Bad Boy of Wall Street: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance (20 page)

I couldn't believe my eyes. There, in the doorway to her house, stood Diana! The little old lady wore a grim expression - and her gnarled, arthritic hands were wrapped around that double-barreled shotgun that she used as a walking stick, both barrels smoking as they pointed towards Hook!

"Don't you dare," Diana hissed as she stepped forward to stand over Hook, her face transformed into a mask of furious, righteous anger. "Don't you dare think of laying a hand on my son!"

On the floor, Hook groaned, but didn't make any effort to move. He was alive, at least - not that I particularly cared about whether he lived or died right now.

"Oh my god." The words came from Rob, still sitting duct-taped to the chair and staring, wide-eyed, at his grandmother. "Granny?"

Diana, meanwhile, took a step forward, and then poked me with the shotgun's barrel. "Dear, would you mind going and picking up that crowbar?" she asked me, sounding weirdly polite for having just shot a man. "It always takes me a few minutes to remember how to reload this."

"Uh, yeah," I said, my brain still sputtering and failing to put any coherent thoughts together. I walked over and picked up the crowbar from where Hook had dropped it, wrapping both hands around it and telling myself that, if the hitman moved, I'd hit him in the head like a batter swinging at a baseball.

"Granny!" Rob yelled out again. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Why, saving your life, I do believe," Diana answered, giving Rob a sweet little grandmotherly smile. "Dear me, what have you gotten yourself into?"

"It wasn't my fault-" Rob stopped abruptly as he caught himself. "Granny, you always told me that thing wasn't loaded!"

"Well, it was just loaded with rock salt," Diana answered, as if this was perfectly acceptable for an old lady to tote around. "Stings like the dickens, but it's not fatal. Ah, there we go!" The gun popped open at the breech, and Diana dumped the two empty shotgun shells out onto her floor. "Now, I think I've got some more in my purse..."

Still strapped to the chair, Rob bit his lip, looking as if he couldn't decide whether to start laughing or angrily yelling at his grandmother. I quickly ducked forward and picked up Hook's dropped knife from the ground, and went over to start cutting Rob free.

The duct tape was sticky and clung to the blade, but Hook had kept his weapon sharp, and I managed to saw through the bindings to free one of Rob's arms. Before I could start on the other, however, he reached over and took the knife from me. "Go watch over him, make sure that he doesn't try to get away."

I nodded and approached Hook, who was now groaning, but still laying out on the floor. I prodded him with the crowbar, and he groaned again, but he didn't appear to be ready to get up and try and fight his way out of here.

As I looked down at the big man, still needing to tell myself that he wasn't about to come lunging up and attack me again, Rob kept on sawing away at the duct tape that held him too the chair. He straightened back up after cutting his legs free just as Diana closed the shotgun again with a loud click as the weapon cocked.

"Let me at him again!" she called out, and once again, I heard that iron ring of command in her voice. For that moment that she burst in through the door, firing both barrels of the gun into Hook, she hadn't seemed at all like the kind-hearted little old lady I'd come to know over the last week or two.

Instead, she'd appeared like an avenging angel, unstoppable and terrifying. Now, as she hoisted the shotgun in her hands and took a threatening step forward towards Hook, I saw glimpses of that battle angel appear again.

Rob pulled himself free of the chair, groaning as he peeled the last pieces of tape off from where they still clung to his chest, arms, and legs. "Ooh," he hissed as he tore one strip free of his arm, taking a fair amount of arm hair off along with it. "That stings."

"What do we do now?" I asked, still standing over Hook and holding the crowbar tightly in both hands.

Instead of answering me, Rob advanced, slipping one foot under Hook and rolling him over. The hitman's eyes were open, although they squeezed shut into winces of pain as he landed on his salt-lacerated back.

"That duct tape rolled off somewhere," Rob said to me, although his eyes remained on Hook. "Find it, and we'll tie him up. That should hold him until the police get here."

Hook, thankfully, didn't put up any more trouble. Maybe it was getting beat by us again, or just the fact that his downfall had come at the hands of an eighty-something year old woman wielding an ancient double-barreled shotgun, but the fight had fled him. He let us manhandle him onto the couch and bind his arms with duct tape.

The dispatcher on the other end of the 911 call at first didn't seem to believe me when I insisted that there was an assassin in the house, but we'd knocked him out and tied him up. She eventually agreed to dispatch a couple of police cars, although I suspected that she might be telling the officers that there was a chance that they'd just encounter a crazy woman, rather than an actual criminal.

Ten minutes later, flashing lights and sirens showed up outside of Diana's cottage, and a couple of uniformed cops came in and joined the crowd growing inside Rob's grandmother's little living room. We'd definitely need to clean the carpet, I thought blankly as I looked around at the new arrivals. All of these strangers marching in were tracking mud and dirt everywhere, right down into the fibers.

A long series of questions and sitting around came next. The police officers needed to speak with each of us individually, and they insisted on taking Diana's shotgun away with them, despite her cries of how she needed it, and she was just a poor old woman all alone, with no way to defend herself. Diana made a valiant effort to argue for her gun to remain with her, until the police officer she was arguing with finally lost his patience and threatened to bring her down to the station, as well.

"Now, none of you have any plans to go anywhere for the next couple of days, right?" the officer finally asked, as his partner led Hook outside to the waiting squad car.

The policeman probably wasn't expecting all of us to speak up. I tried to explain how I needed to get back to the city to write up my story, while Rob insisted that he had to go straight to the SEC and present this new information on how his boss was the true culprit at fault for the case of insider trading. Even Diana added her voice to the hubbub, although she was mainly just complaining about how this better not keep her from missing her weekly bingo nights, or else she'd be talking with her good friend the retired former police commissioner.

"Enough, enough!" the policeman finally shouted over all of us, holding both his hands up. "Look, all of you are people of interest in whatever happened tonight, and we'll probably have more follow-up questions for all of you. So whatever plans you had for the next couple days? Cancel them."

We tried to argue, but the man wasn't having any of it. "No exceptions!" he shouted, turning and retreating out through the front door before we could attempt to sway his mind.

With the hitman and the police officers both gone from the little cottage, the whole place felt smaller, quieter. Diana glanced at the two of us, noting Rob's stony expression and my own look of shell-shocked exhaustion.

"I think that I'll go turn in to bed," she said, moving past us. "After all, this has been quite the exciting day - and it sounds like the two of you have some more talking to do. I'll leave you to it. There's tea and biscuits in the kitchen, if you'd like."

And off she bustled, leaving Rob and I alone in the living room.

Rob didn't seem to know what to say at first, but he took one look at my face and led me by hand over to the couch. "You look like you're about to topple over if you don't sit down," he said, as I dropped down thankfully onto the cushions.

I nodded. "I can't even take in what just happened," I admitted. "This doesn't even feel like real life! What happened?"

He took a moment to consider that answer, sitting down next to me. "I think we won," he finally said, glancing up at me, his blue eyes holding my own.

Next thing that I knew, I was leaning forward, held in his arms as my chest shook, my breathing grew heavy, and he patted me gently on the back. For a long time, Rob just held me. Neither of us spoke, but we took comfort in each other's arms.

Chapter Twenty-Four

*

Finally, after I'd managed to recover to some semblance of normal breathing, I sat up a little, looking up into Rob's face as he sat next to me. "Now what?" I asked, not even sure what the question really addressed.

He just sat there, looking at me - and then his eyes tracked past me. I turned to see what he was looking at, as he reached forward and picked up his laptop from where it had ended up on the floor.

"Now, I think we just need to rest and recover," he said, glancing down at the laptop for a minute. I saw his fingers hover over the keys, and I guessed that he wanted to start digging around, to see about investigating everything that Chad Cartmann had been up to on his computer, but he forced himself to close the lid of the laptop instead and set it aside. "We got lucky, and we should take some time to relax."

"Under house arrest, practically," I pointed out, but he just shrugged.

"I was being told to stick around here and not go anywhere before you arrived," he pointed out mildly. "Staying a little longer won't make much of a difference. And you can stick around and get started on your story."

He was right, of course. But Rob kept on looking at me, holding my eyes with his own icy blue ones. I waited, sensing that he wanted to say something else.

Finally, he spoke up. "Why did you come back?" he asked softly.

That wasn't the question that I'd been expecting, and I started a little. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you heard that I was in trouble, that Hook, that hitman, had me captured," he said, gesturing over to where the chair still stood that had held him. "Why didn't you call the police? Why did you risk your life by coming back?"

I shook my head, not sure how to answer, not even sure what the real answer was. "Because you were in trouble, and I was the only one who could get you out," I said, but he shook his head.

"You could have called the police. You came rushing into danger for me, and you didn't leave when I told you to get out of here, to go and save yourself. Why?"

I looked back at him, my fingers twitching, my knees bumping together slightly. I felt an an answer welling up inside of me, carried on the crest of a wave of emotion, but I knew that saying it would be a mistake. If I said the words inside my head, I'd be opening myself up, exposing myself completely, making myself vulnerable.

"Because you needed me," I said softly, looking back into those eyes, knowing that he would pull the truth out of me, that I couldn't keep up any walls against him.

Rob looked back at me for another minute, one which felt like it stretched onward into an infinity. He didn't say anything, but I could feel him measuring me, his thoughts examining me, turning me around to make sense of me, seeing where I fit in his mind.

And then, just as he started to open his mouth to say something, I felt my breath coming faster, more shallowly.

"Oh god," I gasped out, trying to regain control of my panicking diaphragm.

Rob straightened up, his eyes full of concern. "What's going on? Are you alright?"

"I think it's just all hitting me," I gasped out, feeling faint. The room spun crazily around me, and the whole living room suddenly felt too small. Unsteadily, I pushed up to my feet. I needed to get out of here, someplace where there was enough room for me to breathe. "I just need to get someplace more open..."

As I stood up, Rob rose up with me, supporting my arm. "Here. Outside. The back yard." He led me through the kitchen and out into the cooler night air, where I managed to suck in a deep breath.

The darkness of the night outside helped calm me down, and I found myself once again at least able to breathe. I kept on walking forward, however, moving away from the house, from where I'd nearly lost fingers, maybe even more. Where Rob had nearly ended up dead at the hands of a crazed hitman.

Rob just moved along with me, not saying anything or trying to redirect me. His arm on my elbow gently guided me between the tall grassy outcrops, and I recognized that we were following the path to the beach, the same place where he'd first told me about his situation. Yes, the beach would be a good place for me to catch my breath.

When we arrived, the dirt beneath my feet shifting to softer sand, I only managed to advance a few steps before I dropped down to sit down on the cool, slightly damp sand beneath me. After a moment, Rob plopped down beside me.

"Better?" he asked after a minute.

I nodded, focusing just on breathing.

After a minute or two of silence, however, I cleared my throat. "Do you remember when you first brought me out here?" I asked, turning and looking over at Rob's dark shape, sitting beside me.

He nodded. "This was where I first told you my side of the story, and you believed me and agreed to help."

"And then I told you about my life, and you agreed that I could write the story of this whole thing," I continued.