The hotel was on the waterfront of the San Diego Bay and the US Marshals Service had booked them a large suite with a separate living room, which gave Isabel her privacy and a generous amount of space to unwind in the bedroom, even though Will was there for protection.
Isabel dropped down on the comfy bed, wanting to sink into it, close her eyes and fall asleep. Maybe by the time she woke, Dutch would be there, and they could make love again. She’d missed sleeping with him last night. They needed time away together without the current stressors.
She took out her cell. Five percent battery life remaining. She’d left her charger back at the villa in her overnight bag.
Going through her phone, she found the number to the hospital in LA that she’d saved and dialed it.
“Hello,” the female voice was familiar, but not Brenda. Someone older.
“Mrs. Reaver, is that you?”
“Yes, may I ask who’s calling?”
“It’s me, Isabel.”
“Oh, sweetie, Brenda’s been asking for you,” Mrs. Reaver said.
“She’s awake?” Isabel almost cried tears of joy.
“Yes. She’s been lucid since we got here this morning. They just took her to run some tests, but she’ll be back any minute. She can’t wait to see you. Are you coming by soon?”
Her stomach clenched with regret. “No, I can’t stop by. I’m in San Diego. Can you take down the number to my hotel? My phone is about to die.”
“Sure.”
Isabel rattled off the number, along with which room she was in and the fake name they were registered under. “When she gets back, if she’s up to it, have her call me.”
“She’ll be up to it. She’s dying to talk to you. It shouldn’t be long.”
“Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Reaver.”
Isabel hung up. Her phone was at one percent and as good as dead. She climbed onto the bed and turned on the television, afraid to shower or fall asleep and miss Brenda’s call.
She turned to a show about decorating houses for background noise more than anything else. One program ran into the next while her thoughts whirled, spinning around the last two days, coming back to Emilio and what she’d learned.
Glancing at her purse, she picked up her bag and put it in her lap. She thought of the letter and wondered if she was strong enough to read it. Curiosity won.
She read the letter, slowly, shocked by every line that brought tears to her eyes. Emilio had poured his heart and soul and pain out onto the page. He had written poetic lines about the depths of his love for her. Apologized for everything. Took responsibility for her mother’s last days being difficult, for Luis’s anger, for ripping the family apart with his selfishness, for her confusing childhood, for his brother’s death. In the end, he begged her forgiveness.
He’d confessed to murder in the letter, sort of.
Could it be used as evidence to put him away? Would she use it against him?
He was flawed, corrupt and was guilty of monstrous things. But he was her father and regretted everything, despite what she had thought. Emilio was suffering, too, and he loved her deeply.
With her heart bleeding, she folded the letter, put it back in her bag and zipped her purse closed.
There was a loud knock at the main door of the suite.
“Hey,” Will called from the living room. “You could’ve let me know you ordered room service. I’m hungry, too.”
But she hadn’t ordered any room service. She still didn’t have an appetite and after reading that letter, it would be hours before she’d eat.
It was probably the wrong room.
There was a thud and then nothing besides the sounds of the two televisions.
She shut off her TV. “Will? Is everything all right?”
Something was wrong.
Under the door, she saw a shadow move up to the bedroom.
“Will?”
The door burst open. A man loomed, wearing a hotel jacket and holding a gun with a suppressor pointed at her.
A chilling, mind-numbing fear speared her. The man with scraggly hair, a mustache and glasses seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place him.
“Hello, Isabel,” he said.
That voice. Chad!
Her skin prickled, her jaw coming unhinged as she pressed back against the headboard.
“If you scream, I’ll kill the US marshal and anyone else who comes running to help you, and when I leave here, I’ll pay Brenda a visit in the hospital. Nod if you understand.”
Isabel’s breath snagged in her chest, but she nodded.
As Chad walked up to her, getting closer, she noticed he wore gloves and the suppressor was homemade—two PVC pipes, one inside the other, with some sort of end cap, attached to the barrel of the gun with a...hose clamp?
He pressed the gun to her temple. “Get up. Put on your shoes.” His voice was deadly calm.
Trembling, she did as he told her, holding on tight to her purse.
“Come on. Walk.” He nudged her forward.
“Are you going to hurt me?”
“Not unless you make me.”
She stepped out of the bedroom and he pushed up against the back side of her, pressing the gun against her kidneys.
“When did you get a gun?” she asked, feeling cold down to her bones.
He hadn’t owned a firearm before.
“When I found out Dutch used to be in Special Forces. I have a bullet with his name on it. I’d expected to find him in here with you. Not that one.”
Isabel looked down at Will. Flat on his stomach, knocked out, but alive.
“Behave. If you don’t and draw attention, I’ll be forced to hurt others.” Chad opened the door, keeping her close to him, and they walked down the empty hallway toward the stairwell.
Fear raced through her bloodstream. “How did you find me?”
“I suppose I can tell you since it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Why? God, why didn’t it matter anymore? Was he going to kill her?
No, he wouldn’t.
Chad wanted to be with her in a sick, abusive relationship that mirrored Brett and Mindy’s, where she played the doting partner, tending to his every need, subjected to his every whim. He didn’t want her dead.
“I found you through your phone,” he whispered in her ear, his voice dark and pure evil. “I’ve been tracking you,” he said, “listening to your calls, reading your emails and texts. I knew you were at this hotel, but not what room until you told Brenda’s mom.”
Isabel’s heart nose-dived. How could she be so stupid? How could he be so twisted? So insane?
They entered the stairwell. Cupping her shoulder with his free hand, he steered her up the stairs. Not down, out of the hotel and into a car.
“Where are you taking me?” She clutched her purse against her belly and used the noise of their footfalls to cover the sound of the zipper as she inched it ever so slowly, in the slightest degrees, trying to get the opening wide enough for her hand without him noticing.
“It’s a surprise.”
She swallowed the scream churning in her belly, rising in her throat, and reminded herself there were cameras everywhere. Someone in security would see this, find it odd, report it.
They reached the landing one floor up and he opened the door.
In the hallway, there was a family leaving their room. Two kids were fighting, a girl and a boy, maybe eight and ten respectively. The boy hit his sister and their father snatched him up by the collar and reprimanded him as the mother closed the door. The girl smiled and stuck her tongue out at her brother behind her parents’ backs.
A similar incident from her past flashed in her mind with her and Miguel. Emilio had been furious that Miguel had hurt her one day and when he’d been punished, she’d remembered feeling special, untouchable.
I have a brother.
“Keep quiet unless you want kids to die,” Chad whispered to her.
The family seemed a million miles away as they walked to the elevator, not noticing them at all.
Chad stopped her in front of the first door on their left. Took out a key card and inserted it. The green light flashed, the door unlocked, and he shoved her inside.
Something creaked under her feet. She looked down. There was a thick layer of plastic covering the carpet. Industrial strength.
She stepped deeper into the room. Plastic covered the surfaces in the bathroom. More plastic had been placed over the rest of the carpet, the dresser, nightstands and the bed.
A large suitcase sat near the window.
Dear God. He intended to kill her.
Don’t panic.
Too late. Her mind was being sucked down a dark vortex, chased by pure terror.
“There’s security footage of us together. You can’t,” Isabel said, her brain reeling. It was all she could do not to beg, plead, offer to do anything he wanted, if he wouldn’t go through with this.
He chuffed a smug laugh behind her back. “The security guards here make fifteen dollars an hour. I just paid two of them fifteen thousand each to ensure technical difficulties of the security cameras. Nothing is recording.”
She spun around. Chad had put on a plastic coat and had the gun aimed at her head.
“I’m sorry...about everything,” she said, lowering her eyes, recalling the time when she’d come out of the bathroom and overhead Mindy speaking in private to Brett. “Let me make it up to you.”
The gun lowered to his side, and she looked up at him. Chad stepped closer with his brow furrowed. “If you’re sorry, prove it.”
“Take off your clothes,” she said, digging her fingers in the leather of her purse, rubbing the outline of the stun baton. “Make love to me.”
Chad backed up to the edge of the plastic near the dresser. The opening of her bag wasn’t wide enough yet to get the baton out and his gaze was pinned to her, watching her every breath. He pulled the plastic down and placed the gun inside the bottom drawer. Then he replaced the thick covering.
Even if she got away from him, he’d overpower her before she’d get the gun.
Keeping the plastic coat on, he reached underneath it and removed something hidden behind his back. Steel glinted in the dim light from the drawn curtains. He tossed a large hunting knife with at least a nine-inch serrated blade on the floor in the corner of the room near the suitcase.
She’d be crazy to go after it and that was probably exactly what he was counting on.
Chad slipped the strap of her purse down her arm and tossed the bag onto the bed by the pillow. Her chest rose and fell with tight, anxious breaths.
Isabel kicked off her shoes, realizing at some point that she’d need to run, sat on the bed, scooting up, and lay back as close to her purse as she could get.
Chad pushed her down against the mattress, the eerie sound of the plastic creaking underneath her. Grasping her jaw, he kissed her aggressively, almost violently.
Worse, she had to sell him on her performance as she kissed him back. Her stomach roiled. With her right hand, she stroked his hair and her fingers found the strange strands of the wig. She groped for her purse with her left hand, gently, quietly, trying not to disturb the plastic and draw his attention to what she was doing.
Chad undid his belt and unzipped his pants, the distinct sounds slicing through her ears, echoing in her soul. He lowered his full weight on her, pinning her to the bed.
Hot bile welled in her throat. The backs of her eyes stung with tears, but she surrendered herself to the kiss. To survive, she had to.
Her fingers snagged soft leather. She reeled it closer, drawing the zipper open more.
Chad’s hands wandered, up her skirt, cupping her butt, groping her breast. She shuddered in revulsion.
God, please get me out of this. Tears leaked from her eyes.
She dug her hand in her bag and rummaged for the baton.
“I missed this, Isabel. Missed us.” His eyes burned with his obsession. “I just want it to go back to the way it was.”
She cringed. The fear he’d cultivated in her over the past several months bloomed, like nightshade in the darkness. Invasive vines, strangling, poisoning, blocking out the sunlight and smothering every good thing.
Don’t give up! Don’t let him win!
Her fingers grasped the baton. She pulled it from her purse and swung with all her might.
Crack!
The shaft of the baton struck hard against the side of Chad’s head, knocking him off her. Isabel kicked him, hard, with both feet, propelling him to the floor.
She launched herself up from the bed, holding the Pacifier and leaving her purse. She ran to the door, grabbed the knob and pulled.
It didn’t budge. The door was stuck. For a split second she thought of Dutch.
She tried the door again. Still nothing. She looked around, frantic to get out.
There was a doorstop wedged under the door.
Plastic squeaked as Chad righted himself. Isabel bent down and wiggled the rubber stopper. Desperation sizzled in her blood. She wrenched it from under the door.
As she stood, Chad charged toward her.
No!
She yanked the door handle.
The safety latch at the top caught and the door wouldn’t open.
Chad was almost on her.
Her heart was hammering so fast that she could barely breathe. She flicked the switch on the stun baton, heard the crackle of electricity and lunged at him. Chad snatched the grab guard and an electric current flooded his body. His muscles spasmed and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. She jammed the prods into his neck. He lost his balance, crumpling to the floor. Then she held on for a couple of seconds longer to be sure he was down.
Isabel flipped the safety latch off and threw open the door. She pressed across the threshold to the stairwell. Ran back downstairs one flight barefoot. But the stun baton slipped from her hand over the railing. It clattered along the descent several flights below.
Damn it.
She bolted onto her floor and dashed to her room. “Will?” Isabel pounded on the door. “Will!”
Was he still unconscious?
Adrenaline propelling her, she hurried for the elevator. She glanced over her shoulder, looking for Chad. The stun baton wouldn’t immobilize him for long.
She slapped the button, summoning a car.
The L was illuminated. It was in the lobby and she was on the sixth floor. She hit it again and again, knowing it wouldn’t make the elevator arrive any faster, but what choice did she have?
Number two lit up. Then three.
At the far end of the hall, the door opened to the stairwell.
Even though she already knew it was him, she pivoted to see Chad.
Isabel slapped the button repeatedly. The car was at the fourth floor.
Growling like a wild animal, Chad bulldozed down the hall with the hunting knife raised in his hand, his face taut with blind rage. The fury pumping through him was terrifying.
If he reached her, got his hands on her, he’d kill her.
Dear God, help me! He was almost to her.
Panic exploded in her chest. She hit the button again, cursing and screaming.
A chime sounded, and the elevator doors opened. Isabel stumbled inside and landed against a wall of solid muscle.
“Isabel!” Dutch’s face was ashen and bruised as he held her closer. He glanced up, drew his weapon and put her behind him. “Stop! Or I’ll shoot,” he warned.
But Chad kept charging, yelling obscenities, shouting hateful, violent things.
A shot rang out. The force of the bullet stopped Chad and made him stumble. Blood poured down his body from the chest wound.
Was it over? Would he just die already and let this nightmare end?
Chad lumbered forward a few quick steps, raising the knife again.
As if reading her mind, Dutch stepped out of the elevator, and fired once more. The second bullet to the head flung Chad backward to the floor.
He lay in the hall, still, his eyes open and unmoving.
The demon was dead.
Dutch turned, wrapping her in his arms.
She fell against him, collapsing in the safety of his heat and strength. It was all she could do not to break down. Relief cascaded through her as she clung to him. “Oh, Dutch.”
A few guests opened their doors and peeked out. Others left their rooms, gathering in the hallway.
“Are you okay?” His arms tightened around her.
“I will be.” Now that he was there.
“God, I’m sorry it took me so long.”
She buried her face in his chest, took in his scent, relieved, comforted. Safe. “You were right on time.”