Fair Game: A Football Romance (13 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Adam

That whore set my guesthouse on fire trying to kill Amethyst. She’s going to regret the day she dug her gold-digging claws into me.

The tires spray snow behind the car when Grant peels out of the driveway. I glance out the back window and watch thick black smoke billow into the sky behind my house.

The smell of smoke sticks to our clothes and hair. I need to get Ame somewhere safe, but where?

If this fire was all Cherry’s doing, we have nothing to worry about. She’ll run far and wide to avoid my wrath. She can’t hide forever though and when she shows her face again, I’m going to choke the life out of her scrawny, drug-addicted body.

Belongings can be replaced. I have money, and I’m not worried about that. But lives can’t, and no one is going to keep me from Amethyst or Harper again.

I need to find out where she stashed Harper. She probably dumped her off with one of her trashy friends. How the hell did I get drunk enough to fuck her anyway? I love Harper, but her mother is a piece of work.

“Adam, I know you’re upset, really upset, and I get it, but you’re scaring me.”

My hearing is muffled by a buzzing in the background of my thoughts that is distracting me. I can’t concentrate but when I look over at her frightened face, I work hard to focus.

“I’ll be okay,” I say, because I can’t think of anything better. I can’t say, “no worries, we’re just going to find a heroin whore so I can snap her neck.” I don’t think she’d take that well.

I’m boiling over with anger from the inside out. Yeah, women get jealous, it happens all the time, but burning down a house with someone in it? Cherry’s cold-hearted and calculating, but this seems a little much even for her.

Maybe it’s Vinnie. He doesn’t fit the description of the person outside the house last night, but he could have easily hired someone to do his dirty work. I haven’t paid him this month and I don’t intend to ever again. I said the blackmailing has to stop, and I mean it.

Wrapped in my thoughts, I’m surprised when I feel Ame’s warm hand slip into mine, and she gives it a reassuring squeeze. I look down when it registers that she’s reaching out to me on her own with no flirty innuendoes or accidental falls into my lap.
She
took
my
hand.

I look at her, really look at her now. She’s scared to death.

I turn and stare out the window, lifting her hand to my lips to kiss her soft knuckles.

“Where are we going?”

“I need to talk to Cherry and find out if she did this.”

“And if she did?”

“If she did, then she’s going to pay for it.”

“Pay for it how?”

I don’t answer this question because I’m not sure I know the answer. I really want to strangle her, but then I’d be no good to Harper. One parent dead and another in prison would fuck her up more than living with Cherry.

“Grant, where are we going?”

Grant takes a left turn where he should take a right if we were going to Cherry’s neighborhood, so I ask him too. “Yeah, Grant, where the hell are we going?”

Grant pulls over to the shoulder and stretches out his arm out to the passenger headrest to help him turn in his seat.

“You hired me to keep her safe, didn’t you?”

“I did, and my guesthouse recently burned to the ground.”

“Wait, safe from what?” Ame asks.

“I have a sort of safe house a couple of miles away. We can drop her off and go try to find Cherry.”

Grant conveniently slides right over my sarcastic remark because he suggested the safe house idea from the beginning, but I refused. I wanted her close enough that I could keep tabs on her but far enough to give her some independence, hence the guesthouse.

“Hold on, a safe house? What the hell, is this Chicago PD or something?”

She’s looking back and forth between Grant and I expectantly.

“Well? Either of you want to explain what is really going on?”

“I do, I really do, but we need to find Cherry before she skips town, if she hasn’t already. If you’ll go with Grant, I promise to come back and explain all of this.”

“Absolutely not. Explain this to me now or I’m getting out.”

The click of every lock in the car echoes throughout the car and Ame’s eyes widen. Grant has locked her in, and this Rover has no lock controls in the rear seats. I thought that was odd the first time I rode with him. Now I know well it comes in handy when you’re detaining someone.

“You did not just lock me in.”

“Yes, I did, it’s for your own safety.”

“You keep talking about my safety. Who exactly are you keeping me safe from? Cherry?”

“Maybe,” Grant says with raised brows, daring her to go on. Ame isn’t the kind of girl to back down, and she loves a dare.

Before Grant or I can blink, she’s catapulted herself into the front seat and has her hand on the door handle. Grant easily wraps his arm around her waist and holds her in place between the front seats. Not aware that Amethyst has a brown belt in Krav Maga, he isn’t ready for her lightning-fast elbow jab followed by a backward knuckle punch to his nose.

Ame’s out of the passenger door and running down the street at top speed before he realizes his ex-FBI ass has been handed to him by a girl.

He glances at me, and I can’t help but smile. That’s my girl. I don’t want her running away of course, but watching her handle herself is a major turn on.

Grant throws the Rover into drive and catches up to her in seconds. I roll down my window and grimace when the icy air hits my face going five miles an hour alongside her.

“Ame, stop! I’ll tell you what you want to know. Just stop and get back into the car.”

She slows to a jog, never looking in my direction.

“Right now, you’ll tell me when I get into the car? No tricks, Adam, or I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”

“Right now, swear.” She stops to lean forward with her hands on her knees, gulping in the cold air, and I pat the side of the car so Grant will stop.

“Get in, you’re freezing.”

I watch as she takes her time catching her breath before getting into the car, never making eye contact.

Grant is pinching his nose to keep it from bleeding, but he pulls away from the curb as soon as the door closes.

“Hey, you said you’d tell me right now. Let me out.”

“No, we need to keep moving, but I’ll talk while we drive.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and blows out an impatient breath.

“Start talking.”

I take a deep breath and blow it out, unsure of where to start. It’s not a quick or easy story to tell, but I can probably come up with an abridged version.

“I’m going to condense this to save time, okay? We need to talk about it in length later.” She nods and I continue.

“Ame, I lied to you about why I left you with no goodbye. I mean the league did want me to break all ties with home and focus on the job, but they never forced me and they never insisted I become a playboy.” Her head snaps toward me, and her eyes flash with anger and fill with tears.

Fuck. I knew this was a bad idea. I wanted to have time to explain it gently, in a way so that she wouldn’t hurt like she is right now.

Her lips press together in a straight line but she says nothing, so I go on.

“I never told you about my dad’s gambling problem growing up. It was embarrassing and mom didn’t think it was anybody else’s business. I know you wondered where my paychecks always went. You were a saint for never prying; most girlfriends would have pitched a fit about all the homemade gifts and cheap dates.

“Anyway, it was bad when I was in high school, but it got much worse when I left for college. There was no one around to chastise him for losing money. By the time I graduated, he owed millions to a loan shark who was associated with the Mafia.”

“Oh my God,” Ame says.

“Yeah, so the day I graduated, after the get-together we had in the restaurant, four guys grabbed me in the parking lot and held me in a van. They informed me in no uncertain terms that I was going to pay back my dad’s debt or everyone I knew was going to die a slow and painful death, especially you.”

“You didn’t notify the police?”

“No, they were following you. They had pictures of where you’d been and who you were with for weeks. They told me one word to the cops and you were dead.”

Ame looks at Grant and back to me. “Isn’t he a cop?”

“Ex-FBI actually, now he works privately.”

“So you left for Virginia because they blackmailed you?”

“Yes.”

“And they were going to kill me and your family?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Why didn’t you give me a signal or something? Told me you were in trouble. Maybe I could have helped or told someone or I don’t know, done something?”

“They made me call whoever was closest to signing me and tell them I was accepting their offer. Then they took me straight to the airport. I was in Virginia meeting with Coach the next morning. They knew I was the only way they would get paid back the money Dad owed them.”

“So you paid them?”

“Yes, I finished settling his debt in two years, but they kept threatening to kill you and frame me for illegal drug use and rape. I’ve been paying them a fortune for six years.”

“What’s different now? Why did you send for me if they’re still blackmailing you?”

This is the part I really didn’t want to tell her, not that all of it isn’t horrible, but realizing you’ve invited a murder into your life and your home is going to be traumatizing at best.

“I hired Grant to help me get me out of this mess, and they found out. The guy you’ve been seeing for the past month, Vinnie? He’s the blackmailer. He’s been sending me pictures and videos of the two of you together.”

Her eyes close and she shakes her head back and forth. She’s probably trying to absorb the concept that someone she trusted and allowed into her world could have killed her.

“Vinnie? No, you must be mistaken. He’s a nice guy, he’s never been inappropriate or violent, and I’m sure we haven’t taken any videos.”

The first stage of emotional shock is denial.

“He was on his best behavior. He wants me to pay. And I’m sure he has a recording device hidden somewhere on him. It’s him, we’re sure of it.”

“I hardly ever date, he was so patient and understanding. I thought, I thought … Well, what the hell does it matter what I thought, obviously I’m a terrible judge of character!” she yells, throwing up her hands.

“You couldn’t have known. He’s good at what he does. But I couldn’t let him get any closer to you.”

“So you got yourself injured on purpose?” Her tone rises with every word and by the time she ends her sentence, she’s near hysteria.

“No, of course not.”

Coach has been complaining for weeks that I’m not focused. I’ll get to the line and the plays would vanish from my mind. Maybe I was subconsciously sabotaging myself to get her to Virginia.

“So what the hell did happen?”

“Adam had plans to sneak you out of St. Louis within days of his injury. We were setting it all up but then,” Grant gestures to my leg, “then this happened and it was like fate.”

“I refused surgery until I knew you were coming.”

“So you let me date a killer while you figured out a plan to extradite me from St. Louis?”

“We had somebody watching you all the time and like Grant said, we were coming, but we had to be sure Vinnie wasn’t suspicious.”

Her hands fly to cover her ears, “Stop, enough, don’t tell me any more. Take me wherever I’m safe from your psycho criminals.”

I glance at Grant, and he’s already turning around and putting the Rover into gear. It’s a risk, but I pull her against my side and kiss the top of her head. Respecting her request not to say any more, I hold her quietly until Grant turns off the road onto a long driveway. This is his house. He told me he has a ‘safe room’ when I met him, but it’s more like a safe apartment in the basement of his house.

“This is Grant’s house,” I say with my mouth against her hair. “He has secure living quarters in his basement, and you’ll be safe here.”

She tilts her face up to mine. “You mean we will be safe here. You’re not leaving me here alone. If you go after Cherry, you’re going to hurt her and from what you’ve told me, it sounds like this is Vinnie, not Cherry.”

“She’s right, Adam, this smells like him. Have you tried to call Cherry again?” Grant asks.

“No, she always answers her phone when I call. In three years, she’s never let it go to voicemail. That makes her suspect #1 to me.”

“Try once more before we go looking for her,” Grant says.

Amethyst moves away, and I ache for the warmth and security of her body. It’s been a long time since she allowed me to comfort her. I’ve thought about this more times than I can count.

She points at the phone in my hand and I press Cherry’s name at the top of the recently called list. It rings, and rings, and finally it goes to voicemail. That’s it, a big red neon guilty sign flashes in my mind. Grant glances at me through the rearview mirror right before he pulls into a three-car garage attached to his house.