Or I wanted her to ride me. Either way worked just fine.
Chapter Thirteen: Alexa
I was pretty frustrated that my little phone call ruse hadn’t worked at all, especially because of the smug look on Cole’s face as I climbed into the car.
After Marla had seen through me, Cole went up to take a shower and I was tasked with finding her address. Finding exactly where someone lived should have been harder than it was, but it didn’t take me very long.
But what the hell was I doing anyway? I wasn’t the type of girl to hunt someone down. Then again, I wasn’t the type of girl to marry a stranger, to want her stepbrother, or to get blackmailed, but apparently I could do all those things. Maybe I was moving away from the normal, boring person I used to be.
I felt a thrill at that thought. Maybe it was okay to take my life into my own hands. I couldn’t just sit back and hope for someone to save me; I had to step up and do something about my situation. Cole wasn’t going to just take care of everything on his own, although I was sure he would have if I let him.
No, I didn’t need Cole. I didn’t need anybody. Or maybe I did, but not in the way that I used to think.
“Know where we’re going?” he asked.
I nodded, holding up my phone to show him the GPS directions. “Let’s do this.”
He laughed and pulled out into traffic. I slipped sunglasses on to help with the glare from the slowly setting sun.
“What’s the plan, then?” I asked him.
“Plan?”
“Yeah, you know, the thing we’re going to do when we get there.”
He grinned and shrugged. “No plan.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Relax, wife. We don’t need a plan.”
“Stop calling me that, and yes we do. We can’t just break her door down and start yelling.”
“I wasn’t going to break her door,” he muttered.
“Come on, we need some sort of game plan here.”
“Fine. What do you have in mind?”
I sighed. Was he really going to just wing the whole thing? Probably, yeah. That seemed exactly like something he would do.
“Well, first thing is, she’s going to recognize us.”
“Did you bring masks?”
“No. So I think our biggest problem is going to be getting her to open the door.”
“If it’s an apartment building, we can just wait for someone to come out before we go in.”
“True. Good point. But if it’s not?”
“I’ll buzz her and say I have a package she might want.”
“You’re not making a penis joke right now, are you?”
He gave me a little sideways grin. “Yes. Penis joke.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, whatever. What if that doesn’t work?”
“Then we stake her out. We’ll wait until she comes outside. She’ll have to leave her apartment sooner or later.”
“That could be hours.”
“Could be days, princess. Think you can handle it?”
I gave him an annoyed look. If he could handle it, then so could I.
“Of course,” I said.
“Good. So that’s the plan.”
“What about when we get in there?”
“We ask her where the pictures are. And if she won’t talk, we make her.”
“You are not going to torture this girl.”
“What kind of guy do you think I am?”
“Crazy.”
“Maybe,” he said, laughing, “but I don’t hurt women, even ones that are blackmailing me.”
“Fine. How will you get her to talk?”
“I’ll threaten her, try and scare her. If that doesn’t work, we’ll offer to pay her.”
“And if none of that works?”
“Then we’ll figure something else out.” He paused, watching the road. “Relax, Alex. We’ll make this work.”
“Fine, but when this goes horribly wrong, you can’t blame me.”
He smirked at me. “What could possibly go wrong?”
I shook my head at him. “I wish you hadn’t just said that.”
Fifteen minutes, we parked a few blocks away from the address and walked over. It turned out that she lived in a pretty large apartment building.
“What now?” I asked him.
“Now we wait for someone to come out or to go in, and we follow them.”
I nodded. “Okay then.” I leaned up against the wall and he leaned up next to me.
Things had been tense between us ever since we had gotten back from the banquet hall. I couldn’t believe how incredibly soaked I had been, and how badly I had wanted him. Still, part of me had known it would have been a bad idea to give in to him, and so I had ended up closing the door and locking him out.