have to decide now. We can talk back at the dorm. Let’s just get you packed and out of here.”
“She’s not going back to your dorm,” Mason announced.
Laila’s lips parted. He shook his head. “Dubey knows that’s the first place you would go. It’s wide open—there’s no security to speak of. Hell, I just got in there, and no one tried to stop me.”
He’d been hopping mad, too. And despite having a murderous glare, the people who passed him on the way to Rosamie’s room had just scattered and gotten out of his way.
Mason held out his hand to Laila. “You can stay with me.”
She swallowed audibly. “Joe knows we used to be neighbors. I pointed out my old building to him once, so he might know where you live, too.”
“If the dorm isn’t safe, she can stay with my mom,” Rosamie said. “My old bedroom is empty—Mom put her sewing machine in there, but that’s better than staying on your couch.”
“You’ll have your own room,” Mason promised. “And he won’t find you—I can guarantee that. I moved a few months ago.”
He stepped closer to her. “Joseph won’t get anywhere near you. I promise.”
Laila stared at him with shadowed doe eyes. Then she took his hand. “Thank you.”
Rosamie stopped fighting him then. She focused on getting Laila packed up. Even considering how sparse Laila’s apartment had been, there wasn’t much. It all fit into the suitcase and two garbage bags they grabbed from under the sink.
Mason took a few minutes to go through the apartment, riffling through papers in a vain attempt to find anything incriminating. But there was almost nothing in the desk. Just some utility bills and a few old term papers. There was no second laptop, meaning Dubey had his with him. No gun and no other weapons beyond the high-end kitchen knives.
A man doesn’t need a weapon to terrorize a woman, he reminded himself.
Once the ladies were done packing, he shepherded them back to his car, loading Laila’s few belongings into the trunk. Fate was on Dubey’s side. Mason got Laila and her friend away without the asshole showing his face—or else Mason would have broken every bone in his body.
He decided to drop off Rosamie at her dorm first. Predictably, she put up a fight.
Mason let the small Filipina blister the air before he held up a hand. “I know you think Laila needs you now—and you’re right—but you have to think strategically. I don’t have a problem with you knowing where I live, but Joseph will come looking for her. He’s going to want to know where she is.”
“Well, he’s not going to find out from me,” she protested indignantly.
“Maybe not,” he said, glancing at the passenger seat. Laila was quiet, examining her hands. She had that million-yard stare that told him she wasn’t even listening. “But let me ask you this—did you ever think Joseph Dubey would hit her?”
His words struck their target. Rosamie bit her lip, guiltily turning away.
“No. I’m the one who pushed her to go out with him,” she confessed raggedly. Rosamie reached over from the backseat to put a hand on Laila’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Laila said softly. “He was supposed to be a catch, remember?”
Mason snorted, but his next words were to Rosamie. They were only a few minutes from the dorm. “Until we get a bead on Dubey and figure out what his reaction to Laila leaving him is, you are not safe either. I’m going to send someone over to your place in case he shows up there.”
“Who?” Laila and Rosamie asked at the same time.
Mason pulled up to the dorm. “A friend from work.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Laila scanned the living room of his rental, clutching one of the garbage bags filled with her belongings to her chest.
“Do you want to take a bath?”
She stared at him as if he were some sort of ghost. “Were you really at Gardullo’s today?”
Mason put his hands in his pockets. “I was.”
“Oh.” She sat on the couch—hard—still clutching the bag. When she spoke, her voice was reed thin. “I guess you want to know what happened.”
“No.”
She jerked, hurt filling her eyes. “Oh.”
Mason knelt in front of her. “I just mean I know you want to talk to Rosamie first. I wasn’t trying to cut you off from her by bringing you here alone.” He reached out to take the garbage bag, then set it aside. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to—I learned