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“When?” ejected from me on a desperate note.
Malaysia squeezed her eyes tight and shook her head. I was being too eager.
“When I fucking tell you to!” thundered from Chad. “You think I’m going to give your boy time to set up and prevent me from getting what’s mine?” It was more like he wanted to set up and prevent them from stopp
ing him. Even if he thought there was a setup, it wouldn’t stop him from trying to take me. That was narcissism at its worst.
With a definite location of the next confrontation with Chad, Andre ran out of the kitchen. He wouldn’t be coming back, he had work to do.
Chad was still rambling, “I thought you were smart, Cherise, but I’m guessing not.”
“I’m sorry?” I didn’t know what the hell to say to that.
“You should be sorry. Chad and Cherise has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? It was fate we were named that.” He was grasping at straws to make us seem destined. Doomed was more like it.
I nearly gagged at the simple link of two letters in our names. “If you think so.”
His chair creaked again as if he sat up quickly. “You better think so too, or it’s going to be a tough road for you when you’re where you belong with me. Get that bastard out of your home within the hour, or Eva will pay the price, and so will you. Come one minute later than when I tell you to, and you and Eva both will pay the price. Wait for my call.”
Those ominous last words haunted me for ten hours straight. Every hour on the hour, I thought that would be the hour he called. It wasn’t. My nerves were raw. I couldn’t eat or watch television. Malaysia hovered, the only other in the condo with me. Tobin left as soon as he could to not provoke the monster. He checked in often with info from the calls he made. The cops couldn’t help much. With no direct time of when Chad would show up, nobody could really prepare for what lay ahead. Exactly how Chad wanted it. Doesn’t mean we didn’t try.
At ten o’five, my cell rang. Praying it was Tobin and his voice of calming reason and promise to be there when I need him, I glanced at the phone on my thigh. It was another strange number. Having had it up to my eyeballs with strange numbers lately, I swiped the accept icon only because another life was on the line. Malaysia eased onto the cushion next to me to listen in.
“Hello.”
“Why so down, Cherise?” He was unusually chipper. “It’s about to be the best night of your life. Don’t you want to know what I have planned?”
Not particularly, but I indulged him anyway. “What will make it the best night?”
“Me.” As if.
“What’s the next step, Chad?”
“I’ll tell you step by step on the phone, so you don’t have time to call your savior. Now, go to your car.”
“Let me get my keys and purse.”
Malaysia handed them to me from the side table, mouthing, “Be careful’ and dialing out on her phone. She was calling me. I had to answer her call and conference her in without Chad being any the wiser. She was tasked with reporting my steps to the guys as I sent her my location whenever I could over our iPhones.
I nodded at her, walking outside with my nerves on edge. Every dark shadow and parked car held the promise of danger until I got in my car. I was instructed to drive up and down my street outside the gate three times before heading to the heart of town. Each time, I rode down the street, a black sedan with blacked-out windows passed by.
While I wasted my gas, I figured out it had to be Chad in his secondary car, making sure I was doing as told and hadn’t picked a tail. I didn’t call him out on it. He was oddly quiet until he issued his next instruction; drive to the restaurant behind the bus stop Athena used religiously. He wanted me to park and wait. With a clear line of sight all the way to my office building, I sent Malaysia my location swiftly with one hand while putting my car in park with the other.
Traffic was moderate even at this time of night in the business district. The fastest route to the nightclubs was this way. Nothing could hide the black sedan driving by ten minutes later when I had hawk eyes out for it. It went into the empty lot of my business, circling around the building twice. He was looking for anything out of place. Brown-skinned Andre in all black was going to be hard to spot.
The sedan parked sideways in front of my business. Chad was notorious for quick getaways. If luck was a generous lady tonight, his habits would backfire on him. “You may come to your office. Park with your back to me. Turn the engine off. Wait until I tell you to get out.”
It irked me that I had to get permission to drive to my own establishment. Fuming mad, I obeyed. More anxious than a cat on a hot tin roof, I sat in my car with his headlights shining brightly throughout my car. He could see me, but I couldn’t get a beam on him with the light in my eyes. I tried, squinting to lessen the rays reflecting off my mirrors. This son of a bitch planned for everything.
“Get out the car, Cherise, go in your building slowly. Turn the alarm off quickly. Trigger it, and Eva will never see the light of day again.”
Feeling the heavy burden of his eyes on me, it was all I could do to not rush inside. I got out as told with the phone and heard a low thump on his end. He muttered to himself, “Stupid bitch better be glad I brought her with me. Maybe, I should leave her back there.”
‘Back there’ as in the trunk? I pondered that, sure he didn’t think I heard him, but he probably didn’t care if I did. Keeping it casual, I obeyed his orders, opening the office.
“Turn on the lights in there,” he mandated.
I went to flipping switches through the building, skipping the one behind Athena’s desk.
