Chase didn’t look well at all. I felt so horrible for making him come out and look for me. It was my fault for going to meet those two and thinking they might actually want to be friends. I should have listened to Chase. I should have understood the level of danger he and I were both in.
As we drove back to the car at the bowling alley, I sat quietly in the backseat. After introducing himself, Carlos told me about the police and how they had been at the bowling alley when Chase and he arrived. Chase was quiet, and I figured he had fallen asleep. He looked exhausted and I was sure that he was in a lot of pain.
“Should I go to the police station and talk to them?” I asked Carlos.
“Well, if Escabar is having you followed, you probably shouldn’t do that. He’ll think that you are turning him in or something. You should assume that he’s following your every move. He’s going to want that black book back.”
“I don’t even know where it is. Chase, where is it?” I asked.
“He’s asleep.”
“Well, wherever it is, we need to just get it and give it to Escabar with the money as soon as possible. He will kill the both of us without a second thought, I’m sure of it.”
“Yeah, I’m not exactly sure why Chase got himself mixed up with that guy. But he needs to settle this before things get totally out of control.”
I started to laugh. The fact that Carlos didn’t think things were already out of control had me a little worried. Chase had been beaten up and I had been kidnapped – how much more out of control could things really get?
“Are you good to drive back to the cabin?” Carlos asked.
“Yeah, I’m not sure I’ll remember how to get there, but hopefully I can wake Chase up enough to give directions.”
“All right, you two take care of yourselves. Call me if you need anything. I have a friend that works with the Special Crimes Unit – they might be able to help if you get into a real mess. Just let me know.”
“Thanks.”
I woke Chase up, and he walked over to the passenger seat of his car. I could tell he was in a lot of pain, but he looked more tired than anything else. I was tired, too. A better way of explaining it was that I was absolutely exhausted.
As I drove us down the interstate toward where I remembered the cabin was, I really wished my phone had not died. It had the directions application on there and the address.
“Chase, I need you to wake up and tell me which exit.”
He moved a little and even mumbled something, but I just couldn’t get him to answer me. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to find the cabin without Chase’s help. It was dark out and totally impossible to locate without specific directions. It was close to morning, though. When the sun came up, I might be able to find the cabin again.
I looked over at Chase. I saw that there was no way he was going to wake up. He finally felt safe enough to fall asleep, and there was nothing that I could do to wake him. I tried turning the music up, screaming, and shaking him, but nothing worked. Finally, I turned the vehicle around and decided we just needed to find a safe place to sleep for the night.
If we were going to sleep in the car, I didn’t want to be someplace where we would be easily spotted. I took a lot of extra turns and continually watched my rearview mirror to see if I was being followed. I couldn’t take any chances. Escabar or his goons were surely going to want to know what we were up to that night. If I hadn’t lost them through all my turning around, I needed to lose them before I found a place to park.
The road signs directed me toward downtown Atlanta. Since they were the easiest to follow at night, I just continued to follow them. As I pulled into the city, it was pretty empty. I drove up and down the main streets, looking for a safe place to park.
Finally, I saw the parking garage attached to the courthouse and jail. There wasn’t a much safer place than a building protected by guards and police officers. I drove in and found a nice, quiet parking spot for us to rest. I was surprised that there weren’t more cameras in the parking lot. At least some kind of security would have made me feel safer. But I guessed criminals didn’t come to the jail parking lot to commit crimes very often.
At first, it was hard to sleep. I continually looked around the parking garage to make sure we had not been followed. It took me about a half hour before I felt comfortable enough to finally fall asleep. I was so tired. My whole body felt like it needed to rest for weeks.
Chapter Seventeen
Chase
Waking up in the middle of a parking garage was pretty much the last place I thought I would ever be. As I opened my eyes and looked around, I couldn’t quite figure out why we were there, or where there was exactly. It was calm and dark, but there seemed to be a big police presence, as I saw two squad cars parked just a few feet away from us.
I looked over at Jordan as she slept, but I couldn’t wake her up. She looked so utterly peaceful as she dreamed. I felt horrible for getting her involved in the mess that was my life. I had really put her into a difficult spot. I needed to figure out a way to get us both out of it.
If I remembered right, we had both had a pretty crazy last 48 hours, and I had no idea what day it was or even what time it was. The parking garage was dark and had no windows or areas for light to the outside. I pulled my phone out to see the time, but it was dead.
The weird thing was I didn’t want to move from that spot. It felt so safe there, so comfortable. There were no other cars nearby and nobody coming or going from where we were parked. In the distance, up the ramp, I could see some people parking and going into the building, but they couldn’t see me.
Jordan’s dark brown hair swept across her face. I felt so incredibly horrible for bringing her over to America and getting her mixed up in my mess. It was a stupid decision and I had put her life in danger. I wasn’t use to having to care about others as I cared about Jordan – it was new territory for me. But I liked it. I liked the feelings I was starting to develop for her. I liked how she made me feel.
Most of all, I liked that she didn’t say a single thing about what a mess I had gotten her into. She could have been angry with me, she could have left me right there on the floor of my house after I had been beaten up, but she didn’t.