Chapter 68
"I can't believe the gym was closed," sulked Santana as they made their way back down the hall toward the suite. For someone that had been against exercising in the first place, she seemed awfully disappointed.
"The sign on the door did say we could get the front desk to open it," said Quinn absentmindedly, barely focused on her friend. She didn't care about the gym. Quinn only suggested going there to keep her mind off Sam and old memories.
"The whole point was for us to avoid the lobby though."
"I think the laps we did through the stairwells and down the halls did the trick. I feel more relaxed."
Which was a huge exaggeration, walking the hotel had done little to clear her mind. Sam consumed her thoughts just as they had in the suite. She couldn't stop herself from imagining how their conversation would go. Quinn had practically scripted it all in her mind. Sam would knock on the door and she would open it slowly, because she would be nervous about seeing his face. He could still be angry and cold with her as he had been in the woods and she needed to expose herself to that possibility in stages. Finally the door would be open completely and he would be there, maybe he would be leaning against the door like he used to when he came to her room at the Beacon, and all the coldness would be gone, the iciness melted between them. All the love she knew he felt for her would be once again reflected in his eyes and they'd be back, Sam and Quinn as they always were. She'd reach out and pull him in, wrapping her arms around him before he even cleared the threshold because she wouldn't be able to stop herself from touching, holding him. One night on the outs with him had been too much, the distance more than she could stand, and she'd tell him that. She would make him promise never to walk away from her again, to always talk things out instead of letting it all fester. And he would agree, of course, because he hated the distance between them as much as she had. It would go exactly like that, Quinn was sure of it, if only Sam would hurry up and come.
"Then why were you asking me what time it was every five minutes?"
"I was keeping track of the time to monitor our heart rates. No point if you don't feel the burn right?"
"That is the biggest crock - you were thinking about Sam the whole time, counting down the minutes until he arrived."
"So not true I...oh my gosh Santana the note is gone," said Quinn as she excitedly rushed to the door and swiped her key card to enter. Opening the door wide, a smile spread across her face with nervous anticipation brewing so eager to see Sam. "What are you doing here?" she asked her smile dropping.
"Finally you're back," he said rising from the couch, the note she had taped to the door in his hand. "I was starting to get worried."
"Do you know this guy?" asked Santana in a lowered tone.
"Not really." Quinn whispered. "He's the one that accosted me with his lips at the store."
"Accosted? I prefer to think of it as a rescue. I rescued you with my lips," he said in an accent she couldn't quite place. Not Southern, maybe from out west, but something was off about it.
"Oh goody a stalker," said Santana dryly as she pulled out her phone. "I'm just going to call security and they can drag you away."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you Mrs. Karofsky," warned the man, taking a step toward Santana. "Or are you going by Lopez now?"
"How do you know my name?" asked Santana eyeing him warily as she leaned away from him.
"Dave and I have associated," he replied.
"Oh ok, now I'm definitely calling the police. Quinn let's get out of here," added Santana pulling Quinn's arm toward the door.
"The police are exactly why I'm here."
"Are you a cop?" asked Quinn.
He didn't look like the police. His clothes were expensive and not one strand of his dark hair was out of place. And his body was at the peak of fitness, like a donut never once passed his lips, only cops on TV looked this good.
The man laughed. "Never. My mum would've been so proud though if I had chosen that route. I'm a business man."
"Do you know Sam Evans too?" Quinn asked trying to hide her building apprehension. Maybe he was Sam's colleague and that's why he was there. Sam could have sent him to check up on her.
"No, I've never had the pleasure. He's been incapacitated for most of the time I've been in Lima."
Quinn swallowed the knot in her throat. "So what are you doing in his suite?"
"I came for you Quinn." His voice softened as he walked toward her. Instinctively Quinn backed away, only stopping when she hit the bar. He didn't seem to be menacing, but his very presence was enough to cause alarm. "The police are looking for you."
Quinn's eyes widened in shock, what could the police want with her? She hadn't done anything wrong. She didn't even have time to commit any crimes. She had only been out of the hospital for a day. Maybe that was it? Maybe the police were coming to ship her back upstate. Perhaps her release papers were incorrect or lost.
"Do you expect us to believe that?" Santana scoffed. "We were just all over this hotel and didn't see one cop."
"You were lucky then. I heard a couple officers in the lobby talking about Quinn," the man stated as he casually leaned against the arm of the chair. "They were coming to take you down to the station. I managed to beat them to your room, saw the note on the door, and let myself in so I could warn you."
"How did you get in without a key?" asked Quinn. None of this made sense. Strange men didn't just appear out of the air to save her from some unseen threat.
He smirked. "I have my ways."
"Quinn are you buying any of this?" asked Santana. "Lima PD aren't the brightest bulbs but they would at the very least know to have someone at the door to wait for you to get back."
"They did leave someone at the door. Lucky for you he owed me a favor."
Muscular arms stretching the seams of his dark grey shirt, Quinn thought he was going to offer his hand, finally introduce himself instead he slid his hand into his pants pocket. Her eyes traveled lower noticing the power in his thighs barely hidden by his gray dress pants. This man was in top physical form. Clearly built to do damage to anyone he encountered. Quinn stepped back closer to Santana, fear building within her. What if this man was here to hurt her and his Good Samaritan act was just a ruse to get her to let her guard down?
"Those are some big guns you got there," said Santana. Obviously she had noticed the man's attributes as well, but Santana didn't look scared, quite the opposite actually, she looked very aroused by the sight of him.
"Mixed martial arts." He flexed slightly as he responded, more like an impulse rather than an act of bravado. "Keeps the mind clear and the body tight and strong."
"I can see how it's working for you because your body looks really really tight and strong, although I would really need to touch to make sure."
"Santana!" Quinn looked over at her friend, shocked that she was talking about fondling a strange man when she was possibly wanted by the police.
"What? I need to see what we're working with here, assess the threat level. This guy is built like a tank."
"I assure you ladies. I'm not a threat, not to Quinn at least."
"Who are you? Why are you helping me?" Quinn needed to know what he was after. Men bought her drinks and offered to pay her bills quite a bit, and usually they were after her time or her body, but this man hadn't made any overtly flirtatious moves. She couldn't read his motives and it worried her. "I don't even know who you are."
"I'm a fan," he stated succinctly, as if that explained it all.
Quinn was a nobody in the music world, so she wasn't buying that line at all. "How about a name?"
"Of course, I've been so rude. Brody Weston."
"You totally made that up." Santana wasn't giving him an inch. "Nobody has a name like that in real life. It sounds like something from a trashy novel."
"You got me." He grinned widely showing off his dimples and making his bright blue eyes shine. "I did make it up. A stage name if you will. Stanley Higley never seemed to open doors, so I changed it to something more effective."
"I can understand that, the need to create your own identity." She had done the same when she chose to drop the Lucy and go by Quinn.
"Higley? Like the strip club on the west side of town?" Santana asked. Quinn could practically see the wheels spinning in her friend's head.
"Gentleman's club." He corrected her. "No one's throwing dollar bills in my place."
"Fine, you deal in high class sleaze, but why are you here and not tending to your stable?" asked Santana obviously skeptical about all the man had revealed.
Before he could respond the phone in his hand buzzed. "We've got to get out of here now," he said looking down at the screen. "They're on the way back up. They must have spotted you on the security cam."
"I can't just leave," said Quinn nervously pushing her hair behind her ears. "I mean if the cops are in the lobby how am I going to get past them anyway?"
"I have an associate at the service entrance with a car, but we must leave now." He opened the door and stepped out into the hall, looking both ways, before coming back inside, pulling the door partially closed behind him.
"Damn Quinn this guy's like Batman running through the streets of Lima saving damsels in distress."
"What can I say? I'm a sucker for beautiful women." He smiled sheepishly. "So let's go Quinn. I'll keep you safe."
"Okay let me just grab a few things." Quinn picked up the photo of Beth and Sam from the bar and slid it into her pocket.
"No time to pack, we've got to move. I really want to help you darling, I do, but I'm not trying to get mixed up in any legal mess. We're not close enough for that yet." Brody caressed her shoulder gently. Quinn couldn't tell if he was being comforting or creepy.
"And you never will be," said Santana slapping his hand away from Quinn. "You keep away from her."
Quinn backed away with his hands up. "Easy there. I was just being friendly."
"Santana, stop it. He's here to help me."
"This is really weird. So he owns Higley's okay, but why is he following you all over Lima?"
Quinn tried to shrug the coincidence off. Lima wasn't that big, people ran into each other all the time. "We were in the same store, not a big deal."
"And now the same hotel?" Santana asked not letting it go. She seemed determined to prove that Brody was some sort of devil in disguise.
"He was at the bar probably. Am I right?" Quinn asked him. Brody nodded. "See he was having a drink."
"He owns a bar! He can have all the drinks he wants, why come here?"
"Would you want to spend all your time where you work? He's allowed downtime Santana."
"I don't like it," said Santana shaking her head. "It's all a little too convenient."
Santana did have a sixth sense for this sort of thing, spending most of her youth living by her wits in Lima Heights had kept her on her guard. If Quinn was up to no good, Santana would be the first to recognize it.
"Maybe you're right. This is crazy. I don't even know you. Some random guy breaks into my hotel room and then wants to whisk me away in a getaway car. I've seen this movie. I know how it ends, with me dead in a ditch."
"I am most certainly not a killer. I like my women full of life. They're more fun that way," he said with a wink and a smile that made her stomach twist.
Something about him made her uneasy, his appearance here and earlier in the store seemed too strange. What if he really was a stalker like Santana said? Her face was all over the TV nowadays it was totally possible that she could've attracted a psycho masquerading as a hero.
"Tick tock Quinn Fabray. Are you going to get dragged out in cuffs through the hotel lobby or will you let me help you?" Before she could answer he had grabbed her by the hand and was pulling her out the door into the hall. "You can decide on the way. One minute more and you'll be out of choices."
"Quinn wait a minute," Santana called from the doorway. "Do you really want to do this? Stop and think it through, running away from the police? That will only make things worse and you don't even know if the police are really after you."
"Come on Santana. You know Dwight Evans is behind this." Quinn dropped Brody's hand and walked over to her friend. "He never wanted me released in the first place."
"But you don't know for sure that Dwight was involved, maybe this is about something else entirely."
Quinn wanted to give Brody the benefit of the doubt, she almost felt like she had to. Without his help she might be on her way to the police station in minutes. So what that he seemed to drop out of the sky, twice now? Miracles did happen, good luck sometimes graced her, and maybe this was one of those lucky breaks. It had been a while since he had one of those, she was due.
"Do you happen to know why the police are looking for me?" Quinn asked Brody.
"Something about your daughter," Brody replied anxiously watching the doors at each end of the corridor. "I didn't catch it all, but I did hear them mention her and the word arrest."
Quinn hesitated, maybe she was being too rash running off into the night with a strange man. Sam had come through for her before and got her out of the hospital. He could probably do it again.
"Sam is on his way here, maybe I should wait for him."
Brody shook his head. "I wouldn't count on it."
"How would you know?" asked Santana.
"Any man that keeps a woman waiting this long, especially a woman that looks like you, isn't coming. Maybe he's the one that called the cops on you. Ever think of that?" Brody asked.
That was crossing the line. He had admitted earlier that he didn't even know Sam, yet he somehow felt qualified to make judgments on his character.
"No way," Quinn answered emphatically. "Sam would never do that to me."
"We're talking about his kid though. Ask your friend over there, she knows what I'm talking about. Don't you?" he asked Santana over his shoulder as he rushed down the hall and peered his head out of the door that led to the stairs.
"Family means everything to a man like Sam," responded Santana.
Quinn couldn't believe what she was hearing did Santana agree with this guy? Did she actually think Sam was capable of having her arrested because of what she told him tonight?
"To Sam I'm family. He'd never do this. His father would, but never him," she stated firmly, trying to convince them and that small part of herself that was starting to have doubts. Sam was capable of this. She had seen him do much worse to those he considered a threat, just never in her life would she have thought Sam would turn his ruthless side on her.
"Are you willing to stake your freedom on that?" asked Brody, breathing heavily as he appeared by her side.
"Hey you stay out of this!" barked Santana. "Don't let him badger you into anything you don't want to do. Slow down and listen to me."
"We don't have time!" Brody snapped. "I heard the police in the upper stairwell."
"Brody I just need a minute with my friend," said Quinn.
"Look Quinn the cops are on their way. I'm willing to help you get out of here but I can only stick my neck out so far. At the bottom of the steps there's a door that leads outside. I have a car waiting. You've got three minutes to get out there or we're leaving." And with that he jogged down the hall and through the door that lead to the stairwell.
"Good he's gone," said Santana taking a deep breath. "Now we can talk. Okay so maybe Dwight did something, pulled strings, whatever, let's go down to the station and take care of this. I'll call Artie and he can meet us there. We won't let Dwight win."
"Don't you get it Santana? I've already lost." Quinn tucked her hair behind her ears, blinking back the tears that sprung in her eyes. "Everyone in this town thinks I'm crazy and an attempted murderer. No one else is going to help me. Brody is my best shot."
"That's not true. I'm on your side, and Artie, and Puck and Sam."
If Dwight were behind this visit from the police Artie and Puck would be powerless to stop him. Sam was the only one that seemed to have any real pull with the man.
"Where's Sam now? We've been waiting for him all this time and he has yet to show up or even call. I have to face the fact that he might not be coming."
Quinn couldn't ignore the very real possibility that Sam had written her off. Finding out about Beth had been a blow, and maybe it had been too much for him to take, and finally he decided to cut her loose. All night she had tried to squash those negative thoughts, push them to the back of her mind, but Sam was an Evans, and they were prone to having mean and vindictive streaks. What if Brody was right and Sam had turned her into the police?
"Maybe Sam isn't coming, that doesn't matter, you and I can handle this, we don't need Sam or any man to fight our battles, especially not that sketchy muscle head."
He might be sketchy but right now Brody was her best chance to keep her freedom. The way Quinn saw it she didn't have many options at her disposal and not much time to come up with more. She had to take a chance and trust him, because the thought of going back to the hospital or worse yet jail was too much for Quinn to bear.
"Santana thank you, that means a lot but I can't drag you down with me."
"We are in this together, like Thelma and Louise."
"I won't let you destroy your life for me." She pulled Santana into a tight hug. If someone had told her ten years ago that one of her best friends, practically her only friend in the world, would be Santana, she would have laughed. It had been a rough couple of years for the both of them, but together they had made it through and managed to become even closer. "Besides I'm going to be just fine."
Santana gave her one last squeeze before letting her go. "You call me when you get somewhere safe."
"I will," Quinn replied as she walked down the hall away from Santana.
"And if I see a cop coming this way, I'll trip him." Santana called out as Quinn passed through the door into the stairwell.
The door closed behind her, echoing loudly in the empty space. It was now or never for her. Either she ran down to meet Brody or she faced the music with the Lima PD. There really was no choice, she couldn't risk being locked up again, whether it be the hospital or jail, either would be hell for her. Clumsily down the stairs she ran, her Ugg boots getting in the way. Flipping up her hood and putting on her sunglasses when she reached the bottom landing, Quinn took a deep breath as she looked out of the small window in the gray metal door. A black sedan sat idling by the curb. Brody hadn't been lying he did have a car waiting to take her away. But take her where? If Sam really did want her arrested she couldn't go to him and he was really the only one she trusted in town. She opened the door and cold air hit Quinn in the face.
"Come on Quinn," said Brody gesturing from the car window. He opened the car door. "Get in."
Quinn took a step forward deciding for once to take life by the reins. Where she was heading, she had no clue, but she couldn't go back to her old life. She needed to be free for Beth and Sam.
Another step and she was out of the door, standing alone on the deserted back lot.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Slowly Quinn turned toward the voice, stunned at what she saw. "Make another move and things could get really ugly for you."