DARE: A Bad Boy Romance (17 page)

No response. Dare got his Smartphone out and dialed the emergency number on his way to the garage. A group of about twenty people was gathered on the gravel at the edge of the front drive. The rear lights of a speeding car disappeared through the front gates.

“What was the car’s make?” he yelled at the group.

“A Pontiac Firebird,” a man shouted back. “White. Vintage.” He appeared to converse with the others before he added: “We didn’t get the license plate. Sorry.”

“Fuck.”

The operator put Dare through to the Los Angeles Police Department emergency switchboard.

“Yes, it’s urgent. I’m reporting an abduction. It’s just happened.” He gave his name, address, a description of the car, and the names of the abductor and abductee. “No license plate number, no.” He got into his green E-type Jaguar but had to quickly adjust to driving stick—it had been a while since he’d been behind the wheel of his prized British vehicle—and peeled out of the garage. The tires kicked gravel up at the spectators when he floored the gas. “I don’t know for sure, but he might be taking her back to their house. They used to live together. No, I don’t have the address. You need to find it quick. Okay, keep me posted.”

He hung up, then immediately called his agent, the man with all the contacts. “Duke, I need you to get Trey Oregon’s address for me. I don’t care. Call in a few favors. Make promises you can’t keep. Whatever it takes. I need that address, and I need it
immediately.
Okay. Call me as soon as you get it.”

Next, he rang Holly’s cell. It was a long shot, but just in case Oregon had thrown her in his trunk and forgotten to take her phone away, he thought he’d better check.

To his surprise, the line opened after a dozen or so rings. “Holly? Holly, is that you?”

After a lengthy pause, a man’s voice sounded. “Dare?”

“Who is this?”

“Dare! It’s Julio.”

“Julio? Where are you?”

“At your house. Looking after Ossie till EMS gets here. Someone heard this phone ringing outside, near the Jacuzzi. She saw your name and brought it to me. It’s Holly’s phone, right?”

“Shit. Yeah, it is.”

“Is she okay?”

“Don’t know,
muchacho.
I’m in pursuit. Trying to figure out where he might be taking her.”

“Let me ask around. See if anyone knows where that asshole lives.”

“Okay, Julio. Thanks. How is Ossie doing?”

“He’s cut pretty bad. Nothing major though, as far as I can tell. But he’s banged up. What the fuck is
wrong
with that guy?”

“It’s a long story. I don’t have time right now.”

“Okay, brother. Good hunting. Be careful.”

“Copy that.”

For the life of him, Dare couldn’t recall the street name Holly had given to the taxi dispatcher that morning she’d left his house—his real house. It was the morning after one of the hottest—no,
the
hottest—night of his life. His mind had been on…other things. He’d heard what she’d said; he just couldn’t dredge the name up. Goddamn it. Where had that fucking cab taken her?

His instinct told him it wasn’t in this neighborhood. Holly had seemed, for want of a better word, intimidated by the size of his and Duke’s estate in Hollywood Hills. He pinned it heading south on Mulholland Drive, heading toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

What he wouldn’t give to have one of those police scanners right now. Every unit in the area would be on the lookout for a white Firebird, and there couldn’t be many of those about. It was only a matter of time before it got spotted. But would they get to it in time? And even if they could, what would Oregon
do
when they finally cornered him?

Jesus. Don’t think that far ahead. Just concentrate on finding her, damn it.

The night lights of L.A. sprawled out below like a million drips of melted steel on a huge, sleeping gridiron. One of them was his destination. But which?

The one consolation in her mind when Trey dragged her into the house was that it
was
his house. He hadn’t taken her somewhere else, somewhere they couldn’t be tracked. He’d brought her home. And someone, somewhere would have this address. Therefore, if she was careful, if she could buy herself some time, stall him somehow, it might give the authorities a chance to get to her before he did anything worse.

“Trey, I’m not going to struggle anymore. You’ve brought me home. Now, let’s sit down and talk about this. Let me pour you a drink.”

“Seriously? Oh yeah, why don’t I let you give me a massage as well—with a power tool. Hold on a minute while I fetch that kitchen knife so you can give me a straight shave.”

Holly swallowed a queasy lump in her throat. His talk of power tools and kitchen knives wasn’t the kind of distraction she’d had in mind.

“So what are we doing here?” she asked, immediately wishing she hadn’t.

“We’re here to finish what we started,” he replied.

“What do you mean?”

Holly went to sit on the sofa, but he yanked her up right away and hustled her over to the stairs. “Trey, I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Get up there!” he snapped.

“We settled this last time.”

“Fuck we did.”

By now her heart was racing so fast, she found it difficult to breathe. Holly had heard about WAGs suffering from anxiety attacks during their partners’ fights, but she’d never had one. Was this what it felt like—the onset of one? Either that or a goddamn heart attack. He kept shoving her up the steps. The urge to leap over the banister and make a run for it almost got the best of her. However, he was so close behind her, the bastard would never let her get that far.

“Come on, Trey. This has to stop. It’s getting serious now. You
do
know the police will be on their way. You can stop this now and that’ll be the end of it. I promise. We can both move on with our lives and put this behind us.”

Either he wasn’t listening or his damaged brain wasn’t capable of seeing sense. At the top of the stairs, he shoved her so hard she careered forward and fell flat on her face. Her chin and knees suffered carpet burns that throbbed like hell. Despite her pleas, Trey roughed her to her feet and frog-marched her into the bedroom. He launched her onto the bed. She immediately spun round, ready to fend him off with kicks. But he calmly locked them in and pulled up the white chair from her dressing table.

Now she had an inkling of what he meant by “finish what we started.” The last time they’d shared this room, he’d beaten the truth out of her. Was this his follow-up interrogation?

But she didn’t dare speak first. She was too afraid. Holly had to stick to her game plan at all costs—to draw this out as long as she possibly could and
hope
that he didn’t hurt her too much before help arrived.

Jesus, has it come to this? Trey?
My
Trey? What did I do wrong?

“You fucked him tonight,” he said. “Don’t lie.”

“I won’t lie to you, Trey. Never again.”

“So you had sex with him?”

She nodded sheepishly.

“Where? In the shower?”

“In the Jac—” She cleared her throat. “In the Jacuzzi. It was a spur of the moment thing.”

His eyes were deadly still, his tone so flat it was unnerving. “When did you start seeing him?”

Holly had to think back over a turbulent couple of weeks. She scrambled both for the truth and for an answer that might save her. However, she was too rattled to think that clearly. He was in human lie detector mode, if such a thing was possible. Bullshitting him
was
the way to go, she knew, but not in her state of mind. The truth was all she could cling to right now.

“I went to see him,” she explained, “after you had that fight with him in the street. I needed to know what was going on, why he interfered in the ring that night.”

“What would you do something so stupid?”

“I-I thought I could clear the air. He didn’t know the stress you were under. I tried to explain what you’d been through.”

He stood tall and threw the chair against the wall. “You told that shit to a guy who
hates
me? That was your first disloyalty.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I-I thought if I could explain why you hadn’t been yourself, he’d ease off a little. And he did. He got it. He’s been through hard times himself; he knows what it’s like to go off the rails a bit.”

Trey jabbed a threatening finger at her. “He’s
nothing
like me. Nothing. He was out to sabotage me, and you helped him do it. You think I don’t know that you two were seeing each other
before
he stopped my fight with Boyega? It’s so obvious. It all fits.”

“What fits? What are you talking about?”

“You and Bowden.” By now he was stalking around the room, his mouth open wide as he processed the crazy epiphanies. “Shit. All that time! You were planning it all that time. To humiliate me. You’d told him everything—the steroids, my treatment. First you drove me away to Renata with all your bitching and whining, you made me feel like I was the one cheating, when all the time you and Bowden…” He’d have torn his hair out if he’d had any. Instead, he raked the bristly dome with his fingernails, drawing blood.

“Trey, it’s not true. I swear the first time Dare and I ever spoke was when I went to see him at his gym.”

“That’s another lie. You spoke to him at Home for Heroes last year. I remember it.” He paused to weigh her up. “Why would you try to cover that up unless you were seeing him back then as well? All that time you were fucking him behind my back. And you had the
balls
to give me grief about Renata. That was your second disloyalty,
sweetheart
.” And that was the blackest use of that pet name she’d ever heard.

“Trey, you’ve got no evidence of any of this.”

Not that he needed any. He was so paranoid by now that he could just pluck things from midair and, in his mind,
make
them facts. There was no reasoning with him. Absolutely none. This couldn’t go on much longer. Every word out of her mouth, whether true or not, incriminated her, inched her that much closer to whatever punishment he had in mind.

For Christ’s sakes, Dare. Where are you? Did anyone even
call
the police?

“I get that you think I’ve betrayed you,” she said. Hell, at this point it was worth trying any unorthodox tack. “But if you’ll just give me a chance to tell my side of the story, maybe you’ll see that it isn’t so black and white. You know I’ve loved you since high school.”

“No, you played me,” he replied. “To get what you wanted.”

“Um, you made the first move. You asked
me
out.”

“Then you saw your chance and you played me with that coy little secret-slut routine. I heard about those guys at the burger bar where you worked…that threesome. Did they both nail you at the same time, or did they take turns?”

She shook her head, fighting back the tears. “Where’s all this coming from?”

“The patterns were there all along. I just never saw them before…not until you slipped up the other week. You stayed out all night when you were usually back before bedtime. Then you tried to
lie
about where you’d been and whom you’d been with. That fucking
proves
your guilt. It
proves
you were covering up for what you’d been up to all along, behind my back. And even now, when the cat’s totally out of the bag, you’re still trying to play innocent. You make me sick. You make me fucking sick!”

Before she could offer her defense, he flew at her. Holly tried to kick him off. She caught him in the balls, which halted him for a moment, then just made him madder. He bared his teeth. The veins in his neck and forearms bulged. His face contorted with murderous rage.

“Don’t. Please, Trey, don’t—”

His hands were around her throat before she could finish. He squeezed so hard it punched the breath up out of her windpipe, mid-swallow. She tried to cough up the saliva that had gone down the wrong hole, but even her cough couldn’t get through. He choked and he choked. Her head felt like it swelled three sizes. It was ready to explode. A heavy iron weight in her lungs backed up to her heart. Now she went lightheaded, as though her brain had been filled with hot air and cast adrift from the rest of her body.

She knew she was dying.

Her last impulse was to play him, just as he’d accused her of doing. It made little sense and yet it was the only thing that made
any
sense. To outsmart a crazy person…

She stopped struggling and fell limp. Closed her eyes.

Somewhere through her fog of consciousness he released his hold and set her head down. Not violently but gently, peacefully. He’d done what his insanity had made him do and now he would just have to deal with it…with what he’d done.

Everything she had left told her to gasp for dear life, but Holly didn’t dare move a muscle. She was inside a black, muscular hole that was swallowing her deeper and deeper. But the distant voice above said,
Not yet. If you move now, you’ll never move again.
It kinda sound like Dare Bowden’s voice, and she trusted it. It was desperate, that voice. It relaxed her limbs and clenched her core so that she could play dead long enough to cheat death. To cheat
him.
The man she’d loved for what seemed like a lifetime. Her murderer.

She held on for as long as she could. Not moving. Not fighting back but fighting onward, reaching for survival. All she could hope to do now was outlast him. To cling to the future.

Holly thought she heard a car backfiring. It was close. It was worlds away.

Then she slipped into the darkness.