Page 71 of Until You

The thought eats at me and pushes me to head upstairs to our quarters where a very select few are allowed to enter.

Just as I reach the top of the stairs, a phone rings in our bedroom. A ring I’ve never heard before. I move toward it, toward the cell phone sitting on the edge of my nightstand—right next to my cell phone.

I glance around as if this is some kind of practical joke. But the only proof that anyone has been in my room is the open balcony doors and its curtains billowing in the ocean breeze.

If I wasn’t already on edge, now I’m on edge and paranoid.

With trembling hands, I pick up the cell phone and answer it. “Hello?”

“Blood is on your hands.” The voice is deep and baritone, and his words have the hair standing up on the back of my neck.

“Who is this?” I whisper-yell as I look over my shoulder toward the hallway. No one is there.

He chuckles, and I focus on its sound as I try to steady my heartbeat. “All three of them dead, and you did nothing to stop them?” He tsks. “Did you help hide the bodies? Weigh them down so they became fish food? What about the drugs? Did you know you just transported five million in cocaine via that fancy yacht of yours?”

“Who. Is. This?” The words burn in my throat, and my mind races.

“You’re in a world of trouble, Mrs. Makani.”

Tears spill as my world turns over again for the second time in a few days. This cell phone. How did it get in my bedroom? Who put it here? Who am I talking to?

“Your silence tells me you already know that.” A pregnant pause where my pulse is pounding in my ears is the only thing I hear. “There is a way to save yourself. To get out of the shitstorm you just landed in . . . or have you always known? Are you an accomplice to so much more?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I eek out in an unsteady voice and wipe the tears off my cheeks.

“Yes, you do. The question you need to ask yourself is: who is more important? You? Kaleo? The men who died?”

“Everything okay?” I whip my gaze toward where Rangi is standing at the top of the landing, his eyes loaded with curiosity. Does he see my cell on the nightstand? Does he suspect something?

“Yes. Fine. It’s . . . it’s just one of my students.” Don’t over-explain. “She needs some personal advice on how to deal with another instructor.”

He holds my gaze for a beat longer before nodding subtly and walking away.

“You there?” I ask when I’m met with silence.

“Interesting. You lied for me. That means you’re scared. That means you want to do the right thing.”

“What do you want?”

“You have what I need, and I have what you need.”

“And what’s that?”

“A way out. Immunity. Protection.” I can practically feel this mystery man’s smirk when he pauses. “I’ll be in touch.”

The call ends, and I sit down on my bed and wonder what in the fuck is going on.

“The question you need to ask yourself is who is more important? You? Kaleo? The men who died?”

How the hell did he know how to reach me?

Is there really a way to be free?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Tennyson

“So you two moved in together?” Bobbi Jo smiles like the cat that ate the canary. “Well, that was quick. And to think you two were hiding this right under our noses all this time.”