Page 47 of All Out of Love

She didn’t realize she was heading straight for Carrington Capital until she saw the big dome at the top of its building in the far away distance. She was heading straight for Grayson.

But she didn’t get there.

Both cars caught up to her when the traffic in front of them got thick, with nowhere to go, and they rammed her again so violently that her airbag deployed.

The other two cars veered off and were out of control too. One of them flipped and flipped and landed upside down. The other car got away.

But the Porsche was spiraling into another scary fishtail that had Toya tossing side to side in her seatbelt as if she was a rag doll, and then it started spinning around again rapidly until it finally came to an abrupt stop. Everything seemed to stop.

There were no more hits from behind, side, or front.

There were no more sounds of crashing metal or bullets flying.

There were no more flips or spins or anybody else burning rubber speeding away.

All that was left to be heard was terror masquerading as a quiet peace.

An eerie, devastating, mortifying peace.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The chief of security for Carrington Capital hurried into Grayson’s office. He didn’t knock, even though Grayson was in a meeting with a potential acquisition partner. But Grayson knew, when he didn’t knock, that something was wrong. “What is it?”

“The GPS we have on your automobiles, sir, is indicating a car crash.”

Grayson heart nearly stopped. But he knew many of his servants took his cars in for routine maintenance often. “Which car?” he asked.

When his security chief said the word Porsche, Grayson’s heart dropped through his shoe and he jumped up, grabbed his suit coat off of the back of his chair, and began hurrying for the exit. “Where?” he asked as he ran.

“Near the Balmoral-Brightman intersection, sir,” his security chief said as he attempted to hurry out of the door behind him. But Grayson was so fast that he was on the elevator with the doors closing him in by the time his chief made it over there. The door closed completely before the security chief could wedge it back open.

Dena ran up to him. “Did the system say who was driving his Porsche?”

“The system couldn’t tell me that, but when I phoned his residence, I was told that a Jameesha Morgan was driving it.”

Dena was floored. “Her again? I cannot believe it!” What on earth, she wondered, did that big mouth nobody of a human being have on a man like Grayson? It was inexplicable to her!

But Grayson didn’t care what it was to Dena. He wasn’t thinking about her. He got off of that elevator, ran through his busy lobby, and was out of that building so fast that lobby security wondered if they should follow him.

But by the time they hurried outside to ask, Grayson had already hopped into his big, black Mercedes Maybach and was speeding away. In the decade the chief of lobby security worked for Carrington Capital, he’d never seen the boss move that fast. What, he wondered too, was going on?

But Grayson’s entire thought process was focused on what was going on with Latoya as he drove toward Balmoral and Brightman. Nothing else consumed his mind. She was supposed to be driving over to discuss his father’s refusal to endorse Emily Preston. Which meant trouble for Latoya. By four, which was only six hours away, his father planned to give his full-throated endorsement to somebody else. And now this! Grayson couldn’t get there fast enough.

When he finally arrived at the scene, fear gripped him at just the volume of police cars and ambulances on the scene already. And when he saw the mangled car that was upside down in the middle of the road, and parts like bumpers and wheels and glass were littering the entire area, his heart began to hammer. Where was Latoya?

When he got out and realized it was a Dodge that had flipped and not his Porsche, he felt some sense of relief. Until he saw his Porshe.

It was mangled too, as if it had been hit on all sides. All of the windows were shattered, which was unusual, but what nearly stopped him in his tracks was the fact that there were holes all over that car. And not just any holes, but bullet holes. Bullet holes? What the fuck! This didn’t look like any ordinary car accident to him.

And where was his woman?

He didn’t even try to correct his thought process this time. Because given how his heart was hammering, given how he was on the verge of panicking he was so worried about her, there was no other answer for it. Latoya Morgan was his woman. Pure and simple. But where was she?

He didn’t see her because she was seated on the curb with two policemen surrounding her. And neither one was very friendly.

“You need to tell us the truth,” said the taller one. “Why were they shooting at you?”

“I told you I don’t know.” Toya was so shaken by the incident that she could hardly think straight. But they wouldn’t let up. It was as if she was the blame for everything that happened.