For Love Alone (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 8)

‘I don’t know,’ Jasper replied. ‘I thought I saw something back there.’

‘Wait.’ Justin lifted a hand to stop everyone. They all turned to look back at the safe house. ‘I thought I saw something near the barn.’

They watched. Within seconds, the dull and distant sound of gunfire broke the silence. Brief flashes of light flickered around the property as the men the Star Elite had fought last night attacked the property from all sides.

‘Mother of God,’ Phillip hissed. ‘We only just escaped.’

‘They followed us,’ Oliver growled, a little shaken himself at just how close they had come to being ambushed again.

‘They aren’t highly trained, or they would have scouted the area and made sure that we were at home before they tried to attack us,’ Oliver assured them.

‘They are persistent,’ Niall sighed. ‘Thankfully, on this occasion we are one step ahead of them. Now all we have to do is stay that way.’

‘Do you want to go back and flush them out?’ Callum asked. ‘They must think we are in there.’

‘No, they will know we have already left soon enough, and will start to search for us. We can use their delay to take up position and be waiting for them when they find us. I think it is about time that we created a little ambush of our own,’ Oliver drawled thoughtfully.

Phillip looked down at the ground beneath their horses’ hooves. ‘It is kind of difficult to cover our tracks now anyway.’

‘Let them follow us. We can use the cover of darkness to go to the woods, or wherever it is Carlotta is taking us. We can then settle down and wait for them to come to us,’ Oliver mused.

The men settled into silence and fanned out as they scanned the area of Carlotta, the woman who had become the Star Elite’s most wanted runaway.

Carlotta tried not to allow fear to get the better of her. But it was difficult when every snap of a twig, every rustle of a leaf in the eerily quiet woods threatened to make her jump right out of her skin. She was so cold it was hard to stop her teeth from clattering together. She was shivering so badly she had to cross her arms and cup her elbows, but her fingers were still numb. At some point a stiff breeze had started to build and it snatched what was left of her warmth cruelly away. It was so dark she struggled to see where she was putting her feet, but she refused to stop. Thankfully, she had managed to head in the right direction. The cliff tops had appeared to her right a few minutes ago and were getting steadily closer with each step she took. While she didn’t recognise the area near the house yet, she knew it couldn’t be all that far away.

I must keep putting one foot in front of the other. I will get there. I just need to keep moving, stay out of sight, and everything will be all right.

It had to be because she was well and truly on her own now. She was scared witless and struggled to contain the urge to turn around and run back to Phillip. It was only the thought that even he might betray her and hand her over to her father that stopped her. It forced her to straighten her shoulders and forge ahead when she wanted to just lie down for a while and let the night pass.

‘I have to get to the house to get warm again. I am so cold. There must be clothing in the cupboards. There has to be something I can use.’ Carlotta contemplated the thick covers on the bed she had used and knew that even one of them would stop her freezing to death before she managed to find somewhere else to stay.

‘For now, just focus on getting to the house,’ she hissed before quickly shoving aside the small nagging voice in the back of her mind that asked her what she was going to do when she got to Cliff House because Phillip had the key to the property as well. To try to get her mind off how black it was in the woods she was walking through, Carlotta tried to remember the conversation she had had with Henrietta the day she had arrived at her friend’s house, tired and just as dishevelled as she was now.

‘You must stay here,’ Henrietta had insisted.

‘But I can’t. You have only recently wed. It is too soon for you to entertain. Moreover, here is the first place that father will look for me,’ Carlotta had insisted.

‘We do have a house you might use,’ Henrietta’s husband, Henry, had interrupted. ‘I have just inherited it but haven’t got the time to go there to look over it.’ He had smiled fondly at his wife, making it clear that neither of them was going anywhere while they enjoyed the first few months of marital bliss. Henrietta had smiled and blushed prettily leaving Carlotta in no doubt whatsoever she was making the right decision by turning down their generous offer. ‘It is a little remote I am afraid, but it will give you a place to stay that will be warm and dry.’

Carlotta had readily agreed and gratefully accepted Henry’s the further offer of a carriage to take her to her new home.

‘It has been a blessing but also a curse,’ she whispered as she closed the thoughts of that evening down.

In that moment, in a cold, windswept field in the middle of nowhere, Carlotta had a horrifying thought slam into her that was so shocking, so startling, that she struggled to comprehend it. She stared blankly at the outline of the house on the hill that she had presumed she would be safe in and asked herself the one question that she had, until now, not even realised was important: ‘How had her father’s thugs known where to find her?’

Immediately, her thoughts turned to Henry. Without realising she was saying her thoughts aloud she murmured: ‘Have you told me to come here so I am away from everyone who knows me so that nobody will be able to hear me object or witness anything when my father arrives to force me home?’

The thought that she might have been betrayed by her friends, the only people she had thought she could rely on, was staring at her so boldly that Carlotta felt like several kinds of fool for not having realised the reality of her situation. Henry had told her that it was a house he had recently inherited and as such nobody would know it belonged to him. Moreover, he had said he had no intention of using it, so it wasn’t somewhere he had previously frequented. Out of all the places her father might search for her, it would be Henry and Henrietta’s house.

‘The only way he could possibly know I am here is if one of them told him,’ she whispered in disbelief, feeling every kind of fool for not having seen it before.

Battling tears, Carlotta stared at the ground beneath her boots. She dreaded the thought of what that might mean to her future. In that moment, the stark reality of her situation brought her an acute sense of loneliness that was suffocating.

I could die right now, and nobody would hear or see anything. Nobody would care.

She eyed the cliffs and, for one brief and very telling moment, wondered if it might be better if she just jumped off it. The thought of having to survive alone without a penny or possession to her name was simply staggering. But she knew she had to. She had to find a way to do what she needed to do.

At least I now know that I cannot go to Henrietta’s. I cannot stay at Cliff House either. I must find somewhere else.