AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I heard a thud. Something harder than a bullet hit the car in front of us and then rolled to the ground. The blue vehicle hit the end of the street, made a left, and then peeled out on Bayside. Drake looked like he wanted to chase after them, but he didn’t have a way to keep up with the car.
Determining we were safe, I hauled Hazel off the ground. Her skin had lost its rosy color, and she looked ashen as she huddled beside me. I wasn’t big on hugging, but there was only one thing to be done right then. Her body shook as I pulled her in tightly and circled my arms around her, keeping her safe. She needed the comfort.
“Was that a drive-by shooting?” she asked, her fingers twisting in the fabric of my white dress shirt and untucking it from the back.
I nodded. My chin hit the top of her head. “Well, a crawl-by shooting.” They’d gone so slowly they obviously weren’t concerned about getting caught.
Who’d be so brazen? I had my ideas, but I didn’t want to scare her further.
She shuddered in my hands, and I squeezed her tighter, glancing down until our eyes met. “What is on the thumb drive, Ms. Webb?”
Everyone knew the Grandmaster for his ruthlessness, but he didn’t kill for sport or fun. Why would he take out a middle-class bank worker to keep a thumb drive out of police hands? It couldn’t be as simple as a few faulty tax documents. Things were more sinister at All American Bank than I first assumed.
Sirens shattered our few seconds of quiet post gunshots and screams.
She shook her head, burrowing herself further into my arms. As people made their way out of the shops, I leaned into her embrace, smelling the peach shampoo in her hair.
“That might not have been for me,” she said, the words spoken mostly to my chest, so it took me a moment to decipher them. “I’m a project coordinator. These things don’t happen to me,” she sputtered, moving her head to the side and breathing heavily. “This is not how things worked in Bangor.”
Two rows of cars sat between us and the shooter, something which probably saved our lives. I refused to even glance at my baby to see what damage they’d done to the Aston Martin. Explaining bullet holes to the insurance company would be an interesting phone call.
With Hazel still firmly within my grasp, I glanced at the ground and picked up a white chess piece. Another pawn. I held it in my fingers, twisting the plastic figurine back and forth wanting to see if Hazel understood the significance of the piece.
She didn’t.
I hated being the one to tell her. The one explaining the severity of the situation she now found herself in. It would be like sucking the sunlight from the world.
“That shooting was definitely for you, babe.”
We had bigger questions at play than exactly why the Grandmaster tried to kill Hazel, a bank project coordinator, in broad daylight.
Things like how’d he’d tracked her so soon? How were they aware she had the thumb drive?
She shook again in my arms. “What do I do?”
I’d never gone up against the Grandmaster before, but I’d heard about him during chats on the dark web. He was arrogant and brass. Accustomed to winning. That made two of us, and considering Hazel’s life was on the line, I planned to guarantee I won.
“It’s time to call Ridge, and you need to pack a bag.” It wasn’t safe for her to stay at the bed-and-breakfast any longer.
I handed Drake the chess piece as I led Hazel into the bed-and-breakfast and stopped in front of room six. She didn’t question how I knew but handed me her key and let me unlock it, letting us both into the room.
“Grab everything you came here with,” I said as she went to the small chest of drawers, opened the top one and dug two pieces of clothing from it. Wonderful, she was one of those women who unpacked in the hotel room rather than living out of her bag. The second type made it easier for us to have a quick escape.
“You have five minutes,” I said, and she gave a little squeak, grabbing clothing quicker.
I couldn’t take her to Pierce’s place because it was common knowledge my cousin lived in town. If they hunted her to Pelican Bay, I had to assume they also suspected she was here to meet with me. I may have kept my residence quiet from the townspeople, but I had meetings with more than enough people over the next few weeks, who all had knowledge of my whereabouts. A few simple searches and someone might put it together.
The Grandmaster put it together quickly enough.
I’d grown lazy in protecting my whereabouts.
With Pierce’s place out of the picture and Jerome and his girlfriend living happily ever after in the penthouse of his building, I could only take Hazel one other place to keep her safe—a place few people besides my brother and I knew we had access to. One I didn’t think I’d ever have to use, but now glad Cyrus and I spent the money so carelessly a few years earlier.
I had to take Hazel home with me.
CHAPTER5
HAZEL
