Chapter 31
My face scraped the flagstone tile, my right cheekbone taking the brunt of the fall. My earpiece shifted and I felt my shirtsleeve tear.
Cold Eyes hauled me off the ground by my backpack, and with my back to his chest, he wrapped one arm around my neck, the other around my waist, and carried me into the house.
I reached up and smacked at him as hard as I could, but he seemed impervious. I stopped hitting him and clutched the edge of the stainless steel refrigerator, but my puny fingers and the slick surface were no match for his mile-high frame and huge muscles.
He lumbered through the kitchen, the alarm continued to wail, and I kicked back against his shins. I tried to claw at his arms, but had no nails, since I had nervously bitten them off earlier. I shifted my head to the side and tried to bite his arm through his suit jacket, but all I got was a mouthful of fibers.
As we passed through the kitchen and into the foyer, I grabbed a decorative china bowl off the credenza and hit him on the side of the face. He simply grunted and the bowl fell to the ground and shattered. He tightened his hold. Between his arm constricting my throat and the other arm squeezing my ribs, I thought I was going to pass out. Then the front door burst open and Sullivan rushed in, covered in pink and green splotches.
His gaze took us in. Me gasping for air, Cold Eyes squeezing me like a boa. Sullivan hiked his thumb over his shoulder. The henchman simply released his hold on me and I fell straight to the floor, flat on my ass as Cold Eyes made his way out the front door.
I stared at Sullivan, coughing and wheezing, as I rubbed my throat. I didn’t run. Blatant fear, excruciating pain, and the mind-numbing shrill of the still blaring alarm kept me rooted to the floor.
When it abruptly stopped, the quiet was as deafening as the alarm had been.
“Rose,” Sullivan said. I blinked, as if I had just come out of a trance, like my name was the magic word that set me free.
I scrambled up and ran back to the kitchen and out the door as fast as I could. I sprinted across the lighted yard and into the woods. “I’m coming,” I said in a scratchy shout, hoping my headset still worked. “It’s Rose. I’m coming.”
I tripped over stumps, fell on my already bruised knee twice as I ran in what I hoped was the right direction. When I burst through the trees, I saw Eric standing next to the SUV with the door open. With hands on his hips, his head swiveled from left to right, searching for me. When he finally saw me, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Come on, hurry up.”
No shit. What did he think I was doing, taking a stroll?
I clambered into the car and hopped over the back seat into the cargo space with Roxy, accidentally kicking Axton in the head. Eric climbed into the car after me.
Steve pulled out of the shallow ditch so fast, Roxy and I tumbled against the cargo door. With a grunt I rubbed my shoulder, but didn’t care about the pain. I was just so grateful to have made it out of the house in one piece.
No one said a word until we were huddled around Axton in Eric’s living room. He sat on one of the loveseats next to me, with Ma and Roxy sitting on its twin. Eric and Steve copped a squat on the floor.
I told them about playing catch and release with the psycho henchman while Eric grabbed a blanket from the bedroom and draped it around my shoulders. “Thanks.” My voice was raspy.
“Sullivan didn’t try to stop you from leaving?” he asked as he resumed his seat.
I shook my head. My neck was sore, my ribs bruised, my face was swollen, and my shoulder throbbed, but as I looked at Axton, I was more content than I had been in over a week.
“When we saw the SUV pull into the drive, we set off the alarm,” Eric said.
Steve looked up at me. “I grabbed the paintball gun from the cargo space and ran through the woods. The second Henry and Sullivan got out of the car, I nailed them.”
“So that’s why Sullivan was covered in pink and green splotches. You’re my hero.”
He grinned his crooked grin and blushed.
I grabbed Axton’s hand. “Now your turn. Tell us everything.”
“And start from the beginning,” Eric said.
“Okay, so, like, I went to this club and the next day I asked you to take my backpack. Remember, Rose?”
“I remember. Where was the club?”
“In this warehouse, well it used to be a warehouse. But now they have poker and stuff.”
“Where was located?” Eric asked.
“In the city. And it was a pretty dicey neighborhood. But the people there were dressed up in really nice togs.”
“Here you go, honey.” Ma handed him a chocolate chip cookie she’d pulled from her quilted tote bag.
“Thanks.” He let go of my hand and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth and washed it down with a swallow of beer. “I can’t tell you why I was there, you know, for personal reasons.”
“It’s okay, we already know the trouble Pack is in,” I said.
“Really? Because he told me it was a secret.”
“Yeah, well, we got it out of him.”
“Rose has been working every angle to find you,” Steve said.
“Thanks, Rose.” Axton tipped the bottle in my direction.
“I had a lot of help. Anyway, back to this club.”
“Right. So Pack got me the invite. I went to get info on Sullivan. You know about him?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Okay, while Sullivan and Henry watched the poker game, real stealthy like, I sneaked into the back room.”
“Clever. Then what?” Roxy asked.
“There was a laptop sitting on this desk, so I removed the hard drive.” He leaned back and nodded, a little grin on his face.
“Then what?” Roxy asked. “Are we going to have to pull each and every detail out of you? Just tell us the story already. Jeez.” I could tell she needed another piece of gum or a new patch or maybe both.
Axton looked a little hurt. “All right, keep your panties on. So, I removed the hard drive, stuck it in my jacket pocket, and made like the wind.
“Then I drove back to my house and called Pack with the good news. But Pack was, like, pissed. He didn’t want me to take the whole thing, he just wanted me to hack into Sullivan’s computer. Like I had that kind of time.” He looked at Steve and Eric. Eric shook his head and Steve scoffed.
“But then, I noticed this big ass SUV following me around. That’s why I gave you the backpack, Rose. After I came home from work that night, I heard a car pulling up in front of the house. I looked out the window and there it was, the SUV, and it was blocking my car. Then I saw Henry.” He took a long drink of beer. “So I ran to my room and jumped out the window.”
I huffed out a frustrated breath. “I could just slap Joe. I asked him a dozen times about that night and not once did he mention a very large man in a very large SUV looking for you.”
Ax shrugged. “You know he’s a little scattered. He can’t always remember stuff.”
“Wait a minute,” Ma said, “how did they even know who you were?”
“Sullivan told me his entire club’s set up with cameras. So they saw me steal the hard drive. Plus, I think they already knew who I was. I used Pack’s invite to the club and they had my stats, you know? It was freaky, them knowing so much about me.”
I thought about the files I had stolen. Yeah, Sullivan knew exactly who Axton was.
“Anyway, I ran through the neighborhood and hid behind some bushes. That’s when I called you, Rose. But I saw the SUV trolling the street, so I hung up and hopped the fence and lost the phone in a drainage ditch. I decided I better keep moving, in case I was, like, captured, which I totally was, by the by.”
“Where did you go?” I asked.
