“What the fuck are you doing here?” he growled.
“What are you doing here?” Ashlyn countered, suddenly pissed. She knew she should be scared, and she was, but her anger overcame everything else at the moment. “James told me he fired you.”
“He did. I came by to apologize, and to ask him to reconsider,” Aiden said.
Ashlyn didn’t believe a word he was saying. The living area was in as much disarray as the kitchen. It even looked as if the cushions had been sliced open with a knife! The stuffing was scattered all over the floor.
It hit her then—Aiden was looking for James’s money. The cash he’d given to her just the day before for safekeeping. The older man had obviously known what he was doing by entrusting his life savings to her. Aiden wasn’t going to find the cash he was so obviously searching for.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then both jumped when the phone in Ashlyn’s hand rang.
“Fuck!” Aiden stalked toward her surprisingly fast. He grabbed her arm in an iron-tight grip and squeezed. Hard. “Don’t answer that.”
Looking down, Ashlyn saw Slate’s name on the screen. “It’s my boyfriend. If I don’t answer it, he’s going to know something’s wrong. I always answer his calls.”
“No,” Aiden growled as he reached for her other hand.
Ashlyn held on to her phone with a death grip. She knew it was her link to the outside world. To help. She had no idea where James was, or what Aiden had done to him, but she had a feeling it was nothing good.
And now that she was face-to-face with Aiden, she suspected he was on something. His pupils were tiny in his eyes and his cheeks were flushed. Even as he tried to get her phone, he kept looking around nervously, as if expecting someone else to appear out of nowhere. Not exactly an idle threat, since she’d done just that.
“Give me your goddamn phone!” Aiden shouted, prying it out of her hand. He pulled her into the living room and flung her down onto James’s favorite chair. The cushion was missing, but Ashlyn barely noticed as she kept her eyes locked on Aiden.
He glared down at the phone. “What’s your password?”
Ashlyn pressed her lips together. She wasn’t giving this asshole the password to her phone.
Aiden took two steps forward, leaned over her, and hissed, “Give me the password or I’ll fucking kill you!”
“Three, two, one, four, five, six,” she said immediately. It hit her at that moment just how precarious her situation was. Aiden was desperate and backed into a corner. He’d done something to James, was in the process of robbing him, and now she was a witness. This wasn’t good. Not good at all.
Aiden unlocked her phone and began to type.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Answering your fucking boyfriend,” he spat out.
Ashlyn thought about the tracking app for the first time. Slate would know where she was if he looked at it. But she’d already told him where she was going in her earlier text. So he’d have no reason to think anything was wrong if he saw her location.
Shit. She was in big trouble—and she had no idea what to do about it.
“Where’s James?” she asked quietly.
“He’s fine.”
“Where is he?” she asked again.
“He’s sleeping,” Aiden said as he scowled at her phone once more, then threw it onto one of the shelves of a bookcase near Ashlyn. She stared at it for a moment. If Aiden got distracted, and she moved fast enough, she could grab it and dial 9-1-1. Or call Slate.
“Don’t even think about it,” Aiden said. “You won’t make it. I would’ve broken the damn thing but I need it to work.”
Ashlyn couldn’t help but ask, “Why?”
“Because I need a patsy,” Aiden said. He went to a table near the front door and grabbed something. He walked back toward her, spinning the object in his hand…and if Ashlyn had thought she was scared before, now she was terrified.
The object in his hand was a gun. Aiden having it made an already bad situation downright deadly.
“You’re my patsy,” he repeated, when Ashlyn didn’t respond to his last statement. “Your phone records will show that you were here. Neighbors will have seen your car. You drugged James, ransacked his place, then left. The cops’ll be all over your ass…and I won’t even be a thought in their head.”
“Aiden, you don’t—” she started, but he laughed, cutting off her words.
“I do have to do this,” he told her. “You don’t get it! But it doesn’t matter. Once I find his stash, we’ll be on our way. I’ll take care of you and be set for a good long while.”
Ashlyn didn’t even want to think about what “take care of you” might entail. She also wasn’t going to say a damn word about his search for James’s money being futile. The longer he searched, and the longer they were there, the better the chance Slate would figure out something was wrong and come looking for her.
Ashlyn had no doubt whatsoever that her overly protective boyfriend would eventually come. She had no idea what Aiden had said in the text he’d sent, but Slate was smart. He’d figure out it wasn’t her and come to check on her. She knew that as well as she knew her name. She just hoped she’d still be there when he showed up.
“What? No comment?” Aiden sneered.
Ashlyn simply shook her head.
“Good. I’m sick of hearing you talk anyway. Sit your ass there and be good,” Aiden ordered, pointing the gun at her head.
Ashlyn froze. She’d never looked down the barrel of a gun before and wasn’t enjoying the experience. She gripped the arms of James’s chair tightly and did her best to stay calm. Slate would come, she just had to be smart until he showed up.
Aiden stared at her for a second over the sights of the pistol, then laughed. He shoved the gun in the front waistband of his jeans and said, “Sit. Stay. Good dog.” Then he smirked and resumed his search for James’s money. Money he’d never find.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Slate frowned down at his phone, reading the text from Ashlyn. She hadn’t answered his call, which was somewhat surprising. He couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t picked up when he called. It might not be too surprising if she was in the middle of a conversation with James, even though that had never stopped her in the past. But it was the text that convinced him something wasn’t right.
Ashlyn: bsy cnt talk will cu soon I love you
Again, she’d never been too busy to talk to him. But that wasn’t what had the hair on the back of Slate’s neck standing straight up.
Ashlyn didn’t abbreviate words when she texted. Ever. It was a small thing, and there was always the chance she was distracted and had done so this time for brevity. But Slate didn’t think so.
He checked the tracker app once more and saw that she was at James’s house. At least her phone was.
He was moving before he’d thought about what he was doing.
Slate needed to head over…just to make sure everything was all right. If he was overreacting, so be it. Ashlyn would complain that he was being overprotective and he needed to tone it down, and he’d apologize. But if he wasn’t overreacting…