Page 94 of The Belle and the Biker

Tears fill my eyes and pour down my face, and I hiccup a sob. My father's face swims in front of me. He was trying to tell me something the other day. Whatever it was, I should have listened.

I was going to forgive Crash, and I was going to take him back. He'll never know.

The car swerves again. We've just taken another turn. Harold's driving like a psycho.

Crash's face crowds my father's face out of my vision, and his mouth is moving. I peer into the darkness and try to read his lips, and I think he's saying: Get off your ass and do something.

He's right. And if Tawny were here, she'd smack me upside the head for panicking.

I know how to escape from a car trunk. I've taken self-defense classes. I feel around in the car and find the trunk-release latch and yank on it, and then the trunk springs up, and sunlight pours in. I suck in a breath of ice-cold air and heave myself out of the car onto a dirt road.

I land with an astonishingly painful thud, which knocks the wind out of me. The ground is cold; the air is cold; everything's spinning…

Move.

My whole body aches. I can barely see, and everything on me hurts, but I start crawling toward the underbrush on the side of the road. Up ahead of me, the car stops and then reverses just as I roll off the road and out of the way. Harold flings open the driver's-side door and leaps out.

I stand up and struggle to run, but my legs wobble, and I fall to my knees. Harold grabs me by the hair and tries to haul me to my feet.

I twist around and bite his hand.

"You bitch!" He lets go of me and shakes his hand in pain.

My head is throbbing. "Harold, you can't get away with this!" I groan. "You're too freaking stupid. You couldn't even hire a competent assassin. Where the hell did you even get him from, anyway? You hired him online, didn't you?"

That whole New York thing was a setup. The poor hipster was shot to death because he got in the way of a rage-a-holic hired to kill me. And Harold must have been communicating with him the whole time, and that's how the guy kept finding me.

"Get up!" he hisses.

"The mugger." It suddenly occurs to me. "The guy who tried to steal my purse a week before the shooter killed that poor bystander. He wasn't a mugger, was he? That was the assassin too. You hired the world's most incompetent hitman."

"I don't need an assassin. You know what they say. If you want something done right, do it yourself."

Yeah, but whoever said that didn't know Harold.

I'm desperately stalling for time, praying someone will drive by and see us. Someone might have spotted my broken-down car by now—the car Harold must have sabotaged.

I look up at him looming over me. "Harold. Why did you hit on me?"

"I was covering all of my bases. Because I'm smart like that." He glares at me, defying me to argue with him. "I figured that if we were married, your money would be mine anyway."

"Married?" I splutter in shock. "You and me?"

"Why not?" His face flames bright red. "What's wrong with me? Huh? What's wrong with me?" His voice rises to a scream, and he kicks at me so hard that it throws him off balance, and almost trips. He staggers back, fists balled. He looks as if he's about to cry. He has to realize that everything's unraveling.

"How did your hit man keep finding me?"

"I put bugs in your aunt's house so I could hear every time she talked to you. Duh."

I hear a crackling sound and then a voice. Deputy Willis. "The car was spotted on Thornbush Road two minutes ago!"

Squinting, I realize Harold has a police radio tucked in his jacket pocket.

"They're on to you," I tell him. "You'll never get away with it. They must have found my car. And they're looking for your car. I disappear, and you suddenly have scratches on your face and a bite mark on your hand? They'll know it was you!"

"They won't be able to prove shit! When I get my money, I'll have the best lawyer in the fucking country!"

He grabs my arm and tries to haul me to my feet, and I go limp. I'm too heavy. Ha! One of the many advantages of being a larger woman. The skinny little beanpole can't move me.

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