Page 31 of Vain (Tempest #2)

“I don’t know what they were thinking. Maybe they didn’t know I wasn’t driving.

Maybe they wanted my guard out of the way so I was easy pickings.

Maybe they just didn’t care who they hurt.

All I know is that it wasn’t an accident.

Aiden sped up when I yelled at him to watch out.

Doing so meant that when they clipped the car, we spun.

I thought we would die, but Aiden managed to steady the car again, god knows how.

I thought we’d get away. I mean, it was a nice truck, but we were in a sports car.

I just didn’t account for the stupid, winding roads.

You can only go so fast around those bends.

They just kept coming, and when we did manage to put some distance between them and us, they started shooting at us. ”

I take a shaky breath as Aiden plays with a strand of my hair and fills them in on everything that happened up to the point the car flipped, and I smacked my head against the vehicle and blacked out.

The only part I don’t tell them about is the photo I snapped of the license plate and sent to Banner.

I’m not trying to be deliberately evasive, but if I give them that info, they might ask Banner to back off, and I have no faith that the police will find anything before he will, if at all.

I run through everything again, and so does Aiden. He’s able to give them more info about what happened while I was unconscious. By the time they’re done with their questions, I’m wiped out.

“Alright, Miss Carson, Mr. Church, we’ll leave you in peace.

If you think of anything else, please give us a call.

We’ll do the same if we find anything,” Officer Nolan states.

If. Not when. Typical. I’m probably being unfair, but I feel like the cops never do anything until there’s a body involved, and I’d rather not have to die before they help me.

“Take care now,” Officer Sullivan adds as they head to the door.

They’re only gone a few minutes before a nurse bustles through the door with Reese right behind her. “Time for some pain relief, lovely.”

“That sounds pretty good, actually. My head’s throbbing,” I admit.

“You have a concussion. I’m afraid it might get worse before it gets better. Did the doctor fill you in on what to look out for?”

I nod, but Aiden is the one to speak. “I’ll keep my eye on her.

“You shouldn’t be up there,” she tuts at him, but he just ignores her.

“He almost lost me,” I tell her softly.

She sighs but lets it go. “Alright, take these.” She hands me a little cup with a cocktail of painkillers in it.

I tip them into my mouth before she hands me a cup of water.

I take a sip before swallowing the pills and then drinking down the rest of the water, not realizing how parched I am until now.

“Get some rest. Visiting hours will be over shortly.”

“Someone will be staying with Matilda at all times. She has a stalker after her. It’s as much for her safety as yours and the rest of the staff and patients here.

“Ah, I see. I’ll make a note in her file and talk to the nurse’s station to let them know what’s happening. You have to be quiet, though. I can’t have you disrupting the rest of my patients.”

“I’ll be good. Scouts honor.”

Reese snorts, but the nurse just rolls her eyes. “You were a boy scout about as much as I was a Harlem Globetrotter.”

That makes me chuckle even as Aiden gives her the side eye. “I’ll have you know I was an excellent scout. It was not my fault they asked me to leave–—”

Reese’s laughter makes him give up trying to explain. She shakes her head at him before giving me a playful wink.

“Rest,” the nurse orders.

“Yes, ma’am,” I respond as she turns and leaves the three of us alone.

“Well, I’m gonna sit outside so I’m not the third wheel—” Reese stops talking when Aiden’s cell phone rings.

He pulls it out of his back pocket and answers. “Tell me you have something, Banner.” He puts it on speaker so we can all hear it.

“I’ve got something. The truck is registered to a business called Cox Security.” He says something else, but I stop listening. All I hear is ringing in my head.

I look at Aiden, whose face is like thunder. “Yeah, thanks, Banner. I’ll call you back.”

“Did Daniel do this?” I choke out.

“I don’t know. From what I can tell, all his men drive company cars.”

“What’s happening right now? You guys know who did this?” Reese asks, but I’m still too shocked to answer.

“After Matilda was stalked at work the first time, the studio hired a security team to watch over her. When she was recuperating, she took over paying them and had the same team guard the house.”

“So many people wanted to know what happened to me. Paparazzi would camp out on my lawn, fans tried to break in to check on me, and those who followed Andrew Summers, who was on trial then, wanted to finish where he left off. It was a shitshow. I hired Daniel’s team to keep everyone away from me.

I made the house a kind of fortress, or I thought I had until recently,” I tell them, justifying why I hired him.

I can’t help but feel like a complete fool.

Aiden takes over. “She started getting notes again, like her original stalker left, so she called me in to be an up-close and personal guard.” Reese’s lips twitch at that, but she doesn’t comment further. “Daniel is the owner of Cox Security. He acted like a shit the second I arrived on the scene.”

“Wait, this Daniel guy owns Cox Security, and he’s acting as a house guard?”

I nod.

“For how long?”

“Not including when he worked for the studio, about eighteen months. I stuck with them because they were familiar. I only just found out that my mom had been paying Daniel for inside information about me.”

“Ouch. What a dick,” Reese curses.

“One minute he’s confessing his love for me, and the next he’s trying to kill me? I don’t get it.”

“Ah, fuck.” Reese sighs.

I look at her and see she has clearly figured something out. “What? What am I missing?”

Aiden answers for her. “Most stalkers are half in love with their targets. In Daniel’s head, your relationship with him was likely so much more than what it actually was, which explains why he hated me being there inside the house with you.”

“If he was the one writing the notes, he might have been hoping it would be him you brought into the house to look after you. He wants to be your hero, a role you gave to Aiden,” Reese says softly.

I open my mouth, ready to deny it. But I can’t. Daniel’s behavior of late has been shit, which is why I fired him in the first place. I can’t believe he’d want to hurt me, though.

As if reading my mind, Aiden’s hand skims over my hip. “I’m the trigger.”

“It doesn’t matter if you triggered him or not. Something was always going to push him over the edge. Most likely, it would have been Matilda’s constant rejection of him. He’d have pushed harder, made bolder moves. And when that didn’t work, he’d snap,” Reese states.

I stare at her in shock. “I haven’t seen or heard from him in months.

I’m having a hard time understanding why he’d try to run us off the road today.

He has to know there is no way I’d ever take him and his team back, even with Aiden out of the picture.

And also, what happened between him fucking with my trailer and the car crash? ”

“What do you mean?” Aiden frowns.

“The car chase and shootout was pure hostile rage, but my trailer was neat and tidy. Nothing was knocked over or out of place. Even the stupid flowers were arranged nicely. It’s as if he came in, did what he had to, and left.

If he’s mad enough to kill me today, why was he so calm before that? What changed?”

Reese and Aiden look at each other. I can practically hear the cogs turning in their brains as they try to figure it out.

“You didn’t leave when you were supposed to,” Aiden says eventually.

“What?”

“After the trailer incident, he must have thought you’d run back home and hide. You didn’t. You carried on as if nothing happened.”

“Not giving him the reaction he wanted, pissed him off. Hell, he might have even been lying in wait. And if you were hours later than planned, that’s hours he had waiting for you, stewing on his temper. What I want to know is, how the fuck did he get onto the set undetected?”

I groan at Reese’s question. I look at Aiden as I answer. “What are the odds the studio has Cox Security on retainer? I knew they called guards in. I never questioned which guards they were.”

“Motherfucker.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.