Cherish Me: A Stark Ever After Novella

by J. Kenner

  “If you can manage that,” Jackson continued, “you should be able to get out without being seen. The panel opens behind the reception desk. So long as you stay low and quiet, you should be relatively invisible.”

  “Should be isn’t good enough. What’s my backup plan?”

  “Unfortunately, your backup plan is to manage to get from one side of the shaft to the other, then balance on a four-inch ledge while you pry open the elevator doors and crawl out that way. But then you’d be more or less in plain sight. Also not ideal. So cross your fingers that you can get out through the access panel.”

  “Roger that.” Damien sighed, considering the way this day had gone, he had a feeling he was going to be hanging by his fingertips in an elevator shaft in front of a four-story drop to the ground floor, trying his damnedest to pry open a set of doors before his fingers slipped. It wasn’t a nice idea. “I’m in a goddamn action movie.”

  “And all action movies have a happy ending,” Jackson retorted. “You’ve got this.”

  “Yippee ki-yay,” Damien said, making Jackson chuckle.

  “There’s no reception in the elevator shaft,” Jackson said. “Once you get in there, you’re on your own. Text us when you get out so we know you got through.” He drew a breath. “I’ll see you and Nikki when it’s over,” he said. “And Damien? Don’t play the hero. Shoot to kill. It’s the best way to stay alive.”

  “Roger that,” Damien said. They ended the call, and as soon as the line went dead, he felt bereft and alone. He drew a breath, picturing Nikki. He had one goal, one purpose, and she was it.

  Knowing he was running out of time, he hurried to the access panel. It was opened with a combination lock that the owner would have reprogrammed. Jackson, however, always kept a failsafe programmed in for those owners who were disorganized enough to lose their own combination, and then need access years later.

  Damien dialed in the failsafe, pressed the button, and exhaled with relief when the panel swung slowly open. Score one for the good guys.

  He peered down. It was an elevator shaft, all right. Thankfully it was only an eight-story building, but he would be just as dead if he fell. It looked like the elevator was stopped at the second or third floor, which meant he’d only fall six stories from up here on what was essentially the ninth floor. But that was hardly a consolation.

  The ladder was to his right as Jackson had said. Before he climbed on, he checked the AK-47’s magazine. Empty.

  He frowned. That left him with only a handgun. And if Barclay and his crew had another magazine, they’d have another weapon.

  He considered keeping it with him, either as a bluff or in case he managed to acquire a magazine, but decided it was better to be nimble. He took out the magazine, then dropped it and the rifle down the shaft. Maybe they’d hear the clatter of it hitting the elevator car and assume he was on the first floor.

  That done, he climbed into the shaft and closed the access panel behind him. He held on with one hand and used his phone as a light as he searched for the tool belt.

  It wasn’t there.

  All he found was a coil of rope, which he hooked over his shoulder.

  Feeling a displaced cowboy, he started down the ladder, then paused at the next access panel to listen and check his surroundings.

  The ledge at the sixth floor access panel held a duffel bag. Frowning, Damien reached for it, then let out a soft whistle when he tugged at the zipper to expose at least two dozen bricks of C4.

  If Damien hadn’t recognized the explosive material from the work that Stark International did with various construction and military groups, he would have been convinced by the label that conveniently read C4-Explosive.

  Since he doubted that the building management had any need to leave explosives in the elevator shaft, he could only assume he was going to have company soon. Even if they weren’t looking for him, they’d be coming back for the explosives. The plan, he assumed, was to take it down to the lobby level, then blow their way into the vault to get to the red beryl gem.

  With luck, the local teams that Ryan and Dallas called in would manage to take down the perimeter guard before any one of them got a warning off to the inside team. But that was a big if.

  And if any one of those perimeter men had already relayed a message to the leader, Barclay and the rest would be coming for this explosive—and fast. They’d want to finish the job, get the goods, and trade their way to freedom through the hostages.

  All of which meant that Damien needed to hurry.

  He grabbed the duffel and continued down. At the very least, he could befuddle them. They’d come for the duffel, and the duffel would be gone.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  He continued down, down, down until he reached the fourth floor, then paused at the lobby-level access panel, just in case. But as Jackson had told him, he needed tools for that, and all he had was a rope.

  Well, hell.

  Looked like he was going out the elevator doors whether he wanted to or not.

  Chapter Twelve

  “And you’re sure it was him?” Red asks.

  I nod, still glowing from the certainty that Damien is alive. Alive. And yes, some time has passed, but I’d felt that tap from the watch and I know what it means—that he’s safe and that he’s coming for me. With help, too. Because if I know Damien, he’s already all over that, and everyone from the Coast Guard to the Air Force will be mustering arms to come nail these assholes.

  All I have to manage until then is staying alive. And I try not to think of just how iffy that proposition is. They’d taken the blonde away, there was gunfire, and she hasn’t come back. And though they’ve taken no one else, I can’t relax. Neither can Red beside me.

  My new fear, of course, is that something has happened to Damien between the tap and now, but I can’t let that fear get to me. I’m strong, dammit. Doesn’t Damien tell me that all the time?

  And I don’t intend to let him down now when it really counts. He’s going to make it through this. We both are. There’s no other option. We have to, if for no other reason than the child inside me. The baby that Damien doesn’t even know exists.

  “Do you think he’s—” Red begins, then cuts himself off sharply. “Look.”

  I glance toward the front where the man in black—the one they call Malone—speaks in a hushed voice with a man with tattooed arms, one I haven’t seen before.

  “Who—?”

  Red holds up a hand, then starts to whisper. “He says the C4 is missing, but Malone doesn’t seem to care.”

  “C4?” I repeat. “Explosives?”

  “The man’s not worked up about that at all. But Ron and someone else—Deake, I think—are dead. He’s pissed. He’s very pissed. They need to find the fly in the ointment. They need to snap the head off the monkey in the wrench.”

  He sits back, his eyes on mine. “His words.”

  “Handy trick,” I say.

  “My mother’s deaf. I wanted to see the world the way she did.”

  I smile even as tears prick my eyes, and Red puts his hand over mine. “You’ll be fine. And you’ll be back to those little girls in no time.” He lifts a shoulder in response to my sideways glance. “Nikki, you gotta be used to that by now. You two don’t fly under the radar.”

  “We need too, though. For at least a few more hours.” Because if we don’t, I may end up being more of a hostage than I already am. “What’s he saying now?” I ask as the two men resume their conversation.

  “Their men outside on the perimeter aren’t responding. They think the police may have rounded them up. Now he’s—well, let’s just say he’s not a fan of your husband.”

  “Well, dammit, Barclay.” Malone’s voice rises. “Who the fuck is he?”

  I start to shrink back, but Red takes my hand. “Calm, wife of mine,” he says, barely moving his lips. “We’re going to be cool.”

  I swallow, moving my chin in what could be a nod.

&nbs
p; “I’ll find the fucker,” Barclay says, loud enough that I can hear. “If he’s in that elevator shaft, you better believe I’ll find him.”

  “Of course, he was in the shaft, you idiot,” Malone retorts.

  Barclay scowls. He turns, scanning the room as if we’re all to blame for his mistake, and though I can’t be sure, I think his gaze lingers on me before moving on.

  He shifts, so that his back is toward the bar as he says something else to Malone.

  A moment later, Malone nods. “Let’s be clear. You should have already gone into the shaft and killed him. You fucked up, but this information is worth something, so I’m giving you a pass. For now. But I expect you to do it right. You find him, you kill him. That’s how to handle a problem.”

  “You got it,” Barclay says. He whispers something to Chuck, then strides out, leaving me with a sick burning sensation in my gut.

  For a moment, everyone in the room is silent. The couple on the bad date are sitting closer together, their hands held tight. The anniversary couple are slunk low in their seats, the woman tight in her husband’s embrace. Aubert has an arm around the one woman still at his table, his face pale.

  Malone ignores all of them. Instead, he walks toward me. “Tell me who he is, you fucking bitch.”

  “Who?” My mouth is dry, my voice barely audible.

  “The fly in the ointment. The pain in my ass. The motherfucker who is messing with my plans.”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Because you’re just hanging out in the bar with your husband?”

  I nod, and his attention turns to Red. “You two got a good marriage?”

  “The best.”

  “The little woman buy your clothes?”

  Red frowns. “My clothes?”

  Malone picks up Damien’s jacket, still on the bench seat of the booth. “Not very good a shopper, is she? Can’t imagine this cut fitting your broad shoulders.”

  “It was here when we sat down,” he says.

  Malone’s attention is on me. “What’s your name, blondie?”

  “Nina.”

  “It’s a bar. I need to see some ID.”

  I nod, grateful I have an actual document to back it up. “You have my purse.” Malone and the other one had made another pass after gathering phones, taking purses and patting us all down for anything that could be a weapon.

  “Chuck,” he shouts to the thug who’d emptied the gunfire into the restroom, and who, thank God, hadn’t killed Damien.

  “It says Nina Stanfield,” Chuck says, striding over, my ID in his hand. “But I think Barclay’s right. That’s not who she really is.”

  “I agree. But who is she? We need to figure it out, because the little bitch won’t tell us, will you, Nina?”

  I sit, frozen, and he scoffs.

  “In the meantime,” Malone continues, “Mr. Aubert. Could I speak to you, please.” Malone’s voice drips syrup. “Unless you want today to be the last day of your life, that is.”

  Trembling, Reginald Aubert walks slowly toward us.

  “Now, my dear sir. You have something in your vault that I want. Something a buyer I know is prepared to pay a great deal of money for. Enough that I can retire. And I do so very much want to retire. You wouldn’t want to interfere with my retirement plans, would you?”

  “N-n-n-o.”

  “Good. Now, we’d intended to blow your vault open, but that’s such a messy proposition. Much easier for you to just give me the combination.”

  “And then you’ll let us go?”

  “Of course.” Malone smiles, thin and terrifying. “I don’t want murder on my conscience. Tell me the combination, and we’ll all go home.”

  Auber looks around the room, but it’s obvious he has no choice. “I—”

  “The combination, Mr. Aubert.”

  The jeweler nods, then rattles off six digits.

  “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Chuck, be a good boy and go get our stone. Tell Barclay to join you, just in case, after he takes care of our other little problem. I’ll watch our guests.”

  “Yes, sir. But sir?”

  Malone glances over his shoulder at Chuck. “Yes?”

  “The girl. I sent you a text.” He looks right at me and grins, as malicious as I’ve ever seen. “You’re gonna want to read it soon.”

  “Will I? Thank you, Chuck. Go on now.”

  Chuck salutes and scurries off, leaving us hostages with Malone. We could take him, I’m certain of it.

  But I’m equally certain that there would be casualties. I meet Red’s eyes and see that he’s thinking the same thing. His eyes dip to the fork still on the table, and I shake my head. Try it, and we might all die. Damien is still out there. The police are outside. If we can just hold out a little longer…

  “Nina Stanfield,” Malone says, peering at his phone. “Funny. I’d say you look more like a Nichole. Or a Nikki. For that matter, you look remarkably like Nikki Stark. Honestly, I’m embarrassed I didn’t recognize you myself. Out of context, I suppose.”

  “How—”

  “Google reverse image, apparently. Chuck took a picture of you and put it out on to the wonderful world of the web. And back came the truth. Poetic, don’t you think?”

  I don’t, but I keep my opinion to myself.

  “Your husband stole our guns and explosives, and snatched one of our radios. He killed two of my men. You better hope he’s still listening in.”

  I glance at Red, whose expression is as tense as I am.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “What do you think, you fucking bitch? I want you to shut your husband down. Get him to come here without a fight, and I promise you—my word as a gentleman—that he’ll get out of here safe.”

  “Really?”

  “All I want is the stone.”

  Aubert sits on the other side of the booth, and he looks at me, his eyes dead and flat. Defeated. Red squeezes my hand.

  “You promise?” I press.

  “Yes. I promise.”

  I swallow, then nod. “Then give me a radio.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The radio crackled, and Damien frowned, surprised that he was able to get any reception at all in the elevator shaft. Then he heard Nikki—just a quick clearing of her throat, but Christ, he knew it was her—and he stopped wondering about the reception.

  He tried to shift his weight, teetering on the small ledge beneath the elevator doors as he prayed she’d come back on the air. Had she gotten away? Had she managed to get her hands on a radio?

  “Damien,” she finally said, and her voice—strong and clear—made his soul ache. It felt as though they’d been apart for years, and he wanted nothing more than to have her in his arms. “Damien, they have a message for you.”

  “Nikki—”

  But she was gone and when the radio came back to life, he heard the voice of the man in charge. “We have your wife, Mr. Stark. We have several people. They’re safe now, but if you keep pulling the shit that you’re pulling, that won’t last for long. Come to the bar. Hold your wife. And soon enough, we’ll be gone and you both will still be breathing. Continue this nonsense, and I assure you that won’t be the case much longer.”

  Damien started to respond, but his fingers froze when Nikki’s voice came back through the speakers. “Listen, I know you’re acting like John McClane,” she said, her words slow and clear. “But sweetheart, if you’ll just stop, they promise they won’t hurt me. Please, please, Damien. You know what’s going on here. If you don’t listen to me, we can all forget riding off into the sunset once this is over.”

  The line turned to static, and Damien closed his eyes, overcome by both relief and fear. Relief that she was alive and—for now at least—unharmed.

  Fear because she was telling him to press on. To not stop. He was absolutely certain. The reference to Die Hard, one of their favorite movies, in which the hero did everything he could to save his wife. And, more than that, the specific mes
sage to not listen to her. To not stop. A hidden message, sure, but one designed specifically for him. Because by saying that he should forget the sunset … well, that meant forgetting—or rather, not—stopping. Because sunset was their safe word. An absolute, no questions, demand to stop.

  And she’d just told him to ignore it.

  He knew why, and that certainty was what terrified him. Because she was telling him that she knew for certain what he already suspected—that if he didn’t succeed, everyone in that bar was dead.

  He had to succeed. There was simply no other option.

  With intense concentration, he managed to get in a position where he could balance on the ledge while forcing the fourth-floor elevator doors open. Without a tool it wasn’t easy, but he managed, getting his fingers into the gap, then applying opposite pressure.

  Soon, he had an opening wide enough to squeeze his shoulders through.

  He did, balancing precariously on the ledge so that he wouldn’t fall backward into the void.

  There.

  He breathed a sigh of relief, but it came too soon. Because just as he was hoisting his body up, the sharp impact of a kicking foot caught him in the chest—and before he knew it, he was tumbling backward into the shaft’s void, falling and falling toward the floor below.

  Damien landed with a thunk on the top of the elevator car that, thankfully, had been stopped only one floor below him.

  Unfortunately, that left him too close for comfort when the man above—Barclay, he assumed—got off a round of bullets. Ping! Ping! Metal hit metal, and Damien rolled to the side, clinging to the edge of the car to avoid the spray, his legs dangling in the shaft and the two stories below him. Survivable, but he’d likely end up with broken bones—and then he’d be no help to Nikki at all.

  The firing stopped, and he heard a laugh and a sharp, “Good riddance.”

  Damien waited, then waited a bit more, his arms starting to shake from the effort of holding him up. Only when he knew he had to either move or fall did he risk pushing his head back from where he’d been pressed against the car’s metal exterior. The doors were closed again; Barclay probably presumed he’d been hit and had fallen. Good.