Blindsided (16 page)

With the darkness outside and her headlights reaching up to the road, Roni couldn’t make out exactly how the car teetered. Was she hanging over a cliff? Was the car stuck in a tree? A scan around gave her no answers.

But the mingling odors of smoke and gas and Ethan’s blood also told her she couldn’t stay here all night.

Roni pulled the latch of the driver’s door and slowly eased it open. She peered out without moving her body in any direction. Matted-down leaves were only two feet away.

Roni sighed with the small relief of not being up in a tree, but a look past Ethan’s head to the vast stretch of darkness attested to a much worse situation. One move too far that way, and they could go over the edge.

“Ethan.” She heard the tears in her voice and swallowed hard when no reply came.

How could he? He was hurt. She had to get him out somehow and stop his bleeding.

Smoke released from the engine, pushing her to move before a plan could be thought out. This whole place could blow long before the car plunged off the cliff.

Slowly, Roni reached to Ethan’s belt buckle. She braced the front of him, maneuvering her arm around to his far arm. At the sound of the release, she yanked him to her side of the car.

Groans and creaks echoed all around her, but none came from Ethan. The sickly warped sounds emanated from the swaying car teetering on this precipice.

Ethan’s heavy weight stunned her. The thought that he was already dead hadn’t entered her mind. This was strong FBI agent Ethan. He’d gone up against men like Guerra and come out clean as a whistle. How could a car crash be his demise?

Another groan filled the car.

Hers.

Roni knew just how deadly car crashes were. A car crash killed her parents. She’d seen car crashes kill race car drivers in an instant, no matter how strong and healthy they were.

But this was different. This felt so different.

She let Ethan’s head rest on her shoulder. The slight movement creaked the car again. Roni closed her eyes, knowing her next move to pull him out would have to be her fastest move ever. All those racing accidents she’d avoided never came this close to besting her.

She’d taunted death so many times to claim her after missing its chance years ago. She would have to raise her fist of defiance again, but this time it wasn’t just for her. This time she would fight for Ethan.

“Do You hear me, God? I will fight You for him.” Tears pooled in her eyes. A lump lodged in her throat, and her next words came out sounding swollen. “I won’t let You take him like You took my family. I won’t let You take him.”

Like so many split-second moves on the track, Roni made this one just as quick and calculated. She stuck one leg out of the car, and on a twist of her body, used all her leg strength to catapult her and Ethan from the car.

Ethan’s eyes opened for a brief second, but something that flashed from the interior of the car pulled her attention from him. She landed hard on top of him and quickly disengaged so she wouldn’t hurt him more. She also looked back at the car, wondering what she saw.

A man’s arm had been reaching in from the other side.

The car let out its loudest groan yet, a long drawn-out noise that morphed through various pitches before it swayed back one last time.

Multiple seconds of silence descended as it fell through the dark night. Blissful but disconcerting silence that ended with the rushing heat of an explosion that clawed its way back to her, reaching high up into the sky. Leaves in the trees crackled as embers ignited them.

Hot flames scorched Roni’s eyes as she took the situation in. She threw her body over Ethan’s unconscious one, knowing she had to get him away from the heat and growing flames.

She also knew there had been no man on the other side of that car.

Had it been a memory from her first car crash as a child?

Roni couldn’t give a moment to dissecting the image she saw. The explosion roaring in front of her would give their location away to her pursuers. They had to be turning their directions to this spot right now. But which one of them would reach them first?

Honestly, it didn’t matter.

She dragged Ethan from under his arms, one pull at a time, nearing the roadside with each strenuous movement. At the incline, she had to stop and rest. She cradled him in her arms and dropped her head forward to his. Blood continued to seep from his wound, slow but steady.

Roni looked out to the fire that burned everything in its wake. But not her this time. She reached to her neck and felt the scarf covering her scars from the world. Scars that showed what she’d been though and what she survived. But no one knew all that because she kept them hidden. No one knew but her...and God. To the world, Roni portrayed herself as someone who was in total control. But it was really only God who she wanted to prove this to. Prove that she didn’t need Him. He didn’t want her when she called out for Him to take her, so she raised her fist to Him and said, “I’ll show You. I don’t want You either.”

But that was her biggest cover-up ever.

Roni knew the only way to no more appearances had to start with her. There could be no more running from the truth. No more shrouding it either, no matter if the world thought she was ugly.

Roni’s gaze fell from the flames to Ethan’s flickering face. He would have corrected her word choice, using beautiful instead of ugly. She’d heard it on his lips enough times to know it to be true. That was the truth. He’d been telling her over and over, but she closed her ears and eyes to it, thinking if she did, she wouldn’t have to accept it.

“I’m beautiful.” The words came out on a whisper. “God, I want to believe it, but beauty can’t happen as long as the ugliness is kept hidden.”

Roni loosened the knot at her neck. She pulled one end of the silk scarf down until the whole tail of fabric bunched in her hand. She brought it behind Ethan’s head to grab one end with one hand while she wrapped the material around his head wound with the other. A few revolutions and she tied it off.

“I’m going to get you help, Ethan.” She leaned in close to speak to his relaxed face. “Thank you for all you did for me. Thank you for keeping me safe. Thank you for speaking truth to me, even when I scoffed at your words time and time again.” She gazed at the lips that had spoken his perfect words to her, the same lips that had kissed her so passionately. He didn’t just tell her she was beautiful. He made her feel it, too.

A car engine roared off in the distance. Her first pursuer closed in. Her time with Ethan neared its end.

“I won’t ever forget you, Ethan. You changed my life. You opened my eyes and took off my blinders. Help will be here soon. I’ll make sure of it. If I can accomplish nothing else, I will make sure you have help.”

A car came to an idling stop right behind her.

Roni’s eyelids closed for a brief moment of acceptance. She opened them and pressed her lips to Ethan’s. He still felt warm, and she let that fact push her forward on her mission. As the saying goes, pretty is as pretty does, and she would live up to Ethan’s praise of her by saving him.

Roni lifted her face and stared at him for the last time. He would be forever a part of her heart. “Goodbye, my love,” she whispered and gently laid his head back on the leaves. With one push, she stood and turned to meet her ride.

SEVENTEEN

“G
oodbye, my love.”

Ethan’s injured mind heard the words from Roni’s lips spoken as if from miles away. She stood in a doorway. He reached out for her, but his hands disappeared into a smoky haze swirling between them. “Roni,” he called to her.

Then suddenly she vanished through the door, taking the blinding white light with her.

“No, don’t go in there!”

Ethan shot up to go after her, the bright image of his subconscious replaced with the dark reality of the night.

The red taillights of a car sped off down the road and Ethan figured the headlights had been what blinded him. A look around him showed he’d been left behind. He reached for his aching head and felt silk at his fingertips.

Roni’s silk scarf.

“Roni,” he spoke with a groan of pain.

The car crash. He remembered being driven off the side of the road. Nothing else. He’d obviously hit his head.

But where was Roni? Did he get thrown out of the car?

Ethan took notice of the fire blazing farther down the embankment. Fear had him pushing up to a crouch, but the world tilted and sent him back to his knees. He denied that Roni was in the flames. She had to have been the one to get him to the road.

But where did she go after that?

Ethan looked in the direction the red taillights had taken. He pulled the image back and this time he understood what he saw driving away.

A Porsche. The car pulling away had been a Porsche. And not just any Porsche, but Roni’s Carrera.

She’d left him behind and went with Jared.

But why?

After everything she had learned she knew he would kill her.

An engine roared louder as it approached, and soon more could be heard with sirens.

Ethan covered his ears at the mind-splitting pain the high-pitched noises caused. He figured he must have a concussion, if nothing else. He hoped nothing else, because he had to find Roni.

“Ethan? Is that you?”

Ethan recognized his friend’s voice but couldn’t make him out with the light from the high beams behind him.

“Pace! Pace, we have to find Roni. She’s in danger.”

Pace let out a sigh as he stepped down the embankment. “You’ve really lost your marbles with this one. That girl has done a number on you. I’ll cut you some slack this time because of her good looks, but seriously, she took you for a ride.”

Ethan let Pace lift him by the arm until he stood. He leaned on his friend because he had to, but worked hard to hold his own. Especially since he didn’t like the way Pace degraded Roni. The dig felt personal. “You don’t understand her.”

“I think I have a pretty good picture of who Roni Spencer is. Let me guess. She left you for her ex. At least she bandaged you up. Come on, the ambulance is arriving. I want them to have a look at your head.”

“No! We have to go after her.”

“Oh, we will. Trust me.”

Ethan let himself be led up to the road to the paramedics. When scissors were brought near his head, he held them back. “No, don’t cut the scarf.”

It was an absurd request. He knew it, yet he couldn’t bear to see her scarf cut to shreds, even though he never wanted her to wear it again. But right now, it was all he had of her.

Maybe Pace was right. Maybe he had lost his focus. To have such thoughts about Roni only meant one thing. He had it bad.

No. Not bad. There was nothing bad about her.

“What can I say to make you consider for one moment that Roni was set up?” Ethan asked as the paramedic unraveled the silk from his head. Ethan reached for it before she tossed it in the trash.

With the material in his hand, Pace saw he was going to have to listen to Ethan.

“Well, since my best friend pulled a gun on me tonight and is now holding on to a piece of women’s clothing, I suppose I don’t have much choice but to hear him out, no matter how demented anything you could say would be.”

“Jared Finlay is dangerous. He tried to kill me. Took a shot at me at the gas station.”

“Negative. He took a shot at a propane tank, which caused an explosion that crashed the helicopter above. The fire inspector found the bullet holes clear as day once the blaze was put out. He wasn’t trying to kill you, although I’m sure he wouldn’t have lost any sleep over your dead body. I’m thinking he was trying to free his girlfriend from her pursuers in the helicopter. And it worked.”

“His girlfriend? Their relationship is over.”

“Says Spencer. Boy, she’s been lying to you. When are you going to get that through your dented skull?” Pace reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “Now you’re going to listen to my proof. This is how we knew where to find you and to come with the ambulance.”

Pace pulled up an audio file on his phone and lifted it for Ethan to hear.

“911 operator, what is your emergency?”

“This is Veronica Spencer. I was just in an accident with an FBI agent. His name is Ethan Gunn and he’s unconscious. I left him on the side of Summit Road right before the trail entrance to the castle. I got him away from the fire. He needs medical attention. He hit his head. Will you send him help?”

“Yes, ma’am, I have crews in the area. They’ll be there in a few minutes. Are you able to wave them down?”

“No. I’ve left the scene. Just please, hurry. I never meant for him to get hurt. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”

Click.

“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you still there?”

Pace hit the end button. “So, you want to enlighten me on how Spencer’s in so much danger? Because from that message, I’d have to say, you were the one in danger this whole time. You let your guard down and nearly got yourself killed.”

“Someone smashed into us. Someone sent us off that road.” Ethan jammed his pointer finger in the direction behind Pace.

“I don’t doubt it. Spencer has a lot of enemies. But her ex isn’t one of them. They must have realized organized crime had better money flow than winning car races. They hooked up with Guerra in Miami, and the rest is history.”

“She didn’t know Guerra.” Ethan wasn’t ready to relinquish his faith in Roni yet. There had to be something he wasn’t seeing. Something that would make sense of all this.

“She told you that, too?”

Ethan ignored the condescending note in Pace’s voice. He closed his eyes to push past the pain to find what he needed to make sense of why Roni would leave him.

“Goodbye, my love.”
The words from his unconscious state flittered about inside his cranium.

“She must have gone with him, in return for calling for help. For me.” Ethan stood up, pushing the paramedics off from doing the final dressing of his wound. “Yeah, that has to be it. I’m going after her.” Ethan raced to Pace’s car, still parked and idling on the side of the road.

“Get back here, and that’s an order. I’m not cutting you any more slack.”

“Can’t. Sorry, Pace. But she loves me. She left me behind because she loves me. What other proof could you possibly need of her innocence? If she was guilty, she wouldn’t have cared about what happened to me.”

Ethan reached the driver’s door of the unmarked federal car. He got in and was surprised to see Pace get in the passenger side.

“I’m not taking more danger to her. I’ve brought enough to her already, mainly because of you. I don’t want you with me if you’re just going to take her out. She’s not trafficking anyone, Pace. You can’t make her pay for what happened to your sister!”

Pace’s eyes flashed anger but quickly looked forward.

Ethan calmed but plowed forward, holding nothing back in this crucial moment. “I think you’ve been too close to this case for a long time. I’m telling you this as your friend, nothing more. I will never repeat this to anyone else, unless you give me reason to.”

“Are you threatening me again? First with your gun, and now with legal action?”

“I just want you to be aware of the choices you have. Stay behind or come with me, but if you come with me, this is a hostage situation, not a takedown. So what’s your choice?”

* * *

Jared Finlay’s childhood home felt small and closed in, but the gun held on Roni might have contributed to her claustrophobia. She sat on one of the four kitchenette chairs that squeaked with her every move and gave away any plan of escape. The front door and the back kitchen door couldn’t be more than fifteen feet apart, but with Jared’s towering frame blocking both paths, neither were accessible exits. Especially with the gun cocked and ready. She might make it in time to dive behind one of the tattered couches, but they didn’t look as if they could fend off any bullets, or support a person, for that matter.

But it wasn’t the state of the furniture that concerned Roni. It wasn’t the old dilapidated factory house he grew up in either. It was the fact that she knew this was where he was from, and she’d turned a blind eye to his situation.

“I’m sorry, Jared.”

Jared angled a look over his shoulder at her, his gun swinging around at her. “What have you done now?”

“I mean for what I did before. I never should have publicly called you out. I didn’t have the right to take your livelihood away from you. You’re a great driver. I shouldn’t have had you blacklisted from the sponsors.”

“Good, because you’re going to fix that first thing in the morning. Call up your TV crews and do what you have to do to get a press conference.”

“I will.”

“You will?” Jared’s nervous expression doubled. He retraced his steps to the front windows for nearly the hundredth time. “Is this a trick? Is your FBI man out there ready to ambush me? Did you lie to me when I allowed you to make that 911 call? You said he was unconscious.”

Pain shot to Roni’s heart. She grabbed at her blouse with a fisted hand. “No, he’s not out there. Hopefully, he’s being treated and...” She swallowed hard. “I pray God is caring for him.”

“God? I thought that was one thing we agreed on. We’re in this world on our own. Take what you can when you can.”

“We were wrong, Jared. God does care. He cared about freeing Maddie.”

“Who?”

“Maddie. She was one of Ramsey’s bought servants. God freed her because He really does care. And He cares about Ethan, too. He cared about my parents, and He cared about my burns. Nothing is hidden from Him. He sees all, and He makes all things beautiful in their time. But it’s in
their
time, not ours. That’s what I never understood. I screamed at Him to heal me or kill me, but it wasn’t my time for either.”

Jared curled his lip at the sight of her exposed neck. She knew her scars still disgusted him, but now she also knew that was his problem, not hers.

“It’s who I am, Jared. I can’t change the way I look. But it’s also
not
who I am.” She patted her chest. “God cares about the beauty in here, and tonight, I have never felt more beautiful. He’s changing me, and I have Ethan and Maddie to thank for that. Ethan always saw it, and Maddie—” Roni smiled “—Maddie never stopped praying for it. She prayed for me, even when her own life was in bondage. And, Jared, I’m going to start praying for you.”

“Save it. I don’t believe a word you’re saying. You’ve always been out for yourself, wanting the world to know it was all you.
I
was the one behind the wheel!”

“And I already told you I will rescind what I said.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to be out for myself anymore. I want to go after the things God has planned for me. Cora always said He had great plans for me, but I didn’t want to hear it. Now that I’m listening again, I think He wants me to open my home as a safe house for trafficked women. It’s the perfect place and has everything it needs to give these scared and hurting women a place to feel secure and free. If Maddie is agreeable, I want to do this.”

“What about your racing school?” Jared peered out the window, pointing his gun to the ceiling.

Roni had thought her words would have calmed him, but he seemed just as nervous.

“I suppose that was something I thought was best for me, and I’ll be sad to let it go, but I only want to do what God wants me to from now on. I’m serious about this, and my past can no longer define me. From now on I want to reflect His goodness in my life. It all makes sense to me now. I’ve been racing toward death since the car crash, doing whatever I could to show God I didn’t need Him. That if He didn’t take me then, He would never take me. It was one of the many lies I believed. My life of appearances is over. From now on, it’s nothing but truth.”

Roni hiked her chin to expose her neck more fully and to show she meant it.

He sneered again and looked away, back out the window. “You’ll change your mind, and that’s the truth.”

“Why?” Roni squinted in confusion. “What have you done, Jared? Who are you actually waiting for? I thought you were watching for the authorities, but something tells me that’s not the case. Is it Guerra? You were the one who made a deal with him to set me up, and now you’re afraid he’s going to come collecting and hold you responsible for the demise of the Boss?”

“The man would thank me for the demise of the Boss. Now Guerra’s in charge.”

“Of a dismantled organization.”

Jared shook his head. “He’ll just start another one. Don’t be so naive, Roni.”

Roni sobered. “I’m not, Jared. I understand the battle of trafficking humans is daunting, but that doesn’t mean we should do nothing. That we should turn a blind eye to the fact that it’s happening right under our noses, in our hometowns and cities. We need to be aware and watchful, and we need to speak up when we see something that doesn’t look right. There are many organizations that will tell us how to recognize the signs and to know what to look for, and I hope I can be one of them someday.”

Jared frowned and turned back to the window, barely listening.

Roni leaned back in her chair, the creak long and mimicking her unease. “So, if you’re not waiting for Guerra, why do you have me here at gunpoint?”

“I’m not holding a gun on you. I’m protecting you from someone who wants you dead. I may not think too highly of you, but I never wanted you dead...or sold. I just wanted you to lose everything, to know what it felt like to be dirt-poor. Guerra promised me you would feel the pain of losing everything. That’s all I wanted. Now I’m trying to fix this. To end this tonight before it’s too late for her.”