by Jami Alden
“Shut up,” Danny bit out. “I know. I’m not going to let them do anything to her. You go back to the car, and call the police. I’m going to try to stall them.”
She opened her mouth, but Danny clapped his hand over it before she could utter a single syllable. “Do not fucking argue with me.”
She pressed herself against the side of the house, her heart pounding in her throat as Danny continued up to the front. She heard his firm knock on the door, the murmur of low male voices. Her breath froze when she heard what sounded like a scuffle, but from where she was she couldn’t see anything.
She heard another car pull up as she scooted around to the back of the house to go back the way she came. She wondered how long Danny could stall them without getting in serious danger and how long it would take the police to get there.
Caroline had gone a few steps when she heard a crash and the sound of voices yelling. Do exactly what I say. Danny’s words rang in her ears even as she found herself running back to the house. She looked in the same window as before, scrambling for a glimpse of what was happening inside.
Through the slats she could see a lamp had smashed on the floor. The girl was a lanky lump in the middle of the bed. There were lots of male bodies gesturing and a lot of yelling and swearing. Danny stood in the middle of it all, hands raised as though to calm everyone down.
He had a handle on the situation, and she wasn’t helping anything by peeking through windows. She was about to turn and spring back to the car when something round and hard pressed into the middle of her back.
Horror and shock paralyzed her as a familiar voice spoke directly into her ear. “You couldn’t keep your nose out of it, could you, Caroline. At least this time we’ll be able to take care of you and Taggart once and for all.”
A hard blow caught her on the back of the head with sickening force a split second before her vision went black.
Aww, shit. It had the feel of a clusterfuck the second he stepped inside the house. Danny knew he should have turned tail and run back to the car and called for backup. But he couldn’t let them force the girl. She might have done it a thousand times before for all he knew, but that day she didn’t want to. He wasn’t about to let a girl be drugged and raped while he ran around the block and did nothing.
The only problem with his do-gooder streak was that it landed him situations like this. Stuck in the middle of a pack of meatheads whose guns were bigger than their brains with strict orders from the boss, whoever that was, to make sure the filming went on as scheduled.
The only bright spot so far was that Curtis, for whatever reason, picked up on Danny’s cue not to give Danny up. He’d since retreated to a far corner of the room and was keeping a nervous eye on the Glock one of the goons was casually holding at his side.
“Guys, there’s no reason to wave those around,” Danny said, nodding at the guns while he held his hands up in front of him. “Like I said, we’ve formed a new neighborhood watch, and I came over to see what was going on.” As he spoke a fourth man entered the room from the kitchen. Danny feigned an uncomfortable smile and let his gaze dart from the girl on the bed to the camera, all while doing some quick mental math on how long it should take Caroline to get back to the car and call the cops.
He expected sirens any time in the next few minutes.
“Listen man,” the new guy said, taking charge, his fake smile showing off gold capped teeth. “Why don’t you forget about what you saw here today, and go tell your friends at the neighborhood association that everything here is all good.” He gave Danny a not so friendly squeeze on his shoulder and pulled a roll of bills from his pocket. “You understand the need for discretion.”
Danny grinned and reached for the cash. “Consider my lips sealed.”
The guy gave him a pat on the back. “Hey, maybe you want to stay and watch?”
The thought made Danny want to barf, but he needed to stall. Where the hell were the police? “That might be, uh, kind of cool,” he stammered. He met Curtis’s eyes and subtly shook his head. Curtis nodded back. Yeah, he got it. No performance, not today.
“Hey, she seems kind of out of it,” Curtis said. “Maybe we should wait for her to come around a little more.”
The thug next to Danny dropped his smile and leveled a hard stare at Curtis. “We’re not waiting on anything. Camera’s ready, lights are going, let’s get down to business.”
Curtis shook his head. “No way man,” he said, casting a look at the girl, who was trying to sit up on the bed, only to be pulled back down by the weight of her own head. “I didn’t sign on to fuck no corpse.”
The thug walked over to Curtis and pulled up to his full height, which was a good six inches less than Danny and a couple inches shorter than Curtis. But the sidearm that peeked out when he pulled aside his jacket leveled the playing field. “You’re a hired dick. You signed on to fuck when we say fuck, not—” he was cut off by the ring of a cell phone.
As he listened intently to the man’s quick, monosyllabic conversation with whoever was on the line, Danny’s internal alarm system started to shoot off in sharp bursts.
Something was up there, a suspicion confirmed when the man hung up and gave Danny a slow, evil grin. He pulled his Glock out of his shoulder holster and pointed it straight at Danny’s chest. The other three thugs followed suit as Curtis jumped back into the corner. “It appears Mr. Neighborhood Watch isn’t who he appears to be.”
Fuck. He’d been made.
Caroline. Panic squeezed his chest. Fuck, they’d gotten to her, and that was why the police weren’t there yet. Every instinct screamed for him to charge out the door and find her. Images of Caroline hurt, maybe even dead, ripped through him. He couldn’t lose her, couldn’t let go of her again, couldn’t…
Couldn’t lose his focus, or he’d end up with a bullet in his brain and no help to her at all. He forced the terror down deep and shut it up in a black box. The mission. Only by focusing on the mission could he get everyone out alive.
Every muscle tensed in readiness as Danny held up his hands in mock supplication. “Oh yeah, what did they tell you?”
“Just that they need you taken care of. That’s all the information I need. Now turn around and walk to the kitchen with your hands on your head. I don’t want no bloodstains on the carpet.”
“What the fuck? You can’t just kill him!” Curtis said, a panicked note entering his voice. The two unarmed crew members looked away, on board with whatever needed to happen.
One of the gangsters leveled his gun at Curtis’s nose. “You do your job and you don’t worry so much, kid. Then you won’t end up dead like him.”
Danny caught Curtis’s terrified gaze. They both knew Curtis was as dead as Danny was whether he did his command performance or not. Before Danny turned around, he gazed around the room, quickly cataloging every armed man’s position and body language. They all held their guns out of the holsters, loosely at their sides. It was clear none of them were fighters; they all let their guns, not their muscles do the work for them. A fact Danny planned to use to his advantage.
“Go.” The thug prodded him in the back with the barrel of the gun.
Dammit. He really wasn’t in the mood to kill anyone.
Danny took a half step forward and pivoted, taking the thug by surprise as he caught him with a sharp blow across the forearm, sending his gun skidding across the floor. At the same time, Danny caught him in a leg sweep that landed him flat on his back.
He heard shouts, curses, and out of the corner of his eye saw one of the other guys raise his gun. Danny grabbed the thug off the floor and rolled to one knee, using the guy as a shield as the other guy pulled the trigger, catching his buddy in the shoulder. Danny dropped his shield and pulled his own Glock from his ankle holster in one seamless move. A shot, a scream, and the thug’s gun hand was hamburger.
The third thug aimed his gun at Danny. Danny iced him with a side kick to the jaw. The wounded man lay groaning on the floor, an
d Danny fired at the one guy left standing. His shot went wide and he rolled to the side to avoid return fire. The guy turned and made a run for the stairs.
Curtis came out of his panicked daze as he stepped into the guy’s path and clocked him with a sharp jab to the face. Before the guy could recover enough to lift his gun Curtis caught him with a punch to the back of the head, hard enough to render the guy unconscious.
Danny ignored the pain in his shoulder as he surveyed the damage. One wounded, one out cold, one cradling a broken jaw, and the fourth screaming as he clutched his hand and looked at the bloody gap where two fingers used to be. The two crew members had run at the first shot.
“Chill out,” Danny snapped. “You’ll live.” He sent Curtis to get a rope while he kept a gun leveled on all four.
Danny and Curtis quickly secured them as the girl stirred on the bed. He had a lot of questions for those assholes, but first things first.
Caroline.
The panic he’d managed to beat back earlier surged back with even more force. He forced his hand to stay steady as he handed Curtis a gun, who took it with a little too much eagerness and not a shred of skill. “You ever shoot one of these?” Danny asked.
Curtis shook his head.
“Hold it like this, not like in the movies.” Danny did a quick lesson in operating the Glock. “Keep your thumb on the side, or the slide will kick back and snap it.”
Curtis swallowed hard and gave him a dubious look. “Anything else?”
“Make sure you only shoot the bad guys,” Danny said before he darted out the front door.
He skirted around the house, cut through the neighboring yard back the way they’d come and arrived at the car.
No Caroline.
He wanted to believe she’d fled to safety. But he knew she would have come back to the car to call the police like he’d told her to, and she hadn’t been there.
Christ, someone had her, he knew it. Someone had her and he had no idea who, no idea where, and a very bad idea of what they meant to do with her.
CHAPTER 18
Caroline came to with a nose full of dust and a sensation in her head like someone was in there with a sledge hammer.
She started to sit up and found that her hands and feet were bound by plastic flex ties. She rolled to her stomach and managed to wriggle her way into a seated position. She jerked her head to try to get her hair out of her face, wincing as the motion sent a stab of pain through her head.
Marshall had kidnapped her.
Her husband’s former associate had pressed a gun in her back and knocked her unconscious and taken her…where?
She pushed through the pain in her head and forced her vision to focus. It was dimly lit, wherever he’d taken her. She shifted so she could get a three sixty view, taking in the thick wooden slat walls and and the gate at one end. She was being kept in a stall in a barn. It must have been vacant because she didn’t hear any animal sounds or smell any evidence of livestock.
None of that information was important, but cataloging the details helped to calm her. And distract her from what was happening to Danny, and that poor, drugged out girl who obviously wanted nothing to do with whatever moviemaking those assholes had planned.
Danny. A sick feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. Danny outnumbered five to one, and at least three of them had guns. Sure she’d seen him slip his own gun in his ankle holster, but what were the odds that he’d be able to take out three armed men on his own?
Her chest seized at the thought of losing him. In the past week and especially in the last few days she’d done everything she could to downplay the connection between them. Tried to convince herself that what they’d resurrected was nothing but old chemistry sparked by being thrown together in a highly charged situation. But then she thought of the way he’d reached out to her, the way everything in him had needed her. The way everything in her had needed him. God, she’d never gotten over him, never stopped loving him. And she was going to lose him before they could get a second chance.
Hot tears leaked down her cheeks and a keening sob rose up in her chest. It froze there as she heard the squeal of the old barn door being opened, the sound of masculine voices arguing and getting closer.
“I don’t see why you think that was necessary.” She recognized Marshall’s sharp, clipped voice. “There was no reason to bring them into it.”
“Shut up,” another voice, another shockingly familiar voice growled. “This isn’t your operation—it never has been. I make the decisions.”
No, it couldn’t be.
“I think Gates would have something to say about that.” Caroline could hear the sneer in Marshall’s voice.
She stared through the bars of the stall gate as the muffled footsteps came closer, hoping against hope she was wrong. Praying her ears had played a trick on her.
Her stomach bottomed out as a ruddy face topped by thick salt and pepper hair appeared between the bars. “Patrick,” she managed to choke out.
St. Luke’s. The insignia flashed in her brain. We all gave birth at St. Luke’s, Lauren had said. Caroline saw the physician’s coat hanging in Melody’s closet, clear as day. Too late, her brain made the connection that had been floating around back there, waiting for Caroline to take notice. “Are you going to kill me now?”
His mouth stretched in a smile that didn’t reach his blue eyes. Eyes she’d always seen as glowing with humor were now flat and cold as ice chips. “Not yet. First you’re going to tell me everything you know, and how much damage you’ve done in your idiotic quest to clear your name.”
“Who are you working for?” Danny said to the thug in charge, whose name, Danny discovered when he pulled out his ID, was Antonio. He and Curtis had moved the three stooges to the couch. The fourth was still on the floor where he landed, unconscious. The girl had finally managed to haul herself into a seated position but was still too out of it to do more than stare at them in a slack jawed daze.
“Fuck you, man, I’m not telling you shit,” he slurred as blood seeped from the wound in his shoulder.
“Shouldn’t we call the cops or something?” Curtis asked, his eyes widening nervously as Danny pressed the barrel of his gun against Antonio’s cheek.
“Not till I get some answers.” As soon as the police got there, the whole thing would be locked up and lawyered up and Danny wouldn’t get anything from them. “Maybe you can tell me something,” Danny said, keeping the gun trained on the couch as he slipped his Randall Model One from its sheath on his right calf. He smiled tightly as the goon with the shot off fingers watched him twirl the blade.
Danny reached out and clamped his hand around the man’s wrist. The guy had no ID. Sticky blood soaked his wrist and the cuff of his shirt. The man struggled, but Danny’s grip was like a vice as he brought the knife closer to the raw, jagged wounds. “Come on, Stumps. Who are you working with? Who wants Caroline dead?”
“Don’t you fucking tell him shit, or I’ll kill you myself,” Antonio shouted.
The other guy was screaming and Danny hadn’t even touched him yet, while the third sat silently, his face ashen as he fingered his broken jaw.
Danny pressed the tip of the blade against a raw finger stump and twisted. The man screamed and thrashed. “You feel that? And I’m barely applying any pressure.” He dug in a little with the blade, twisted harder. The man twisted and moaned, but didn’t give up any information.
Time to try a new tactic.
He shifted his attention back to Antonio. “Maybe you’ll be more talkative if you’ve got something to lose.”
The man’s lips curled back in a sneer. “I’ve been shot nine times. You think I give a fuck about a couple of fingers?”
“Who said anything about fingers?” He nodded at Curtis to catch his attention. “Take off his pants and hold his legs.”
Curtis looked uncertain, but moved to obey.
“What the fuck?” the goon yelled, thrashing and trying to worm his way off the co
uch. It took some doing, but Curtis got him in a leg lock and wrestled the guy’s pants off his hips.
He screamed and froze at the first icy touch of Danny’s blade against his scrotum.
“No man, no,” finally the guy had lost some of his bravado. Now they were getting somewhere.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to cut the whole thing off.” The man’s scream was loud and startlingly shrill as Danny let the razor sharp edge of the knife barely kiss the man’s skin as the others looked on in horror. “Just the balls. You’ll still be able to piss normally and everything.” He pressed harder with the blade, enough to coax a tiny bead of blood to trickle down the man’s thigh.
“Please man, please don’t do this.”
“I’d love to drag this out,” Danny said, his voice turning deadly, “but someone I care very deeply about is in danger, and I think whoever you’re working for has something to do with it. Now tell me who he is and where I can find him, or come this Sunday you’ll be singing soprano in the church choir.”
“Gates!” the man yelled. “Please, we work for Esteban Lucero, but he goes by the name Gates. He moves women and drugs out of Sacramento.”
Danny eased up the pressure on the blade. “Why does he want Caroline Medford dead?”
“I don’t know, man, I swear. We’re just muscle, get called in on jobs when we’re needed. We don’t ask no questions.”
“Where can I find him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.” He pushed the tip of the blade against the underside of the guy’s scrotum.
Sweat poured down his face and his chest heaved in quick, panicked breaths.
“He’s telling the truth,” the third guy, who had remained silent up until then, slurred. The guy was staring at his buddy’s junk like he couldn’t tear his eyes away, his face even paler as he saw the smudges of blood on Danny’s blade. The thug swallowed hard like he was trying not to barf. “We get our orders on the phone. We never meet Gates in the same place. He could be anywhere.”
