Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

   The next days went by rather slowly. Jonas continued getting better, and luckily, no one got sick from our time out in the pouring rain. Two weeks after Jonas had been taken and beaten, the two brothers started making plans for our journey to Seattle, Washington. All three of us sat around the kitchen table together, staring at a map spread out before us.

  “Guys, there’s no way we’re getting out of here,” I said suddenly with realization, interrupting their quiet discussion, which I’d been listening to. They turned to look at me, surprised.

  “Why not?” Jonas asked me.

  “The second we start packing things into a car we’re done for,” I explained to them. “They have to be watching us here, just like they were watching Jonas at his apartment. They’ll know we’re planning on leaving and will stop us before we even get out of LA.” Jonas and Alaric turned to silently stare at each other.

  “I hadn’t thought about them seeing us getting ready to leave,” Alaric finally admitted. “I just figured we’d have to shake them once we were on our way. I hate to say it, but she has a point. I don’t see how we can get everything we’re going to take with us into the car quickly enough for us to be gone before they stop us.” Silence filled the room.

  “We can’t stay here,” Jonas at last voiced from his place.

  “I’m painfully aware of that, Jonas,” Alaric replied. “Look, we’ll figure something out. It just might be a bit longer than we’d been anticipating is all.”

  “But they could come back any time now,” Jonas countered. “Hayden’s probably ready to return and strike with a vengeance by now. We can’t afford to continue sitting around here doing nothing.”

  “Well...” Alaric cast a sideways glance my way. I knew what that look meant, I’d gotten it from Steve and my dad for years, but I refused to budge. I wasn’t going to be sent away while they discussed plans without me. When he saw I wasn’t going to take his hint and leave, he cleared his throat and returned his full attention to Jonas.

  “Well we’ll figure something out,” Alaric promised.

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  “I thought she would never go to bed,” Alaric chuckled as he and Jonas sat together at the table later that night after Britney had headed off for bed. Alaric had been waiting until they’d be alone to talk about the idea he had thought of earlier.

  “She’s determined,” Jonas agreed. “So what is it that you didn’t want to talk about around her?”

  “We can settle this, once and for all,” Alaric declared. “I think we should go ‘visit’ Britt’s dad and see if we can’t settle this thing.”

  Jonas raised his brows, skeptical. “How do you intend to do that exactly? They’re not about to just let us walk in and stay for tea,” laughed Jonas humorlessly.

  “Tea?” Alaric wondered, “Jonas, I think you spent far too long in Europe,” he laughed. “Anyway, of course we’ll have to fight our way in. After that I guess we have a couple options,” Alaric answered. “First, we can kill everyone in sight, thus solving our troubles by eliminating them completely.” At the look on his brother’s face, Alaric decided to move on to the next possibility. “Our second option is to try to corner and talk to Larkin, alone. We can try bribing him and see if that gets us anywhere. He has to have some sort of price.”

  “You want to buy Britney?” scoffed Jonas.

  “In a sense, yes,” Alaric acknowledge, “If it would get these guys off our backs and solve our problems, I don’t see any anything wrong with it. As I said, he has to have a price. I think it’s worth a shot.” Hesitantly, Jonas nodded.

  “You’re right, it’s worth trying,” he agreed. “But it’s going to be nearly impossible to get in there. It’s a miracle Britt ever got out, the place is crawling with guys, and we’ll have to keep our eyes open for Hayden.”

  Alaric waved a dismissive hand. “Forget Hayden, we can get in, easy.”

  “You really want to do this?” Jonas questioned, “You realize it’s essentially a suicide mission, right? If I had to take a guess, this will easily be a ten to one fight.”

  “Jonas, you couldn’t convince me not to go with you if you were going in there,” laughed Alaric. “And you’re going to go in there, I know it. I’m going to be right at your side,” he announced. “Or, back,” he corrected, “whichever.”

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“I’m going with you,” I announced with a fierce determination, following behind Jonas and Alaric the next morning after they’d told me what they’re plan was.

  “Don’t be ridiculous Britney,” Alaric responded sharply from the lead. “You’re not going in there. It’s going to be like walking into the freakin’ mouth of hell. I wouldn’t even take Kara in with us if she were here.”

  “Alaric’s right Britt,” Jonas agreed, turning around and stopping me. “I can’t afford to be worrying about you while we’re in there. If I’m distracted with your safety, I might make a mistake, and in this situation, it could cost me very, very dearly.”

  I bit my lip. I hadn’t considered that. I knew that he was only saying it to scare me into willingly staying behind, but I knew too that I didn’t want anything to happen to him or Alaric.

  “But I can’t just sit here doing nothing while you guys are off storming my dad’s place,” I argued feebly as I followed Alaric’s every move with anxious eyes as he continued preparing.

  “You’re not going to,” Alaric called out, slipping two guns behind his back and another in his black leather jacket breast pocket.

  “We’re going to make it look like you’re going with us. I’ll open your door for you to get into the car. Once I close it, Alaric will make some sort of distraction that’ll cause anyone watching to focus on him,” elaborated Jonas. I listened, but my eyes still followed Alaric’s movements. Currently, he was shoving knives in both of his boots. I wondered, absently, if he was going to somehow manage to pack all the weapons lying on the kitchen table before him, onto his person. Then I imagined what would happen if he were to walk past a metal detector, fully loaded as he was.

  “While I make some ruckus, you’ll sneak out the other door of the Maserati and slip into the Benz, which will be parked right next to it,” added Alaric from his position several feet away from where Jonas and I stood.

   “You’ll lay in the back for exactly ten minutes after we’re gone,” continued Jonas. Obviously, they had already planned out and discussed all of this previously. “After that, you’ll go inside, grab a couple of bags of your things, which you need to pack by the way, and take them down and put them in the Benz. You’ll wait in there with them until the Ferris’ arrive. They’ll be in a forest green sedan, so be ready for it, and don’t get out until they flash their lights three times.”

  “The Ferris’?!” I questioned, incredulous. What exactly was Jonas thinking, including them in this mess?

  “Yes,” Jonas confirmed. “They don’t know any details, only that we’re in a bit of trouble. They’ve agreed to hide you for now. If everything goes well, we’ll be back sometime within twenty-four hours after we leave,” Jonas hesitated, his deep eyes searching mine. He captured my hand in his own, and I could tell by the tightness of his grip, he didn’t like what he had to say next, which meant, I wouldn’t like it either.

  “If we don’t show up within forty-eight hours, I’ve instructed them to get you to the airport and put you on a plane for Washington,” Jonas told me at last.

  “Once you’re there, Kara will pick you up and take you to a place that only Kara and I will know where to find you,” Alaric concluded.

  “But, why won’t you know?” I demanded from Jonas.

  “It’s our safe call,” Jonas answered, “If anything goes wrong, they won’t kill Alaric because he’ll be the only one to know where you are.”

  “What about you?” I pressed. “What’ll keep them from hurting you?”
  “DeRuise, I hope,” replied Jonas, releasing my hand and going over to the table. I swallowed hard as I watched Jonas begin to start concealing weapons on his person as Alaric had been doing. He pulled on a black leather coat, similar to Alaric’s, though slightly different in some ways.

  “What if he takes away his protection, or they don’t care anymore?” I asked.

  “Then we’ll improvise,” a grinning Alaric assured me. I glanced towards his smirking face, and knew beyond a doubt that he was looking forward to this extremely dangerous raid.

  “How?”

  Alaric shrugged. “We’ll tell them something, don’t worry. Besides, we’ll only need that if we get caught,” he flashed another smile as he examined one of his guns, “and I personally, have no intentions of getting caught.”

  Jonas eyed his brother briefly, and I wondered if he was thinking along the same lines that I was. Alaric was a killer, born and bred. Jonas never shot to kill as far as I knew, but from the look in his eyes, I wasn’t so sure that Alaric planned to do the same.

  Coming back over to me, Jonas wrapped his arms around me, hugging me to him with strong arms that felt absolutely secure to me. I closed my eyes and twisted my own arms around his back. I could feel the cool, hard guns beneath his shirt.

  After a moment, he released and pushed me away. “You need to go pack up what you want to take with you. Remember, worst-case scenario, you go to Seattle, so make sure you have everything you’ll want to take with you there. I don’t know how long you’ll have to stay there if you end up leaving.” I nodded with tears in my eyes.

  I would have refused to listen to them, and gone with them despite their protests, but the pain in Jonas’ eyes told me this was as hard for him as it was for me. Also, that he and Alaric would do whatever it took to make sure I didn’t go with them. Without looking back, I ran upstairs and started collecting together my things.

  I grabbed one duffle bag to load my clothes into, and another for other various items. Mindlessly, I randomly threw clothing into the bags. Suddenly, I came face to face with the blue dress Jonas had found in the store before I started college, so long ago. I had never worn it yet, and on an impulse, I grabbed it and tossed it into the bag. Deciding I would wear it for Jonas, for when he and Alaric would come to get me from the Ferris’, I added it to my bag. I wouldn’t allow myself to entertain even briefly the thought that they might not return from their mission. That it could in fact, be a very long time until I saw Jonas again after today.

  Soon, I had finished collecting together my things. I was just double-checking my closet, when I found, in the very back, a couple of familiar bags. The bags that Jonas had insisted I bring with us from his apartment. Wondering why they were stuffed into the back of my closet, I knelt down and unzipped the closest one to me. Shock rippled through me at the sight that greeted my naive eyes.

  The bag was filled with syringes and bottles of various liquids that I assumed Jonas had previously used while working for DeRuise. I had known from speaking to Mac around when we’d first met that this was how Jonas operated, but having never seen them, I had always managed to push the thought of it from my mind. Now, I was face to face with it.

  On a sudden impulse, though I wasn’t really sure why, I decided to grab one of each and take them with me. I could look them up online to find out what each one was used for. I grabbed what I wanted, hid them among my clothes, zipped the bag back up, and moved on to the next.

  Inside this bag was a mix of different items. I pulled out a framed picture that had both Jonas and Ana, along with a man and a woman, whom I assumed to be their parents. I smiled softly when I realized how much Jonas looked like his father. Ana was exactly like her mother only younger, the same dark silky hair; the only difference being their mother had dark brown eyes. Alaric however, was a mix of both parents, getting his mother’s hair and almost everything else from his father.  I wasn’t sure exactly when the picture was taken, but if I had to have guessed, I figured it probably hadn’t been long before their mother had died, seeing how old both Ana and Jonas appeared to be.

   I was about to dig deeper in, when I heard footsteps on the stairs that I recognized as belonging to Jonas. Frantically, I shoved the picture back into the bag and pushed both bags back into their hiding place in the closet. I was just closing the closet as Jonas walked in. I turned from the closet and zipped up my bags, which were resting on my bed.

  “All ready?” inquired Jonas. I nodded, and he took both bags and carried them downstairs for me. I looked around my bedroom briefly before following him. My eyes fell on my nightstand, and I walked over to it and opened its drawer, withdrawing the handgun Jonas had insisted I keep with me whenever I was alone �"which was never long. I examined myself, looking for somewhere I could hide the gun in my tan cargos and midnight blue peasant blouse. I made an aggravated sound and weighed the gun in my hand, reconsidering taking it.

  “Here, use this,” Alaric’s voice said from the doorway, making me jump. I turned to look at him, and saw he was holding out some sort of a harness-like thing.

  “Umm, what is it?” I questioned, unsure of what exactly I was supposed to do with it.

  Alaric turned around and lifted up the back of his shirt to reveal a similar thing holstering a pair of guns to his back. He dropped his shirt and jacket, and turned back around to me.

  “Your blouse is loose enough it should be hidden alright, though a jacket wouldn’t hurt anything either. It’s built for double guns, but it works with just one too,” he told me. I reached out and accepted the thing with a grateful smile.

  “Thanks,” I said as I examined it more closely in my hands.

  “No problem,” he replied. “Just stay safe, ok? Jonas is already second guessing his choice to just leave before you’re safely gone.”

  “I will,” I promised sincerely, “but you guys need to too,” I added.

  He gave me the signature Matthews’ smirk. “I’ll take care of both of us,” he assured me.

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  As Jonas walked me to the car, it took all my will power to not give away the fact that we weren’t really going together by hugging or kissing Jonas goodbye. When we got to his Quattroporté, he opened the door for me solemnly, and I got in, scooting over to the side closest to the Benz. Then I waited for the distraction.

  It wasn’t a long wait. In another minute, Alaric was calling out to talk to Jonas, and though I couldn’t fully hear what he was saying, I could tell that he was starting an argument with Jonas. Alaric made some louder noises, doing something, though I couldn’t tell what, and I knew it was time for me to switch my location.

  Going into stealth mode, I cracked the door open just enough so that I could slip out of the car and down onto the pavement, carefully and quietly closing the door behind me. Next, I opened the left side passenger door and slunk into the car, closing the door as noiselessly as I had the other. I lied down across the seat and waited. Within minutes, Jonas and Alaric had “settled” their disagreement and got into the other car. Soon they were speeding off on their mission.

  Tears filled my eyes, and I just prayed they’d both get back unharmed, with a successful mission or not, it didn’t matter. All that mattered to me was that they both got back from this. I waited my ten minutes just as I’d been told to, watching the time on the new cell phone that Alaric had bought for me a few days back. When the time was up, I climbed out of the car, looking around warily. Satisfied that it was safe, I hurried back up to the loft and grabbed my bags. Hurriedly, I got them out to the Benz and resettled myself back into the car.

  A few more minutes went by before the promised green sedan materialized and blinked its lights three times. I got out of the car and took my two bags to my ride. A back door swung open, and a hand reached out for the bags.

  “Here, hand me those,” instructed a male voice. I handed him one bag and then the other before climbing in. Mr. Ferris was driving the “getaway” car with his wife at his side. I turned to the guy in the seat next to me.

  “Hey,” he said with a nod. “I’m Justin,” he introduced himself. “You must be Britney?” I nodded, feeling the car beginning to move.

  “So, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me what all this is about would you?” Justin asked, obviously curious about the reason for all of this.

  “Justin,” Mr. Ferris commanded sharply from up front.

  “It’s alright,” I assured him. “I’m sure you’re all probably wondering what’s going on, but I really can’t tell you,” I told them in an apologetic tone. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s alright, honey,” voiced Mrs. Ferris from the front. “We know that Jonas is a good boy and I’m sure that brother of his is too. We know he’s not doing anything wrong.”

  I swallowed hard. Right now, the lines of right and wrong appeared to be rather blurry. Jonas and Alaric were going to try to stop any more violence or trouble, but it was going to take violence to get in and some people were likely to at the very least get hurt. I just hoped Jonas could keep Alaric reined in enough to stop him from killing anyone.

  We drove for some time, but finally, we pulled up around the back of their restaurant. Justin got out, taking my bags with him. Slowly, I got out as well.

  “We live up above the restaurant,” Mrs. Ferris explained to me, “and in a couple extra rooms on the first floor.” She led me inside, and up a set of stairs. She took me to a small but comfortable room where Justin had already put my things.

  “This is where you’ll stay,” she told me.

  “Thank you for allowing me to stay with you,” I said, turning from looking at the room to Mrs. Ferris.

  “It’s no trouble. We’re glad we could help,” she replied. “Now, you go ahead and get settled, and I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  “What? No, I can go down and get something, you don’t have to bring it up to me,” I assured her, not wanting to be waited on or having her go out of her way to bring me something.

  “Actually, Jonas asked that we keep you out of sight while you’re here, so I’m afraid that you can’t go downstairs right now,” she confessed, “So I’ll have to bring something to you.”

  I sighed. Trust Jonas to have lock-down rules laid out ahead of time to keep me from doing things he didn’t want me to do while he wasn’t around.

  “Alright, thank you Mrs. Ferris. I’m sorry you have to go to the trouble of bringing something up to me.” I bit my lip, wondering if she’d be willing to go against Jonas’ orders. Probably not, I decided. He seemed to be like a second son to her by the way she talked.

  “It’s just Hannah, remember? Hannah and Harold. And it’s no trouble,” she reminded me with a motherly smile that seemed to make her plump cheeks glow. “I’ll be back shortly.”

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  “Alaric, we don’t want to hurt anyone more than we have to,” Jonas reiterated to his older brother in a careful voice, watching Alaric, who was currently driving, from the corner of his eye as he spoke.

  “Sure,” Alaric agreed lightly.

  “Alaric, I’m serious,” pressed Jonas. “I want to do this without killing anyone. We just need to get in to Larkin to try to come to an agreement of some kind. I don’t want to have to go back to Britney and tell her that we killed her father and everyone else. I made a promise to do everything I could to prevent that from happening.”

  “Whatever,” Alaric muttered. More clearly, he added, “I don’t see why we don’t just shoot Terrence. He’ll probably be there you know. I could easily take care of him. Then, presto! No more problems. No one would miss him.”

  “It’s not that simple,” argued Jonas. “Larkin will only become angrier if we pick off his heir. Plus, we’ll then have a miffed Irish clan coming after us too,” Jonas warned him, “and trust me Alaric, we do not want to go up against a clan of angry Irishmen.”

  “We could handle them,” declared Alaric with confidence. Jonas just shook his head, exasperated. When they were almost there, Jonas spoke again.

  “Thanks for coming with me Alaric,” he said quietly. “I know you’re risking a lot by coming with me today.”

  “Please, I’d never let you go on this little expedition on your own,” Alaric remarked dryly. “I wouldn’t pass up a chance like this for anything, and besides that, you’d never last a second in there by yourself.”

  Jonas smiled slightly. “You might be underestimating me just a tad.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to see about that,” Alaric commented with a sparkle in his eyes as he pulled off to the side of the road. “Are you ready to do this?” Jonas took a deep breath and nodded. “Ready.”

  “Alright then,” Alaric said, a grin spreading across his face. “Let’s go show these guys what happens when you mess with a Matthews.”

 

 

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