Escaping Vegas (The Inheritance Book 1) Read online

  A row of houses older than the one she rented sat across from the businesses, some with wrought-iron fencing circling the yard, others decorated by more of the huge old trees. Several cars parked next to the curb provided Madalina a little cover as she crossed the street to the sidewalk. Not known for her endurance in sprints (or longer distances—who was she kidding?), she dashed down the block, pushing her body to the limit.

  Surprised that she hadn’t been snatched from behind or that she hadn’t heard the Chinese men shouting in pursuit, she took the next corner and then another, losing herself in the residential maze of streets. Wind bent the boughs above her as the storm raged on, blowing leaves sideways across the sidewalk, some getting caught in the wet strands of her hair.

  Lianne did not live far away, perhaps another five blocks. It was the only refuge Madalina could think of, the only one where she might feel temporarily safe.

  Pausing on the back side of a broad tree trunk, desperate to catch her breath, Madalina braced her hands on her knees and stared at the ground. Her chest burned, and her legs felt like noodles, knees trembling with the effort of running so far, so fast. Sucking in huge gulps of air, she sent a quick glance back the way she’d come, paranoid that the Chinese agents might already be on her trail. The street was empty of pursuing bodies. She brushed hair out of her face and plucked at the silky peach shirt that she wished she’d had time to change out of. But her purse and all the new clothing she’d purchased were in Cole’s car. Fat lot of good it did her now.

  She didn’t even have her cell phone, which made her groan in dismay. Not only that, but she realized she had no way to contact Cole. She didn’t know his cell number, didn’t have an address to track him down by. She knew his name, and that was all. Why hadn’t she thought to exchange those things in the car? Or the hotel room? You can find anything about anyone on the Internet. Pay two-ninety-five and you’ve got access to a person’s entire history, he’d said. Maybe she could find him that way.

  As another peal of thunder roared through the dark sky, she started out again, using the trees and parked cars as cover whenever she could.

  Five blocks and two dizzy spells later, Madalina reached the golf course behind Lianne’s house. She ran through the clipped green grass toward the trees lining the walkway circling the course. The same walkway she and Lianne had used countless times in their effort to get more exercise. Partly obscured by rain and by the trees, Madalina jogged down the path behind the houses, out of breath again and almost out of gas. Her thighs shivered in protest, her lungs on fire from the hectic pace.

  Finally, along the fencing that separated the backyards of the homes from the golf course, Madalina spotted Lianne’s gate. Each residence had access to the course, although Lianne had never golfed a day in her life. She’d moved in for the relative privacy.

  Liberating a small key from under a rock, Madalina let herself into the yard and relocked the gate.

  Although it was the middle of the afternoon, the back porch light burned bright, as if Lianne had left it on as a beacon. There was no way Lianne could even know she was in town, which led Madalina to believe that Lianne had simply forgotten to turn it off. The house, modest in size and more than thirty years old, was nondescript in design. Nothing stood out, from the beige stucco to the flat roof to the utter lack of creative architecture. Madalina had always considered the homes in this section of town to be some of the ugliest, but the rent was moderate and within Lianne’s budget.

  Under the porch roof, dripping from head to toe, Madalina knocked on the door. A furtive tap-tap-tap that she hoped Lianne heard above a fresh rumble of thunder.

  Hissing curses under his breath, Cole jumped in the Jaguar and sped down the street. He jerked glances back and forth along the sidewalks, looking for any clue, any sign of Madalina. Rain made it difficult to see inside vehicles parked along the curb, but he didn’t want to conduct a search on foot. It would take too long, and if the Chinese agent had managed to stuff Madalina into a car, he needed every spare second to try and catch up.

  Using Madalina’s parents’ house as a starting point, he expanded the radius of his search in a methodical, overlapping grid. A half hour later, after driving countless miles and scouring four residential areas, he had to accept the fact that the Chinese agents had made good their escape. Madalina was probably scared out of her mind, which made him feel twice as guilty about losing her. He didn’t want to contemplate what might happen if he didn’t find her before the assailants began their questioning session, which they would do as soon as they possibly could.

  Returning to her parents’ house, he parked in the driveway and entered the house through the still-open sliding-glass door, intending to check one more time for the missing woman.

  “Madalina!” he shouted as he walked the halls, searched the rooms. She wasn’t there, as he both expected and feared. Closing up the house in his wake, he jogged back to the car and drove away.

  Cruising the streets beyond the grid he’d already worked, Cole looked for sedans along the busier commercial districts. He saw quite a few, although none that panned out to be Madalina and the men who’d taken her.

  Raking a hand through his hair, he cursed under his breath. Gripping the wheel tightly enough to turn the skin of his knuckles white, Cole tried to convince himself that the only reason he felt so volatile was because Madalina had been abducted right out from under him. Not because she’d managed to make an abrupt, lasting impact on his life. That he found it odd to glance across the car and see an empty passenger seat meant nothing. And he certainly didn’t miss her feisty banter and witty comebacks. Guilt that he’d let her down, that he’d let himself down, was the cause of his brooding mood.

  People didn’t usually get the jump on him. His adversaries were wily, though, and he had tried to keep her away from places he suspected were dangerous. The risk of searching the Chino house for information hadn’t paid off either, leaving all the questions about the dragon unanswered.

  Cursing the weather, Cole decided to change tactics. He could search Chino for a month and never get any closer to finding Madalina. It was time to try something different. Every hour that passed was another hour she might be subjected to . . . uncomfortable situations. His teeth clenched at the thought. She wasn’t built to be a prisoner. Wasn’t able to withstand torture. Madalina Maitland wasn’t of his ilk.

  He pulled into a mom-and-pop restaurant that boasted free Wi-Fi and turned off the engine. From the trunk he withdrew a laptop case and toted it inside, ducking out of the torrential rain. Nondescript on the outside, the restaurant brimmed with warmth beyond the single glass door. Cole barely noticed. He sank into a booth with black vinyl seats and pulled the laptop from its protective sleeve.

  The storm kept the flux of customers low, which meant that he had all the privacy he needed when he pulled up a search engine not typically available on the regular market.

  As thunder boomed through the sky, Cole’s fingers flew over the keys. One way or another, he would find Madalina again.

  He just hoped he wasn’t too late.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Madalina grew wary as a second round of knocking went unanswered. Although she knew where the spare key to the back gate was, she didn’t have a key to the house.

  Feeling uneasy about the delay, she knocked again.

  “Lianne!” she called out, careful to keep her voice low. Madalina glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one had vaulted the fence and was creeping up on her from behind. It would be a long time, she thought, before the sensation of being stalked went away.

  The back door swung open with a sudden scrape of wood on wood that scared the hell out of Madalina. She gasped, which caused Lianne to yelp in surprise.

  “What are you doing—”

  “Where have you bee—” Madalina, talking over Lianne’s questions, pushed her way inside. She closed the door and e
ngaged the dead bolt.

  “You’re soaking wet—Madalina, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Vegas.” Lianne, wrapped in a cream-colored blanket with snowflakes stamped around the edge, sniffled into a tissue. Her voice had a nasally quality attributed to colds or sinuses.

  “Has anyone been here but me today? Wow, you look terrible.” Madalina ushered Lianne away from the back door into the tiny kitchen. A theme of green and white ruled in the small space, colors that had been there the day Lianne moved in. If the cabinetry hadn’t been so dated, it might have been quaint and appealing. As it was, the grooved cabinet doors couldn’t be improved with layers of paint, and the checkered linoleum beneath her feet made the area seem like a half-and-half mix of the fifties and seventies.

  Lianne, dirty blonde hair tied back in a messy bun, eyes rimmed red, her nose in competition with Rudolph’s, looked confused and lost. She also looked somewhat vampirish with her ultrapale skin. After another sniff she said, “Huh?”

  “Anyone. Has anyone been here today? Knocking on your door, asking for me?” Madalina shivered. The dampness of her clothes sent a chill straight to her bones.

  “No. No one has been here but you. Madalina, what’s going on?” Lianne frowned, pulling the snowflake blanket closer around her thin body.

  “Good. If anyone does come to the door asking for me, tell them I’m not here and you haven’t seen me for days. As far as you know, I’m still in Vegas.” Madalina pulled Lianne gently through a short hallway into the living room. The tapestry furniture was quaint, at least, with plump cushions and little accent pillows sporting a whimsical fringe. A television stood against the wall, and a love seat sat adjacent to the sofa, the only two pieces of furniture that would fit in the tight confines.

  Madalina released Lianne and went to the front window to peer out. She saw nothing suspicious. Yet.

  “You’re not acting like you,” Lianne stated, standing in the place Madalina had left her.

  Turning from the window, Madalina said, “I know. I’ll explain in a minute. First, do you have anything that will fit me? I’ve got to get out of these wet clothes.” She didn’t want to consider that she’d been in them for more than a day, a hideous crime in her book.

  “I’ve probably got . . . something.” Lianne sniffled and led Madalina down another short hallway. The old home had two bedrooms, one an overflow for Lianne’s clothes, the other the master bedroom. Lianne turned into the converted bedroom and snapped on the light. Clothing racks lined each wall, and two more stood in the middle, stuffed to the gills with shirts, pants, shorts, skirts, dresses, and jumpers. The problem wasn’t the amount of clothes, but the sizes. Lianne was the narrow greyhound type, with little to nothing up top, where Madalina had that damnable fifteen extra pounds loitering around her hips and thighs. She also had an ample bust, which might make some of the shirts a little more snug than she preferred.

  Helping herself to the racks, she started pawing through a section of pants, listening for sounds from the front of the house that would alert her to trouble.

  “I need something stretchy, probably, because your size-zero jeans won’t even fit one of my legs,” Madalina said. Focusing on something dry to wear didn’t take her mind off of the accident and the agents. Off of Cole. She didn’t know whether he was alive or dead, and couldn’t call even if she wanted to because she still hadn’t exchanged numbers with him.

  For the next ten minutes, while hurriedly shuffling through myriad articles of clothing, looking for something that fit, Madalina explained the entire situation. Everything from the near-abduction in Vegas to the minutes before arriving at Lianne’s back door. Sometimes the words seemed incredible, impossible, as if she was describing an event that had happened to someone else. Lianne expressed shock, outrage, horror. All of the emotions Madalina had herself experienced. In the telling, Madalina relived each scenario until, by the end, her fingertips trembled as much as her voice did.

  “So, what are you going to do about this Cole guy? Does he know where to find you?” Lianne asked.

  “He has no idea where I am. I’m sure he realizes by now—if he’s still alive—that I didn’t leave on my own. But there are no clues to lead him here.”

  “You think these men, these agents, might have killed him?”

  Madalina felt nauseated by the thought of Cole lying dead in her parents’ house. “I have to at least accept that it’s a possibility. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up trying to find him. He’s tough, and he knows how to fight.”

  “I’ll help you look. And you know without me saying so that you’re welcome to crash here as long as you need to.”

  “Thanks. We’ll start searching after my shower.” Madalina raided a box of unopened undergarments destined for the boutique and took those, along with her clothes, into the bathroom.

  She spent exactly four minutes in the shower. Using a fluffy purple towel, she patted her skin dry afterward and wasted no time donning new clothes. The black riding pants were a little snug, but she got them buttoned and zipped without too much trouble. After sliding into a bra and a burgundy-colored shirt, she hijacked Lianne’s blow-dryer and used it on her hair until her scalp tingled and the strands were dry. Coming down off the adrenaline rush, she felt the effects of the accident more acutely. Mostly aches and soreness, maybe a bruise on her ankle. She’d been luckier in the accident than tackling the fence. The abrasion on her forearm and ribs hurt, but was nothing she couldn’t handle.

  Lianne had left a new pair of socks outside the door, on top of Madalina’s knee-high boots. The thick socks felt like heaven on Madalina’s aching feet. She left the boots outside in the hallway and padded into the living room.

  Curled on the love seat, Lianne studied the small dragon from different angles, pausing once to blow her nose before resuming her inspection.

  “I just don’t see it,” Lianne said. “I don’t know why anyone would want this thing unless it had nostalgia attached to it, like your grandpa passing it down to you.”

  Madalina crossed the living room to peer at the dragon. The beady red eye stared back. She’d examined the thing before, after finding it in the safe deposit box, and saw nothing new or exciting to make her think a trove of Chinese men would kill to have it.

  “I don’t either, Lianne. I have to be honest—I’m not sure that this dragon is what they’re after at all. What else they could want, I don’t know.” Leaving the dragon in Lianne’s care, Madalina went to look out the window. The rain still fell, as if it might never stop, making it seem a lot later in the afternoon than it actually was.

  She didn’t see anything that raised the hair on the back of her neck. Not satisfied, she passed through the kitchen to a back window and scanned the yard.

  The gate was closed, the yard empty of skulking bodies.

  After a moment Madalina said, “Can I borrow a pair of tennis shoes? I need something I can move quickly in. The boots were good for the weather, but they’re not made for vaulting fences and running long distances.”

  “Did you change your mind about searching for Cole?” Lianne asked.

  “Not at all. But if I’ve learned anything with all this, it’s that I need to be prepared to move fast at any given second. I don’t want to have to waste time finding sneakers if someone, God forbid, shows up at the door.” After a thoughtful pause, she added, “Actually, I’m not really sure I should be here. I know you’ve offered me shelter and I don’t have anywhere else to go right now, but I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you.”

  Lianne made a dismissive motion with her hand. “You’d do the same for me. In fact—you would insist that I stay. My name isn’t on the lease at the boutique, so the only way these people would find me is if they can track your cell-phone calls. Or if they’d been watching and following you, and if that was the case, they would have already shown up at the door. Check m
y closet for the tennis shoes. You can have any pair you want.”

  “Thanks.” Madalina realized Lianne was right. She would offer Lianne shelter, no matter the danger. When Lianne seemed reluctant to set the dragon on the end table, Madalina held out her hand. “Here, I’ll take it.”

  “While you’re in there, take some cash out of my jewelry box. Don’t argue,” Lianne said, placing the dragon in Madalina’s palm.

  “I can’t—”

  “You can, and you will. Just in case.”

  “All right. Remember, if anyone knocks, don’t answer. At this point, I think that’s the best way to handle it.” Madalina retreated to Lianne’s bedroom.

  She fetched a pair of tennis shoes and two hundred dollars from Lianne’s jewelry box. The rest of the room was all quilts and pretty wallpaper and an ornate headboard attached to a double bed. Madalina remembered picking up the headboard at a flea market with Lianne and spending two entire weekends sanding it down and painting it off-white. Then they’d added some distressed effects for extra character. As she drew the shoes on her feet, she marveled at how complicated her life had seemed then, trying to manage a full-time business and a few employees. It was nothing compared to being on the run from strangers who would do almost anything to pluck you out of your safe, cozy existence into the world of the unknown.

  She wondered as she pocketed the money if she would be the same after this. If “regular” life would seem boring and uneventful—and wasn’t that an odd thought. She would do backflips if she never saw the Chinese men again. All she wanted was peace and quiet and her life back to the routine she’d carved out over the last several years. She’d been driven and determined to make a success out of her own business. Meeting Lianne at an old secretarial job, she’d discovered someone as passionate about clothing as she was, and before long, they’d decided to go in on the store together. Success hadn’t come as easy as they’d hoped, but they worked hard and invested back into the company on a regular basis.