Page 44 of Making Home with You (The Rockport Beach #3)
Finn
The car on the drive to Boston is filled with a tense silence. I’m too afraid to say anything, to give voice to my fears about what might have happened to Sarah or to question the last thing Ryan said to me as we drove out of Rockport.
I don’t want to question if he really meant it, let alone think about all the things that might have happened to the woman I now know I’ve totally fallen for.
About ten minutes out, Ryan’s phone rings, the sound cutting through the car. He answers immediately, his terse “Joe, what’s happening?” filling the car.
“I’m at her building,” he says, his voice coming through the speakers. “I haven’t been able to get hold of her either and the desk guard says she isn’t answering her office phone.”
“Fuck,” Ryan says shooting me a quick look. “We’re almost there.”
He hangs up before Joe can say anything more and a small part of me wonders if this is what it was like when Joe worked for Ryan. I’m not sure how much I could put up with that, but then a part of me also recognizes that I work exactly the same way.
After what feels like the longest five minutes of my life, we finally reach Sarah’s building. Ryan parks illegally out the front, then both of us are out of the car and running into the lobby.
Joe is impatiently waiting for us, two uniformed officers standing behind him, hands on their hips as they watch him try to call Sarah again for what appears to be the hundredth time. Before any of us can say anything though, the unmistakable sound of a gunshot rings out.
“Fuck,” Joe, Ryan and I all say at once, as all five of us now run toward the stairwell beside the elevators.
“It definitely came from above,” Joe shouts, ignoring the rent-a-cop from the front desk who comes wobbling over demanding to see some identification.
I burst through the door to the stairwell, quickly followed by Joe and Ryan. All three of us climbing the stairs, but halt on the landing below when we see Sarah, face to face with a man who looks like he has completely lost his shit.
“Jesus Christ,” Joe whispers. “It’s her fucking boss. What the fuck is he doing here?”
“What?” I ask, my head snapping up.
“Didn’t she tell you?” he asks, meeting my stare.
I shake my head, unsure what he’s referring to. Sure, I knew her boss was a dick, slimy with the words and a little too over-familiar. But as much as I’d hated that, Sarah had assured me he was harmless, nothing worse than the drunken idiots she’d had to deal with while working in the bar.
Now it’s Joe shaking his head, glancing at Ryan whose face looks like stone.
“Don’t tell me you knew?” I bite out.
Ryan swallows hard, nodding once as though he knows this is going to monumentally piss me off. And he’s right too, but before I have a chance to rip him a new one, we’re distracted by a male voice on the stairs above, neither Sarah nor her boss seemingly aware that we’re down here watching them.
“I’m going to fucking destroy you,” he says to her, spit flying from his mouth as he takes a step toward her.
I watch as Sarah drops her bag to the ground, raising both hands in defense in front of her, one hand tightly gripped around a TASER.
Where the fuck did she get a TASER?
“You wish, you dumb shit,” she says, her words confident and sure.
Her boss takes another step closer, but Sarah doesn’t move and before I even realize what I’m doing, I’ve moved around the stairwell and am halfway up the stairs toward them.
“Sarah,” I shout, immediately regretting my stupidity.
Because even though both he and Sarah both look at me, the distraction is enough that he lunges at her, smacking the TASER out of her hand and sending it flying out of her reach
Sarah’s stare meets mine for a millisecond, her face impassive before she turns back to her boss who’s now grinning like a maniac as he steps even closer.
I move up the stairs, slowly, not wanting to spook him or provoke him into doing something stupid. I don’t get very far though, a hand on my arm, gripping me tight and stopping me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I hiss, turning and yanking my arm from Ryan’s grip.
Ryan nods toward his sister, his eyes never leaving her as he says, “Watch.”
I turn back and my eyes widen in surprise, maybe amazement and a little bit of arousal, as I see Sarah move in what looks like slow motion, deflecting the hand her boss reaches out toward her, while at the same time, grabbing his wrist and snapping the arm behind his back.
He howls in pain and I feel myself smile, at the same time my heart kicks it up a notch and a tingling starts up low in my gut.
Sarah spins him around, pressing his face into the brick wall of the stairwell, not bothering to be gentle about it.
Still holding his arm in her grip, her other hand grabs the back of his neck, holding his head in place while she gives him a quick, hard kick to the back of the legs so his knees buckle beneath him.
“Hey detective,” she shouts, her eyes never leaving him. “Got any cuffs down there?”
I turn to Joe, who’s standing behind Ryan, gun drawn. He grins at her request, holstering his weapon and pulling out his cuffs as he walks around us both and up the remaining stairs toward her.
When he reaches Sarah, they grin at each other and a momentary wave of jealously rushes over me that I quickly squash down. I know this isn’t anything more than two friends and I’d be an idiot to make it anything more than that.
“Can I cuff him?” she asks, letting go of his neck and yanking his other arm behind him so both wrists are now firmly gripped in her hands.
Joe chuckles. “As much as I’d love to let you do that, Sarah,” he says, stepping toward them. “We should really follow protocol.”
“No fair,” she pouts, although the smile on her face suggests she understands. I watch as she transfers her boss to Joe, who immediately snaps the cuffs on his wrists, giving them a hard yank to make sure they are tight.
“Anyway,” Joe continues. “I think you might need to go and greet your audience,” he says, nodding down toward Ryan and me.
Sarah’s gaze travels downwards, her eyes locking onto mine where she offers me a half smile before moving to her brother. She scowls at him though, and when I turn to Ryan I see him standing, arms crossed over his chest and smug look on his face.
“Not bad, kid,” he says, grinning at her as she walks down the stairs toward us. “Guess I wasn’t such a bad teacher after all, was I?”
Sarah rolls her eyes. “Or more likely, I was an excellent student,” she says, turning her gaze back to me.
In that instant, something clicks and I haul ass up the last few stairs and pull her into my arms. “Jesus Christ, baby,” I breathe out, burying my face in her hair. “Are you okay?”
Sarah buries her face against my chest, her arms wrapping tightly around me. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she says, even though I can feel her body shaking in my arms.
“What the hell happened?” I ask, as Joe calls out to the two uniforms to escort her boss to the squad car and take him to the station.
We watch in silence as they move past us, one of them taking her boss by the cuffs and guiding him from behind, the other at his side, hand gripping his arm as they lead him down the stairwell and out into the lobby.
Joe follows, stopping when he reaches us. “You wanna finally tell them what’s been going on now?” he asks.
Sarah glances at him, then her brother before finally looking up at me. I watch as she swallows hard, her eyes flicking between the three of us as though she can’t decide who she should be looking at.
Eventually she settles on me. “So it seems like my boss doesn’t just like to harass people,” she says, an edge to her voice. “Apparently he likes to rape them too, and then pay them off when they try to do something about it.”
“What the fuck?!” Ryan and I both shout at the same time.
My arms tighten around her even as she pulls back. “Let me go, Finn,” she says, a hand on my chest. “I need to tell you this.”
I loosen my grip, even as my heart continues to pound and my brain screams at me to pull her into my arms again. I watch as she takes a deep breath, sliding her hands up and down her thighs as though to steady them. Eventually she looks up at us.
“Joe found the last woman,” she says calmly.
“Found out what Andrew had done to her, about the payout and the confidentiality agreement. It’s what he does and it’s why no one has ever been able to stop him.
HR turns a blind eye because all these women eventually retract their stories and mysteriously end up promoted,” she continues.
“Either that or they disappear, several hundred thousand dollars richer apparently, but not so keen to tell their version of events anymore.”
“Jesus, Sarah,” I say, pulling her back into my arms. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? Why didn’t you tell me how much danger you were really in?”
She shrugs in my arms, her words muffled against my chest. “I don’t know,” she says. “It’s not that I wanted to keep it from you, Finn, it’s just that you were going through your own shit and I didn’t want to add to that.”
“Oh baby,” I breathe out, burying my face in her neck. “You don’t ever need to worry about that, okay,” I whisper, my words meant only for her. “You can always tell me anything, always. I want you to tell me everything, okay.”
Sarah nods but says nothing more.
I catch Ryan’s eye as we stand in the stairwell, Sarah in my arms. He doesn’t say anything but I get the feeling he’s known more about this than I have. Joe too, obviously.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “Why didn’t you tell me what the fuck was going on with her?”
Ryan opens his mouth to speak but Sarah cuts him off. “I asked him not to,” she says, hand on my cheek. “I’m sorry, Finn, truly. I know I should have told you.”
“For the record,” Ryan says. “I did tell her to tell you.”
“As did I,” Joe adds.