Page 97 of Hearts and Hidden Secrets

CARSON

We weren’t going back to their gated and very, very secure estate. I figured that out when we turned toward the city lights, and the city lights never went away.

“Where are we going?”

The driver looked in the rearview mirror. “Change of plans, ma’am. I'm supposed to take you to the airport.”

“What? Why?”

“I wasn’t told, but I’m sure others will come who can explain.”

I wished I’d kept that burner phone Jonah gave me. I’d put it down on a counter in the kitchen and never picked it back up. There’d been no reason to have it. I knew I was getting my phone back. So much for that.

The driver took me to the airport, but not the part of the airport I knew.

These were the private hangars, on the far end of the public airport.

Inside was an airplane with some workers around it.

We pulled in, and a giant-sized guard approached the vehicle.

At least he seemed like a guard. He wasn’t wearing an airport uniform, and had a handgun strapped to his side.

The driver got out, they talked, and then the guard came to the back and opened my door.

“Ma’am.”

I got out. He gave me a polite nod. “If you’ll follow me?” He pointed to a room. “I’m told you can wait in there for the rest of the passengers.”

“Who are the rest?”

His face shuttered closed. “They’ll be along shortly.”

Um… Okay?

I stepped inside a cozy waiting room with couches and chairs. There was a table in the corner and a whole bar/coffee setup on the other end. I was too wired to sit, so I moved to the window and watched.

That’s when my bladder reminded me I hadn’t gone to the bathroom before leaving Jonah’s family’s very, very secure estate, and who knew how long ago that was.

There were two doors in the back.

I opened one, and it was a bathroom.

I went in, peed, and for a moment—a brief moment—I wanted to stay there.

I wanted to hide.

I wanted to wake up, come out of this nightmare, and find I hadn’t been kidnapped, hadn’t had sex with a guy who was using me, and hadn’t started to fall for him. I wanted a world where my sister hadn’t been set up by someone who also sent me an app.

Milo.

I hadn’t even considered her after everything happened.

They had her phone. I didn’t think she would send me a virus to download.

That meant it hadn’t been her texting me at all.

But I hadn’t put two and two together. I hadn’t shared that with Jonah.

My phone went wonky, and they lit it on fire, and then I was in the vehicle, being driven away for my safety.

Panic collapsed my lungs. My chest felt like it was caving in on itself. I wanted to claw at it, open it up so I could breathe—but that was anxiety.

Fear.

I was having a panic attack.

I knew this.

I hadn’t had one of these since I was a child. I felt the world trying to collapse on me, and I couldn’t do anything except let it. I tried to use reason to remove myself from the panic. Sometimes that helped.

This will pass.

Eventually.

Reason and logic will come back. The world isn’t actually ending.

I’ll be just fine.

I’m here, in a private airport waiting room bathroom, and everything is fine.

Everyone will be fine.

Jonah’s family weren’t pushovers. They could fight—Jonah! He’d shoved me into the vehicle, but where was he? Was he safe?

Wait .

I needed to think logically about this. He had to be fine. There was a whole other vehicle there, other guards there. He was part of their family. There was no way he wouldn’t be safe. His family loved him. They would do anything to keep him safe.

Nonetheless, the rational sentiments weren’t working.

The panic continued to rise.

I washed my hands and went back outside. I sank down into the nearest chair, put my head between my knees, and took a breath. I counted down from five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Breathe out.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Breathe in.

I kept going.

Holding for five.

Releasing for five.

I lost count, but I was still doing the breathing exercises when there was a commotion.

Bang, bang.

That sounded like fireworks.

That was weird, but breathe in.

And five, four, three—fireworks.

This is an airport.

There wouldn’t be fireworks here.

I lifted my head, stood, and turned toward the window.

I saw the backside of someone running out of the hangar.

What? I ran for the door and started across the hangar toward the opening.

Someone else came around the corner from the opposite side.

I faltered, thinking he was a guard. He’d come back to check on me.

But wait…

He was tall, with broad shoulders and a thick gut—not overweight, just muscle. He was built like a box.

He was moving with purpose.

He wore a business suit.

He saw me…

He kept coming.

There was no emotion on his face.

No remorse.

No shock.

No sadness.

Nothing.

He was nothing.

He reached into his suit jacket…

I started to move backward.

My gut was slow on the uptake, but my feet weren’t.

I began running…

I looked back over my shoulder.

He pulled out a gun.

Still, there was nothing on his face.

Just knowing. Recognition.

He knew who I was.

I had no idea who he was.

I ran faster.

I couldn’t get there fast enough. I knew that much.

Still, I tried.

I had to try.

“Stop!” he yelled.

I did.

I stopped.

Why?

I should keep going.

Fear pulsed through me.

My blood was pumping. The sound became deafening, drowning out everything else.

That was shock. Shock and fear.

But I turned to look at him. I didn’t know why. Maybe I needed to see who was about to kill me? Was that it?

I turned, my chest heaving, and I felt something trickling down my leg.

I looked down. I’d just gone to the bathroom…

When I looked up, he was coming closer.

There was nowhere to run.

There was no escape.

This was it.

I held my hands up, as if that could do something.

A bullet would go through my hands, ripping my skin.

I knew the trajectory it would take.

I knew the damage it would make.

I was the one who cleaned that up on others. Other bodies.

That was my job.

Someone else would clean me, some other forensic technician.

This wasn’t supposed to be how it ended.

I loved Jonah.

I could admit that now. I knew it, fully and completely, with the same ferocity as the breaths I pulled in.

I’d fallen for him.

I’d miss my sister.

My family.

My future nieces and nephews.

I wouldn’t be there to hold my parents’ hands when they needed me.

They’d attend my funeral, rather than me attending theirs.

My sister would get married without me at her side.

Her wedding—she’d be mourning me instead of getting married.

That wasn’t right.

That was supposed to be the happiest day of her life, and now this—this guy!

Rage sparked in me, warming my belly, growing, spiraling.

I started for the guy, and that seemed to shock him.

His eyes widened.

He hadn’t been expecting that, but screw him.

“Who the fuck are you?!” I snarled, dropping my hands. “Why are you doing this?”

He backed up, his eyes still big.

I just kept coming.

He moved back again, but then logic kicked in, and he stopped. A hard look came over him, and his arm firmed, holding that gun steady at me.

“It’s nothing personal,” he said. He took off the safety. “You’re a loose end.”

Did I really want him to be the last thing I saw before I died?

No.

I closed my eyes.

I thought of my sister.

My parents.

My grandparents.

Jonah.

I thought of Jonah.

And I waited.

BANG!

I braced myself, expecting pain, but nothing.

I opened my eyes. The guy was turned away from me, blood everywhere.

His gun was on the ground.

He held his arm, and I rushed to grab the gun at the same time he dove for it.

I kicked it out of the way, but his hand closed around my ankle, and he yanked.

I went down.

“Stop!”

Jonah .

He came toward us with a gun in his hand. He was advancing, fast.

“No,” I tried to say, but the guy moved fast. He whirled behind me, his arm whipping around my neck. He had it bent at an angle, and he dragged me with him.

“Get back!” he yelled. “Get back or I’ll snap her neck.”

Jonah kept coming, kicking the gun on the ground behind him.

I couldn’t look away.

He was here. I knew he’d keep me safe.

But that look on his face? He was cold. Ruthless. He was like his brothers.

But there was goodness, too. He was a doctor. He wanted to heal people.

We’d never talked about it, but I saw it in him. I understood that side of him. The good, the bad. I saw it all. I understood it all.

I still loved him.

I loved him.

It had happened so quickly. One look in the morgue, and that was it for me.

Love at first sight? Did I believe in that?

I think a part of me did. A part of me must’ve, because a part of me knew.

That part loved him.

That part had recognized him in the Bresko’s bathroom.

That part had kept me from being scared of him.

That part knew he’d take care of me.

That part knew I’d found home.

I shuddered, all of those emotions spreading through me while a guy was threatening to snap my neck.

“Let her go!”

The arm tightened around me. “No! You leave. I’ll let her go once I’m clear.”

He was trying to walk me to the other end of the hangar.

I saw people moving in behind Jonah, but I was almost transfixed. I didn’t want to look away from him.

BANG!

The body behind me went rigid, and then the arm slacked from around my neck.

I stepped away, feeling disjointed. The body slumped to the floor behind me, and I turned, staring down at him. I couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at.

He was a stranger, but he’d been holding me, threatening my life, and now he was on the ground.

His eyes were like glass, frozen in time, a hole in his forehead.

Almost black-looking blood gushed from it, flooding his body, and he was bent at a weird angle.

His leg went one way as his body had landed on it.

One arm was flung out, the other arm still bleeding.

There was a presence beside me. I felt someone’s breath on my face.

An arm wrapped around my waist, and pulled, carried me away. “Don’t look.” A hand cupped the back of my head and turned me away from the stranger bleeding out on the cement.

I knew whose arms I was in.

Safe. Home. Jonah.

I could come back to my body.

“Jonah…” A sob worked its way up my throat. My whole body started shaking.

Bits of reality started to piece together, what had actually happened.

“It’s okay.” He smoothed a hand down the back of my head. He stopped and held me tight. “It’s okay. You’re okay. He’s dead. He can’t hurt you. You’re okay.”

There were others here now. I heard them. I felt them.

They stopped and talked to Jonah, but he didn’t move. Not once. He held me.

He conversed with them over my head, but he never let me go.

That’s all I cared about.

He never let me go.

He never let me go.