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The master bedroom.
Like the floors below, the room was showroom-sterile, from her black bed frame to the nightstands and the lamps.
That wasn’t what had my stomach dropping, though.
No.
That was the fact that the red gown she’d been wearing to the fundraiser just a few hours before was on the floor at the foot of her bed. The heels she’d been wearing were kicked off in two directions.
So she hadn’t just possible gone out after the gala.
She’d come home and changed.
But was gone.
Suspicion growing, I turned toward the open door of her walk-in closet, and found half the insides a mess. Clothes were strewn everywhere. Drawers in her dresser were rummaged through and left open.
Not like someone had broken in.
No.
Like she’d ripped things out of them in a hurry.
Like she’d been trying to grab as much as she could as quickly as possible.
Like she was in a rush to get out of there.
Like, maybe, she was on the run.
Because she’d discovered what I had.
Brandon Adams was still alive.
And he was looking for her.
And now she was God-knew where with no one to have her back.
“Shit,” I growled, grabbing one of her shoes off the rack and hauling it at the wall.
I stood there for a long minute, trying to calm my chaotic thoughts, trying to form some rational thoughts.
But all I could come up with was: I was going to find her.
And then I was going to protect her.
Whether she liked it or not.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Shawn
My insides felt like they were shaking.
Which, I guess, was better than my outsides doing it.
Even if it felt the exact same way.
My suitcase was sitting on the passenger seat, filled with as much as I could grab in the five-minute timeframe I’d given myself to get changed, get packed, and get the hell out of Dodge.
I had no reason to believe Adams was following me, but that didn’t stop me from frantically checking my rearview mirrors as I turned off the highway and onto the parkway, teasing the speed limit before reminding myself that getting pulled over was only going to delay my escape.
How the hell was he still alive?
I wasn’t an idiot.
I knew how to shoot someone in a permanent way.
But I normally would have stopped to check to make sure I’d gotten it done.
Bellamy.
This was all Bellamy’s fault.
“Asshole,” I grumbled, slamming my head back against the rest.
If he hadn’t grabbed me and pulled me along with him, I would have checked. And, feeling a pulse, I would have done a double-tap just to make sure he was dead-dead. You know, so he wouldn’t fucking rise again like some plot twist to a damn soap opera.
And now, a mess.
A big, bloody, dangerous fucking mess.
The only solution to which was to run. At least until I could get my head together and figure out what could be done about it.
It wasn’t like I could just walk back up to Adams and shoot him again. First, because he likely knew who I was now. Second, because after one assignation attempt, a man tended to get paranoid and double-down on personal security.
“Damnit,” I grumbled, reaching for the stereo volume, cranking it up, hoping to drown out the swirling, ugly thoughts.
Like if Brandon Adams figured out who I was, would he go through my family to get to me?
Like what would he do to them if he decided to go that route?
A low, pathetic, whimpering sound escaped me at that, and I promised myself that whenever I got to… wherever the hell I was going, I was going to find some private security to keep an eye on my family.
Would they want a reason for the sudden presence of highly-trained bodyguards?
Yes, of course.
Would I be able to give them something even remotely satisfactory?
Nope. Not at all.
It wasn’t like I could come out and tell them that, after all they’d done for me over the years, I’d decided to smear the family name by trying to kill Brandon Adams.
I mean, yeah, he was the lowest of scum the world had to offer, but I highly doubted my family would be okay with me trying to kill him, regardless of what he’d done.
See, my family, as lovely as they were, they lived in a bit of a bubble, a place where they believed that the justice system always worked.
I didn’t have the luxury of that bubble.
I was painfully aware of how many scumbags fell through the cracks of the system.
That was why I’d needed to step in, why I had to shoot Brandon Adams.
But my family wouldn’t understand. They would want me to call the police, to let them handle it.
They were amazing, loving people. Who were just a bit naive about the world.
I didn’t want to lose them over this.
Not when the easy answer was to get away, regroup, and kill Adams. You know, for good this time.
