Joker in the Pack (Blackwood UK #1)

Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

I SCRAMBLED TO the nightstand and grabbed my phone. Who should I call? The police?

Living in London, I wouldn’t have hesitated to punch in 999, but out in the sticks, where was the nearest police station? I had no idea. Last time I needed help, Graham had taken over an hour to arrive, and he’d been next to useless when he did.

That left Tate or Nye. Tate lived twenty minutes away, and Nye… I had no idea.

Proximity won out.

“You’re through to the voicemail of Tate Palmer. I’m not available to take your call right now…”

Oh, hell. Why didn’t he wake up when the phone rang?

“Tate, it’s Olivia. Can you call me urgently?” I whispered as another creak came from downstairs.

One option left, and Nye answered faster than Sophie did.

“I think there’s someone in the house.”

He was all business. “Whereabouts are you?”

“In my bedroom.”

“Is the door locked?”

“It doesn’t have a lock.”

“Fuck. Okay, I want you to drag the heaviest thing you can manage up against it. That’s the bed, right?”

“Hold on. I’ll try.”

“I’m not going to hang up, but I need to get on the other line and send the nearest team to you ASAP. Just try and breathe, okay?”

All very well for him to say—he wasn’t the one about to get attacked and murdered in their own home. I shooed Twiglet off the bed and tried to push it over to the door, recalling belatedly how it had taken three of us to get it into the bedroom in the first place. A thunk came from downstairs as I found superhuman strength and slowly slid the thing across the worn carpet. Breathe? I was panting by the time it nudged against the door.

“Have you done it?” Nye’s faint voice came from the phone I’d dropped on the chest of drawers.

“Yes, I’ve moved the bed.”

“Now, do you have any kind of weapon up there?”

I thought longingly of the poker snugly back in its rightful place next to the fire. For the first time ever, I cursed my obsession with tidiness.

“I don’t think so.”

“Nothing heavy? Or a can of hairspray? Deodorant?”

Hairspray! Maddie had left her can of super-hold here after she and Dave dropped me off the other day. I snatched it off the dressing table under the window and clutched it to my chest.

“I have hairspray.”

“Well done, babe. The patrol’s five minutes out. You just need to hold on until then.”

Five minutes. Just one song. A cup of filter coffee. Sex with Edward. It didn’t seem like long on a normal day, but when I was a sitting duck with a madman after me, every second stretched into infinity.

Footfalls sounded on the stairs, soft and steady, and I heard a muffled expletive as the intruder hit the noisy ninth step and the creak echoed through the house.

“He’s upstairs!” I whispered to Nye.

“Just breathe, babe. My guys are on their way, I promise.”

Steps tracked across the landing, and slowly, so slowly, the handle on the bedroom door began to turn. The visitor had come straight to my room, no hesitation. He’d been in the house before, and he knew exactly where he was going tonight.

“Nye, he’s here.”

A dark gap opened up around the edge of the door, and a black-gloved hand reached inside. The crack was wide enough for Twiglet to dash through when I screamed, but the solid wood jammed against the bed before a human could fit through. The man didn’t bother to muffle his swearing this time.

“Open up, bitch.”

I couldn’t even open my mouth to reply, let alone the door.

Then I heard the most glorious sounds in the world—the roar of an engine followed by the crunch of gravel as the patrol car sped down the drive outside.

“You’re going to regret this,” the man outside my door shouted, then ran down the stairs. The back door bounced hard against the frame as he left in a hurry.

Car doors slammed outside, and the yelling that followed grew quieter as the chase went through my garden and into the woods beyond. I finally managed to heed Nye’s instruction to take in air, huge gulping breaths that turned into helpless tears.

“I think he’s gone,” I told Nye, speaking between sobs.

“I’m on my way, babe. I’m in the car, and I’ll be there as soon as I can. You don’t open the door for anyone but me.”

“Okay.”

The phone slid from my grasp and hit the floor, and Twiglet slunk back in and licked my face with his sandpaper-like tongue. I petted him, needing something to do with my hands other than biting my nails.

It seemed like forever before Nye arrived, and I didn’t move from my position wedged against the wall until I heard his voice outside the door.

“Liv, it’s Nye. Can you open up?”

I struggled to my feet, but the bed wouldn’t move no matter what I did. How on earth did I manage to shift it earlier?

“I-I-I can’t move the bed.”

“Not even a little?”

I tried again. Nothing. My adrenaline had subsided, leaving me drained. “It just won’t.”

Visions of starving to death in Aunt Ellie’s bedroom flashed through my mind, with nothing but a crackly television for company. Perhaps Nye could send Twiglet in with food, or better still, brandy, like one of those St. Bernard dogs in the Alps.

“Can you open the window?” Nye asked.

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

Thankfully, nobody had painted over the catch, and a minute after I pushed the window wide, Nye climbed into my bedroom. At the sight of him, my trembles became uncontrollable shudders, and then the tears started again, much to my embarrassment.

He pulled me to him and wrapped me up in his arms. “Shh, it’s okay.”

In my cocoon of safety, I wept against his chest, leaving a nice damp patch.

“I’m sorry about your shirt.”

“I don’t give a shit about the shirt. I’m more worried about you.”

“I’ll be okay,” I lied.

Rather than letting me go, he held me tighter and stroked my hair as I began shivering again.

“I should have put a car out there full-time,” he muttered. “Babe, I’m so sorry. I should have foreseen this.”

“How could you?” I leaned back enough to see his face, and his eyes swam with torment. “Nobody’s ever come while I’m here before.”

“I shouldn’t have taken that chance.”

“You’ve already done more to help me than anybody else.” A shout came from downstairs, and I looked towards the door. “Did they catch him?”

“I don’t know. I came straight for you, so I haven’t spoken to the others yet.”

“C-c-can you find out?”

He dropped a kiss on my hair, then let me go. A part of me tore away and went with him as he strode across the room and shoved the bed out of the way as if it weighed nothing.

“Coming?”

He held out his hand, and I hurried over to take it. My lifeline.

Downstairs, the living room was packed with people, all talking amongst themselves. Nine men plus a dog. Twiglet took one look at our four-legged guest and leapt on top of the shelves, hissing.

“Well?” Nye asked.

Everyone turned to face him, and one man stepped forward. They all wore matching uniforms—black with a shield logo on the breast pocket.

“The upshot is, we lost him,” the spokesman for the group said.

“We tracked him through the woods, but he got in a vehicle on the far side,” the guy with the dog added.

“We’ve got photos of the tyre tracks, and we’ll fingerprint the house.”

I shook my head. “There’s no point—he was wearing gloves.”

Nye’s grip tightened, cutting off my circulation. “You saw him?”

“Only his hand. He was right outside the bedroom door when the first car arrived.”

Nye’s mouth set in a hard line, and I was glad someone else was on the receiving end of his fury.

“Did he say anything?”

“Not much. ‘Open up, bitch,’ and when the men arrived, he shouted that I was going to regret this as he ran off.”

“That’s it. You’re not staying here any longer.”

I snatched my hand out of his. “Yes, I am. This is my home.”

Nye’s tone softened. “Babe, there’s a lunatic out there with a grudge against you.”

“And if I move out, he’ll have won. That’s what he wants. So I’m staying.”

“I’ve never met anyone as stubborn as you.”

Nye stomped off, and the front door slammed shut behind him. Marvellous. Now I’d managed to upset the man who’d dropped everything to help me.

“Am I crazy?” I asked the nearest black-clad ninja.

He shrugged, which pretty much gave me my answer.

Should I bow to Nye’s wishes and stay with Maddie? I couldn’t deny the thought of a proper night’s sleep was appealing. I was on the verge of going after him to grovel when he came back carrying a duffle bag.

“What’s that for?”

“I’m staying with you.” He turned to ninja number one. “I need a car out there twenty-four seven. Two men. The locks are getting changed on Thursday, and I want CCTV installed as well.”

The guy saluted. “Consider it done.”

As the men filed out, I was still stuck on the “staying with you” part. “You can’t stay here.”

“Watch me.” He unzipped the hold-all and shook out a sleeping bag.

“But what about work?”

“Babe, the people at work tend to be fairly understanding about this type of thing, seeing as it’s a security company.”

I looked down at the floor. “But I can’t afford to pay.”

He tilted my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “Then it’s a good thing your mate Soph likes shopping, isn’t it?”

“What about your girlfriend? Won’t she get upset if you don’t go home?”

“Girlfriend?”

“Sophie said she went shopping for your girlfriend’s birthday present.”

“Turned out I got her birthday confused with the previous girlfriend’s. We split up over her not-so-birthday dinner.”

I couldn’t help the burst of laughter that escaped. “I’m sorry, I know that shouldn’t be funny, but…” I giggled again.

“I’m just happy you’re smiling.”

His gaze burned into me with the heat of a distant sun, and I looked away, suddenly unable to withstand the intensity.

“I should try to get some sleep,” I muttered.

“Yeah, you should.” He herded me upstairs and made sure my bedroom windows were secure before turning to leave.

“Will you be okay?” I asked. “On the floor, I mean? I’m sorry I don’t have a spare bed, or even a sofa.”

“I’ve slept in worse places, believe me.” He leaned down and kissed me on the cheek, brushing my jaw with his thumb as he did so. The roughness of his stubble contrasted with his soft lips. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

My cheek burned as I went to use the bathroom. I touched where he’d caressed me, expecting to see flames coming from my fingers, but they looked no different from normal. How could that be? My insides had gone nuclear.

Then I caught sight of myself in a shard of mirror as I climbed back into bed, and I groaned. I’d faced my stalker and a crowd of Blackwood’s finest while wearing a pair of Hello Kitty pyjamas. No wonder even the dog had stared at me funny.

If there was an afterlife, my mother would be up there crossing herself, asking what she could have done to make her only daughter just a little bit more normal. I imagined her frown as I lay there on my once-luxurious king-sized mattress. I’d bought it to share with Edward, but now I had a very different man on my mind.

My last thought, as I drifted through the dreamlike limbo between me and oblivion, was that I wished he were lying beside me.