Alex watched her for another moment and then nodded. “Sit tight.” As he turned to leave, she called softly after him.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
Alex shot her a glance over his shoulder and then left the room, closing the door gently behind him.
Annabelle watched him go. Then she stood and quickly made her way to the door, taking care not to make any noise as she moved. She pressed her ear to the door and listened carefully.
“… Mr. Thane’s transportation… no, he’d kill you…”
Annabelle’s brow furrowed. She cupped her hands around her ear and concentrated.
“First time in something like twenty years, I think.” It was Alex’s voice. He was talking to one of the other men. There was movement too. A bag or jacket being zipped up. The metallic clinking of gun parts being checked and loaded.
“Jack Thane’s fallen off the wagon.” Someone laughed and then whistled low. “Wow. What do you make of that?” That voice belonged to a young man by the name of Simon Jeremiah. He’d only been working for Jack for a few years, if she had her information correct. He was Australian, in his early twenties, and the buff blonde was very much into surfing in his spare time. Which he had little of these days. Working for Jack Thane was no cake walk. But, rumor had it that the job paid
“I think you know as well as I do what to make of it. It’s no mystery.” Alex crossed the room then, if Annabelle was hearing correctly. His boots made a specific sound on the hardwood floor in the den outside her room.
“You know the rules,” Alex went on. “She has free reign of every public area within the building, but she’s not to leave the complex. And if she steps out of this apartment, you’re not to leave her side. Not for anything.”
“You,” Alex said then, addressing someone else. “Call this woman and have her in Miss Drake’s quarters within the hour. Money is no concern. She knows the drill.” Alex’s tone of voice had changed to become more managerial and direct. He was giving someone orders.
“And you two will have to meet her at the door. Check for weapons. She’s used to that as well.”
Okay. So, if Annabelle was counting correctly, Alex had addressed three different groups of people. Simon was one of at least four men who would be left to guard her.
She stepped back from the door and took a deep breath. There was no way she could take out four men. With a gun, yes. Apparently, that much had been proven. But, in any other way, shape or form, not a chance. And she couldn’t shoot those guys anyway.
She was screwed on using this opportunity as an escape route.
Which made her wonder about a few things. She paced across the room to a door on the opposite end and went through. Beyond was a complete in-home gym, set up with a steam room on one end and a sauna on the other. Between the two, against the wall, was a roiling, boiling hot tub, steaming and waiting to relieve the ache of inflamed muscles.
She ignored all of those things and headed for the rack of weights instead. She lifted a twenty pound dumbbell in each hand and began to curl them. As she did so, she stared blankly at herself in the mirror and wondered why she wanted to escape so badly. Where would she run to? And how long, exactly, did she think she would be able to remain missing before someone – before
Not long.
Her wrists and hands were still sore from the abuse they’d taken in the alley that night. Scrapes on the backs of her hands were just now healing, and the bruises around her wrists from the cuffs were deepening into their ugliest colors. She felt a mild ache in them as she worked the weights, but ignored it.
Her mind was stuck in re-wind now, reliving the events of the last few days, from their fight in the alley to the scenes that played out afterwards, like a nightmare domino effect.
He’d lied to her and that had hurt her. She’d run, simply wanting to get away from the craziness for a while. To hide. But, he’d caught her of course and they’d yelled at one another. Said awful things.
She’d told him that she hated him. As she remembered the words she’d spoken, she realized that from that moment on, Jack Thane had been a different person.
He’d brought her back to his flat at the top of Canary Wharf Tower and told her, in no uncertain terms, that she would not be leaving the premises for the next several days. She’d rebelled, going so far as to shove him square in the chest at one point. She’d told him she was not a piece of his real estate, to be bought or kept – she wasn’t property. She’d demanded that he allow her to go home, to take care of what was left of DesignMax, and to attend Max Anderson’s funeral.
She’d been worried, over the last few days, about what the cops were going to do or say about her disappearance. And Dylan’s. And she’d been worried about Mackenzie, the jerk that trapped Max and Annabelle in a never-ending contract for a web site that would never quite manage to be to Mackenzie’s liking. Would Mackenzie sue DesignMax because of the unfinished site? Would Dylan end up suffering for that?
Annabelle had things to tend to and she’d said as much to Jack.
Jack, for his part, had laughed a mirthless laugh and simply shaken his head, his blue eyes blazing madly. He’d told her she would be going nowhere.
When she made a dive for the cell phone on the table beside her bed, he’d beat her to it and pocketed the item. “I’ll be closing your account with the phone company,” he’d said, his tone matter-of-fact, his expression cold. “Since you obviously have no concept of keeping yourself safe, you’ll have no further contact with the outside world until I deem it prudent.”
And then she had attacked him, picking up a hard-backed book from one of the shelves and hefting it at him with all of her might. He’d dodged it easily, so she rushed him. And, of course, he’d caught her, spun her around, and tossed her onto the bed with no effort whatsoever.
But his eyes were positively ablaze. An anger such as she’d never before witnessed was radiating off of his tall frame in heated waves. “Keep it up,” he’d told her. “I can keep going.” He strode to the bed and towered over her. “Dylan Anderson can think you’re dead. Cassie Reid will never see you again. You want me to contact your mother personally and let her know her only child has decided to no longer speak to her? Or do you think it would hurt her worse if she, too, thought you were dead?” He’d hissed that last part, his expression something between deceptive control and a hellish rage barely held in check.
She’d lunged off of the bed, wanting to rip him apart with her bare hands. He’d been right. He was capable of far more cruelty than she’d imagined, and he wasn’t holding back.
But he made short business of her outburst, simply catching her by her already sore wrists and holding her fast in front of him. “No phone, no computer, Annabelle,” he told her, bringing his face a mere few inches from hers. “You’ve hereby signed away the last of your freedom. You’re not thinking straight and you’re obviously incapable of understanding the depth of the situation.” He shook her then, causing her head to snap back before he drew her close once more. They were both breathing heavily, and she could feel his words across her lips, just as he could feel her shaking in his grasp. “You will not run again, Bella, so help me God.”
“I can’t believe I actually thought I loved you, Jack.” Her tone had dropped and her words were barely a whisper, but they hit home. Jack’s blue gaze turned steely as she watched. His grip tightened ever so slightly on her arms.
And then, suddenly, he was letting her go. He stepped back from her, his jaw tight. He stared at her for several long, tense moments, and then he took a deep breath, letting it out through his nose. “So be it.”
It was the last thing he’d said to her. He’d turned around and left the apartment, assigning half a dozen men to watch over her twenty-four-seven.
She hadn’t seen or spoken to Jack since that night. It had been two days. And every minute had become an hour; every hour, a century. She had nothing to do but think about the out-of-control mess that her life had become. It was virtually unrecognizable.
And that wasn’t all. She was filled with a much deeper ache. A horrible, gut-wrenching, throbbing kind of ache that threatened to engulf her entirely.
She loved Jack Thane.
She’d loved him since that first night, on her twenty-first birthday.
And yet, she’d told him that she hated him. He’d lied to her, hurt her, locked her up and threatened her. And she loved him. Why?
