Sweetest Taboo (SIN 3)

Dallas, of course, has always been a tabloid favorite, but he'd manufactured that persona and encouraged it.

We get our minimal luggage, and I hold tight to Dallas's hand as we keep our heads down and our sunglasses on. As if UV protection is sufficient to allow us to hide in plain sight.

The crowd is rowdy, shifting from simply photographing us to shouting insults, screaming that we're sinners, that it's Dallas's fault that poor dog is dead.

"You'll burn in hell!"

"Whore!"

"Dallas! Dallas! Do you think religious zealots sacrificed that dog?"

"Jane, give us a smile for the camera."

I don't look--I keep my eyes focused on the floor--but when I hear the wail, I can't help but turn my head just quick enough to see a wo

man tumble to the ground, taking a reed-thin man with a camera down with her.

"Bitch!" the man yells as two burly security guards rush to pull him away before his fist smashes into her face.

They've completely drawn the focus away from us, and for that much at least I'm grateful. Even so, an unwelcome surge of panic rushes through me, and I just want Adele to pull up so that we can get this over with. But she doesn't. And doesn't.

And thirty minutes later she hasn't answered Dallas's texts or shown up.

"Any sign of her?" Dallas asks, talking with Liam on his phone. I lean close so that I can hear what they're saying.

"Nothing. Maybe she--wait. Noah found her. Patching him in."

"Got her," Noah says.

"Where? This terminal."

"Across the goddamn Atlantic. She hopped a plane to London late yesterday. She must have gotten wind of the fact that we were scoping out her house."

"And she just answered my texts from the goddamn UK."

"There's more," Noah says. "Get this, her seat mate was a guy named Christopher Brown. He's from Queens. And he owns a white cargo van."

"They're running," I say.

"Looks like it," Dallas says, and then to Liam and Noah, "I'm getting Jane home. We need to talk to our parents today, but you guys find out everything you can about Brown and see if you can track the two of them in the UK. Give me a few hours and I'll check back in."

I'm tense in the taxi home, not sure if it's good or bad that Adele is gone. I'm happy to have her in another country, but I'd rather have her behind bars. And on top of that, I'm guessing that the press is going to be just as crazy at our apartment, and I'm really not in the mood to deal.

But when we pull up in front of my building, I don't see any signs of paparazzi. I say a silent thank-you to the media gods who are, for once, protecting instead of pelting us with bolts of lightning.

My relief, however, is short lived, because the moment we step into the building, I see Bill waiting in the lobby. Bobby, one of the doormen, stands beside him, managing to look both official and embarrassed.

"Why are you here?" I ask, but it's Bobby who answers.

"He wanted to wait in your apartment, but that just wouldn't do. Not without a search warrant. Even being your ex-husband, Ms. Martin, I couldn't just let him in your apartment."

"No," I say slowly, dread growing inside me. "You couldn't." I focus on Bill, who's standing now. And, I notice, his attention is on Dallas, not me.

"What's going on?" I pray my voice sounds normal.

He shifts his gaze to me, then lifts an eyebrow. "What's going on? Apparently a hell of a lot more than you bothered to tell me when we were married."

My stomach twists as I realize that he learned about both my kidnapping and what happened between Dallas and me in that cell from the tabloids. "Bill, I'm so, so sorry. We--we should talk."