied Cole’s features, the unusual color of his eyes. She said, “I took it out of the safe deposit box. It’s somewhere else. I didn’t plan it that way; it just worked out that the person who was with me when I listed the information on the antique site had the dragon and kept it while I went to Vegas.”

Cole slid his hands into his pockets, weight shifting from one foot to the other. “I think we should go take a look tomorrow. See if we can find out more about it. I mean—if it’s nothing, a cheap knockoff, then we’ll be able to rule it out and turn our attention to something else. Systematically going through the possibilities of who is after you, and why, will help us make better, safer decisions.”

It didn’t sound to Madalina like Cole meant to go anywhere. He talked as if her problem was
his
problem, as if he was in it till the end. She thought she should ask him how long he planned to stay, how much dedication he meant to expend on her behalf. Maybe after breakfast, when some of the shock had worn off.

“All right. Tomorrow we’ll do that. I’m not sure what we’ll find. I need to stop by the boutique, too, to get some clothes and shoes. I can’t keep wearing this skirt and shirt.” Madalina had a thing about wearing clothes over again. It skeeved her out if she couldn’t change into something new and fresh after showers or in the mornings. Sometimes she changed
twice
a day. Besides her peculiar obsession, concentrating on this kind of mundane task helped keep her anxiety in check.

“
Your
boutique?” Cole asked. He didn’t move away, didn’t take a step back.

“Yes, mine. I can get the clothes at cost. It’ll be cheaper than going to a regular store.”

Cole’s whiskers rasped against his fingertips when he rubbed his jaw. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“You think they’ll be watching it, too?” she asked with a frown. Madalina hadn’t considered that the Chinese agents might haunt her place of business. Then again, she hadn’t expected her house to be devastated, either.

“Look. You can find anything about anyone on the Internet. Pay two-ninety-five and you’ve got access to a person’s entire history. Old and current addresses, old and current jobs, schooling, relatives—they probably have your parents’ address, too. It’s just not safe going anywhere that might be on a list.”