“You said you were an agent, right?” she repeated out loud. Oh God, she had told him about all of Clayton’s charity groups. What if he was the one who orchestrated the entire shooting? What if he had only pulled her to safety so he could get the information he wanted out of her?
Harley looked in the rearview and saw the fear spread across her face. Hadn’t they come to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to hurt her?
“I am an agent. Just not with the FBI. I work with a company called Hewitt and Hewitt. We work privately for the government, sort of like freelancers.” He glanced back again and saw relief replace the fear.
“It sounds like a law firm.” She covered her mouth with her hands and her eyes got wide.
Harley bit back the anger and tried to smile into the mirror. He knew the reaction was a direct result of the way Matthews had treated her. “That’s what I thought at first also.” He tried to put her mind at ease. “A friend of my dad’s runs it. After I had been there for a while I understood why they call it that. When you sound like you work for a law firm, people are surprisingly willing to hand over information.”
She smiled lightly and looked out the window and into the cloudy sky.
* * *
“HERE WE ARE,” he said, and pulled over in front of a large apartment building.
“Thank you,” she said, and started to open the door.
“Here.” Harley handed her a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “If you need anything, give me a call.”
“Will do.” She stepped from the car and hurried into her apartment building ready to wash the night’s events off her.
As soon as she heard the lock click behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief. The coffee scent she had put in her wax warmers filled her nose, and she stood for a moment, staring into the empty apartment. It still looked exactly the same as it had yesterday afternoon.
Her coffee cup still sat on the same place on the table next to the Self magazine she had been reading. How could everything still look the same when her entire world had changed? What was her next step? She knew she needed to contact the authorities to see about funeral arrangements. She needed to start notifying Clayton’s friends that he had passed and figure out how to handle his affairs.
“Just start with a shower,” she murmured to herself. A knock sounded on her door. Surely it wasn’t Harley; she hadn’t even told him what apartment she was in.
The pounding started again and Norah looked through the peephole. Two large men stood on the other side wearing dark suits.
“Open up, Norah, we know you’re in there. We just want to talk.”
“Who are you?”
“FBI.” The man held up a badge so she could see it. She opened the door slowly and he smiled at her. “Good afternoon, Miss McNamara. We would like to ask you a few questions.”
Alarms went off in her head. Something wasn’t right, and she could swear she had seen these men before. “Can I see your badge again?” she asked, and irritation flashed across his face.
“Look, Miss McNamara, this won’t take long.”
“Then I will come down to your office, we can talk then. I would like to shower and change now.” She started to shut the door, and the man who hadn’t spoken yet put his foot in the way.
She didn’t know much about FBI agents, but she was pretty sure they didn’t typically have gauged ears and neck tattoos.
“We could have done this the easy way.” They pushed into her apartment and she screamed.
* * *
HARLEY WAS JUST about to take a sip of coffee when he heard the scream. It was loud enough that he was pretty sure anyone nearby would have heard her. He pulled the gun from his holster and bolted up the stairs in the direction she had gone.
Another scream tore into the silent afternoon, and he rounded to head back towards where it had come from. Had they found her already? Damn, he was an idiot!
“Where is it?” A large man with a neck tattoo blocked the door while another even larger man gripped her by the hair and yelled at her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she insisted, and Harley felt his anger snap when the bastard smacked her.
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” he growled.
“Hey fuckers,” Harley said, and charged the man blocking the door. His mass alone was close to double Harley’s, and it took more strength than he would have thought to bring the bastard down. Once he had, he flipped around and pulled him into a chokehold. Once he was sure the man was unconscious, he started towards the man holding Norah.
“Let her go.”
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea.” Harley walked closer to Norah. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks were red and tear-stained. “Now let her go.” He pulled the gun from his holster. He would prefer not use it and alert anyone else nearby, but if it came down to Norah or this bastard, he had no problem pulling the trigger.
The man shoved her to the floor and she moved quickly to Harley’s side.
“We’re coming for her, Andrews.”
When Harley’s own eyes widened with surprise, the man laughed. “Yeah we know who you are. We know everything about you and your mother in, where is it? Oh yeah, Texas.”
Harley ignored his comment. He needed to focus on getting them out of there alive and before neck tattoo woke up.
“Give her to us and we won’t mess with either of you. Norah is the one we want.”
“Not a damn chance. We are leaving. If you so much as step out of this apartment before we’re gone, I’ll put a bullet in you. If you go anywhere near my mother, well, then, so help you, because she won’t be as nice as I was.” Harley backed towards the door along with Norah and then pulled her as quickly as he could down the steps.
Once they were safely in his car, Harley put his gun back in his holster and peeled away from the curb. How could he have been so stupid! He had almost gotten Norah killed, and for what? On the off chance she knew something?
“What had they been asking you for?” Anger flared in his voice, and he didn’t bother trying to hide it.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, and brought her knees up to her chest.
“Dammit, Norah, focus! They wanted something, what could it have been?”
“I don’t know!” she yelled back. “I have no idea what the fuck is going on! My fiancé is dead and my entire world has turned upside down in the matter of twenty-four hours, and I have no fucking clue why!”
Harley pulled into the parking lot of a gas station and pulled his phone out. He had turned it off and taken the battery out last night, so it took him a moment to get it working.
He dialed up the only number he knew better than his own and smiled when his mom answered on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Ma, it’s me.”
“Harley, what number are you calling me from?”
“A friend’s. Listen, I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Of course, what is it?”
“You know that savings account information I gave you?”
“Yes. Is everything all right, Harley?”
“Yeah, I just want you to take a trip for me.”
“Harley, what’s wrong?”
“Mom, please just listen to me.”
“I will once you tell me the truth.”
“I’m in a bind with work. A job went bad and I need to go into hiding for a little while.”