Page 4 of Waylon
“Yes.” As suddenly as the man came into her apartment, she was standing in a strange kitchen with boxes everywhere. “Where am I? And who are you?”
“I’m the elite shifter he was telling you about.” She nodded, not sure if she was awake or something. “You’ll be safe here so long as you don’t leave the house for any reason. I’ll return with your things in a few moments.”
“I don’t understand.” He said that Waylon would tell her soon. “I’m assuming that’s the guy who said that I’ve been claimed. Does he have any idea who I’m hiding from? Or why they’re hunting for me? It was my money, and now someone is dead because of it.”
She tried her best not to cry. She’d been doing that a lot lately since getting the checks from her estate is what she decided to call the money. Twice, she’d been tempted to hand the money over to the men, but she had a suspicion that they’d kill her anyway for making them have to find her. She was not sure why that kept coming into her mind. She was scared shitless about any bump in the night she heard too.
“You’re going to be safe here. I swear to you.” She asked about the man, Waylon. “He will be, as well as his family will be. They’re all gorillas—please take my word for it that they’re real. There are many things and many more creatures that exist that you will come to know and understand.”
“I don’t understand any of this now.” He smiled at her and even though he looked to be in his mid to late twenties, she had a feeling that he was much older than he appeared. “Can you really change into a coffee table?”
“Shall I show you?” Shaking her head, she told him that she didn’t want to know that bad. “Suit yourself, Londyn. Now, if you wish, I can have one of the others come to sit with you. I’d like to go back and see to Waylon if you’d not mind. I don’t think that he’ll need my help, but I’m not entirely sure that the men with him will believe him when he tells them that he doesn’t know you.”
“I’ll be fine by myself.” She looked around the room. “Is he moving in or out? It could be about anything from what I’m seeing.”
“This is his temporary home until he finds a home to share with you and your upcoming families.” She said that she didn’t have any family. “The one that you will create with him. I’m sorry, I must go. He does indeed need me there.”
He disappeared, just like when he’d arrived, by sort of sprinkling out. There weren’t words that she could think about that would be enough to explain to her what he was doing. Turning away from the now empty spot, she sat down on the living room chair and then jumped up. She needed to be doing something or her head just might explode.
There was a knock at the door that she ignored. Not even going to the peephole, she was terrified that once someone saw her eye in the little hole, they’d blow her brains out. She was going to have to stop watching those mystery things where someone is killed every episode, or she was going to drive herself insane.
By the time Waylon, using his keys, entered the house, she had tidied up his place and done the dishes that were in the sink. Not that it was all that messy, but she needed something to calm her nerves, and that was all there was for her to do.
“You’re safe for now.” She asked him what had happened. “What sort of person are you about someone giving you the full story? All at once or just a little at a time?”
“Did anyone else die because of me?” He told her that no one had died because of her. “Yeah? Tell that to Donnie and his mother.”
“He knew that he was going to be in trouble when he handed them over to you. Perhaps not dead, nor his mother, but he was taking a chance, and that ended up with him being murdered. However, I will tell you that he’ll be avenged before this is all over.” She asked him how he was so sure. “Because to believe otherwise would be the same as giving up. You’re not giving up, are you?”
“I don’t know if this would be considered giving up but what do you think would happen if I were to just turn over the money to them. The checks, I mean?” he told her that they’d kill her anyway. “You sound so sure about that. It’s not like I’d miss the money. I mean, I’ve been doing without for so long I don’t know how I’d act if I had money for both groceries and my rent at the same time.”
“Your apartment is gone. The entire building has been destroyed.” She sat down hard on the chair again. “Also, your car. It was still in the parking lot when it was torched as well. No one got out.”
“You need to work on your bedside manner.” She stood up then and made her way to the kitchen to…well, she didn’t know, but that’s where she ended up standing. “All those people. They, for the most part, didn’t know me, and now they’ve died because someone decided that me having the inheritance from my family all passing away was a reason to kill them off.” She looked at Waylon. “They’re really out to kill me, aren’t they? For money.”
“People have killed for less.” She glared at him. “You didn’t answer my question about how to be told things, so I’m just not sugarcoating it. How do you want the rest of the information that I have for you?”
“There’s a lot more?” He just stared at her. “Tell me. I have a feeling that getting it this way from you is better than hearing about it in the newspaper. What else is going on that I need to be aware of?”
“The people in the diner are going to be fine; however, you might want to know that they figured out that you were staying there. It’s been burnt out as well.” She felt her eyes fill with tears. “I’ve been told that they’re going to have the money to rebuild but won’t be doing that. The owner, Ms. Janie Scott, is going to retire and move to Florida when she’s out of the hospital. Without Logan and myself there, it might have been a great deal more loss of life than just the two that had died. And since you asked, it was two of the men that had come looking for you that didn’t get out.” She told him good. “I thought you’d say that. They were killed by me as my gorilla. Logan helped to make it look like their bodies were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. So no one will question why they were killed when the roof, your floor, fell atop them.”
“Honestly and rudely, what do you think they would have done to me had they found me there?” He nodded and started to tell her. Putting up her hand, she asked him to stop. “You’re much too blunt for me right now. Just knowing that they’d yank out my teeth one at a time is enough.” She looked out the window again.
“For now, you’re safe. The man, Mr. Davis, isn’t going to let this go, so my family and I are going to talk to him about what’s going on. And why his thugs were in the restaurant in the first place. Thethird man, the driver, has gotten away—mostly because we allowed him to so that he could go back and tell his boss that you’re untouchable.” She asked him if she was. “As of the moment that I claimed you, you became immortal. You’ll be safe with me.”
“But that didn’t mean he can’t get to me. Correct?” Waylon told her not to borrow trouble when everything else was free for her. “But they’ll get to me. They’ll try and kill me.”
“Yes. But I’ll protect you with my life from now on.” She didn’t know if she was all right with that either. She’d had enough people die because of her.
Chapter 2
Roman didn’t care for the dead body in his office right now. It should have been three of them, but he wasn’t worried about that right now. Rice, she was still out there and she had his money. As soon as he was able to put his hands around her scrawny little neck, he was going to squeeze the life out of her. Christ, it was a nightmare that was happening right now.
Glancing at the body that was just under the window in his office, he thought about tossing it out to the street below. But that would be dangerous as it was a nice sidewalk there, and people would notice that it had fallen from his window. He just hoped his dad or any of the other people in the office noticed it. He was going to do his best to ignore the body himself.
All Rice had to do was to work for him for the last year and a half or whatever her contract stipulated. After that, he’d have her declared dead, and that would be the end of it. He’d heard that someplace but didn’t know how it worked. After seven years, you could have someone declared dead. No one seemed to be able to find her but him, and that was all right, too. Since he didn’t want her popping up anytime after he had cashed out her checks, he actually was going to need to kill her. He’d been holding off in putting in his inground pool for months now so that he could easily dumb her body under the concrete, and that would be the end of his issues with his damned attorney.
She was a good one, too at least for as far as he would allow her to go. She did research better than anyone he’d ever met, and when one of his underlings went to court with her notes, they’d win hands down. If they didn’t, he’d cut her pay again, and that, too, would make her have to stay under his thumb. Who would hire someone that couldn’t even keep their pay up?