Page 95 of The Belle and the Biker

"The hell with it!" he screams. He whips a pistol out of his pocket and points it at me. "I'll shoot you right here, you bitch! Right in the fucking face!"

My stomach turns to water. Keep stalling, keep stalling… I climb to my feet as slowly as I dare.

The radio crackles again. "Someone thought they saw his car on Mulberry Lane."

His eyes bug out with panic. Looking around, I realize that's where we are. "Move!" He jabs the gun at me. "Move, move, move! Get in the fucking trunk!"

I let him move me to the car trunk, stumbling and half falling several times to slow him down. I climb in quickly and flop down on my back, but when he goes to slam the car trunk, I kick my legs up against the trunk door, and it snaps up and hits him in the face. He staggers back with a scream of pain. The gun goes off, but the shot is wild.

"You bitch!" He drops his gun on the hard dirt road, and I leap out of the trunk. As he scrabbles, I kick it out of his way.

Then I hear the most beautiful sound in the world—the sound of a motorcycle. No, several motorcycles.

"No!" Harold howls. "No, no, no!"

Crash roars up to us on his Harley. Behind him is Tank, a motorcycle cop, and a big SUV. My father and his hunting buddies pile out of the SUV.

"We've found her!" I hear the cry go up.

Harold tries to crawl away. Crash and my father swarm Harold, who squeals in a pitch so high that I can't believe it came from a human. They're hitting him, punching him, and it takes several men to pull them off Harold before they kill him.

I hear an odd buzzing sound overhead and realize someone's sent a drone up.

There are more and more cars pulling up down the road.

For me.

They all came for me.

CHAPTER28

Savannah

Three days later,my left arm is in a sling, and I still ache all over, but I've insisted on going to the reading of the will in the Asheville office of Burnham and Meyers, LLC. It used to be Burnham, Smythe, and Meyers, but Smythe is in jail now and in the process of being disbarred. He was the oily little bastard who hid my great-great-grandfather's letter from me and almost had me killed.

Or rather, my possible great-great-grandfather. I, my parents, and several interested parties from Sugar Hill are gathered in the office for the reading of the will and also, the results of a DNA test. Crash has come for moral support.

There are so many interested parties because it turns out that many of the Harkwells were getting a free ride. The big houses they live in? They didn't own them. They were held in a trust created by Jebediah Harkwell. Their fat monthly allowances? Also distributed by that trust. The investment company they work for? The Jebediah Harkwell Trust has always owned a majority position on the board.

My great-aunt is from a separate branch of the family, so she won't be affected by this. Some of the other Harkwells have been smart over the years and amassed their fortunes, and others will be in for a rude awakening.

So the tension in the conference room is relatively high. There are twenty people sitting around the table, and their eyes are burning holes in me.

"Are you sure you're up for this?" Crash asks.

"I'm fine," I insist. He pats my good arm, and I wince in pain. "Totally fine."

"They should have let me kill him." Crash's eyes gleam dangerously.

I smile. Even smiling hurts. Turns out that jumping out of a moving vehicle onto the hard frozen ground is bad for your entire body. "Yeah, the police generally frown on that whole vigilante justice thing. I mean, he's in jail. Think of Harold Harkwell in jail. He's not going to do well there."

Crash snorts in contempt. "No, he won't."

My mother and father are at the far end of the table, sitting across from each other. Turns out that when my father tried to talk to me in Bitter End the other day, he wanted to let me know that he'd separated from my mother. He was still living in the house because they wanted to keep it quiet for as long as possible. My mother won't even look at me, but with Crash by my side and my father finally sticking up for himself and me, I find it doesn't hurt too badly.

Harold Harkwell's entire family is also there. They're hoping the DNA will say that I'm not the heir because even if Harold's going to prison for life, he'd still have all the money, and they'd have access to it.

Jacob Burnham sweeps into the room and sits at the head of the table. He's got a magnificent head of snowy white hair, and his navy suit is pressed so sharply the creases could be used as a weapon.

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