Page 6 of Hacker Salvation

I couldn’t hear the reply, but Daisy’s eyes went wide. “They took you downtown?” she screeched.

By the time Daisy was done with her brief conversation, Neal, Brock, and Aaron stood around the kitchen island. Daisy told us that her friend was at the sheriff’s station. Annabella’s fiancé might be dead.

3

Annabella

Icould always count on Daisy. Uber had been my first idea, but I already heard the clicks of the cameras outside. Daisy’s friend and ex-boss who owns a mercenary company was in town, and she’d told me he would send someone to help get me through the crowds. Now I just had to sit and wait, which wasn’t easy to do given my location and the circumstances. I wasn’t on some Hollywood set. There were genuine criminals in this place. But I wasn’t one of them.

The sheriff had kicked me out of his office as soon as I finished making my call. The deputy from earlier had then escorted me to the waiting area. Everyone was staring at me, wondering why I was there. Deputy Charles hadn’t let me grab my purse or phone before we’d left my house. Now I sat there, waiting for Daisy. I was not ready to face the million or so reporters on the other side of the door, who were anticipating my exit.

At one point I snapped at a little kid running around the waiting area. The mother whipped around and glared at me. As a star, I was unaccustomed to that kind of treatment. People regularly went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. Instead, the sheriff was trying to make an example out of me.

The front desk clerk mumbled something under her breath that I was too angry to even pay attention to. Then she turned to another guard, and they both looked in my direction and laughed. They didn’t stop the paparazzi when they’d tried to come in. It was like the officers wanted my face plastered across the tabloids.

I tried to look calm, cool, and collected, but the whole situation was trying on me. I was in absolute danger of being photographed dressed down.

I hoped that Daisy would hurry up and get there. I’d never been taken down to the sheriff’s station before. I shouldn’t be there. All I could do was think about what had happened to cause me to end up there. None of it made any sense, not the housekeeper taking video or Nate missing. I prayed the blood in the upstairs bathroom wasn’t his. I didn’t know what I would do if I lost my best friend even though I was pissed as hell at him.

Finally, the doors to the waiting area opened, and in walked a six-foot-four muscular man. He reminded me of the men Daisy talked about. He had on a pair of dark denim jeans and a white button-down shirt. The sleeves were rolled up, showing off the man’s arms. Tattoos lined his biceps, adding to his sex appeal. I licked my lips. His hair was pulled back. He scanned the room until his eyes landed on me. At least I thought they did—it was difficult to tell because of the aviator glasses he was wearing.

With a couple of steps, he was by my side. He raised his glasses, and his deep-gray eyes hypnotized me. “Annabella, my name is John Waters. We’ve met a couple times. Daisy sent me to pick you up.”

I didn’t remember meeting him before. The man was sexy as hell. I would have remembered if he’d walked into a room. My mind was going a million miles a minute, and I wanted out of the sheriff’s station. It wasn’t that I was ungrateful Mr. Waters had come to get me, but I really needed to see my friend as soon as possible.

“Where’s Daisy?” I blurted out.

“Waiting in the car. I’ll take you to her.”

Tears began to stream down my face, and I finally managed to say what I should’ve opened with. “Thank you.” I felt like a broken woman. This was all more than I could handle at the moment.

“Here.” John pulled off his leather jacket and handed it to me. “There are a lot of reporters out there. When I open the door, stay next to me, and I will make a path. If you want to, cover your head with the jacket.”

Everything seemed so unreal. I nodded and followed John to the door. When he pulled the handle of the door back, cameras blinded me with their flashes. Everyone was yelling my name, asking why I was taken in and where Nate was. I wished I knew. Not wanting my face plastered across all the gossip rags, I put John’s jacket over my head then grabbed the back of his shirt and held on. With each step we took, the crowd became more restless. John reached back and grabbed my hand. I expected his hands to be rough and calloused. Instead, his hand was soft.

When we reached the sidewalk, Neal, one of Daisy’s future husbands, jumped out of the black Escalade parked along the sidewalk and opened the back door. When we were within feet of the vehicle, John grabbed me around the waist and pushed me into the waiting SUV. The flashing lights and yells intensified with each step. John jumped in next to me and pulled the door shut. Even with the door closed and the blackout tint on the windows, the paparazzi continued to rain down questions.

At the top of the stairs to the station stood the officer who’d brought me in. His arms were crossed, and his sunglasses made it impossible to see his eyes. But his rigid stance and body language suggested he was glaring at our car.

“Are you okay?” Daisy asked as she wrapped her arms around me.

I shifted in the leather seat. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Neal cleared his throat from the front seat, his eyes meeting mine through the review mirror. “Don’t worry Annabella, Brock is meeting us at the house and we will figure everything out.” John shifted in the seat next to me.

We were silent as we rode to the house Daisy shared with her men. Neal said not to worry, but he wasn’t the one being accused of killing someone. Even worse, I was accused of killing my best friend. Aaron and Neal were in the front seat, while Daisy and I hugged each other throughout the entire ride in the back seat. John sat next to me. I could feel his body heat. He sat with his arms crossed and stared out the window.

I was struggling not to cry anymore. “Daisy, I’m sorry to pull you away from your opening. You can drop me off at my house, and you can go back.” Earlier, I had panicked when the deputy said I had to go to the sheriff’s office, and I hadn’t known who to call. Asking Daisy to leave her special day was selfish of me, and I felt evil for doing it.

Daisy rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry about it. We were already open for a while, and I got to meet a lot of the new girls. Kat, my sister-in-law, runs the sister shelter back in Ft. Lauderdale. She and her husband have it under control. Brock and Jessica are meeting us back at our house so we can figure out a game plan. Kat and Antonio will stay and work the shelter with the staff.”

I let her words sink in. It was nice to have someone look out for me without wanting something in return. No one in Hollywood ever did anything without an ulterior motive or the promise of some type of gain. I could’ve called my manager, but I was worried he would turn the whole mess into some kind of publicity. All I wanted was to find Nate and figure out what had happened. He couldn’t be dead. Even though I had been mad at him last night, I’d never wanted him to die.

“Okay, but I can go home.”

John’s deep, gravelly voice startled me. “I talked with the sheriff’s office on our way over to pick you up. Your house hasn’t been released yet. You might be able to get back in tomorrow.”

I laid my head back against the leather seat and listened as everyone talked around me. I closed my eyes, hoping that when I opened them, this nightmare would be over and I could go back to my customary life. I didn’t even want to look at my phone. More than likely, I had twenty missed calls from my manager and double that from the producer of the movie I was working on. The contract for the film had stipulations about being arrested. I’d never imagined it would happen, so I had always skipped over reading that part of the agreement. Acting was my life, and I didn’t know what this situation was going to do to my career… or if I would even have one after it was all said and done.

---