Unstoppable: Truth is Unstoppable (Truth and Love Series) (18 page)

VICTORIA

I have no choice. I let go of the ledge. My head goes beneath the soapy water. I squeeze my eyes shut but they burn anyway. Rough hands pick me up. I gasp. This is not like before, the first time they washed me. I am not shocked. I struggle. My fingers curl around the edge of the tub, but the basin is slimy and slippery and I can't keep my grip. I beg.

If I'm clean, I have to get dressed.

If I'm clean, I go to trial.

If I'm clean, I die.

I struggle.

I open my mouth.

The water swallows my scream
.

DEREK

I stifle a scream as I land in a tall shrub and roll to the grass. My elbow hits hard and I curl myself into a tight ball. My head feels like it's going to pop because I can't breathe or scream. My ankle is definitely twisted or sprained. I didn't hear a crunch though, so I'm hoping to God it's not broken, though I know it very well could be fractured.

I look up. William and the man he was talking to are standing at the window and, because the light is on behind them, I can only see the silhouette of them. The other guy is about William's height, but that's about all I can tell. 

My leg and left hand are throbbing. I grab the edge of my t-shirt with my bloody hand and squeeze it in a tight ball to staunch some of the blood. I'm still not breathing right, but I force myself to keep quiet.

The guy beside William says, “Maybe someone dropped their phone earlier? Or someone just walked by?”

“Go outside,” he says. “Check the grounds.”

The guy leaves without any more instruction. That's my cue. I wait until William leaves the window and I force myself up. I clamp my teeth down so hard that I can hear them grind against each other. I gingerly but quickly move out from the shrubs. I half-limp, half-run from the house, constantly looking over my shoulder for the other guy. I don't see him. I pick up the pace, jumping at this point because it's so painful to put weight on my ankle. I’m nowhere near my car, having purposely parked it far away just in case some neighbor happened to look out their window, and I curse a blue streak at myself.

“Shit,” I mutter as a wave of pain nearly doubles me over. But then I hear a noise.  As I see what it is, I swear again. The man from William’s house is at the top of the street.

DEREK

I crouch down fast—too fast. Black dots appear in my vision as excruciating pain shoots up my leg. I clamp my teeth together to keep a scream at bay. Quick as I can, I duck behind a pickup truck. I peer over it. The guy is closer now, looks left and right, then begins to cross the street to my side.

Shit.

Just as he steps from the curb, I roll myself beneath the truck. I hear his footsteps scrape the asphalt as he comes closer. And that’s when I realize my second problem. The guy is coming from the crest of the hill. He'll be able to see me lying beneath the truck.

I grab a bar above my head and brace my feet against the body. I hoist myself up, clenching my teeth to keep from screaming. The gash in my arm seems to widen and tear with the pressure it takes to keep myself up, and my leg feels like the bones are grinding to dust as I have to push them against the truck to keep still. But I can't let go. Too late now.

The guy is right beside me. 

I see his feet and a bit of his pants as he walks past the truck. My whole body is a live wire as I wait for him to suddenly drop to the ground and say
Gotcha
! I readjust my hold. My abs are on fire. I focus on breathing as softly and lightly as I can.

A cell phone rings. Blessedly, not mine. I hear a guy say, “No, no one’s out here. I checked around the house. I’m on the street now. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. Okay.”

I hold my breath as he leans against the bed of the truck, almost causing me to lose my footing. 

Please, please, please. Walk away. Go. Walk away
.

Blood is racing, rushing, down my arm. It begins to puddle beneath me...and meander right to the curb where the guy is standing. My eyes widen as I watch it creep closer and closer to his shoes. I stop breathing. Oh shit. A thousand maybes run through my mind. Maybe the asphalt is dark enough and he won’t notice. Maybe he’ll go away now. Maybe he’ll notice, find me, beat me to a pulp, and throw me in a cell right next to Victoria. Maybe he won’t even bother.  Maybe he’ll just take me back to William’s so he can throttle me to death.

My body is on fire, shaking and shuddering. But I can't let go. If he does start walking away and for some reason looks back, I won't have time to hoist myself up again. The time or the strength. A spasm in my neck makes me want to throw up. 

An eternity passes. Finally, the guy sighs. Finally, he stands up straight. Finally, he walks away, and he doesn't look back.

<><><>

I take my cell phone from my pocket. My voice is a whisper. “Sabrina, it's me.”

“Hey. I just tried to call you.”

“I know.” I hiss and grimace and bite down a yell. Everything is killing me. “Can you pick me up? I'm in a bit of trouble.”

“Trouble? Won’t the car start?”

“No, it’s not car trouble. I sort of fell from a bit of a distance and, uh, anyway, can you come pick me up?”

“Okay. Be there in twenty.”

I nod and take a tremulous breath. I wipe the sweat from my face. “Sabrina, see if you can make it ten.”

VICTORIA

I don’t smell anymore. My skin is rubbed red. The women dump the water in the corner of the cell and the pile of hay flattens to the ground. They leave without looking back.

My nails are black as I dig through the mud. A worm gets stuck to my skin. Squishing noises fill the cell.

Finally, I find it.

DEREK

Sabrina is on the floor in front of me, my ankle in her hands. It's bruised and swollen and ugly—exactly what I had expected it would look like. 

“Don't worry. It's not broken, just sprained.”

She grimaces. “Oh God. Do you need a splint?”

“I have a brace. But I need you to help me set it.”

“What do I do?”

Now it’s my turn to make a face. “Take my ankle in both hands. When I count to three, pull as hard as you can.”

“Oh God.” Sabrina bows her head and breathes deep once, twice. “Derek, oh my God.  Please don't ask me to do that.”

“Come on. You'll be fine.” When she shakes her head, I tease, “You can break Tim Sharky’s arm but you can't help me reset my ankle?”

“I didn't break his arm. And besides, that was different. I wanted to hurt him. I don't want to hurt you. And I know that this will.”

“It'll hurt me more if I don't deal with it now. Come on, Sabrina. We can do this.” I brace myself and breathe out. “On three. One. Two. Wait, wait, wait!”

“What?” she yells.

“Just…hold on.” I shut my eyes. I breathe in deep several times, mentally bracing myself, telling the part of me that really does not want her to do this that she must do this, because it’ll be far worse and much more painful if she doesn’t. “Okay.” I open my eyes and lick my dry lips, mustering as much determination as I can. “One. Two. Three!”

She pulls hard in one direction while I pull in another. I try to stifle a scream, but a strangled gasp comes out anyway. I shudder from the pain. But I fight through it. I put the brace on as fast as possible. When I have it tightened, I finally breathe a sigh of relief. It still hurts like hell, but the pain has lessened. It's about a thousand instead of a million watts of horror. I immediately stack ice bags all over it.

Sabrina rises from the floor and sits across from me. “Oh my God. How bad did that hurt?”

“On a scale of one to out-of-body-experience, take a guess.”

“Yeah. Alright, so tell me what happened.”

I start from the beginning, working on the cuts on my arm and hand while I talk. Sabrina listens without interruption. She doesn't take her eyes off me. My palm needs stitches, and it’s awkward and takes me a million years, but I finally sew myself up. I clean out my wounds, grimacing, gritting my teeth—there are actually times I shiver because it hurts so bad—but I get the story out. When I am done, Sabrina doesn't say a word. I lean back. We wait in, well, not comfortable silence. I’m still sore as hell. But it’s not an awkward silence. 

Finally, she says, “So what's our next step?”

“A part of me wants to go back there and get those devices. Then again, I'm worried if I do that and there is something there, the Corps will think we did that, that we tampered somehow. I'd bet my life that that's what William would say. Then he'd probably have me arrested and shot.”

“He sounds charming.” She sits beside me with a sigh. “So I assume I’ll go back later for Lucas’s car?”

I nod. “Just in case anyone saw me.” I put my stuff back in my kit. “God, I can't believe I've been so blind. Here I am looking for this ghost of a gunman and all along, we’ve had William right in front of us. I mean, think about it. He’s set to inherit billions now that his father is dead. He's the president of a major corporation. He had everything to gain from his father's death.”

“But I thought William had his own money.”

“He does. Which is why I never even thought about him. It’s like, why? What could he have to gain?”

“Well…it’s a good question.”

“And the answer is obvious. When it comes to money, people always want more.” I wince as a sharp pain runs up my leg. “He hired someone to kill his father.”

Sabrina doesn't say anything. I don't know if it's because she's trying to digest the information, review it, or is trying to believe it. I mean, a part of me still can’t believe it. I liked it better when I thought some anonymous, crazy lunatic was behind it all. But I can’t ignore what I’ve seen and heard.

“I’m so naïve,” I mutter. “I can't believe I didn't even consider him until now. I just thought, I dunno. I thought family bonds were…” I breathe out hard and shake my head. “Like I said, naïve.”

“No, not naïve. You just thought he was a good guy.”

“Yeah well, now I’m thinking he’s the perfect murderer. I mean, here he is with the money, means, and motive to kill his father. And yet, no one questions him. No one even thinks twice about that. Instead, they’re all zooming in on Victoria, who has absolutely no means or motive. Somehow, William orchestrated that. I’m not sure how, but he did.”

“Does William hate Victoria that much?”

“The relationship is stressed, to say the least.”

“Yeah, but enough to set her up for murder?”

I run my hand through my hair. “He’s calculating. He’s cold. And if it's a choice between himself or her—" I shrug.

“So what do we do then? You said he has the Corps in his back pocket. How do we convince anyone to listen to us?”

“We give them evidence.”

“So far, there is none when it comes to William.”

I rub my eyes. When I open them, black dots dance in my vision. “There’s got to be something. He doesn’t live in a bubble. He’s got to have emails, or bank deposits, or withdrawals, or
something. I mean, the one guy said that ten million was being transferred. There would be a record of that, right? I say if we find that record, we can find the guy who’s receiving it, and we can prove that William hired him to kill his father.”

“You’re assuming that’s what the money was for.”

“Come on, Sabrina. Ten million? He’s transferring another ten million more? He’s paying someone a lot of money for a reason, and I’m thinking it’s not because the guy cleaned his car.”

Sabrina concedes my points with a cant of her head. Then: “What about bugs? I have these sound bugs that can pick up around 300 square feet of sound. And they’re like, shaped like common objects too, so he won’t even notice. We can plant one in his work, his house, maybe even his car. See who he’s talking to.”

“Nah. We’d only get his half of the conversation. And who knows if he’d say anything valuable in the next day.”

“God, I can’t believe we only have a day to do this.”

I adjust an icepack on my ankle. “If we’re going to do this, and actually find something useful, we need to go big.”

“What do you mean?”

A plan is forming in my head, and I rest my chin on my palm as I think it through. It’s not a perfect plan, it’s not even a very good plan. But it’s the best I can come up with.

“That guy who gave you that bug, the one I put in the Steel Tower. He still here?”

“Um, I think so.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Absolutely. What’s up?”

“I have an idea.” I stand and test my ankle. It’s sore, beyond sore. I wince with even the slightest bit of weight. “But I’ll need some help.”