BORDEN 2 (18 page)

Emma

Graeme was present when I got to work. His eyes were a little bloodshot and he had a mug of coffee in his hand, downing it like his life depended on it. I said good morning to him, and he responded with a half-assed grumble.

“I thought you’d come around last night,” I told him as I took a seat at my desk.

“I didn’t get the call until morning,” he replied, taking another large gulp of his coffee. “I was drunk out of my mind.”

“You hit up a bar after you left the club or something?”

“I got some bottles at home lying around. Thought to hell with it, might as well go down hard. Now I’ve got a headache from hell.”

I laughed. “I can tell. You look like crap, Graeme.”

He nodded, his moustache unruly, his face pale. “I feel it.”

“Maybe you should go home.”

“No. You’re my priority.”

I turned on my computer and stared at him with a soft smile. “I don’t have to be. You take on too many hours looking out for me. You said so yourself yesterday. It wouldn’t be wrong to go home and nurse your hangover.”

“I’d rather be here. Work is practically my home now. Has been since I started working for Borden.”

I nodded, thinking of my conversation with Hawke. Graeme had been a police officer. Christ, how does one fall so far? I didn’t want to ask Borden about it because I felt like it was none of my business to pry, but I was damn curious. I kept staring at Graeme, past his current hungover state and into his soul. He was a good guy, even if he worked for a pretty bad one. In fact, now that I thought about it, most of the men that worked for Borden were pretty decent. Gerry, in particular, was the nicest guy in the world when he was around; smart, young and built like a football player. He talked to me sometimes, even opened up about going to night classes after work. It was like a normal 9 to 5 job for most of them. And then there was Hawke, who was still a jackass in a sense, but one I’d seen layers deep yesterday.

“Is Hawke here?” I asked Graeme curiously. “I didn’t see him around when I walked in. Did he go with Borden to the port?”

“No,” Graeme answered. “He’s off the radar at the moment. After the exchange with Borden, he’ll probably be missing for a while. That’s usually the way when they blow up.”

“That wasn’t the first time?”

He let out a hard laugh. “No way. They’ve argued many times, and it’s always in circles. Then Hawke storms off for a while, returns, and all is right in the world. Nobody talks about the argument, nobody says a word, and they carry on right where they left off.”

I laughed. “Bloody men.”

And with that, I turned to my computer and caught up on work.

*

Borden was at the port all day and didn’t make it to work. He stopped returning my texts afternoon, so I figured he was really busy. He wasn’t home either when I returned.

Graeme stepped into the apartment with me and sat in the living room while I made a quick call to my grandmother for a catch up. She sounded upbeat, like our dinner hadn’t gone to shit. When I got off the phone with her, I went to the bathroom and had a long shower. I’d just stepped out and wrapped a towel around my body when my cell phone rang. Thinking it was Borden, I didn’t look at the screen as I pressed the answer button.

“When are you getting here?” I asked him, smiling. “I miss you.”

“Emma?” cried a voice.

I stilled and my smile dropped. “Blythe? What’s going on? Why are you crying?”

“I need your help,” she begged, her voice cracked and hoarse. “I’m-I’m stuck.”

“What do you mean? Where are you?”

“I took that job at the titty bar a week ago, and today some of the guys got physical in a bad way. The person I hitch rides with isn’t here for work and the guys that touched me are standing out front of the bar. I don’t have a way home and I’m scared they’ll do something to me.”

My hold on the towel tightened. “There’s no one to help? None of the girls there or the boss –”

“Nobody gives a shit about me here! My shift is over which means I’m off the clock and they don’t give a fuck. I-I just don’t know what to do right now and I’m scared.”

“Are you able to call a taxi?”

“I don’t have any money, Emma. Besides, if there’s a taxi out front, what’s stopping them from grabbing me? They’re seedy and scary, and I know they’ll hurt me.” She took a few breaths. “Can you come get me?”

I ran a hand through my wet hair, pondering. “Blythe…I can’t just get out. I’m…I’m in a bind too.”

“What do you mean? How are you in a bind? I need you.”

“Things here are pretty fucked,” I tried to explain. “I’m not allowed to just get out and get you.”

“You’re not
allowed
? I don’t have anybody else! What am I meant to do? Let them rape me?”

I cringed.
Shit. Fuck.
“No, of course not,” I sighed. “Send me the address.”

“I’ll text you it right now. I don’t know it off by heart, I’ll have to ask someone.”

“You don’t know the address of the place you’re working at?”

“Just give me a second.” I heard her put the phone down and ask someone nearby, her voice muffled. When she got back to me, she sniffed and said, “Yeah, I got it now. Do you have a pen?”

I raced to the bedroom and grabbed a notepad and pen off the nightstand. “Yeah, give it to me.”

She told me the address and I hastily wrote it down. “Okay, Blythe, hang tight. I’ll be there, alright? Just don’t go anywhere and I’ll call you when I’m there.”

“Okay, Emma.”

I got off the phone and immediately changed into jeans and a shirt. It was freezing outside, close to snowfall, and I hadn’t blow dried my hair. But there was no time. I grabbed my phone and ran to the living room where Graeme was watching an episode of Cheaters on the massive television screen and shaking his head. “Fucking cheaters,” he muttered.

“Graeme!” I yelled hysterically.

He quickly turned back to look at me. “What? What is it?”

“It’s Blythe, Graeme. She’s in trouble. She’s holed up in a bar and needs a ride home. She’s feeling really threatened from a group of guys that have given her a hard time. We need to pick her up.”

He blinked at me, processing my words. “I don’t understand.”

I ripped the remote out of his hand and turned the television off just as a cheater went down on his knees to beg for forgiveness. “What is there not to understand? We have to pick her up!”

“First of all, do not yell at me, Emma.”

“Graeme, please –”

“Second of all, most of Borden’s men are at the port with him doing business with the bikers.”

“I don’t care about what they’re doing!”

“And third of all, do not yell at me
again
, and you should care about what they’re doing because you’re not allowed to roam the city without a group of men nearby –”

“Blythe needs to be picked up! I’m not looking to roam the city and have a freaking siesta or something!”

He blinked at me again. “What did I say about the yelling?”

I growled angrily, grinding out, “Graeme, she is in trouble.”

“She can wait several hours.”

“Graeme, I’m serious. She was crying and sounded so scared. I can barely breathe right now, I’m that worried for her. She took a very bad job and now she needs my help. You should know what that’s like. You were a police officer once. You used to help people in need.”

He considered my words, sighing every few moments. “I’m not going to ask how you know about my previous employment, Emma, but if you cared at all for my
current
employment, you would not ask me to do this. Borden would have my head.”

“Would you stop caring about Borden for just one second?”

He muttered an inaudible curse and stood up, turning to me with those tired eyes. “Easy for you to say. I’m not the one in bed with the man. Now I’m going to call him and ask him about this, and if he says we’re good to go then we’ll go. If not, it’s not my fault your friend decided to be stupid.”

I watched him dig into his phone and call Borden. He frowned shortly after before attempting to call him again. “No one is picking up,” he told me. “It’s just ringing. It must mean he’s busy.”

I turned to my phone and tried calling him as well. Like Graeme said, he didn’t pick up. We tried for several minutes with no luck. I fumed, wanting to smash the phone. “We have to go,” I told him. “Borden will understand. Hell, we’ll probably be back before he is.”

Graeme frowned. “I can’t just go with you, Emma. It’s not that simple. You need to be protected.”

“Aren’t there other men around? I saw three outside the goddamn apartment building, Graeme. You can’t tell me that’s not enough. You guys are being too damn paranoid about this shit.”

He didn’t respond for a moment, and I was tired of feeling like a caged animal.

“How about the cops?” I asked. “We can send some over to pick her up, right?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “Christ, Emma, why do you think I left the police station? They’re useless here. They won’t get to her for a very long time, and by then she could be stupid enough to try and walk out.
Women
.”

“So what are we supposed to do?”

“Give me the address.” I handed him the paper and he stared down at it, that frown of his deepening. “This is a very bad area, very isolated. What the hell is the idiot girl doing there?”

“It’s a bar.”

“Idiot girl,” he repeated, shoving the paper in his pocket before levelling me with a deep stare. “Now listen here, Emma, if I lose my job over this, you go to the ends of the earth to find somebody as perfect as me. Someone a little younger. A little buffer. Not a pretty boy like Gerry, or too harsh like Hawke. Somebody just right.”

I couldn’t help my smile. What the hell was wrong with this guy? “Graeme, you are irreplaceable.”

He smiled back and ran his fingers over his bushy moustache, neatening it up like it mattered all of a sudden. “Perfect answer. Let’s get this done and fast.”

Emma

We had four men with us: two in the car behind us, and two in the car in front of us. Graeme was working with what he had, and I had to roll my eyes at this. I felt like some overpriced china doll, undeserving of all this over the top protection. I grew up in the ghetto, taking care of myself when I went out. And the crazy thing was, I knew if all of Borden’s men had been available, there would have been ten more guys in half a dozen cars nearby.

We rode to the east side of New Raven, where the city began to meet with the dense pine bush of numerous untouched nature reserves. Gone were the skyscrapers and luxury high rises and congested traffic the heart of the city was known for. We ventured into the outskirts, where homes were far and few, where random streets held a random convenient store and pub and the parking lots were filled with suspicious looking weather-beaten RVs. Everything appeared all the more eerie as the sky darkened and the sun disappeared over the horizon. The GPS was telling us we were fifteen minutes away to the destination along the winding road in the middle of Hicksville. The forest looked ominous, and the only source of light were our car lights and full moon.

“Why would your friend be working this far out?” Graeme wondered, shaking his head.

“Because she’s desperate,” I replied numbly. “I have to admit, it’s very far away from where she lives.”

“This map is taking us to a very old bar. I remember taking these very roads, chasing drunk and irresponsible people who didn’t give a rat’s ass about my police sirens. There are a lot of drugs up here. A lot of violence too. I’m glad she has you for a friend, Emma. I don’t think anyone else would have done this for her.”

“You are,” I said quietly.

“I don’t count.”

“You do. You count a lot.”

He looked away from the steering wheel and at me for a brief moment, seeing my sincerity. “And you count too, Emma. The first time I saw you I knew you would be something good for Borden. You have a lot of fight in you. I knew you’d be the only person who could bring that stubborn man back to earth and give him life again. He was broken, and you not only healed him, but you’ve changed him too.”

“Changed him how?”

“If somebody told me before you that he had a soft side, I would have bet my life they were full of shit.”

“And now?”

He smiled broadly. “And now I see a man that looks at you like you’re his light in the dark.” I couldn’t help smile back as he added quietly, “He’s in love with you. He never wants to let you go, and you have stayed by him, even when the threat came to light. That takes a lot of courage, and all the men respect you for it. You’re a great woman. Your love is true, and take it from me – a man who has been burned in the past – a woman like you is difficult to find.”

“Thank you, Graeme, but being burned doesn’t mean you’ll never find the right person again.” When he gave me a questioning look, I shyly admitted, “Hawke told me about your marriage.”

“Ah,” he grumbled, “of course he did. It’s water under the bridge now. I’m well over it. Sometimes you have to realize people aren’t who they say they are, and no matter how deeply you love them, the truth won’t change. It’s hard to accept, but I did make amends with it.”

“So why did you end up working for Borden?”

“Because everything I believed in was a lie. My wife had laughed behind my back and jumped into bed with my best friend. My world fell apart after that. I think what hurt the most was nobody cared. Not my friends, not my family, not the people I worked with at the station. And with Borden…well, it was an opportunity to tell everyone to go to hell and do something for myself. He pays remarkably well and he has always looked after his employees. It wasn’t a hard choice to make.”

I nodded in understanding. Borden went on that his men were just paid employees, but like Graeme, their loyalty was obvious. Borden was harsh, but he was fair too, and I suddenly missed him. I pulled out my phone again and made another attempt to call him.

“Nothing?” Graeme asked.

“No,” I answered, tucking the phone back into my pocket. “He must be really busy tonight –”

“What the hell?” Graeme suddenly punched on the brakes, and we jerked forward. The car came to an abrupt stop, and I followed his gaze to the car in front of us. It was stopped too, and both men were climbing out.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“I don’t know.” Graeme looked in the rear view mirror. The men behind us had stopped too, raising their hands in the air questionably. “Stay here,” he told me. “I’m going to see what’s going on.”

He stepped out of the vehicle and I watched him stride to the men. One met with him and gestured to the back of the car, talking fast. Graeme went to the rear of the car and kneeled down on the ground, inspecting the road and tires. I sat up straight in my seat, trying to get a better look at what was going on. The second Graeme’s hand touched the back of the wheel, his face went tight and he immediately stood up, talking loud enough for me to hear through the closed window.

“We’re turning back. This is a trap! Turn back!
AMBUSH!
”

Just as he shouted the last word, loud bangs erupted. My heart jumped at the sound of gunshots. Graeme took off back to the car, pulling out his gun from his waistband, screaming at the men to take cover. The other two men followed, producing guns as well, taking cover behind the first car. They scanned around us, looking toward the forest, before one shouted, “Over there!”

I screamed as bullets shot into the front of the car I was in. I ducked down, covering my head with my arms.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“They’re shooting the engines!” one of the men screamed.

I didn’t know what to do. I was too scared to get out, too scared to sit up, too scared to look at the men. Their screams suddenly erupted.

“Emma!” I heard Graeme.

My passenger side door opened and arms grabbed at me. I looked up into Graeme’s startled eyes.

“Get out, Emma! The car is useless now! You need to run!”

“Run where?”

“Emma, just run!”

He physically removed my coiled body from the car just as bullets ripped around us. He dropped me down to the ground beside the wheel of the car, shielding me. The bullets rained over us, some of them so close, it felt like a bomb had exploded in my ears. I cried out, terrified of them hitting us.

“Run,” he told me once the bullets moved to a different direction.

I heard the other men yell. Graeme’s hands grabbed at my shoulders and he shook me. “Emma,” he growled out. Scared, I looked at him. “Run into the forest. I need to fight these men off as long as possible before they try and get to you.”

Get to me? Why would they want to get to me?

“This is my fault?”

“Run,” he roared again, angered by my stillness.

Pushing my body up on wobbly legs, I ran straight into the forest. I looked over my shoulder and at Graeme, and everything inside of me halted. He was kneeled down, grabbing at his chest. I saw the blood and cried out.

He’d been shot.