A Billionaire's Redemption - By Cindy Dees Page 0,85
building was not the one her room had opened out onto. Hopefully, Gabe hadn’t insisted on exterior guards on every side of the darned building. Scrambling awkwardly, she fell through the small window, mooning a bunch of birds that flew up, squawking, as she hit the grass.
Grabbing at the back of the gown to cover her bare backside, and crouching low, she darted out into the parking lot, ducking behind cars for cover. Rain threatened in the pregnant clouds overhead, but so far none had started falling. Thankfully, she lived only a dozen blocks from the hospital. Running barefoot was painful, but it wasn’t like she had any choice. And it felt good to move. Her instincts had been screaming at her to do exactly this ever since that phone call came in.
A nut ball was hurting an innocent five-year-old, and she was the child’s only hope. It was up to her to stop it from happening. Spurred by that knowledge, her feet flew across pavement and grass like the wind.
It was still early, and the streets were mostly empty. She alternated between jumping behind shrubs and racing along the sidewalk like she always went for a morning run in a hospital gown. If anyone had been watching her, they’d have surely thought she’d lost her mind. She just hoped she could reach her house before someone called the police on the lunatic woman running down the street.
She figured she had five to ten minutes before the MRI technician went looking for her, and notified her guards that she’d gone missing. Feeling the pressing weight of the ticking clock, she sprinted the last block to her house and ran around back to fetch the spare key hidden in her messy garage.
She burst into the house. “Hello?” she called. “Are you here? I came like you wanted.”
Silence was her only answer. Where was the caller? Where was that poor baby? She’d made it home in under an hour. Now what?
Frantic, she went to her bedroom and dressed quickly in jeans, a T-shirt and running shoes. She ought to call the police, but then the sound of that slap and the wails that followed stopped her. This was her fault. Her problem to solve. Not the police’s. She paced, wringing her hands. Her security guards would be here any second looking for her. She couldn’t let them find her, but the caller obviously planned to contact her here next.
She jumped about a foot in the air when her phone rang. She pounced on the receiver. “Hello?”
“I can’t come to your house. Those thugs of yours might spot me. Meet me at the Darby College Bell Tower in ten minutes.”
“But I don’t have a car,” she replied, feeling dense.
“Don’t you have a bicycle? Run for all I care. But get there.”
How did the caller know she had a bike? “You have to let that child go. I won’t cooperate unless you promise.”
“Fine,” the caller snapped. “I don’t want the brat, anyway. It’s you I want. You and I are taking a little trip.”
“Where are we going?”
“Where else? To where you and your damned family ruined me. The Vacarro Field, bitch. A fitting ending for the Merrises, don’t you think?”
Huh? The line went dead and a dial tone resumed in her ear. Confused, she nonetheless ran for the garage and her bicycle. Even with wheels, getting to the bell tower in ten minutes would be close. Not to mention her security team would likely show up here at any second and prevent her from saving that child. They hadn’t heard the fury in the caller’s voice, the sick pleasure at the thought of causing pain. They didn’t realize that her caller was dead serious. But she did. Oh, how she did.
She yanked her bike off its hooks in the garage and headed through her backyard. At least it would blend in on the campus and be hard to spot in the crowd of students pedaling to their eight o’clock classes. The bike had the added advantage of letting her go cross-country and not having to stick to streets that were no doubt already crawling with freaked-out security guards.
Eyes watering from fear and from the wind whipping past her face as she pedaled for that poor baby’s life, she managed to reach the edge of the campus. She guided the bike toward the broad, grassy park surrounding the tall brick clock tower in the middle of campus.
A few fat raindrops splatted onto the pavement around