Page 6

If this was any other moment in the entirety of my life, I would feel completely awkward about what I was doing. However, given the circumstances, it felt like a necessity. Here I was, standing at the window of my motel room, peeping through a crack between the curtain and the windowpane, watching a black sedan complete its second lap around the parking lot.

It was 6.20ish in the morning and to say this was weird as hell was an understatement. There were plenty of parking spaces available and this vehicle kept driving around as if it was casing the place. I tried to figure out what the make of the car was, but given that the sun was still coming up, it made it extremely difficult.

From where I was standing, I couldn’t see any plates to identify where the vehicle was from. The tinted windows made it hard to see who was driving the car. Watching the vehicle start on its third circuit in front of the place I was currently staying at did little to settle the pit in my stomach. While I didn’t want to think that this was a sign for me, deep down I knew that it was. After having been at this motel for several days, I knew for the most part who was coming and going and what their cars looked like. And the only reason I knew that is because there weren’t that many people staying in rooms here.

My heart slammed into my chest as the car slowed down while passing by the motel’s front office, then accelerated out of the parking lot. There was no way this was a coincidence. It wasn’t a lost tourist or a local going for a joyride. I let the curtain fall back into place and stood still for a moment, as I practiced a breathing technique my old therapist recommended I use when my brain was racing. Four counts in and then four counts out.

I knew I sounded paranoid. Hell, at this point, I probably was. But there was no doubt in my mind that those vehicles were a sign that Cain knew exactly where I was. I moved away from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. This mattress didn’t sag here the way it did in the middle, and I’d learned within the first hour which parts of this room could bear weight without making a sound. I pressed my palms flat against my thighs and felt myself shake for several seconds before I got my body under control. It wasn’t fear because I’d filed that emotion under unhelpful and locked it away days ago. It was my body recognizing that things had shifted once more and I needed to figure out what to do next.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to think. The sedan had completed three circuits. Three. Not one, not two, but three deliberate loops around a motel parking lot at 6.20 in the morning. No sane person would be driving around this parking lot at this time of day. They probably could have found some place that was completely abandoned unless they had a specific reason for being here or were practicing their driving skills. I doubted it was the latter and that thought was what finally pushed me to do something right then and there.

I grabbed a burner phone from the nightstand. This was the second I’d purchased and I thought it might be a good idea to have another one just in case the first got lost or was being tracked. I dialed Cassie’s number because I knew it by heart after having to recite it twenty million times when I pretended to be her while on a call with customer service for our electricity provider. Who knew it would come in handy when I would need to call her from a motel in Delaware in the middle of nowhere, where I was hiding out after attempting to murder a billionaire? Not me, I thought as my fingers shook slightly as I put the phone to my ear.

The phone rang three times before going to voicemail and I was irritated and relieved at the same time. It wasn’t hard to believe this would happen since I was calling her from a burner phone with an unknown number versus my real cellphone.

Her voice soon filled the tiny speaker and I swore hearing it made me smile for the first time in what felt like ages.

“You’ve reached Cassie, but I can’t come to the phone. You know what to do.”

I waited a beat before I did what I knew to do. “Hey, it’s me.” I kept my voice low and steady to not give anything away. “Just wanted to let you know I won’t be able to make it to your birthday dinner next week. Something’s come up at work.”

I paused as I weighed my next words carefully. “Don’t go by my apartment to water the orchid. I already took care of it.” I hung up without another thought.

The voicemail made absolutely no sense on the surface. Cassie’s birthday had already passed and she and I both knew there were no flowers in my condo because I couldn’t keep them alive to save my own life. But I hoped my coded response was enough to alert her that I was okay, especially since she hadn’t heard from me in several days. It should also let her know that something was wrong and that she shouldn’t go to my place to check it out.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he was already tracking her as well. This whole exercise might be pointless, if he already had eyes on her, but it was something I had to at least try to do.

This wasn’t the best plan, but it was also a way to hopefully keep her from doing something that could get her into trouble. About two years ago, I’d missed a brunch date with her due to a forty-hour client crisis where I’d been on the phone off and on for hours and forgot to text her to keep her in the loop about what was going on. By the time I’d gotten everything under control, I went over to Cassie’s place to apologize and found out that she’d called my office, my father, and had called several area hospitals to see if I might have ended up at one of them. Yes, it was a bit dramatic given what had actually happened, but I was grateful that someone actually gave a damn about me to the point that they would do all of that. And I would do the same for her.

We would need to talk about a better system when I got back, but for now this was the only choice I had besides blurting out everything on the phone where it might make it more likely Cain could intercept it. Not that he couldn’t get this message, but I thought alerting her just the same was a bigger deal now just in case I didn’t make it out of this alive.

That thought weighed on my entire body and I knew I wasn’t overexaggerating. I’d seen him kill someone in cold blood without breaking a sweat. Who’s to say I might not have shared the same fate as Bradley in the alleyway while an expensive gala was going on? Then again, he could have killed me then because I was a witness. Instead, he fucked me while a dying man’s life fled his eyes.

Even after everything that had happened since then, the memory of that night made my skin crawl. I’d been a witness to murder, and instead of running, I’d let him take me against the wall while blood pooled on the ground just feet away. The power he wielded over me in that moment was something I couldn’t explain, even to myself.

I wouldn’t be surprised if deep down it was one of the reasons why I reacted the way I did in his office that now put me in the predicament I was in. I shoved those thoughts aside because they were taking up valuable brain power that I needed to use to decide my next move.

I turned the burner phone over in my palm twice, then popped the back open to grab the SIM card. I cracked the piece of plastic with both hands and a satisfying click greeted me when I achieved my goal. I dropped both halves into the trash can beside the nightstand and buried them under a crumpled napkin from yesterday’s breakfast. I then set the phone itself on top of the pile. Someone might fish it out eventually, but I didn’t care.

I took a deep breath and stood up. My shoulders were pretty much raised to my ears due to the stress living in my body. When I walked over to the window and slightly shifted the curtain, I noticed that the parking lot was empty now except for the usual vehicles I’d catalogued when I’d booked my room.

The black sedan was gone, but its absence didn’t comfort me. If anything, it confirmed what I already suspected. I was willing to bet all of the money in my bank account that Cain didn’t send someone to find me. He sent someone to let me know I’d been found.

With that in mind, what was my next move? Try to get off the East Coast? Flee the country? Probably should have attempted that days ago, but I didn’t have my passport with me so the attempt was futile. What else was there to do?

I could try to go back home.

At this point, did it really matter if the black sedan doing loops around the parking lot was connected to Cain in some way? What my focus needed to be on was not only figuring out what I was doing next, but it would be advantageous to anticipate what he planned to do as well.

I pulled the curtain closed once more, making sure that no one could see in. Then, I grabbed the first burner phone I’d bought and began typing another note to myself. This one was titled, “How Cain Operates.” Beneath it, I typed:

He doesn’t move without multiple contingencies in place. (See how he moves in the business world.)

Patience is strategy, not passivity. (See how long he was tracking you for proof.)

He prefers psychological pressure that could eventually lead to direct confrontation.

Has no problem committing murder to get what he wants.