Author’s notes:
Ready for some action? Well…sort of. LOL
Within about two minutes, I saw a car behind me.
Chapter 63:
For the longest time, we just looked at each other. I contemplated the phrase making love, and wondered if I was even capable of doing such a thing. I knew fucking, but I hadn’t watched enough chick flicks to understand how they were different. Bella would know, though, but I didn’t want to ask her. I wanted to…prove I could do it. For her.
So what made it different?
It should be slow, I figured. And it should be someplace nice, and someplace where she was safe, and I didn’t have to worry about someone showing up in the middle of the night.
Lee.
Shit.
“Bella, we have to get out of here,” I said.
“Why?”
“That guy who was here – he was probably just a customer, but having anyone know where you are isn’t safe. We need to get out of here.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
I leaned in and brushed my lips over hers once again.
“I will give you the wedding night you want,” I promised her. “I’ll make it good – I swear I will. Just not now and not here.”
Bella’s eyes studied mine for a minute before she nodded. I dragged us both out of the bed and started throwing shit into the suitcases we had brought. I watched Bella carefully tuck the little castle snow globe in a nest she made out of one of her shirts. She also packed what looked like a white shirt box into her bag. I remembered it from the hotel in Paris, but hadn’t thought to ask about it.
“What’s in there?”
Bella smiled and bit down on her lip.
“You’ll see,” she responded cryptically.
I narrowed my eyes at her, but didn’t really have the time to get into it. Maybe I’d ask again once we were in the car. I threw the rest of my stuff in my bag, holstered my gun under my jacket and started putting things in the car. Bella followed me out with her bag, and we headed down the driveway in the dark. Once I got to the main road, I looked around and didn’t see any more cars, which made sense at four in the morning. I pulled out and headed towards the train station.
Within about two minutes, I saw a car behind me.
I’d been going at a pretty decent clip, and they would have had to be going faster to have caught up with me, but once they were in my sights, they stayed about the same distance behind me. Not good. I grabbed the phone and called Rosalie.
“I just got out of the shower and I’m going to bed,” she quipped over the phone.
“I’m getting Bella out of here,” I told her. “We had a visitor, and now I’ve got a trailer.”
I told her about Lee Stephens, and she agreed she had never heard the name before. She yelled to Emmett to contact Harry Clearwater and see if he really knew him or not.
“I need the train schedules for Dilsberg,” I told Rose. “Whatever one will get us out of Germany the fastest.”
I looked back behind me. The headlights were still in plain view – no closer, no farther away.
“Make that two trains heading to two different countries.”
Rose gave me the info, which I repeated to Bella and she wrote down.
“I’ll get the tickets ordered for you,” Rose told me. “Once we hear back from Harry or Seth I’ll call you back.”
She hung up, and I increased my speed. The headlights went out of view, but only for a minute before they were back again.
“What do we do?” Bella asked, sounding a little panicked. I reached over and grabbed her hand. Her fingers wrapped around mine.
“We get on one train, hope whoever is behind us gets on it, too, then we get off and get on the second one instead. We’ll have to move fast.”
I saw her nod in my peripheral vision. I sped up again, and we were rally flying now, but the car remained the same distance away from us. I slowed down, and they didn’t get any closer. We rode in silence the short distance to the Dilsberg train station, and I parked the car right up by the front door, where we abandoned it. The other car passed us up, turning slowly into the parking lot.
“Come on,” I said as I took Bella’s hand and dragged her through the station. I bought both sets of tickets, using some of my more colorful German words when the guy in the booth asked why I was getting tickets to two countries on trains that were leaving five minutes apart. He backed down, gave me the tickets, and we headed towards the platforms next to the lines of trains.
I scouted out the train that left second and would head to Switzerland, finding it already waiting four platforms away from the first train, which would take passengers to Lichtenstein. We had about twenty minutes until the first one was scheduled to take off, so I walked Bella slowly up and down random platforms – watching for anyone who might have been following us.
He wasn’t hard to find. There weren’t a huge number of passengers looking for transportation at this time of night, and he stood out just because he wasn’t looking around at train schedules or even carrying a bag. Amateur.
It wasn’t Stephens, because he was way too short and lanky. I considered finding a place to just off him before we left, but there really wasn’t time. I doubted he was going to actually follow me into a men’s room anyway. I led Bella to the train heading for Lichtenstein, and we boarded at the very front of the train, which was the farthest from the station, and then began walking slowly down the cars until we reached the back. The guy was still behind us, leaning over the edge and smoking a cigarette, but watching us closely.
Damn, I wanted a cigarette.
We stopped at the second to last car, standing just outside the little siding door to the area when you could sit and relax. Yeah, we were doing a lot of relaxing right now. Bella hadn’t said anything, but she knew I was watching the guy, and she kept twisting her fingers around themselves and biting her lip. I leaned over and kissed her lightly, whispering that it would be all right, even though I knew it wasn’t the very best of circumstances.
The conductor announced that the train was leaving.
I grabbed Bella’s hand and raced to the edge and the stairs that led off the train and back onto the platform. I glanced behind me and saw the guy toss his cigarette down and start running towards us. With Bella’s hand in mine, we jumped from the train just as it started to move, landing on the platform below just as the conductor started yelling at us. Bella stumbled, and I had to drop the bag I was carrying to keep her from falling. I looked over my shoulder and saw our trailer arguing with the conductor, who was holding him back as the train began to leave. He shoved the conductor hard, and I started to run, leaving the bag behind me with all mishit in it, mentally taking note of what was inside and figuring none of it really mattered.
We raced up the platform to the middle of the station, over to the platform of the train for Switzerland, and got to the first car just as the conductor was starting to shut the gate.
It was all going to be good now, right?
Chapter end notes:
See? He does know what he’s doing…sometimes!
I should be able to get one more update out today.
