“I won’t. But I’m going to try to take a picture.” I snuck out from my hiding spot and moved to the window.
Carlo walked away from the building into a red car parked out front. I snapped some pictures with my phone. It wasn’t likely that I got the license plate, but I tried anyway until the car was out of sight.
“I got a few,” I told Thayer.
“I want you to go back to the airport and take the next plane out of there.”
“Okay.”
“Find a security guard. Tell him you think your crazy ex is following you. Ask him to stay with you until your plane departs.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be there when you get off the plane.”
“You’re in California.”
“I don’t care. I need to be with you.”
I glanced around, planning my exit.
“G?” Thayer asked.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve never felt so fucking helpless in my entire life.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him, though I wondered if it was me who needed reassuring.
“I’ll stay on the phone. Just get to the airport,” he instructed.
I spotted a taxi parked outside the hotel next door. “There’s a taxi. Let me call you once I’m at the airport.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re gonna be okay, G.”
“Promise?” I asked.
“Promise,” he assured me.
While everything in me wanted to believe him, life as I knew it had again been flipped on its head.
22
GISELLE
I arrived at the airport fifteen minutes later. I found the nearest security guard and told him what Thayer had told me to say. He ushered me to my gate, and he waited with me until I’d boarded the plane. I could only breathe once I was in my window seat.
Then my mind reeled.
Between online orders and in-store purchases, I made a lot of money over the course of two years. A lot of money that Gino convinced me to keep in a safe. Sure, I used a bank for the money to purchase inventory, but otherwise we kept the money in-house. And, he knew it. Had he told Carlo? Did he know what his friend was capable of? Or, had it been an inside job?
My stomach dropped.
Did he know Carlo was going to rob the store? Did he know he was going to hold a gun to my head?