She pauses to think and then shakes her head.  I’m not sure why she’s so quiet, but I don’t want to push her.

“Also, I’ll need your cell phone.  I’ll take it to the club and leave it in the back, just in case.  Until then, you can use one of the disposable phones I bring back for us.  Okay?”

She nods again.

“You can call your dad and Ginger in the morning.  Just tell them your phone’s out of commission for a few days and that you’ll be calling to check on them.  We’ll throw that phone away after you talk to them and you can use another one to call later in the week.”

Her smile is agreeable but very tight.  “It’ll be okay.  I’ll make it okay.”

She nods again, but still she doesn’t speak.  I refuse to acknowledge the possibility that I may already have screwed things up beyond repair.  No, I’ll just have to find a way to make her trust me, to get us out of this.  Maybe then…

CHAPTER FIVE

Olivia

I can’t even remember the name of my meal.  Something fancy and exotic and foreign that I’ve never heard of.  The only thing I care about is that it’s chicken.  I like chicken.  And this is great chicken.  My taste buds are working well enough for me to be sure of that.  But I don’t really taste it.  Or maybe it’s that I don’t really enjoy it.  My mind and my heart are too troubled and heavy to enjoy much of anything.

What in the world have I done?  Not only did I do exactly what I knew I shouldn’t—get involved with another bad boy—but I went and picked one that actually has a dangerous past.  He’s not just dangerous to my heart; he’s dangerous period!

Obviously running at this juncture is completely out of the question.  It’s not safe.  Well, not for my physical wellbeing.  It might be safest for my heart.  But, then again, maybe not.  Even after all this, I still don’t know what to make of Cash.  Sometimes he’s so sweet and sincere and…

He treats me like I’m something important.  He talks to me like I’m something different.  Not like I’m the throw-away kind he’s used to loving and leaving.  He seems to value me—my safety, my happiness.  Just…me.

But I’ve talked myself into believing that before, into seeing what wasn’t really there.  On the one hand, I know better than to take the chance.  I know from long experience what the wild ones do to girls like me.  But on the other hand, something tells me to take the risk.  A voice I’ve never heard before, one that seems to speak from somewhere inside my soul, tells me Cash is different.

The question is:  what to do?  What to do, what to do?  That’s always the question. And it’s so much harder when everything’s left up to me, when I’m the one forced to make the tough call, the tough decisions.

But right now, these circumstances are dictating my actions.  I’m stuck.  For the moment anyway.  I need to stick with Cash until all this mob stuff is resolved, which hopefully will be very soon.  And then I can decide.  Then I can think.

After I finish part of my meal, I get up and wander restlessly through the room.  I don’t like not having a phone, not knowing what’s going on.  I don’t like not knowing if I’ll ever see Cash again, if Marissa will be okay, if a raccoon has made its way into my apartment through my wide-open door and torn everything to shreds.

Yes, my mind works in very strange and nonsensical ways.  I think it’s so overwhelmed, it keeps coming back to whether the front door was left open.  Like a broken record, it skips back to that over and over and over again.

I’m sure it probably was.  I mean, I was a little distracted.  To say the least.  Maybe Cash closed it and I just wasn’t paying attention.  Maybe I closed it out of habit and just don’t remember it. Or maybe neither of us did and everything I’ve ever owned is in some homeless person’s shopping cart.  Who knows?  I guess time will tell.

And if that happens to be the case, some stuff ought to be fairly easy to find.  A homeless person who has recently redecorated their cardboard box with a two thousand-dollar clock might stand out a tad, as would one walking the streets in Jimmy Choo shoes and a Prada evening gown.  Of course, who’d want any of it back at that point?  Not me!  I say happy trails and I hope you enjoy Marissa’s expensive thongs.

The only thing I could identify would be my Tad’s shirts.  How sad is that?  Maybe I ought to have my underwear monogrammed from now on…

I snicker and roll my eyes at my own wayward thoughts.  I have very strange coping mechanisms.

The posh bathroom in our suite has a deep marble tub surrounded by all sorts of bathing accoutrements. On the back of the door hangs a thick robe.  Although I have no clean clothes and no toiletries, a bath is too tempting to resist, so I turn on the spigot and undress as the spacious room fills with steam.

Thirty minutes later, I’m examining my pruned fingertips, thinking it’s probably time to get out of the tub.  The scent of the lavender bath products has permeated my skin and, after this long of a soak, might very well have invaded my liver.  But it’s been worth it.  The hot water seems to have drowned out a portion of my thoughts and worries.  At least for the moment.  My utter exhaustion has helped a fair amount, too.  It’s been a seriously long and emotionally taxing week!

I release the drain and let the water out of the tub, toweling off and wrapping myself in the soft, warm robe.

The rich sure do have it easy!

But I rescind that thought almost immediately.  Cash comes from money, albeit the ill-gotten kind, and he might argue that some riches aren’t worth the price.  In fact, I’d guarantee he would.  He’s lost so much because of his father’s pursuit of wealth.  Granted, it began as an effort just to feed his family, but it soon turned into more than that.  Yes, he wanted out, but he still benefited financially from his ties to organized crime. And look at them now—suffering on every front!

I make my way into the bedroom and slide under the covers to rest my eyes until Cash gets back. I push the worry over how long he’s been gone to the very back of my mind. I refuse to think of him getting hurt, of what that would feel like and how it would affect my life.  I can’t think in those terms. I won’t.  Whether Cash and I have a future is one thing.  Whether he’ll break my heart is one thing.  But his death?  That’s something else entirely.  I can’t bear the thought of a world without him in it, even if he’s not mine.

********

I sit straight up in the bed when I hear a noise.  My mind is instantly alert. I’m shocked that I managed to fall asleep.  That’s a testament to how fatigued I really was.

I see a shadow pass through in the living room; I left the lights on in there.  My heart thuds almost painfully against my ribs as I wait and listen.  I hear the soft fall of footsteps against the hardwood floors and I look wildly around the room for some kind of weapon.  The only thing I can spot is a vase on the dresser that I could crack over someone’s head, a hotel pen on top of the bedside table I could use to stab someone in the eye, and a Bible that no doubt resides in the top drawer, although I’m not sure I could really harm someone with that.  God absolutely could, but I don’t think He works on demand like that.