Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(88)

“Something like that.”

“I’m not. If anything has happened to Natalie…” he waved his hand, “…it’s all shit. How’s that for literary? If anything’s happened to her I’ll never write another word.”

“Yeah, okay. I mean, I’m sitting here all calm-like but that bastard is with Marshall right now—”

“You should have called the police immediately,” Julian stated, his voice like ice. “For Natalie. Gotten her somewhere safe.”

“You think I didn’t say that, like, a million times? But she was too scared. She had a gun pointed at her head. That’s all she could think about…David doing the same to you.” She glanced out the window, remembering what Natalie had told her and Marshall that first awful night. “She loves your books, you know? I mean, obsessed. They helped her get through all that shit with her parents even when we couldn’t. I couldn’t. She never talked about it but I never asked. I wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. So she used your books instead. To escape.”

He said nothing but she saw muscles in his jaw clenching.

“But now, it’s different. She’s different. I know David forced her to say some shit she didn’t mean so don’t believe it. She loves you. I’ve never…I’ve never heard anyone talk about someone the way she talked about you. She loves you more than…more than anything, really. More than the books. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, barely audible, and he took a hard right the GPS told him to take, tires screeching.

“And where the hell is Marshall?” Liberty demanded of her phone. “He’s supposed to call me after he’s got the cops on David.”

“What’s happening up there? Is that the club?”

An ugly, cinder block-looking slab of a club was rife with people milling out front, many clustering around a side corner. The wail of sirens could just be heard emerging from the distance.

“Oh my god, Marshall.” Liberty felt her heart plummet to her knees. “Let me out! Let me out!”

Julian brought the car to an abrupt halt on the street parallel to Orbit, and they both raced across, into the crowd.

“Let me through, dammit.” Liberty pushed through the bystanders and let out a little whimper when she overheard one say, “Some dude got capped.”

She rounded the corner to a dirty alley and found Marshall sitting against the wall, his chin resting on his blood-splattered chest. She shoved her way past more people and knelt beside him.

“Marshall! Marshall!” Liberty turned his chin to her and bit back a scream. A gash of torn flesh streaked from his temple, along his scalp, just above his ear. His cheek and shirt were painted red but the blood flow had slowed.

Marshall raised his head. “Little shit shot me. He actually did it.”

“I thought you were dead!” Liberty screeched. “Dammit, don’t ever do that to me again or I’ll kill you!”

“I’m okay, honey, really.” He looked up at Julian. “You must be him. Hey, I’m big fan.” He chuckled and then winced.

“Where did he go?” Julian demanded.

“Just missed him. Back inside the club.”

The wail of sirens was loud now, and the night colored with red and orange flashing lights. Liberty held Marshall’s hand, calmer now that it seemed his hideous wound looked worse than it was. But holy f*ck, one half-inch to the right…She shuddered to think about it.

“It’s okay,” she told herself and then him. “You’re going to be okay, you big dummy. The cops are going to handle this now.”

“Our author didn’t get the memo,” Marshall said tiredly.

Liberty twisted around. Julian was gone.

#

Marshall is dead. My sweet, smart, hilarious Marshall…

Natalie’s beleaguered mind tried, all at once, to imagine a world without Marshall Grant in it. Like trying to swallow a gigantic pill, to force it to go down and then move on. Impossible.

Men were shouting, chain link rattled, but it all came from far away. Then David was in the cage with her.

“They don’t know it was me!” he shouted over his shoulder, knocking aside boxes to get at her. “If I leave now, it’s nothing more than a drive-by or street fight. But you.” He stood over Natalie, seething. “It can’t be easy, can it? Nothing is easy with you. I was just going to end you, but no. Now there’s a connection. Now you have to disappear too. Get up, Natalie. Get up!”

“You killed him?” she cried. “Why? Why?”

“I said, get up!”

David lunged at her. Natalie screamed and raised the spray bottle of bleach, pulling the nozzle again and again. The bleach caught David full in the face, in his open mouth and in his eyes, fogging his glasses. The storage until smelled like an indoor pool. Natalie began to cough as the vapor found her too, but she shoved David aside and got to her feet.

Half-blind, she ran with her arms outstretched, feeling for the door of the storage unit. She found Garrett instead. The big man loomed over her, grinning obscenely, his dull eyes filled with an ugly promise…

“You goddamn bitch!” David screamed from behind.

Natalie yelped as he took a fistful of her hair and yanked her back. The muzzle of his gun on her temple was still warm. Marshall…The strength in her legs slipped away and she would have too had it not been for David’s painful grip on her hair.