His Absolute Proposal: An Illicit Billionaire Love Story (Elise, #3) (14 page)

Maybe I was a little strange, but I was fine with it.

Anyways, we weren't in Lucent's apartment, nor sitting on his couch, and after peeking one eye open I realized we were in a car, driving.  Which...

"Oh," I said.  "Where are we?"

I decided I should give Lucent his hand back, but not before holding it tight one more time.  I touched my fingertips to his, seeing my smaller hands contrasting with his larger one, and then I squeezed his hand tight.  In mine.  And then against my breasts.  Lucent acted naughtier still by taking my breast in his hand and palming it, squeezing it on his own, then returning to what was probably much safer driving.

I mean, I understood it in a way, but I kind of didn't think I'd complain all that much if he just decided to randomly grope me while we were driving, you know?  Yes, yes, it wasn't safe, but... it seemed exciting.

I turned my eyes towards the crotch of his pants, becoming more curious, still.  Curiouser and curiouser, Miss Tanner.  I was like Alice, wondering just how far down the rabbit hole I would fall.  What, I thought, would it be like to give Lucent a blowjob while he was driving?  Was that a BDSM thing, or just a regular thing?  I thought it was probably just a regular thing, unless, of course, he commanded me to do it.

Which I didn't think he'd do, because he was driving and Lucent took driving very seriously.  This was good.  And safe.  I liked that he wanted to protect me, but I didn't know if I liked that this meant I probably couldn't give him a blowjob while we were driving.  I was somewhat conflicted.

Lucent laughed.  "You're not paying attention, are you?"

"What?  No, of course I was."

"Were you?" he asked.  "Where are we then, Miss Tanner?"

I glanced around, because there must be a sign or something telling me where we were, right?  Except, no, there wasn't.  We were driving on some small country highway, surrounded by woods on one side and a field on the other.  I could see train tracks in the distance, following parallel alongside the road, and then further away were more trees.

Finding no sign in front of us, or to the sides, I did the obvious thing—or what I thought was obvious at the time—and turned around to look behind us.  There was a car following behind us at a decent distance.  Nothing peculiar, or not quite, except I randomly happened to look more closely at the driver, and...

"Lucent, we have to go," I said, urgent panic rushing through me.  "Hurry, please.  We... we need to leave.  We need to go."

"What are you talking about?" he asked.  "What's wrong?"

"There's..."  How to explain this?"  "There's someone behind us," I said.

Oh, great job, Elise.  Yes, there's someone behind us.  While we're driving?  How could that happen!  People drove behind other people every day.  That wasn't this, though.  Oh no, not by any stretch.

Lucent came to the same assumption as I did, which was to say that we both probably thought I was crazy at the moment, but I knew I wasn't.  He was nice enough not to say anything, but the look in his eyes gave me pause.  More concern than worry, but still.

I took in a deep breath, trying to control my sudden rush of anxiety.

"Last night," I said.  "I was followed.  I think.  I don't know for sure, but when I went to get my purse from your car, I heard someone following me in the parking garage at Landseer Tower.  And then when I started walking faster, I think they kept following me.  That's why I screamed when you found me, because I thought you were them and they... they were..."

"It's alright," Lucent said.  "Take your time."

"They looked the same as the person we saw at Jessika and Asher's home," I said.  "He wore a hooded sweatshirt, or something like it, I think.  I was scared, Lucent.  I remember what he looked like, though.  I mean, I sort of do.  I..."

"It's fine," he said.  "I understand.  We're leaving.  If someone was following you, they won't be able to find you now.  It might have been nothing, but it's better to be safe than sorry."

"No, it's... Lucent, it's the same person.  I think it is.  Behind us.  They... how long have they been following us?"

Lucent blinked.  This seemed like one of those strange moments where I'd caught him completely off guard.  It didn't happen often, but it did happen sometimes, and...

"Are you sure?" he asked.  "They've been behind us for awhile, but there aren't many exits on this stretch of road.  It's generally a back route and quite isolated.  Nothing but small towns for miles."

I turned around again, risking a glance.  I wasn't exactly covert here, but I thought we both really needed to know what was going on at the moment.

I saw him, the same as I saw him the other day.  His eyes, intent, staring forward.  Not just on the road, no, but on us.  On me, now.  Our eyes locked and a faint grin spread across his face.  Just like the previous night, I saw him nodding, nodding, nodding, his head bobbing up and down to the sound of some imperceptible music.  Not altogether too strange at the moment, since he was in a car, but why had he done it the night before?

There were a million reasons why someone might be doing something like that, but the fact that this man and the other one were doing the exact same things, looking the exact same way, doing...

While I tried to puzzle through this, to figure out if it was just my imagination or if there really was something to this, the man reached behind him.  Towards the headrest, or that's what it looked like, but then he grabbed something, pulled it up...

"Yes," I said, whispered, nearly choking on the words.  "Lucent, that's him.  I'm sure of it."

I turned around fast just as the man driving behind us started to grin wickedly at me.  Before, when I saw him reaching back, he'd grabbed the hood of his sweatshirt and lifted it up and onto his head.  A sign?  Yes, possibly.  Probably, even.  I didn't know what he wanted to tell me, but none of it seemed good.

I'm following you.  I'm watching you.  You can't escape.  You will never escape.

And what?  Or... why?  What did he want?  Why was he here?

I wasn't alone now, though.  It didn't matter what he wanted.  Or why.  Nothing.  None of it.  I was here and he was there, and I had Lucent and the thing they wanted.  I had the portable hard drive in my purse, resting on the floor between my feet.  I reached down and grabbed it, then clutched it tight in my lap.  I wouldn't let anyone else have it.  They couldn't.  It was mine.

"Your seatbelt is buckled, of course?" Lucent asked me.  His right hand moved from the steering wheel to the stick shift, where he pressed a button quickly with his thumb.

"Yes," I said.  "Why?"

"I suppose you could say we're going to take the scenic route, Miss Tanner."

"Scenic route?" I asked.  "Um... Lucent, I don't think it's time to..."

I wasn't sure what happened until after it happened.  I still didn't know where we were.  I wasn't sure how long I'd slept for.  I didn't know a lot of things.

I just knew that I heard the screech of tires, an odd, sudden smell of something burning, and before I realized it we were no longer on a country highway but instead traveling down a narrow, dirt road.  Behind us, blazing up and covering our trail, was a cloud of dust, like smoke.

"Would you mind assisting me with something, Miss Tanner?" Lucent asked.

I tried to respond, but the car thumped heavily along the bumpy road, sending my teeth chattering.  It took me a second of nodding, but finally I managed to say, "Yes."

"Please remove the GPS from the dashboard," Lucent said; I did what he asked.  "Click through the menus so that it brings you to the destination screen.  We're going to change it."

"Change our destination?" I asked.

Lucent just nodded at me, staying focused on the road.  His hand moved along the shift stick, accelerating and decelerating us in a jumpy, awkward way.  I didn't realize why at first, because I thought we sort of just wanted to go as fast as possible, right?  But whatever Lucent was doing, it seemed to work.  Behind us, continuous and blinding, the cloud of dirt kept us somewhat hidden.  What with the bumpy road and the trees surrounding us on either side, it didn't seem like we could go much faster, either.

"This doesn't seem like very safe driving," I said, trying not to smile.

"We have airbags," Lucent said.

"Oh, right.  Of course.  How could I forget?"

He kept his eyes on the road, but scrunched up his nose and his brow, which I thought was basically to tell me that I could be quiet any time now.

"Can you change our destination yet?" he asked.

"I'm trying!" I said.

And I was.  Sort of.  It kept yelling at me.  I mean, it was just a GPS, so it wasn't actually yelling at me, but it continuously wanted to remind me that attempting to use a GPS while driving was unsafe behavior.  Yes, I know.  I know!  I tapped at it anyways, moving away from the warning screen, tap, tap, finally getting to where Lucent wanted me to be.

"Yes, alright," I said.  "Where are we going?"

He gave me a funny look.

"What?" I asked.  "Don't look at me like that."

He laughed and said, "Alright, put in this address."  And he named some place I'd never heard of, with a single digit street number, and some street that sounded like it belonged in an old country Western movie.

I tapped it all in, finding everything with relative ease.  There weren't a lot of options for this place, apparently.  Once I confirmed our new destination, the GPS beeped happily at me and told me it was recalculating our route.

"It's all set," I said.  "It's recalculating.  Do you want me to tell you the directions or turn up the sound on it?" I asked.

It only took a second, but the recalculations were finished now.

"No," Lucent said.  "Could you please unplug it now?  From the cigarette lighter or directly from the device itself.  Either way is fine, Miss Tanner."

"What?" I asked.  I didn't know why I asked him this, though, because I just pulled the plug out of the cigarette lighter anyways.

Lucent maneuvered away from the shift stick with his right hand so he could hold the wheel and handle one of the buttons on the car door instead.  Two seconds later, I found my window rolling down, with the fresh scent of the forest rushing inside, a faint dust from the dirt road following along with it.

"Now throw the GPS out the window," he said, shouting.

I stared at him like he was daft, because honestly at that very moment I thought Lucent was daft.  "What?" I asked.

He shouted again.  "Throw it out the window!"

After I'd unplugged the device, it started counting down at me, asking if I wanted to let it shut down or keep it running on battery power.  I didn't have time to ask Lucent about that, though.  He seemed rather adamant about me throwing it out the window.  I tapped the button to tell it to stay powered on by battery, then threw the thing out the window.  It smacked against a bush, then started falling to the ground.  I turned to watch it, but we were already too far past.

Lucent rolled my window back up with the buttons on his door and the rush of deafening forest air stopped, replaced again by the quiet sound of classical orchestra music.  I hadn't even realized it was playing before, and it was so quiet as to be easily missed, but now that it was the only sound I could hear, it seemed more than a bit odd.  We drove like that, silent except for the sound of a few violins accompanying a piano, and later on some flutes.

After a minute or so, I said, "Did you want me to keep the power on?  Or was I supposed to let it turn off like it usually does when you unplug it like that?"

"Please tell me you kept it running by battery," he said.

I really didn't like his tone.  I wasn't the crazy one here.  And I told him that.  "I'm not the crazy one here, Lucent.  You're driving like a maniac and yelling at me to throw the GPS out the window.  You know what?  They're going to charge you for that at the rental place.  How are we going to explain that?" I asked.  Mimicking us doing exactly that, I added, "Yes, excuse me Mr. Car Rental Man, we lost the GPS.  Lost it how, you ask?  Well, we were driving like maniacs down a dirt path in the middle of nowhere and Lucent told me to throw it out the window!  It's somewhere in the woods, I'm sure.  It's a GPS, so maybe you can... track... it..."

I realized what was going on with those last few words.  Lucent smirked, looking thoroughly amused, despite the fact that he was staring at dirt road and nothingness in front of us.  For good measure, because he deserved it, I slapped his arm.

"Yes," I said.  "I tapped the little button thing to make sure it stayed on."

"Good," he said.  "I assume that's how they were tracking us.  Either that, or they hacked into the destination satellite."

"How can someone even do that?" I asked.  "It's not like it's a computer."

"Not the same as a laptop or a desktop computer, no, but it works similarly nonetheless.  Transmissions can be intercepted.  In all likelihood, they didn't know our destination, and I made sure to put in a false one before we started, but changing it to something else is safer.  It's more likely they were tracking the GPS positioning, so they knew where we were and where we were going."

"Why'd you have me change the destination, then?  Couldn't I have just thrown it out the window right from the start?"

"Yes.  Probably.  It'll look more genuine, though.  If they find it, which I have no doubt they will, it'll appear like we were attempting to throw them off our trail by changing our destination before tossing the GPS.  My hopes are that they'll believe the first destination is real, and it will give us a little more time."

"More time?  Um..."

Because didn't we have plenty of time?  I guess they might still be following behind us, but the cloud of dirt seemed to put a good stop to that.  And by the looks of it, Lucent was about to bring us back onto a regular road any moment now.  Trees and dirt gave way to air, fields, and actual concrete.  Lucent did whatever manumatic transmission shift stick switch trip things to get us back up to heightened acceleration as soon as we hit real road again.  There wasn't anyone behind us after that from what I could see, either, so...