Discovered (26 page)

Layla

Layla held onto Jay’s hand as they rushed back
up the hallway. “They killed James,” she moaned. “They killed him right in
front of me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jay replied. “But truth be
told, I’m actually surprised James was still alive.”

Her heart still pounding in her chest, Layla
almost ran to get out of the vile hallway as quickly as possible, feeling her
back exposed to the evil she’d just left behind.

When they burst out into the cold night, she
let go of Jay’s hand and stumbled over to the brick wall beside the staircase,
panting heavily. She slid down the wall and sat on the ground, putting her
hands up to her head.

Jay knelt before her and put his hand on her
shoulder. “Layla…” he said softly.

And then the floodgate opened. She cried
bitterly, holding her head in her hands, the image of James’ face burned into
her memory.

“Layla, they can’t hurt us now,” Jay uttered,
trying to comfort her. “It’s over now.”

She was an array of emotions.  She was grieved
over the death of James, but somewhere inside, something else started to
surface, another feeling. Was it relief?

Before she knew what was happening, the bitter
tears turned into laughter. She was well aware that her emotions were not
stable at the moment, but went with the turbulence anyway. She looked up to see
Jay glaring at her with a worried expression on his face as she laughed almost
hysterically.

After a long while, she felt her composure
return. She looked up at Jay and put her hand on his perfect cheek. “I’m
sorry,” she said. “My head is all over the place.”

“No, that’s alright,” he said kindly. He helped
her to her feet and put his arm around her shoulder, leading her in the
direction of the car.

She stopped short and looked at him, feeling
love and relief pour over her. “What did you say to him before we left?” she
asked.

“What?” Jay questioned, looking confused.

“Before we walked out of that horrible room,
you turned around and said something to Robert. What was it?”

“Oh…I told him to burn in hell,” Jay answered.
And then Layla slammed into him, nearly knocking him backward. She clung to him
for dear life. “What?” he asked, chuckling.

“Arturo!” she gushed. “I could listen to you
speak Spanish for the rest of my life. It’s so beautiful.”

He laughed and hugged her tight. “If you
promised me the rest of your life, I wouldn’t dream of ever uttering a word in
English again,” he answered.

“Then you wouldn’t be doing a lot of talking,”
she replied, pulling away from him, “because there’s only one thing I want to
do to those lips when I hear Spanish falling from them.” She leaned in and
kissed him forcefully.

After many heavenly moments, he pulled away. “Mi
amor,
me gusta su forma de pensar
,”
he said.

“I don’t even care
if you just called me a fat, ugly beast,” she replied, laughing. “Say it
again!”

He shook his head
and looked deep into her eyes. “Eres la chica más hermosa en el mundo
.”

“
Whatever!” she blurted out,
attacking his lips once more.

He pushed her away
gently and looked down at her. “Are you feeling better, mi amor?” he asked.

She smiled sadly
and nodded. “I’ll be fine,” she answered seriously. “And you sound like Ben
when you say ‘mi amor’,” she added.

“Ugh!” Jay yelped.
“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she answered.
“I love it.”

“And…speak of the
devil,” Jay blurted out, staring over her shoulder.

Layla let go of his
neck and turned around sharply to see Ben walking down the street slowly as
though he was out for a stroll, his arm loosely over Issy’s shoulder.

Issy put up her
hand and waved.

Joey walked beside
them. He stopped short, crossed his arms over his chest and nodded approvingly
at Jay.

But if they were
just out for a leisurely stroll, they weren’t dressed accordingly. All three
were decked out in camouflage combat pants tucked into Doc Marin boots, with
dark T-shirts under black leather jackets. These three looked like they meant
business. Layla didn’t doubt for a second that between the various pockets on
their outfits, they were armed to the back teeth.

Jay walked sharply
toward them. “Did I not tell you three to stay away from this?” he fumed.

“Yeah, well, we’re
your family, moron,” Joey replied. “We weren’t going to let you deal with this
alone.”

“And since when do
we ever listen to you?” Ben added, shaking his head.

“Besides, it’s
after midnight,” Issy added. “Which means it’s officially Thanksgiving, and we
have spent every Thanksgiving together since the thing started.”

Jay shook his head
disapprovingly. “Well, you’re late, anyway,” he informed them.

“Oh, we would have
been here ages ago, but a little birdy told us that you had things under control,
so we slowed down, figured we’d let you impress your lady…y’know…play the
hero,” Joey answered.

Jay narrowed his
eyes suspiciously.

“We should get
going,” Issy said awkwardly.

“Um…” Ben mumbled.
“
“Rabidomente, mi amor,” he added and bit the
inside of his cheek.

“Oh, Arturo!” Joey
gushed in a mocking voice and threw his arms around Ben’s shoulders. “I could
listen to you speak Spanish for the rest of my life.”

Layla stopped short
and felt her face heat up.

“Cut it out, you
two,” Issy scolded.

“Start talking,” Jay
ordered, glaring at them both.

“When you came into
the living room just after Robert had kidnapped Layla, and you were all
distraught and y’know, kicking over the furniture and stuff, well, I noticed
you rubbing your back, and you had a strange look on your face for a split
second. It kind of dawned on me that maybe you’d felt something back there,
like maybe Robert had placed a bug on you. So I got to thinking that if he did,
it shouldn’t take me more than an hour or two at the computer to find the
signal. Then, if I found the signal, I figured I’d have no problems tapping
into it,” Joey explained, beaming from ear to ear.

“Clever,” Jay
replied, nodding.

“Not really,” Joey
contradicted. “What kind of a guy would I be if I couldn’t read my best friend
after five hundred years?”

“Well, I suppose I
owe you,” Jay said appreciatively.

“Um….if you promise
to owe me…” Joey said, smirking wickedly,  “I wouldn’t dream of ever uttering a
word in English again.” Then he and Ben fell about the place laughing and
high-fiving each other.

“Idiots!” Jay snapped,
unlocking his car door with the remote keychain. “Come on, mi amor,” he added,
grabbing Layla’s hand.

“I’m sorry, Layla,”
Ben shouted after her as she climbed into the passenger seat. “I’ll make you breakfast
as a piece offering.”

“Don’t bother, Ben,”
Layla called out the car window. “I remember what a disaster that was the last
time.”

“Ignore them, Layla,”
Jay yelled, walking to the driver’s side of the car, “
I’ve
been doing it
for hundreds of years now.”

A few minutes later,
just as they approached the BQE, Jay picked his phone up from the little
compartment beside his seat and hit the front. “Where can we get a pay-as-you-go-phone
at this time of the night?” he asked.

“I’ll meet you
there,” he replied. “Okay thanks. Oh, and by the way, one more wise-crack from
you or Joey and I’m going to start throwing punches.” He tapped the front of
his phone and placed it back beside him.

“Ben?” Layla asked.

“Yeah,” Jay said with
a smirk.

“What did he say when
you told him you’d punch him or Joey?”

Jay sighed and rolled
his eyes. “He basically busted his gut laughing.”

“You’re really not
the violent type, are you?” she asked.

“Never with my
brothers,” he replied. “I don’t think I’ve hit Ben since I was four years old.
He knew it was an empty threat. But, that said, if anyone threatened one of the
four people I love, I’d kill them without the slightest bit of remorse, as
you’ve just unfortunately witnessed.”

“It was self-defense,”
Layla informed him. “We weren’t walking out of there alive. Robert told me that
himself.”

Jay nodded. “I know.
I figured as much. He probably knew that if I handed over the water, I’d have
enough money to track him down eventually.”

“That’s what he
thought,” Layla confirmed. “He was going to kill you, and then lure Ben, Joey
and Issy to their deaths by claiming he had you held prisoner.”

Jay nodded, staring
straight ahead, his nostrils flaring briefly. “I can’t begin to tell you all
the things that were running through my head as I watched them carry you off,”
he said through clenched teeth. “I ran all the scenarios through my mind
quickly and was bewildered as to what to do. It was a blessing that Robert placed
that listening device on the back of my jacket. When I knew that he had, the plan
came to me in an instant.”

“How did you know?”
she questioned.

“As the scene kept
playing over and over in my mind, I suddenly remembered the strange way he
grabbed the back of my jacket,” he answered. “Without really giving it much
thought, I knew I had to convince the others that I had every intention of
handing Robert over what he wanted. I knew he was listening in.”

“But you weren’t
considering that?”

“For you, I would,
Layla, please believe that. But I knew that we weren’t going to survive the night
that way anyway.”

“I know,” she
answered, gripping the top of his arm. “You took a big chance on the poison not
killing us.”

“We were as good as
dead anyway,” Jay responded.

“What are we meeting
them for?” she questioned.

“We’re not,” Jay
stated. “Ben will take care of it. He’s heading to Flushing now. There is a
twenty-four hour, full service gas station on Northern Boulevard that sells
pay-as-you-go phones.”

“For…?”

 “He’s going to call
the police and let them know where to find James’ body,” he answered solemnly,
grabbing onto her hand. “We need to do that anonymously from a phone that can’t
be traced back to us.”

“That seems wrong,”
she uttered, wiping a tear from her eye.

“I know, but if your
mother found out that you hadn’t been home this entire time, it would open a
whole other can of worms. And besides, wasn’t he due in New York today anyway?”

Layla nodded, rested
her head against Jay’s shoulder and closed her eyes, exhaustion engulfing her.
“Is this alright?” she questioned. “Can you drive like this?”

“It’s so much better
than alright,” he answered. “Try to sleep, Layla. We have over two hours of
driving ahead of us.”

Layla was not fully
awake when she stretched out her legs and hugged the pillow to her face.
‘This
isn’t right,’
she thought and forced her eyes open.

The last thing she
remembered was nodding off on Jay’s shoulder, somewhere on the Long Island
Expressway.

She sat up and threw
her legs off the bed, still dressed in the same clothes she’d worn the day
before.

She pushed at her
belly when the horrifying memory of James’ face, as a knife slid into his
throat, flashed in her mind.
‘Please, God, no,’
she thought, hoping the
scene was not going to play relentlessly like a video on loop, over and over.

She walked down the
stairs and into the kitchen to find Issy alone, standing at the counter
spooning stuffing into a large turkey. She looked up and smiled at Layla then
wiped her hands on a dishtowel and floated over to throw her arms around the
girl. “Good morning,” she said, rubbing Layla’s back, “and happy Thanksgiving,
my friend.”

Layla hugged her
back, grateful and flattered to be considered one of Issy’s friends. “Happy
Thanksgiving to you also,” she murmured.

“How did you sleep?”
Issy asked, pulling away.

“Well, but I don’t
remember going to bed,” Layla replied.

“You fell asleep in
the car, apparently. Jay carried you upstairs when he arrived. He didn’t want
to wake you. He figured you needed sleep after the traumatic night you’d had.”

“The guys aren’t up
yet?” Layla questioned.

“Nah, they stayed up
late, I think,” Issy responded. “Poor Jay was taking a razzing from Ben and
Joey when I went to bed.”

“Ugh!” Layla
muttered, rolling her eyes.

“It’s childish, I
know,” Issy said. “But it’s just their way of expressing how delighted they are
for him. They’re happy that he’s happy.”

Just then, the man in
question walked into the kitchen looking adorably disheveled in cut off sweats
and a tight black T-shirt, his stubbly cheeks and chin giving him an
irresistible air of danger. He sauntered up to Layla, took her hand and bent
down to press his forehead to hers.