The big fix, p.10
The Big Fix, page 10
He circled back in front of me and gave me a serious look. “This place is surrounded, but everyone has instructions not to interfere until he gets to you,” he said while he tapped at his tablet. “You aren’t going to do anything foolish when he comes down here to find you, are you?”
I blinked at him as it struck me with a startling realization what role I was playing in all this.
Bait.
They didn’t want me; they wanted him. And I was the leverage to get to him.
People like me can’t really afford to get close to others. It creates leverage. Anthony had said those words to me that night in his kitchen. When we had crossed the line into close enough for him to come rescue me, I couldn’t be sure, but here we were.
I stared up at the tweed man, wanting to scream. For help, in fury, to warn Anthony. He was about to walk into a trap, and I had no idea the tweed man’s intentions, once he was caught in it, but they couldn’t have been good.
I decided it was in my best interest to cooperate until further notice.
I nodded.
“Good girl,” he said with a wink. He wedged the tablet between his knees so he could reach for my gag and shove it back up into my mouth.
My heart thrummed with the enthusiasm of a hummingbird’s wings. The tweed man moved to the corner to watch his tablet, and I could only assume to monitor Anthony’s progress in locating me. I tried to count. Why? I didn’t know, but numbers often soothed me, and I thought perhaps knowing how long it took Anthony to get to me would somehow help us escape on the other end of whatever was going to happen.
I got to fifty-five when the tweed man locked the tablet’s screen and stepped back completely into the shadow. Given where he stood, flat against the far wall opposite me and adjacent to the staircase, there was no way Anthony would see him when he came down the stairs.
I was bait in a pool of light, a slab of meat in a cage with an open door, and I hoped Anthony had the sense to recognize the scene for what it was.
Another thirty seconds passed before the door at the top of the stairs opened again. The beam of light spilled down so gradually that he must have been opening the door inches at a time. I heard the first cautious footstep, and then another. His shadow tumbled over the steps, long and broad from the light behind him.
At the sound of his voice, deep and secret and soft, my whole body went tingly with simultaneous fear and relief. “Penny?”
I tensed, wishing I could warn him about the monster in the shadow.
His legs came into view first. Then his outstretched arms, holding a gun in his hands. I flinched at the sight of it. By the time I could see his chest and shoulders, he’d reached the bottom of the stairs. When he saw me, he sagged with visible relief.
“Penny!” My name was a lyric on his lips. He shoved his gun into his waistband and strode over to me.
I shook my head and threw my eyes at the tweed man in warning, but he was too busy hurrying to my side. He lifted an intimidating knife from his jeans and snapped it open while he squatted at my feet.
“I’m so glad I found you. I’m so sorry.” He reached for my ankle, his hands a hot flash on my skin, as the tweed man crept out of the shadow behind him.
I jerked and kicked against my bindings; I screamed at the gag, but only succeeded in garbled nonsense.
Anthony looked up at me with a vulnerable empathy in his eyes. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
The words weren’t even out of his mouth before the tweed man clubbed him in the back of the head, and he collapsed at my feet.
CHAPTER 8
Watching the tweed man struggle to position an unconscious Anthony in a chair beside me gave me an appreciation for the man’s size all over again. He grunted and cursed, and by the time he had outfitted Anthony with a set of zip ties to match mine, hands bound and feet shackled to his chair, he was wiping his brow and declaring the need for a drink.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said to me with a sick chuckle, obviously proud of his twisted joke.
He marched up the stairs and left us alone.
The space suddenly felt suffocatingly tiny. I was no longer by myself, but the fact Anthony sat beside me, equally as defenseless, was a source of terror more than comfort.
His shoulders drooped forward and his chin nearly rested on his chest. He was out cold, and I still had a gag in my mouth, so the best I could do was grunt at him and try not to cry.
He’d walked straight into the trap—the big, sexy, reckless oaf. It was like he’d seen me, and all sense of reason and precaution abandoned him—I didn’t really want to unpack what that meant, though the thoughts were dancing through my mind like a chorus line.
How had I become leverage over him? We’d known each other for barely three days, and here we were tied up together like some bizarre couple’s retreat gone wrong.
From my position beside him, I studied the architecture of his body. Even drooped over and slack, he was all muscle. His hair fell forward, nearly covering his face, but I could still make out his long lashes and the way they fanned over his impossibly high cheekbones. His lips pursed out in a loose swell, slightly parted and relaxed like a pair of pillows. He was unfairly beautiful, and I hated how attractive I found his attempted rescue—how attractive I found him.
What a mess we were in, all because someone saw us arguing over a pair of candlesticks and got the wrong impression.
He suddenly stirred and inhaled a sharp breath.
I jumped at the sound and felt tears blur my eyes in relief.
A gravelly grumble escaped his mouth as he sat up and blinked a few times. It took him several seconds to gain his bearings. I watched as it happened, knowing the feeling for having gone through it myself not long before. He winced, the same as I had done, when the pain in the back of his head reminded him of what had happened.
I waited for him to turn and see me. When he did, his face lifted and then fell.
“Penny!” He leaned like he meant to reach out for me before the restraints held him back. He said my name in the same reverent tone he’d used when he came down the stairs. It stirred a confusing warmth in my chest.
My eyes welled up again. It was all too much. Being snatched and hit and tied up, all to end up with Anthony Pierce gazing at me like the missing piece that completed a puzzle.
“No! Please don’t cry,” he said with a shake of his head.
But I couldn’t help it. The tears were coming in a flood of relief and pain and anger at him for putting me in this situation.
He leaned in again, and I saw the muscles in his arms straining against the ties. He looked like he could Hulk out of them, but they wouldn’t give. “Penny, you can’t cry,” he said desperately. “Not with that thing in your mouth. You won’t be able to breathe if your nose gets stuffed up.”
As soon as he said it, I noticed the limited air flow battling the clog of tears, and it only made me cry harder, more desperately. Messy, wet, panicky tears.
“No, no, no!” he pled. He jerked his body so his chair moved an inch toward me. His knee and elbow pressed into mine. “You have to stop. Here, I’m going to help you.”
I flinched when he leaned in farther. A strangled yelp garbled from my mouth.
“I’m not going to hurt you! Relax. I’m going to take your gag out.”
I turned to look at him with a question on my face. How? Because the last I checked, his hands were bound behind his back too.
He understood my silent query and answered by way of snapping his teeth together.
His mouth?
I gaped at him in disbelief, but based on the determined yet soft look in his eyes, and the way he was leaning in as if to kiss me, he was serious.
His chest and arms strained against his bindings and his T-shirt. I leaned in, still crying, and let him come close. When he was an inch away, he looked me in the eye and nodded, silently asking for consent for his strange and wildly desperate plan. I nodded back, just as desperate, and felt my heart pound my ribs like a drum.
In a move that ended up being absurdly tender, he brought his face against mine and bit at the gag. His nose pressed into my cheek, and I felt his lips brushing my skin as he searched for purchase with his teeth. A tear rolled from my eye and followed the curve of his nose. It was all so obscenely intimate, I would have collapsed if I hadn’t already been sitting down and tied to a chair.
“Almost,” he said in a muffled burst of warm breath. The motion of the word pressed his tongue to my cheek for a split second, which made me gasp. I shut my eyes at the dizzy spell that came over me in a wave. His hair brushed my temple, and I reflexively leaned into him. There may have been a moment of involuntary nuzzling. “Turn your head,” he said softly.
I followed his command, under a spell, and felt his mouth move closer to mine until they overlapped at the corner. I’d never touched lips with someone I wasn’t kissing. What an odd situation to have one event occur without the other.
Anthony’s lips were soft, so incredibly soft, where they touched mine. I wanted to melt into them and stay there forever. I’d lost sense of what we were even doing, until I felt him bite down and tug. He grunted at me and tilted his chin up, indicating I should do the same. He had a solid grip on the gag; all I had to do was move my jaw back and tilt my head up. I did as much and felt it slide off over my chin.
I exhaled in relief. He lingered with his face in the crook between my chin and neck, buried in my hair, and deeply inhaled.
“Thank you,” I muttered. My mouth was already parched again. My voice still strangled with tears.
“No problem,” he said in a deep rasp, and sat back against his chair.
The longing I felt for him to return burned in my veins. Whether it was from fear, desperation, or pure desire, I couldn’t tell, but the confusion pushed a fresh set of tears up into my eyes. I sniffled.
“Hey,” he said. “No more crying. We’ll figure this out.”
“What are you even doing here?” I said, a blubbery mess.
“What?”
“I said, what are you even doing here? You’re one of the bad guys!”
He reeled back as far as he could go. “Bad guys? Penny, have you been paying any attention?”
I swallowed a sob and nodded. “Yes! They murdered Portia, and you and your uncle covered it up for them.”
“What? Penny, that’s not true.”
My voice continued to get higher pitched and more waterlogged. “Yes, it is! I found her other shoe in your closet! I know she’s dead, and I know—”
“She’s not dead.”
“What?”
He turned to me with a serious yet guarded look in his eyes. “Portia is not dead.”
I blinked at him in confusion. He said it with such certainty, I could only assume he knew the rest of the story. “Then where is she?”
He clenched his jaw tight enough that I could see his muscle twitch. “Gone.”
The word didn’t ring with a finality to indicate he was using a euphemism, but I still didn’t understand.
“What does that mean?”
He glanced at the staircase and lowered his voice to a near whisper. “It means Portia wanted to disappear, so we made it happen. But things got . . . complicated.”
I gaped at him in shock. The pieces I’d been turning over and over for days suddenly fell into a new pattern that made a whole different kind of sense.
“Wait,” I said, still piecing it together. “Her husband didn’t kill her?”
He shot me a sideways glance. “No. He’s looking for her. Hence all this.” He gestured at the room with his chin. “He wants her back,” he said, sounding like he was spitting out a bitter seed.
“Oh, my God,” I muttered. My head was spinning fast enough to make me feel like I’d taken an ill-advised turn on a carnival ride. The cast of characters I’d had listed in my mind shuffled and reorganized into a whole new reality.
Portia was missing, but on purpose. And Anthony and Lou had set it up.
“So, then, where is she?” I repeated my question right as the door at the top of the stairs opened.
Anthony sucked in a sharp breath, and I flinched.
“Don’t say anything,” he whispered.
I nodded in agreement. My whole body vibrated with tension. I fought to steady my breath.
The tweed man appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a grin on his face. “Mr. Pierce, nice of you to finally join us. Dr. Collins and I have been anxiously awaiting your arrival.” He nodded his head at me and took note of the gag hanging around my neck, instead of firmly stuffed in my mouth. “What happened here?” He stepped toward me, and Anthony tensed.
“Leave her alone. She has nothing to do with this,” he growled. The sound of it sent a shiver through me.
The tweed man stopped his approach toward me midstep and pivoted to face him. He tilted his head with the grin I’d come to recognize as his signature look. “Oh, but she has everything to do with this, because without her, we never would have gotten your attention, Mr. Pierce.” Anthony shifted uncomfortably as he came closer and leaned in. The tweed man’s voice dropped to an icy hiss. They were nearly nose to nose. “We killed your uncle, and you didn’t get the message. We dumped that two-faced piece-of-shit bodyguard on your doorstep, and you didn’t get the message. We broke into your house, and you didn’t get the message. I was starting to wonder what it would take. And then, like a godsend, the girl next door shows up, and all we have to do is snatch her, and you come running. Makes my job a lot easier.”
The tweed man turned his head to wink at me and found a look of shocked horror on my face.
They killed his uncle? And the bodyguard?
I suddenly saw the past days’ events in a new light. The tweed man had been outside Libby’s house the day with the reporter to keep tabs on me. He had broken into Anthony’s house that night we hid in the closet. And, surely, Connor was at the funeral earlier to intimidate Anthony, or at least let him know he was watching. And the tweed man had come to the reception to snatch me, because none of the other things had had the intended effect.
The revelations crashed over me in pounding waves. I was drowning; I didn’t know which way was up. The sensation left me both spinning and aching with sorrow for Anthony’s loss. Not to mention, petrified I was wrapped up in something far more sinister than I’d realized.
“Now that we have your attention, Mr. Pierce, I have a simple question for you: Where is Portia?” the tweed man asked.
“Go fuck yourself,” Anthony spat out without a second’s hesitation.
A dark chuckle popped from the tweed man’s mouth as he stood up straight. “I figured you’d say as much.” With a windup quicker than a blink, he pulled his arm back and threw his fist at Anthony’s face.
I shrieked in fright and flinched. The sound of knuckles against cheekbone made a sick, hard crack, not the pumped-up sound effect of a movie. It made me realize I’d never witnessed someone get punched in the face in real life.
Anthony took the hit like he had, in fact, been previously punched in the face in real life. He shook his head with a rough breath and worked his jaw. Clearly, the hit had been intended to hurt him, not knock him out again. An angry red welt bloomed out over his cheek, like he’d stepped out into a cold morning, but he only looked a little fazed.
“Any idea where she is now?” the tweed man asked as he flexed his hand.
Anthony glared at him with a silent fury while I held my breath.
The tweed man released a frustrated sigh. His voice took on a cold, taunting edge. “You know, your uncle didn’t even beg. Most guys plead and cry; I’ve seen grown men piss themselves. But the only thing he said before I shot him was: ‘Anthony will take care of this.”’
A tear rolled down my cheek at the anguish on Anthony’s face. He tried to hide it, but I saw it in the corners of his mouth, the set of his jaw, the sheen that glossed his eyes.
The tweed man huffed a tiny, dark laugh. “At first, I thought he was simply being stubborn and putting on a show. A real tough guy. But then I realized he didn’t beg because he had nothing to beg for. No family—except you—no wife, no real friends. What was the man even living for in the end? It felt like a waste, actually. To take a life no one cared about.”
“Fuck you,” Anthony barked, and fought against his restraints again. Veins throbbed in the side of his neck. The muscles in his arms looked fit to burst through his shirt.
The tweed man laughed again. “So you do care. Then why wasn’t it enough? Why didn’t you give us what we wanted then? Because of you, we had to keep going, and now here we are.”
He stepped over in front of me and reached out to smooth my hair like I was a pet. I flinched and turned my head, but he kept his callused palm pressed against my cheek. Another tear spilled out from my eye. “What’s it going to take, Mr. Pierce? How many people have to die before you tell us what we want to know?”
“Leave her alone,” Anthony demanded.
The tweed man pivoted with a scrape of his shoes. “Gladly. Just tell me what I need to know.”
Anthony silently glared at him, as if he was trying to melt him with his eyes. The pause seemed to stretch forever.
My heart had lodged in my throat like it planned to never leave.
Eventually the tweed man got tired of waiting. He sighed. “Mr. Slate told me to handle you by whatever means necessary. If you’re not going to cooperate, then you leave me no choice.” He reached into his waistband and pulled out a gun. Whether it had been there all along, or was Anthony’s gun he nabbed after he knocked him out, I wasn’t sure, but he used it to smash into the side of Anthony’s face and then pummel him in the abdomen with two sharp blows. The series of hits left the room echoing with cracked bones and scented with blood. The tangy bite almost made me gag. A large gash had split open over Anthony’s left eye and began streaking his face red. He sat hunched over as far as he could bend, struggling for breath and wheezing.
“Stop!” I wailed. “Please!” Tears strangled my voice. I felt them streaming down my face in hot rivers.
