by Cynthia Eden
Victor’s body sagged. “Warehouse district,” Victor murmured to Drake. “Building thirteen-oh-four. Niles Street.”
Drake lunged for the door.
“By the time you get there,” Victor called after him. “It will all be over! My team has this!”
***
She should have kept her mouth shut then, but Jasmine pushed. “Are you sure Anna Jean wasn’t going to betray you, too? What if she was just going to use your resources, then vanish with Weston’s money? I bet she even had a back-up lover around. Some fall guy waiting in the wings…seems like her style—”
He didn’t punch her then. His hand just dropped to her throat and he squeezed, cutting off the words and her airway. “I don’t want you speaking of her again. Compared to Anna Jean, you’re nothing.”
Story of my life.
“Boss…are you going to use Jazz against Archer?” Saxon’s voice came quietly from behind Maxwell. “Because he sure went crazy when I got away with her.”
His hold tightened even more. Red spots began to dance before Jasmine’s eyes. Her temples were throbbing, the blood surging as he squeezed and squeezed.
Drake, I’m sorry.
He eased his hold. She gulped in air, but those red spots didn’t vanish.
“Does Archer care about you?” Maxwell asked her.
“No.” The one word sounded like a frog’s croak, but she wasn’t about to let this man use her against Drake.
“Will he come for you, try to save you?”
Her chin lifted. “No.”
He swore. “Then what good are you to me?”
She stared into his eyes. “I’m not.”
***
The cars were going too fucking slowly. “Faster, Noah! Dammit, I should’ve driven!”
The police were behind them. Rushing with their lights blazing. They were driving desperately to that warehouse district.
To Jasmine.
Victor had told them that his team on site would be moving in, but Drake intended to be there, too. He had to see Jasmine with his own eyes. Had to hold her and make sure she was safe.
If Maxwell had hurt her…
“Go faster!” Drake snarled again.
“Easy,” Trace said from his position in the back.
Screw easy. “I have to get to her.” He could feel Trace’s eyes on him. Drake turned his head to meet Trace’s stare. “If she’s dead, so is Case.”
Noah whistled. “Man, calm down. The FBI is already there. Your woman is safe.”
Your woman. He knew that was exactly what Jasmine was. Had he really thought he might be able to give her up?
Noah’s sister. Shit. They’d find a way to work all of that out. Maybe he’d let Noah take some swings at him. But Drake wasn’t walking away from her. The fear in his gut told him that he couldn’t walk away.
“Faster,” Drake whispered.
Yeah, he should have driven…but the way his hands were shaking, he was afraid he would’ve wrecked the car and never gotten to Jasmine.
***
“Drake won’t care what happens to me,” Jasmine said softly. Her throat ached. Her jaw ached. And she couldn’t hear the jazz music any longer. “I’m not—”
“Anna Jean? No, you’re not. Not even close. You’re a whore from a trailer park. A woman with a few useful talents.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And you’re a psychotic dick who gets off on blowing things up and killing people. So in comparison, I think I’m the one with more talent.”
He backed up a step. “You didn’t just call me—”
“I did.” Holy crap, she had. “You’re going to kill me, so what does it matter? I see you for exactly what you are. You’re a monster, Maxwell. A monster hiding in the clothes of a man.”
“And Drake?” Spittle flew from his mouth. “What is he?”
It broke her heart but she said, “I thought Drake was my hero.” She’d wanted him to be. “But…but I guess that wasn’t in the cards. He didn’t care about me. I was a woman he took to his bed. By the time my body is found, he probably won’t even remember my name.” Keep talking. Don’t let Maxwell think he can use you against Drake. Because she wasn’t about to let Drake try to trade his life for hers.
Maxwell’s furious expression told her that he believed every word she said. Good. She twisted her hands once more against the ropes. If she could have broken free from those ropes, perhaps she would’ve had a fighting chance.
But maybe she’d never had that.
“Uh, boss…”
Her head turned at Saxon’s measured voice. He stood near the lone window.
“There’s some action out there.”
Maxwell waved that away. “Drunks. The homeless on the streets. It’s after midnight and they always—”
Saxon stiffened. “They’re armed! I count five—six? I can see them moving across the street!” He spun toward his boss. “They’re coming!”
“No! No, that’s not possible!” Maxwell stormed toward the window. He stared outside. “Fuck, no!”
And then Jasmine started to laugh.
Maxwell whirled to face her.
“I guess my talents are pretty useful.”
He shook his head and stalked toward her.
“Boss…” Saxon began.
Jasmine raised her voice, drowning out Saxon as she said, “There’s no slowing them down. There’s no escape.” Her heart raced. “The Feds are coming for you, and you’re going away for a long time. You’re not going to burn anything. You’re not going to break anyone. And you’re not going to get your precious payback for Anna Jean.”
He was still shaking his head.
“I’ve got you,” Jasmine whispered, and she stopped struggling against her bonds. She wanted to remember this moment. To savor it, as she’d savored few things.
“What?”
“You didn’t even search me when they brought me in. Just tied me up…and talked your mouth off.”
He lunged toward her. Grabbed her shirt. The buttons popped and flew as he ripped that shirt open.
His gaze dropped to her breasts. To the black bra and the small, black wire there.
“Surprise,” Jasmine whispered.
“No!” Rage exploded in his eyes. She thought he’d hurt her then. Attack hard and fast. But he jumped back. “No, this isn’t how it ends for me!” He pointed to Saxon even as he rushed for the door.
Trying to protect yourself? That’s the way it—
“Shoot her!” Maxwell bellowed. “Right in the heart. Kill her and then get your ass out of here.”
After giving that order, Maxwell paused at the threshold of the room. He wants to watch me die. He won’t run, not until I’m dead.
She heaved against the ropes. “Saxon, Saxon, don’t…”
He had out his gun. “I’m sorry, Jazz.”
“Don’t!”
He fired.
***
“You need to stay out here,” Victor told Drake as the FBI agents swarmed the warehouse. “Civilians aren’t clear to hit a crime scene.”
Trace and Noah were at Drake’s side. They were all watching silently, waiting, as the teams entered the building.
“How do you even know she’s still alive?” Drake demanded. “Who’s monitoring the surveillance feed?”
“My best agents are listening to every word. Relax. We’ve got this shit covered.”
The blonde from the police station rushed up to them. “Sir, we lost the feed.”
No.
A gunshot blasted. Drake’s blood froze. He didn’t even realize he’d started running toward that warehouse, not until three agents grabbed him. “She’s in there!” Drake snarled at them. They must’ve heard the gunfire. “He’s hurting her!”
Not Jasmine. She’d been hurt enough…
Scars on perfect skin. Wounds that she never should’ve had.
“Let me get to her!” But they were hauling him back. “Noah, Trace, help me!”
And even though it
would probably get their asses arrested, his friends swarmed. They knocked those FBI agents on their asses.
Victor tried to block Drake’s path. Like a guy on crutches was going to stop him. “I’m getting her,” Drake promised.
“It’s too dangerous! A civilian can’t go into that scene. My agents……they’ll get her,” Victor said. Did the guy even hear the doubt in his voice? Because Drake did.
Drake shoved the man aside.
Victor shouted his name. Drake didn’t stop. He didn’t have a weapon, the Feds had made sure of that, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t sitting on the sidelines.
Noah and Trace were running with him. The fools that tried to get in their way got thrown to the side—badges or no badges.
Then Drake saw the other FBI agents running out of that building. They were hauling ass. What?
“Bomb!” One yelled. “Clear the area. Clear—”
The explosion sent Drake flying off his feet. He hurtled through the air and slammed down inches away from a light post.
Heat lanced over his skin, and, for a moment, he lay there, stunned.
Then his eyes took in the inferno before him. The warehouse wasn’t just smoking. It was blazing. Fire shot from the windows even as part of the right wall collapsed.
He staggered to his feet. He could feel blood sliding down the side of his face—he vaguely remembered slamming into the pavement.
“Pull back!” Victor shouted. “Pull back!”
Another explosion had fire streaking into the sky.
“Jasmine?” Drake said her name, once, barely recognizing the lost sound of his own voice. Then as he ran toward the fire, he roared her name.
The flames were raging so hot and high. Burning brightly. Destroying everything.
Destroying…her?
Not Jasmine. Not her. Not…her!
“Stop, man! Stop!” Noah was there, fighting to pull Drake away from the fire, but he just wanted to get closer.
“I have to get her out!”
Another window exploded. Glass hit the pavement. Flames crackled.
Noah tightened his hold on Drake. Drake swung at him, connecting with a hard punch, but Noah didn’t let go.
And then Trace was there. They were holding him too tightly, hauling him away from the flames.
“I have to get her out!” The fire was stinging his eyes. Burning his throat.
Ripping a hole in his chest.
Trace’s grip was like iron around him. “She is out, buddy. She’s…she’s gone.”
No. The fuck, no. “Jasmine!” He fought them both. He’d get free. Get through the fire. Get her out of that building.
“Clear the road!” Victor was barking orders.
And Trace and Noah weren’t letting Drake go.
“I have to get to her…” He punched at them, drove his fist hard and fast, not caring that they were his friends. That he was hurting them. “She could still be alive!”
Noah shook him. Slammed his own fist into Drake’s face. “The building is a total loss! There’s no way she’s still alive in there—”
He was going to give up? On her? “She’s your sister!” Drake shouted at him. “We can’t let her burn!”
Noah’s face went slack with shock. Drake pulled from his hold. “We can’t,” he whispered and then he ran into that building. He’d just cleared what was left of the entrance when the ceiling collapsed.
***
“Mr. Archer?”
Drake cracked open one eye. “Jas…mine…”
“Mr. Archer, you’re all right. We got you out.”
He cracked open the other eye. Saw an EMT staring down at him, shining a light right at his face. Drake swatted the light away.
“Sir, sir, I’m going to have to insist that you stay calm and remain still. I think you’ve got a concussion—”
He remembered the rush of fire. Something heavy hitting him. And—
Drake grabbed the EMT and twisted the man’s shirt in his fist. “Did she get out, too?”
“Sh-she?” The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Jasmine!”
“I-I…you were the only one recovered.”
No. Drake shoved him away. He was in the back of an ambulance. How the hell had that happened? The last thing he remembered was the fire.
“Sir, you have to stay—”
Drake jumped out of the ambulance. He would’ve fallen right on his face then, if Trace hadn’t appeared and grabbed his arms.
“Dragged you out of a fire once already,” Trace groused. “Don’t make me do it again.” He put himself in front of Drake—and Drake could see the flames still reaching for the sky behind his friend.
“She’s in there,” Drake said, voice rough.
“The firefighters said the flames were too hot. No one in that building has survived.” Brutal words, but said softly, sadly.
Drake shook his head. “She was…she was alive. She was with me just hours ago.”
I’ve never loved anyone, Drake, but I think…I really think I came close with you.
Trace’s eyes were grim. “I’m sorry.”
Drake tilted his head back. Stared at the flames. They’d consumed the building.
“You’re lucky you aren’t dead, too. Those boards that hit you were on fire.”
Drake realized that a big, thick bandage covered his arm. He lifted his hand. Another covered the side of his head.
“I dragged you out. Noah and I…we pulled you out of there.”
“You two are always saving my ass.” He couldn’t pull his gaze off the fire. “But maybe this time, you should’ve just left me in there.”
His chest didn’t burn. It didn’t ache. He just felt numb. Drake could barely even feel his heart beating. He looked at that fire, and he just saw Jasmine.
Curling her finger at me in the club…inviting me down to her.
Laughing in New Orleans…licking away powdered sugar as she savored her beignet.
Crying out my name in an elevator…holding me so tightly…so tightly that I never wanted to leave her.
“Was she…” The gruff voice came from Drake’s right. It was Noah’s voice. “Was she really my sister?”
Please, Drake. I don’t want him to know. There’s no point in it. Drake didn’t speak.
“Was she?” Noah pressed.
Drake stayed silent.
Noah grabbed him. “Did my sister just burn alive in that place? Did she?”
“Noah…” Trace hauled him back.
“I wanted my family.” Noah’s words shot out fast and hard, like bullets. “I always wanted to know—and you knew. You knew she was mine and you didn’t say a word…”
The firefighters were closing in now. Because the flames were finally dying down? Cops were all over the scene. FBI agents.
“She wasn’t yours,” Drake heard himself say. That numbness was spreading. Consuming him. “She was mine.”
And she was gone.
Something deep inside of Drake splintered then.
I could have loved you, too, Jasmine. Fuck…I did love you.
I did.
Chapter Thirteen
“There’s no point in this exercise,” Victor said as he marched into the small office in the New Orleans Police Department. An office that Trace had commandeered with the guy’s army of contacts.
Drake stood near the room’s lone window. Noah and Trace were already seated, but he couldn’t sit. His body was too tight with tension. With fury.
Grief clawed at him every time he closed his eyes. So for the last three days—and it had been three long, wrenching days since he’d lost Jasmine—Drake hadn’t slept.
He knew he’d have new nightmares when he slept. Anna Jean wouldn’t haunt him any longer. Jasmine would.
She would always haunt him.
“I get that you’ve done a few favors for the FBI,” Victor said as he shoved a laptop case onto the table. “But I don’t see why a civilian should get access to classified—”
“Screw the civilian crap. Play the tapes,” Drake snapped.
Victor opened his laptop. Booted it up. “This is material that will be used in an ongoing investigation. This could compromise my case—”
Drake stalked toward him. “You mean because Maxwell wasn’t in that building when it blew to hell?”
Victor jerked back a bit.
“Yeah, I know,” Drake snapped at him. “We can get our own intel. Word is that the coroner recovered the remains of two people in that warehouse. A man and a woman…and according to leaks in your office…” Leaks that Trace had exploited with his Weston Securities contacts, “You think the dead man was one of Maxwell’s men, a guy named Saxon. Not Maxwell.” Just an underling.
Victor’s gaze slid to the closed door, then back to Drake. “Yes,” he said softly. “We do believe that Maxwell Case escaped from that blaze. He set the bomb—the fire as a distraction so that we’d be thrown off…but we know he got away, and we’ve launched a search for him.”
“The guy might not even be in the country anymore,” Noah muttered. Like Drake, Noah had been…different since the fire. Quieter. Harder.
“His assets are frozen. Thanks to our…inside man…we were able to learn about all of his off-shore accounts. Maxwell Case is running on his own. He’s desperate, he’s broke, and we will take him into custody. It’s just a matter of time.” Victor seemed so confident.
Jerk. This confident prick had been the one who was so sure Jasmine would be all right. “It’s your fault,” Drake accused.
Victor blinked.
“You left her in there too long.” He wanted to punish the bastard. He would punish him. “You knew where he was holding her. You should have gotten her out—”
“Easy.” Trace. Trying to be the voice of reason as he carefully positioned himself between Drake and the FBI Agent. Trace just didn’t get it. There was no “easy” for Drake anymore. There was just darkness. A void. A fire had taken Jasmine—heat and an inferno, and now, all he felt was…cold.
Victor leaned forward and tapped a code into his laptop.
Drake’s hands fisted. “You’re going to pay,” Drake told him.
