Wrapped Up in You (Heartbreaker Bay, #8)(65)

Damn.

She climbed the stairs and entered her apartment, immediately knowing something was off.

Her couch was empty.

Brandon was gone.

“Shit!” She ran through the place, which didn’t take but a second, trying to figure out if anything was missing. Her laptop was right there on the table.

In fact, just then it lit up with a notification that her PayPal transfer had gone through.

Except she hadn’t made a PayPal transfer.

Whirling around, she looked for her phone. She couldn’t find it, and she froze in place. Where had she left it? When had she had it last?

She couldn’t remember. Hell, she could barely function. Brandon had used her laptop to transfer himself her twenty thousand dollars.

She sank to a chair on wobbly knees and didn’t know who she was more furious with—her brother, or herself.

Both, she decided, and on her laptop went straight to PayPal to put in an immediate dispute to the transaction. Then she called her bank and did the same. After, numb, she looked at the time. Six a.m. She ran downstairs and went searching for Martina and Jasmine. She found them sipping coffees and discussing homeless etiquette.

“I mean, this here alleyway between the buildings is ours,” Jasmine was saying. “Until we say otherwise. So no, she can’t stay here.”

“She’s your sister and it’s the day before Christmas Eve,” Martina said.

“Fine, whatever. But I still get the good stoop.”

“Do either of you have a phone?” Ivy asked.

“Girl, what do you take us for?”

“Right,” Ivy said on a wince. They were homeless, they didn’t have money for phones. “Sorry.”

“Of course we have phones. We’re civilized.” Jasmine gave her a long look. “You got man trouble?”

“Men are trouble,” she said.

“Amen to that.”

Ivy looked down at Jasmine’s phone and realized she had a problem. While Kel was in her cell as a contact—which she’d changed to Bad Decision—she didn’t actually have his number memorized.

Nor Caleb’s.

Nor anyone’s.

“Are you okay?” Martina asked.

No. Not even close. “Yes. Everything’s fine.”

“You don’t sound okay.”

“I’m tougher than I look.”

“You are,” Martina said easily. “But just remember even the tough need someone at their back. And you’ve got that anytime you need us.”

She nodded and swallowed the ball of emotion in her throat. “Thank you.” She handed back the phone. “I’ve got to go.” She needed to get to the job she’d created for herself, the one she now needed more than ever. Upstairs, she opened her laptop. She didn’t have it set up for messages, so instead of texting, she had to e-mail.

She didn’t know Kel’s e-mail addy.

But she knew Caleb’s. So she sent him a quick e-mail that she’d lost her phone, and if he could let Kel know, that would be great, thanks.

Thirty minutes later, she was at the truck and in the middle of prepping when a noise at the back door had her turning in hope, a smile already curving her lips. Kel, she thought. Caleb must have gotten his e-mail and let Kel know her phone was missing, and he’d come to make sure all was okay.

But it wasn’t Kel.

It was Unibrow and Thug Two. With one hand, she automatically reached for the phone in her back pocket, the one she no longer had.

Dammit.

Luckily she happened to have a massive chopping knife in her other hand and she waved it in front of her in what she sincerely hoped made her look as fierce as the mother of all dragons.

None of them said a word. But Thug Two pointed to his eyes and then to Ivy.

They were watching her.

Great. Just great. She went to point to her eyes to signal she’d be watching them right back, and nearly took out her own eyes with the knife.

She’d been in the same city for a whole year and apparently in that time, she’d lost all her hard-earned survival instincts. By the time she managed to put a menacing, try-me expression on her face, she was alone.

But what if they’d come when she hadn’t been alone. What if she’d had customers, or if she’d been with her friends? What might’ve happened?

Her hands were still shaking, and now so was the rest of her as she turned the Open sign to Closed. She needed to call Kel, but she also needed to solve her problems and fast, before anyone, including herself, got hurt.





Chapter 23




Leave it all here



Kel spent the long hours of the night dealing with the local authorities for Caleb, and going over the site. Whoever had broken in wasn’t a novice. He’d managed to avoid surveillance cameras, or destroy them by spray painting the lenses, all while revealing only a dark hoodie, no facial features.

No visual or evidence of an accomplice.

It turned out that the hit Arlo had taken to the back of his head had been because he’d been shoved and had fallen, hitting the concrete floor. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that he’d been the one in a million who developed an unexpected brain swell, requiring surgery.

When Kel was finally allowed in to talk to him in the predawn early morning, he took a seat next to the bed.