Page 6 of Defending You

“If I’d sat tight, I’d be dead.”

“I need you to stay calm. Can you get to the police station? We can?—”

“I can’t!” she snapped, her voice cracking. “They were too late. I’m driving away. Please, just send someone to get them.”

“You need to get to a safe location and file a report. Can you?—?”

Cici ended the call. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t risk it. Her chest heaved as she changed lanes to pass a car, her mind spinning. She needed help—actual help.

She grabbed the phone again and dialed Forbes.

“Cici?” His deep voice filled the car, tight with worry. “Are you at the police?—?”

“They were outside the station.” She took a breath, working to sound rational. “The men from the store, they were waiting for me. I couldn’t stop. They saw me.”

“Are you safe? Where are you?”

“I don’t know where I am.” She checked her mirror again, her pulse pounding in her ears. She had no idea what those men would be driving. “They’re going to find me. They saw my car?—”

“I understand.” Forbes’s tone shifted, firm and commanding. “I’ll book a room for you under the name Ford Baker. I’ll text you the address of the hotel. Get there, use valet parking, and go straight to the desk. Tell them you’re picking up a key for my reservation. Don’t stop for anyone. Can you do it?”

“If they don’t catch up to me.”

“Just keep moving. I’ll text you an address.”

He ended the call, and a moment later, a text came through.

Cici clicked it to open the map. The hotel was on the other side of town. The farther she could get from those two men, the better. As long as she could reach it before they found her.

Twenty minutes away. Twenty minutes of praying for safety. She wasn’t going to let them take her—or the necklace. She’d get to that hotel, lock herself in, and figure this out.

CHAPTER TWO

The elevator hummed as it descended, a steady drone that matched the low buzz of irritation in Asher Rhodes’s bones. He leaned against the back wall, arms crossed, his duffel bag slung over one shoulder. The job—a three-week gig babysitting a paranoid tech exec—had wrapped up rather…abruptly, and he was done. Done with the city, done with the client’s ridiculous demands, done with everything but the promise of his own bed back in Boston.

He’d grab a coffee from the shop in the lobby and then get on the road. With luck, he’d be home in six hours, probably closer to seven, considering the Friday night traffic between Philadelphia and home.

The elevator dinged past the tenth floor, and his phone vibrated. He fished it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. Bartlett, Asher’s boss at the agency. He wasn’t surprised to hear from him, only that the call had come so soon.

“Yeah?”

“You want to explain what just happened?” Bartlett’s gravelly voice crackled.

“He didn’t need protection. He’s just an arrogant jerk who wants to look important.”

“You just described three-quarters of our clients. Those are the clients who pay our bills.”

As if Asher didn’t know that already. He’d be lucky if he still had a job by the time the elevator reached the lobby. He wished he didn’t care, wished it didn’t matter.

It did matter, and he did care, but there were lines he wasn’t willing to cross.

“From what I heard,” Bartlett said, “he was assaulted, and you did nothing to protect him.”

“He wasn’t the victim. The woman who assaulted him?—”

“It was a woman?—?”

“—was his assistant. Five four, maybe a hundred fifteen pounds. And she slapped him because he grabbed her. He had it coming.”