“Imagine watching the most important thing in your life walk away.” Roy raised his voice. “When I find out what that thing is, you’ll know exactly how it feels.”
Don’t engage him. Keep walking. The backs of his ears burned. His teeth ground. He held his breath until Charlee was safely inside the armored vehicle. Then he turned and looked Roy in the eye. “She’s not a thing, you fucking prick.”
42
She’s not a thing. Jay’s words resonated, loosening the knot coiled in Charlee’s belly. She wanted to crawl into his lap and envelop him with comfort. But the tic in his cheek and his wooden posture suggested he might need more than a handless hug.
Nathan followed Jay in, putting Jay in the middle, and Tony climbed in the front seat. When the last door slammed shut, the knot unclenched.
She met Nathan’s eyes over Jay’s slumped head and saw her relief reflected there. “So you disarmed that Craig in the parking lot, I assume?”
He held the gun on his lap, his eyes glassy and locked on his fingers as clicked the magazine in and out, checked the safety, went back to the magazine. “Had to time it right.” He glanced at her. “I didn’t want to force Roy’s hand.”
“Nothing forces him to do anything.” Recalling the things Roy had done to her produced a dull ache in her chest, but watching Nathan avert his eyes at the memories sucked the air from her lungs, strangling her.
As Colson merged the SUV into traffic, the gravity of Roy’s threat knocked her in the gut. She turned to look out the rear window. At the center of the standoff between his men and Jay’s remaining bodyguards, Roy stared directly at her as if he could see through the dark tint.
A shiver penetrated deep in her bones. On its heels was the incessant hum for vengeance. Did she just walk away from her only opportunity to kill him?
If she had the penthouse camera footage, she might’ve stood a chance against him in a courtroom. But during Nathan’s undercover sting, he hadn’t been able to crack the firewalls to copy the recordings or pinpoint where they were stored. The photos he’d snapped of her injuries the night he rescued her didn’t incriminate Roy as the abuser. Without proof in court, it would’ve been her word against a powerful billionaire and his infinite team of lawyers.
If Jay’s video cameras captured Roy forcing her into the SUV, maybe they finally had something. Something they could use. She lowered her finger from her mouth, the nail ripped to the quick. What a disgusting habit. “I know you made a verbal agreement back there, but what’s stopping us from using your recordings against him?”
Tony glanced over her shoulder and shared a look with Jay. He lowered his gaze. His fists clenched, flexed, shook, and clenched again.
Charlee felt his silence. Why wouldn’t he look at her? She rubbed her temples as his non-answer ripened to realization. “You were bluffing.”
“Yeah.” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth.
The remorse in his voice pained her. She leaned forward, tried to snag his gaze. “You know what? We didn’t run away from him. We walked.”
He cut his eyes to her.
“I’ve never walked away from Roy Oxford. You gave me that.” Just thinking about it made her blood sing through her veins. She glanced up and found the corner of Nathan’s lip twitching. Yeah, she was certain he shared her sentiment.
She returned her attention to Jay. “Roy knows where I’m at, who I’m with, and what I’m doing. Which means he’s lamenting the fact he can’t just pluck me off the street anymore.” She grinned. “Not with the parade of media following you. And not with the level of security you employ. The cameras were a bluff, but the threat is still there. He won’t risk it.”
“Charlee’s right.” Nathan holstered the gun and leaned back. “We’ve been running so hard for so long, we’ve been in nonstop defense mode. Now that we don’t have to run, we can finally focus on our offense.”
Her head swam. “Since he can no longer force us physically, he’ll try to outmaneuver us. He’ll blackmail your PI business, Nathan.” She looked at Jay. “And he’ll dismantle your band. He won’t be above using your loved ones as leverage to force me to him.”
Jay stared at something on the floorboard, his tone flat. “I don’t have loved ones outside of the band.”
She would ask him about that when there wasn’t an audience. She followed his gaze to…a nasal spray bottle? She bent to pick it up, and his body jerked to stillness. His eyes locked on the bottle in her hand, and he leaned toward it even as his expression seemed to draw away. What the hell? She turned it over. The label was worn and peeling.
“This isn’t allergy spray, is it?”
He snatched it from her grip, eyes hard, and dropped it over Tony’s shoulder and into her lap. “Get rid of this.”