Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(86)

Marshall fumbled blindly, tried to grab hold of him but it was too late. David leveled the gun.

“You stupid, stupid man.”

Marshall held up his hands. Blood poured from his nose, maroon in the dusky light. “Now, wait…”

“All I wanted,” David said, breathing hard, tears choking his throat, “…all I’ve ever wanted was to be with Julian. Alone. Why is that so hard for everyone to understand?”

“It doesn’t work that way, David,” Marshall said. “Now, put the gun down and we’ll talk about it—”

“Will we, Marshall? Will we talk? You didn’t seem so eager to talk when you were slamming your fist into my face. In fact, I seem to recall you saying you were glad.” David sniffled. “I don’t want to do this. But I don’t have a choice. Natalie did this to you, Marshall. This is all her fault. I hope you know that.”

“David, wait…Don’t....”

David’s hand trembled badly and the gun felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. No! I’m not this! But what choice did he have? None. He cocked the hammer.

Marshall squared his shoulders. “Julian can’t love a murderer.”

David jerked his shoulders in a shrug, tears falling. “Who’s going to tell him?”

He pulled the trigger.

#

Julian careened his rental car—a Mercedes SLK350—from SFO back into the city, all the while cursing David’s name and muttering colorful threats under his breath. Easier to do that than consider what might have happened—or be happening—to Natalie.

Things were falling into place. He couldn’t see the entire picture yet but he saw enough. The missing money. It has to do with the missing money. Natalie knew David was up to no good. She knew it and I let him off. The thought of what that mistake might have cost him was too terrible to contemplate.

His curses grew louder and more imaginative as he hit every red light along 19th Ave. He arrived at Niko’s Café a little after six o’clock, double-parked the rental, and raced to the wrought iron gate. He buzzed her intercom several times. No answer.

Work. She’s at work. She feels better and is at work. Or school. You’re flipping out over nothing.

But the person at the counter wasn’t Natalie but Niko.

“Julian, my boy,” Niko said. “I hope you’re here to tell me how my Natalia is doing? She calls in sick three days ago and I hear nothing since. Not like her.”

Julian opened his mouth but nothing came out. Three days...

Niko’s face went pale. “Oh no. It is bad? Oh dear, oh dear.” He fished a key out of his pocket and pressed it into Julian’s hand. “I own this building. You check on her, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Julian’s pulse pounded in his ears as tore up the stairs to her apartment, and turned the key in the door. “Natalie!” Her place was small; it took ten seconds to determine she wasn’t there. It wasn’t ransacked, either, though Julian didn’t know why he expected it would be. Because something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Back downstairs, he told Niko that Natalie was likely at school and that he’d go look for her there.

“Julian?”

He spun around at the sound of a woman’s voice. Not Natalie; a black-haired woman in a baggy green sweater, her kohl-lined eyes wide with fear.

Julian took the young woman by the arm and steered her out of Niko’s earshot. “You’re Liberty, right? Tell me what happened. Where’s Natalie? She’s been missing for three days?”

Liberty furrowed her brows. “No. She’s been holed up in her place, afraid to leave in case you called. But now she won’t answer her phone.”

“She’s not there now, I checked,” Julian said. “Just what the hell is going on?”

Liberty wrangled her phone from the oversized sweater pocket as a text came in. “Marshall. He’s followed David to a place called Club Orbit. In the Tenderloin.” She looked up at Julian. “You know it?”

“No,” Julian replied. “I don’t know a goddamned thing.”

“I’ll fill you in on the way.”

Julian stopped at the counter. “Niko, if Natalie comes back, tell her to call me. Or you can call me if you hear anything.” He scribbled his number on a napkin and slid it over to the man. “And if you think you should…”

Niko nodded solemnly. “I know, young man. I call 9-1-1.”





Chapter Forty


The drive was a rumble of an engine beneath her; a nauseating, dizzied excursion Natalie experienced from the back seat of the Escalade, her blood dripping onto the leather seats. Night fell outside the windows and Garrett was an ugly, hulking shape in the front seat, laughing loudly and singing badly to the radio. Natalie’s awareness came and went. Pain was her only constant; an ache in her head kept time with her pulse.

Finally, she felt the tires beneath her crunch gravel and then he was there, clutching her wrist and yanking her from the car.

His breath was sour beer and smoke. “Nice and quiet now, thatta girl.”

She registered a parking lot behind a dingy white building. A door and sign, Club Orbit parking only. Violators will be towed at owner’s expense. Then she was inside. Linoleum, buzzing fluorescents, the distant thump of house music. Then a storage room that was two walls of cement and two walls of chain-link fence. Garrett dumped her inside among the toilet seat covers and boxes of cleaning supplies.