The Debt 3 (9 page)

“The damage I’ve done to you?
 
You’ve threatened me, had me
fired—“

“Shut up,” he told her.
 
He rolled up the sleeves of his
shirt.
 
“One more word and so help
me, I’ll show you what real damage is.”

“You’re going to hit me?”

“Only if you give me a good reason,” he
grinned.
 
“Please, doll, give me a
reason.”
 
 

Raven felt faint, and she saw spots for a
moment, but then she blinked them away.
 
“Okay,” she said.
 
“I’ll
go.
 
Just don’t hurt me.”

“Gladly,” Scott said.
 
“It’s so good we had this little chat,
darling.
 
Really
good to meet you.
 
I mean,
Max has told me so much about you, but meeting you first hand is precious.
 
Just precious.”

“Great,” she replied, simply trying to
end all of this.
 
It was a nightmare
and she only wanted to wake up now.

“I’ll go and tell Max you’ve been a sport
and agreed,” Scott told her.
 
He
started to walk out, but he turned around at the last moment.
 
“One last thing, Miss Hartley.”

Raven forced
herself
to look at him, even though doing so made her sick to her stomach.
 
“Yes?”

“If I find out you’ve talked to
Jake—even a Tweet, just a friendly hello—I don’t care what.
 
If I find out you so much as breathe in
Jake’s direction, I will send a couple of goons to pick you up.
 
Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing,
it won’t matter.
 
My guys will find
you and within twenty-four hours you’ll be halfway across the world, in some
slum in Africa or Asia where nobody can find you.
 
And you don’t want to hear the rest,” he
told her, as calmly as if he was offering her another glass of water.
 

“I’m sure I don’t,” she replied, not
wanting to give him the satisfaction of showing him how terrified she really
was.

“Good, we understand each other, then,”
he said, and opened the big wooden doors, leaving as calmly as he’d entered.

Raven was still sitting and waiting.
 
She was scared, really scared, in a way
that she hadn’t been in a very long time.

Maybe she hadn’t ever been this afraid.

Max Mendez came into the room moments
later, and he was visibly tense.
 
“Come on,” he said, “we need to get you outside to the car.
 
It’s waiting to take you.”

“Back to Boston?” she asked him.

He averted his eyes, glancing away.
 
“Yeah, yeah.
 
Boston.
 
Come on, we need to hustle.”
 
He clapped his hands like an instructor.

Raven got up and walked out, following
behind him, as he made his way back to the elevators.
 

Inside the elevators together, there was
a long and uncomfortable silence between them.
 
Max stood with his hands clasped and
just stared straight ahead, still not looking at her, as the floors dinged
during their descent.

This time they didn’t stop at the lobby,
and Raven realized he’d pressed the button for the basement.
 

“Where are we going?” she asked, her
heart hammering inside her chest.
 

She had a feeling of claustrophobia, as
if the elevator was closing in on her.
 

“Just out the back way,” he said,
smiling.
 
“The car’s parked out
there.”

“Oh.”
 
She swallowed drily.
 
Her bladder was throbbing and she wanted
a bathroom more than anything now.

When the doors opened.
 
They were in a dark and dingy narrow
hallway, and it was the polar opposite of the beauty and richness of the rest
of the building.
 
Max led her down
the hallway, which was littered with boxes and barrels and smelled of rot and
mildew.

At the end, he opened a small steel door
and Raven was grateful to see an alleyway back there, with a black sedan parked
close by.
 
Near to it was a
dumpster, and a small gap between buildings to which she could even glimpse
Central Park West, as if it was a door to a beautiful fantasy world.

Through the narrow gap between buildings,
she could see joggers passing by, and rich people walking a tiny dog, and then
a family strolling by, dressed like something from a catalog.

“There it is,”
Max
said, pointing at the black sedan, which was somehow menacing in its quiet
stillness.
 
“Go ahead, now.
 
Back you go.”

She started out of the basement and into
the alleyway, walking slowly, her heartbeat getting faster and faster.

She turned back to look at Max.
 
“This car?” she said, suddenly more
scared than she’d ever been.
 
“Are—are you sure?”

Max smiled, a little too friendly
now.
 
“Yeah, of course I’m sure.
 
Go ahead.
 
Get inside.”
 
He was standing in the doorway from the
basement, watching her intently.

She was at the car now, and she reached
out to open the door.
 
As it swung
open, a smell came pouring out, a smell like…she didn’t know for sure.
 
Later, she would tell herself it was
just her imagination.
 
But she
could’ve sworn it smelled like a hospital, and she instantly pictured herself
getting in and being unable to get out again, the doors locking on her.

The driver was a hulking shape in the
front seat, and she imagined him coming back at her with a big cloth in his
hand, pushing the chloroform to her nose and mouth, holding her until she
passed out.

And then Scott’s voice echoed in her
mind, over and over as if on a loop.

…Within
twenty-four hours you’ll be halfway across the world, in some slum in Africa or
Asia where nobody can find you…

She stood there as if for an
eternity.
 

Distantly, she heard Max telling her to
get into the car, but then everything inside told her to run.
 

Run
where?

Back
to Jake
.
 

The only place that was even remotely
safe for her anymore.

And so she did it.
 
She turned and bolted for the gap
between the buildings.

“Where are you going, you crazy bitch?”
Max Mendez yelled, and she could’ve sworn he was coming after her, but as big
as he was, he wasn’t that fast.

And she was literally running for her
life, practically falling in her heels, but still able to scoot through the gap
and then out onto the crowded street where there were far too many people for
anyone to just come and grab her.

Raven walked as fast as she could,
blending in with the crowd, not looking back.
 
At first, she found a small group of
Asian men and women who were excitedly talking to one another.
 
They might have been
business colleagues
,
she had no idea
.
 
They didn’t seem to notice her walking
in the middle of them, and so she stayed with them for a couple of blocks and
then she saw a cab sitting on the corner and ran to it, jumping in and shutting
the door.

“Take me to…the hotel,” she gasped.

“Which one?” the driver asked her, his
eyebrows
raised
as she slumped lower in her seat.

“Hurry, drive!
 
Drive!” she screamed at the top of her
lungs.

“Shit, relax,” he said, but drove anyway.

***

This time, she wasn’t as lucky with the
media.
 
As she exited the cab in
front of the hotel, the paparazzi overwhelmed her, and she had no security team
to back them off.
 
They were in her
face, snapping pictures and screaming questions.
 
The questions were ridiculous, absurd,
insulting, and she tried her best to just ignore them all.

She put her head down and tried her best
to cover up, at least hide her face a little as she walked inside.
 

Once inside the lobby, the random
strangers were all staring at her like she was an alien.

She felt like one, too.

Tears were very near the surface, and
Raven was starting to feel like she might simply break down.
 
How much more could she take?

The elevator ride was quiet, with an
older couple
who
spoke French to one another and
laughed softly, holding hands.

Raven got to her floor and walked slowly
to her room.
 
Funnily enough, she no
longer had to go to the bathroom—it must have been nerves before.
 
She was still feeling scared, but not
quite as scared as she had felt back at the Club Alpha building.

She was also quite certain that she’d
done the right thing in not getting inside that black sedan when Max had tried
to convince her to.
 
There had been
something very wrong with that whole scenario, and she still had the feeling
she’d only just escaped in the nick of time.

If they were really willing to kidnap her
and whisk her away to some foreign country, that meant that Club Alpha was
capable of just about anything.
 
Now
that she’d openly defied them, what would they do to her next?

She didn’t know.
 
Raven unlocked her hotel room door, and
as it swung open she was shocked to see Jake sitting on one of the chairs,
drinking a bottle of beer.
 

She walked inside and the closed the door
behind her.

“What are you doing?” she asked him,
realizing she was less surprised than she probably should have been at his
invasion of her personal space.
 

“I should ask you the same thing,” he
smiled, taking another swig from the beer bottle.

She wanted to tell him the truth, tell
him what had happened with Club Alpha, but she was also afraid of his
reaction.
 
What if he didn’t
care?
 
What if he wouldn’t help
her,
wouldn’t stand up for her?
 

And what made her think that he might
stand up for her for any reason?

Jake hadn’t defended her or shown any
interest in helping her in the past.
 
 

“I’m not ready to talk about me yet,” she
said slowly.
 
“I’m having a pretty
bad day.”

“Were you hanging with Skylar and her
parents?”

“Ummm…yeah,” she said half-heartedly.
 
The weird thing was, as much as she
doubted him sometimes, she couldn’t deny the safety she felt being in the same
room with him.

Jake made her feel like nobody could ever
hurt her as long as he was nearby.

Even if it wasn’t true, it was how she
felt.
 
And that melted her, it made
her want him to hold her tightly again, it made her want to be close with him
like they’d been not so long ago.

Jake got off the chair and swigged from
his beer.
 
“What did you guys do?”
he asked, wiping his lips with the back of his hand as he came towards her.

“I don’t want to talk about it right
now.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” he said, coming
even closer.
 
He was dressed in a
casual gray sweater and black slacks that hugged his muscular legs.
 
He smelled clean and fresh, and every
hair on his head was perfect.
 
But
his brown eyes were locked on hers, and he wasn’t giving her any space.

“Jake, how did you get in my room?”

“Hey, I’m practically Houdini,” he said,
throwing his arms wide.
 
“There’s no
safe I can’t crack, no lock I can’t pick,” he said, getting so close to her
that she stepped back nervously.

“You should try and respect my privacy.”

“I can’t do that, Raven.”

“Why not?”

“You won’t let me.
 
You keep lying to me,” he said.
 
“And so I can’t trust you.”
 
He put his beer bottle down on the coffee
table nearby.

She bit her lip, her entire body
trembling now.
 
This day had been
too much for her in so many ways.
 
The last thing she could do was
resist
Jake
Novak, especially when his comfort was her one possible salvation.