by Lori Ryan
Diya’s expression turned cold. The faces of her mother and father and her two angel brothers flashed through her mind’s eye and she all but whimpered at the pain of their loss. She’d give anything to be wrapped in the love of her family again. Anything.
“Take her out.”
Yoshi brought the phone back to his ear, prepared to give instructions before Diya interrupted.
“Wait. Strike that. Tell them to bring her to me. Let’s go ahead and draw this out. Let Logan Stone suffer for a while.” She felt a slight, if only temporary, ease in her chest. Yes, bringing him pain would alleviate some of her own.
Yoshi gave the instructions to the man on the other end of the line, smiling as he told the man not to be careful with her. He didn’t care what condition Samantha Page was in when they got her, as long as she was alive enough to let them film her for a few days.
Yoshi was happy with Diya’s plan to let Stone suffer watching videos of Samantha as they tortured and killed her.
Diya laughed when she heard him. Yoshi had a lot stronger taste for revenge than she’d given him credit for when they set out on this journey. It turned out, he wanted payback for her family’s slaughter almost as much as she did.
Sam set the alarm after Logan left and went up to her bathroom on the third floor to take a hot shower. She figured she would change into the silk pajamas that she’d bought recently, just in case she ended up spending the night with Logan.
She’d thought about getting something skimpy and sexy, but had opted for a soft ivory-colored pants and top set instead. It was more her style, with the light scalloped edging and buttons down the front. It was sexy without being over-the-top, in-your-face slutty.
Although, now that she thought about it, being slutty for Logan had its appeal. She grinned as she reached into the shower and started the water running. Maybe she’d buy something with a little more lace for next time. He made her feel sexy and alluring.
She didn’t feel big and clumsy and awkward with him. Hell, he made her forget her size. She didn’t feel like a woman who was almost as tall as he was when she was around him. She felt downright dainty, and that was saying a hell of a lot.
Sam undid the buttons and slid her shirt off her arms and down her body, then removed her bra, letting her hands trail over her nipples as she did. Logan’s mouth had felt incredible on her breasts earlier. When she slid her panties off, she saw they were damp from the effects of Logan’s caresses, and she couldn’t wait to finally make it to bed with him. To see if it would be as explosive as she thought things would be with him.
Sam pulled open the shower door and let the water run over her hand to test the heat. She hated getting into the shower before the water was good and hot. She loved being warm.
She’d earned more money than she could have imagined on her game. Sam planned to build her own house from start to finish and she knew one thing for sure. Her master bathroom would have a minimum of two shower heads and heated tile flooring throughout to keep her toes warm. Maybe a heated towel rack and toilet as well. Why not go all out?
She placed one leg into the shower, and then froze as a piercing screech filled the house. It took Sam precious moments she didn’t have to realize what it was. Her alarm. She hit the shower faucet to turn off the water, realizing too late that if someone was in the house, they would have heard it and would know her location sooner rather than later.
How would someone have gotten past Jeff? Could it be Jeff coming in for some reason? He wouldn’t trigger the alarm, would he? No. The alarm that was screeching was the internal alarm Zach had set just inside her front door. A laser crossing her inside hallway was a backup precaution in the event anyone disarmed the perimeter alarms. All too late, Sam heard footsteps on the stairs and started toward the panel that led to the crawl space, grabbing the top to her pajamas as she went.
She slid the panel open and climbed through the two-by-four-foot opening, wincing at the darkness. She slid the door shut and then threw her pajamas over her head. She shoved her arms through the holes before moving boxes in front of the door to block it from opening.
It was too late. Sam froze as footsteps hit the top of the stairs. Would they hear her moving the boxes and know right where she was? Her heart felt like it would break straight through her ribs with its pounding, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to choke on the fear.
Please be Jeff, please be Jeff, please be Jeff, she chanted again and again praying she was being foolish by hiding. Maybe he would call out to her and tell her he forgot the code for the alarm. She’d feel like a fool but she’d be safe and that was all she cared about right now.
But harsh voices came to her through the panel door of the crawl space. They sounded as though they were right at the top of the landing, which put them within feet of the bathroom door. Sam crushed her fist against her mouth, biting into her knuckles, and squeezed her eyes shut as her heart slammed in her chest.
“Move it! We’re out of time.”
She heard them move and swallowed a sob, trying desperately to remain quiet. Her mind raced. She had only pushed three boxes against the door. If she pushed any more in place, they would hear her. On the other hand, there didn’t seem to be any possibility that they would leave without checking the crawl space.
Then again, the police and Logan would know the minute the alarms went off. The intruders should know they were almost out of time. Would they give up and leave? Or would they guess that the response time of the police would be long enough to allow them to grab her?
Moving to the back of the crawl space, Sam made herself as small as possible behind a few boxes of winter clothing and silently rocked back and forth. She saw nothing in the space she could use to defend herself with, but she mentally began to prepare.
If she had to, she would kick and fight and claw at anything she could sink her nails into. If the men breached her hiding place, she would fight.
Chapter 14
Logan made the trip to his apartment as fast as possible. As soon as he left Sam, he wanted to turn back around and bring her with him. But he reminded himself she had Jeff outside watching over her, and the truth was, he couldn’t let her see how he was living. He would change that, though.
He would put away the knives and guns he had strategically all over his place. If she’d seen the sheer number of them, she would know he wasn’t well, that he was still struggling. He would buy furniture, soon, instead of sleeping on the floor and eating standing up at the counter in the kitchen. He’d take down the blackout curtains on all the windows and turn his apartment into a home, instead of a cave for him to hide in.
He was three blocks from Sam’s house, heading back toward her when he got the alert on his phone that let him know someone breached Sam’s home.
What the fuck?
Seconds before, he’d been fighting the urge to blow through the red light he sat at simply because of the caution that ingrained in him during his last tour of duty. For most of the last few months of his service, he’d been overseas serving in Afghanistan. One thing US military members never did over there was to sit still in traffic. You kept moving and you stayed alive.
The urge to move had been strong, but Logan had steadied the twisting in his gut and was coping with the feelings bombarding him.
Until that alert came. Then he hit the gas and barely slowed down for turns for the remainder of the trip to Sam’s. He was instantly back in combat-ready mode. Calm, breathing evenly, ready to take on whatever came his way.
His head told him they wouldn’t have come this quickly for her, whoever the hell they were. His brain tried to argue that Jeff was standing guard outside her place. His gut was telling him the alarm was no freaking technical glitch or accidental triggering of the alarm. He needed to get to Sam and he needed to get to her fast.
He slammed to a stop several rows down from her town house and exited his car, moving in a crouch to make his body as small as possible. He circled and crept up be
side Jeff’s car, keeping one eye on the front door to Sam’s house and one eye on Jeff’s car. No sign of Jeff.
The front door stood slightly ajar and Logan stayed to the right of it, looking through the opening to the mirror hanging in Sam’s entranceway.
If the man standing guard at the bottom of the stairs was any indication, these guys had come fully loaded. The lookout held an assault rifle as though it were an extension of his arm and a Glock 23 holstered under one shoulder. A vicious looking knife strapped to one leg—and that was only what Logan could see. The man’s appearance screamed mercenary: killer-for-hire.
The man stood with his back to the door, looking up the staircase. What was the point of leaving a lookout at the door, if he kept his freaking back to it? Logan used the momentum of the door as he kicked it into the man’s body.
A blow to the temple to stun, before grasping head and neck and applying pressure beyond the bounds where a person’s mind normally says to stop.
Logan’s mind no longer sent that message. It was a move he had done in the past. Many times.
The intruder’s neck snapped and Logan lay his body down to the floor, trying to remain as quiet as possible as he continued up the stairs.
With no idea how many were in the house, he was moving blind. Not a situation he wanted to be in. On an op in the teams, they would prep intensely ahead of time, gathering as much intel as possible. He’d have backup and, at times, even eyes inside through fiber optic scopes.
Logan paused five steps from the top of the first staircase and scanned the living room and dining area. There was very little cover for him on the stairs and he could hear a struggle taking place above him, but he stayed calm. He was in his element now, and even knowing Sam was up there facing a threat alone wasn’t enough to force him to act foolishly. He needed to stay calm and move ahead with caution if he was going to save her.
And he was going to save her. He focused on clearing one room at a time, even as he heard Sam scream above him.
Christ, he needed to save her from whatever hell she was in, right now. The what-ifs tried to swamp his brain, but he shoved them back.
He moved forward, his breathing steady and his mind clear, clearing the kitchen and moving up the second staircase to the third floor.
If she’d had enough time to follow his instructions, she would have headed for the crawl space in her master bathroom. It sounded like that’s where the struggle was taking place.
Logan quickly cleared the guest bedroom and hallway bathroom. No other perpetrators. He entered the master bedroom. Two men in the bathroom now stood between Logan and Sam. Beyond them, he watched Sam kick and shriek and rake her nails down one of the attacker’s faces. Her screams were no longer simply cries of fear. She was in pain. A lot of it.
One man stood laughing while the other pinned Sam to the floor, backhanding her with such force the crack of the blow seemed to echo in the room, and she went eerily still. He couldn’t tell if he’d knocked her unconscious or she simply stopped fighting back. Or worse.
Logan wasted no time. He entered the room, and double-tapped the man closest to him in the back, dead center mass, then the head.
As the first man crumpled to the floor, the other turned, raising a gun toward Logan. Logan didn’t give him a chance to use it.
He didn’t want to take a chance at firing at this guy. He was too close to Sam. Logan’s free hand shot out, grabbing the man’s gun hand and pulling the attacker into him as Logan brought his other arm up, laying a fierce blow to the man’s face with his elbow.
He followed with the butt of his gun, but the man’s own elbow shot out and struck Logan. Blood exploded from his nose as the two struggled above Sam’s limp form.
When the man forced Logan back toward the hallway, he knew he couldn’t take a chance on this guy getting back to where Sam lay defenseless. If the attacker tried to use her as a shield, Logan would be screwed.
Logan slid his knife from the sheath attached to his leg and thrust it up and into the man’s chest, catching him just to the left of the sternum. The man staggered and Logan landed several punches to his face before his opponent fell to the floor at his feet.
Before Logan could get to Sam to rouse her, the sound of feet and sharp orders for him to drop to the floor flooded the stairway behind him. Logan fell to his knees, hands laced behind his head, waiting for them to cuff him, all the while talking to Sam.
“It’s all right, Sam. You’re safe now, baby.”
She didn’t move.
Someone’s knee was at his back, hand on his head. Hands pushed him down as a voice instructed him to lay face forward on the floor.
“You’re all right, Sam. Wake up for me, babe.”
“Stay down. Palms flat on the floor—” came a voice from beside him.
In moments, those hands lifted him forcibly and pulled Logan from the room. Still more officers entered the room to check on Sam, but they’d pulled Logan from her line of sight. He couldn’t see into the room any longer, didn’t know what was happening to Sam.
“Sam! Sam! Is she awake? Is she breathing?”
No one answered and Logan began to feel the thin threads of the life he’d been painstakingly tying back together unravel before his eyes.
Chapter 15
Logan sat in Sam’s bedroom with an officer at his side as an EMT tended to Samantha’s injuries. She’d come around almost immediately, so he suspected she wasn’t suffering any lasting effects, but he couldn’t see past the man working on her wounds to tell what was going on.
Now that he eliminated the threat to Sam, he felt panic rising in his throat at his lack of ability to control the situation. They uncuffed him and no one had read him his Miranda warning, so he must not be under arrest yet, but he wasn’t exactly free to move around.
He was always in charge in a situation like this, not shut down. Not useless, unable to defend Sam.
“Is she all right?” he asked quietly, hoping the officer standing next to him would answer. He’d already tried yelling at several of the officers, with no results. Apparently, this guy took pity on him because he nodded.
“She doesn’t have any signs of a concussion. They want her to go to the hospital for some stitches, but she’s giving them a hard time about it.”
“Stitches?” Logan didn’t want to know why she needed them, but he needed the answer at the same time.
“Seems they took a knife to her chest before you got here,” the cop said.
Logan felt his whole body go cold and hard. If he hadn’t already killed the men who’d done this to her, he’d be tearing heads off.
Right now, he needed to focus on getting to whoever was behind this. The men who attacked Sam didn’t come here of their own accord. Logan needed to find out who was behind it.
“And Jeff? Have you guys found him yet?”
The cop’s mouth formed a tight, thin line. “In the trunk of the car. He’s on his way to the hospital. He was shot several times. He fought them first—”
They were interrupted by loud voices from downstairs and everyone seemed to freeze as they listened to the exchange.
“Who the hell called the Feds in?”
“I did, sir,” came the answer from a disembodied voice on the first floor. Logan assumed it was one of the responding officers. “With the firepower these guys were carrying, I thought the ATF needed to be called in. It’s not your average crime scene. Three purported assailants, all carrying assault rifles and explosives.”
“Crap,” mumbled the cop standing over Logan, under his breath.
Logan glanced up and raised an eyebrow. The cop bent at the waist a bit, speaking under his breath. “Eric Westbrook, the state’s attorney.”
Logan’s attention was pulled away at that moment by Sam, who pushed past the EMT working on her.
“What are you doing? Why are you holding him? He saved me, you idiots. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, looking from where Logan sat to t
he officer standing beside him. Logan was relieved to see her looking and sounding so fierce.
But then his eyes fell to the blood on her pajama top and the way she clutched the front of it closed. It looked like it had been torn loose from her. Christ.
It took everything he had to stay calm through the next few minutes. Between the state’s attorney puffing up and trying to toss out the two recently arrived federal agents, and Sam refusing—quite loudly—to go to the hospital and demanding they release him, things got loud.
He hadn’t even been officially arrested yet, but he had a feeling that might not be far away. The cop standing over him tried to ask him about the scene, but Logan wasn’t in any shape to do anything more than demand to know what was going on with Sam. He knew if Sam saw him taken away in cuffs, she would likely refuse to go to the hospital.
“Sam,” Logan said quietly. When she didn’t respond, he spoke up, putting the kind of force behind the word that used to stop his men short, no matter the chaos around him. “Sam!”
The room went silent and he locked his eyes to hers. The officers in front of him wouldn’t let her come closer than a few feet away, but he had her attention now.
“Sam, I need you to go to the hospital for me.” When she tried to talk again, he cut her off. “If I’m going to get through this,” he said, knowing they weren’t about to just turn him loose, “I need to know you’re safe and you’ve got a doctor looking at you. I need that, Sam.”
He knew when they arrested and restrained him, when he was detained, searched, interrogated and whatever the hell else was in store for him, it would stress every damned bit of control he had.
Even sitting here waiting for the cuffs to come out, completely useless and defenseless, had tapped out most of his reserves. He couldn’t focus if he didn’t know she was safe.
“Get ahold of Chad or Zach and have one of them meet you at the hospital.” He turned to the officers standing in the room. “Someone will stay with her until her protection arrives.” He said it as a statement not a question, but they confirmed it and he looked back to Sam.
