Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(87)

He loomed over her, a giant in the dim lights. His eyes were stupid, his leer obscene. If someone cut him open, Natalie thought, maggots would spill out.

He adjusted the bulge in his jeans. “You ready for me? I’m going to break you in half.”

Natalie scrambled backward on her hands and heels, knocking over a wall of individually wrapped toilet paper rolls. “No,” she breathed. “No! No! NO!”

Garrett kicked a roll out of his way, huffing a low laugh. He knelt down in front of her, reached for her, and then a shape crashed into him, grabbed him, wrestled him on to his back.

“Are you out of your mind?” A blond man straddled Garrett. “No way, man! No way!”

“Jesse! Garrett! What the hell?”

Natalie’s panicked gaze swiveled to another man—a fatter, older version of Garrett—standing outside the cage of the storage room. “That’s her, eh?” he said, and ran his hand over his mouth as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her. He turned to the men, his gaze hardening. “You two. Get up. This isn’t Romper Room. We got shit to talk about. Where the hell is David?”

“Still at the bar.”

“Get him.”

Garrett nodded and turned to go, then suddenly swiveled and buried his fist in Jesse’s midsection. The air whooshed from the blond man and he crumpled to his hands and knees. Natalie watched, horrified, as Jesse coughed. Blood splattered the cement floor.

“Jesus, Garrett!” Cliff cried. “What that hell was that for?”

“He knows what for,” Garrett said. He hauled Jesse out of the storage room and dumped him on the floor outside. “I’m not done with you,” he told Natalie, locking the chain link door. “Not by a long-shot.”

A phone rang in a back room somewhere. Cliff gave Jesse a hesitant look then went down the hall in the opposite direction as Garrett. Natalie watched him walk away with her bag—Julian’s book inside—on his arm.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse said, wincing. “My daughter is sick. I needed the money. But I never thought Cliff…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” Natalie whispered.

He looked at her and the answer was there in every pained line of his face.

“David?”

“Yeah.”

“Help me,” she pleaded. “Please.”

“I can’t. Garrett…I think he busted something in my gut. I can hardly move.”

“Do you have a phone? We can call for help…” Her gaze darted around frantically. “In my purse. A keychain…It has a thing… a panic button…”

Jesse shook his head and coughed. Blood splattered the front of his shirt.

Natalie recoiled, panic and fear racing through her. She searched around the small enclosure for something, anything. In front of her was a box. Bleach cleansing spray, 24 count. A sudden, fiery rage swept through her and dove at the box. Two fingernails ripped in half as she tore it open but she hardly felt the pain. She hauled out a spray bottle of bleach disinfectant and scooted back to her spot, glaring a challenge at Jesse.

“Don’t do it,” he said tiredly. “It’s just going to make it harder on you.”

A door opened down the hall and Cliff reappeared.

“Ah Christ, look at you, Jesse.” He shook his head. “You gonna fall in line or what? I checked over the book. Looks legit, for our purposes anyway. Three million dollars. Feeling a little more positive about what we’re doing here? Because I think Marietta might just make a full recovery if you can pay the docs that kind of money. Right?”

“Not this way, Cliff,” Jesse said. “Not like this…”

“Goddammit, I don’t have time for your—”

Cliff didn’t finish his sentence because at that moment another door opened at the end of the hallway. House music poured in and then became muffled again. Running footsteps sounded hollowly, and then Garrett and David Thompson were there. David’s gun was in his hand and his hand was shaking as if he had palsy.

Garrett chortled. “He’s f*cked.”

“What happened, Dave?”

David’s eyes were wide and staring, his gaze roving all around the hallway. His coat was torn and dirty. “I killed him.”

“Who?”

He found Natalie, eyes round and disbelieving. “Marshall. I killed Marshall.”





Chapter FortyOne


Liberty told Julian everything she knew as he sped the rented Mercedes over the streets of San Francisco. As she spoke, Julian’s silence grew stonier; his hands clenched the steering wheel and jerked the stick as he shifted. Liberty clutched her cell phone in her lap in a vise as her own panic tried to swamp her. She battled it by talking.

When she was finished, she felt calmer, though not by much. Julian said nothing, stared straight ahead, and did what the rental’s GPS told him to do to take them to Club Orbit. Liberty glanced at him sideways. Extremely handsome with an artistic intelligence about him; masculine yet emotional. It was no surprise that Natalie had fallen for him.

“So you’re a writer, then?”

“Yes.”

“A real important one, right?”

He glanced at her briefly before returning his eyes to the road. “You’re trying to decide if I’m worth the trouble. If I’m worth the risks the three of you have taken on my behalf.”