Evidently Callan hadn’t seen things the same way.
“I need a phone.” Eryn tried to fight against him, but he dragged her after him like a rag doll without responding. She wanted to scream. She wanted to kick the back of his leg, trip him, then plant a roundhouse kick right into his head. Except that she felt certain the effort wouldn’t have done any good. Callan was big and strong, and all she could do was delay both of them. For the moment, Daniel Steadman was in danger. “I can help if I get a phone.”
Still on the move, his grip almost tight enough to cut off circulation, Callan pulled her in his wake. His long legs ate up the ground.
Like most of the members of the bachelor party, Toby still lay on the floor. He had his cell out now and unlocked the screen. Eryn leaned down and plucked the phone from his hands.
“Hey!” Toby grabbed at her frantically, but she was already out of his reach.
Even if Eryn had wanted to explain, there wasn’t time. Callan was crossing the room in gigantic strides that caused her to take two to his every one. She had a hard time keeping up in the spike heels, but she managed.
She clutched the borrowed phone in her hand, then glanced at it briefly to make certain it was one she was familiar with. Knowing that the other guests would be calling the police and, hopefully, hotel security, she pulled up the phone’s camera function.
Callan barreled through the door and out into the hallway. Eryn hesitated, thinking the gunmen would make good on their promise and leave someone out in the hallway. Irritably, like a cranky parent pulling at a stubborn child, Callan yanked her into motion again.
“Where are they taking Daniel?” His voice echoed like quiet thunder in the hallway.
“I don’t know.”
“They didn’t tell you that part of the plan?”
She couldn’t believe it and didn’t even want to dignify the question with an answer, but she hoped he would listen. “They didn’t tell me any part of the plan. I’m not—”
“You just climbed in the cake, set off the flash-bangs?”
Eryn cursed him inside her mind but kept her verbal anger inside because she knew voicing her observations wouldn’t do any good. Callan was reacting emotionally, obviously worried about the kidnap victim. She remembered what Toby had told her about Callan being overly protective of his sister and how that spread to other people in her life.
She tried again. “I’m not part of this.”
Callan shot her a hard-eyed look filled with determination and resolve. That look cut right through her. “You can lie to the police. Not me.”
“I’m not lying.”
Switching his attention back to the hallway again, Callan kept moving. “They knew about Daniel.”
“The wedding’s probably in the papers. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure there might be a party in the same hotel where the wedding was going to take place.”
He grimaced. “They knew about me.”
“Knew what?”
“Don’t play games.”
“I don’t know anything about you.”
“They did. You didn’t have to. All you had to do was set off the cake.”
Eryn opened her mouth to protest at the same time Callan flicked out a hand and set off the fire alarm on the wall. Warning Klaxons roared to life and pierced the cotton in her ears. Callan glanced at the elevator bank at the next hallway.
Watching the digital numbers on all the cages dropping steadily and uniformly, Eryn suddenly understood the move. With the fire alarm engaged, all the elevators would descend to the first floor without stopping. If the kidnappers had taken the elevators, they would be momentarily trapped.
Room doors opened along the hallway as guests came out. “Is there a fire?”
“Is that the fire alarm?”
Callan brushed through the people as he headed for the emergency exit.
Impressed, Eryn looked at him. “You did that so more people would be around to identify the people who took Daniel.” The move was clever and she instantly respected it. She hadn’t thought of that, but she would definitely file it away. “Those guys will dump the masks and coveralls, but they can’t dump the hostage. You’re hoping you can get an ID from a bystander.”
Callan glared at her, then he opened the emergency exit door and dragged her through. Traversing the stairs was a lot trickier in heels than simply keeping up with Callan. She stumbled and fell repeatedly, always bumping up against that rock-hard back just ahead of her. Moving swiftly, he grabbed her again and again, righting her and keeping her moving. Her feet ached with the constant stress of navigating the steps and she hoped she didn’t turn an ankle.
The bachelor party had been on the fourth floor. Four flights of stairs later, Eryn thought they were going to enter the lobby again. Instead, Callan continued the descent into the underground parking garage.
“The elevators stop at the first floor.” Eryn turned the corner on the landing and headed down the stairs after Callan. The parking garage door was straight ahead.
“Did they plan on taking the elevator?”
“I don’t know.”
Callan shook his head. “They wouldn’t have taken the elevators. Not with Daniel. He’d be too easy to identify, and then the men who had taken him could be identified as well.”
Eryn knew that was true. Hotel security kept cameras in all the elevators. She looked at Callan’s profile, so hard it could have been carved from granite, and wondered who he was and how he knew all the things he did.
He was calm and in control. Not only that, he wasn’t even breathing hard from the pell-mell rush down the stairs. He reached for the knob and opened the door.
Car engines and voices echoed inside the cavernous parking garage. The temperature changed immediately from cool to muggy despite the fact that night had fallen over Vegas. The lows in August usually were in the seventies.
While Callan came to a dead stop and looked around like a hound on the hunt, Eryn took a deep breath filled with carbon monoxide and burned oil. Callan pulled her around to look at him.
“What are they driving?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are they taking Daniel?”
“Look, you’ve got this all wrong. I’m not—”
Thirty yards away, the side door of a cargo van slid open with a grating shrill. Interior light from the vehicle spilled out onto the parking garage and lit up Daniel Steadman and his captors. The men still wore the black coveralls. The van gaped emptily as one of the men shoved Daniel inside.
Eryn lifted the cell, pointed it at the van, and started taking digital images. The phone was expensive. She hoped the camera utility was, too, but it wouldn’t compare to a 35mm SLR. Still, there might be something recoverable later. She only managed three images in quick succession before Callan jerked her into motion.
The men climbed into the van, but not before one of them spotted Callan and Eryn. He pointed and called out a warning to one of the other men. He grabbed for the machine pistol hanging from a sling on his side.
“What are you doing?” Eryn pulled at her arm, certain they were about a heartbeat from getting shot. “Getting Daniel.”
“You’re going to get shot. You’re going to get us shot.”
Twenty yards out, Callan never broke his stride. Eryn had seen few men with that kind of single-minded intensity. Her father was one of them, and she respected him. But running into a group of armed men was suicidal.
“They didn’t shoot anyone upstairs. Maybe they’re not shooters.”
“They will shoot you. They’ll shoot me.”
Callan’s grip tightened on her wrist. “I thought you said you didn’t know these guys.”
“I don’t.”
“Then you don’t know if they’re really willing to kill someone.”
Two of the men lifted their machine pistols from inside the van. The engine caught and the driver roared backward, then braked forcefully to a stop. The men took aim, cursing
loudly at the driver.
Unwilling to run into a hail of bullets to prove Callan wrong, Eryn kicked his leg out from under him and threw herself against him. She was surprised when the ploy worked. They fell hard onto the parking garage’s cement floor just as bullets struck sparks from the smooth surface and whined off into the parking garage. Bullets hammered out glass from a nearby Suburban and punched holes in the body.
The impact knocked the wind from Eryn’s lungs. She lay helpless and watched as the van roared straight at where she lay on top of Callan. The headlights flicked on and the vehicle looked like some hollow-eyed monster bearing down on them. The gunners inside the van kept firing.
Bullets slammed into nearby vehicles. Pockmarks appeared in spiderweb windows. Sparks leaped from fenders as some of the rounds ricocheted. Car alarms screeched to strident life and a light show from the stricken vehicles ignited. A cry of pain from another area of the garage caught Eryn’s attention.
Lying on her side, Eryn tried to push herself up and reach for Callan, certain they would never get clear. He roped an arm around her and flipped himself on top of her. His hard body pressed against her and for a moment her senses swam with the presence of him. Despite the motor smells beaten into the garage, she smelled him, inhaled the musk mixed with some kind of cologne that seemed familiar but was so different on him. His free hand slid up her spine and cupped the back of her head protectively as he rolled.
Eryn realized he was trying to maneuver them from the path of the advancing van but didn’t know if there was enough time. She lay pliantly against him and wrapped her arms under and over his, holding on so tight it was like they were one body. They rolled once more and the van’s tires sped by only inches away. The heat of the vehicle and the stink of the exhaust washed over them as another fusillade of bullets chopped into nearby cars.
Stunned, not believing she was still alive—or in Callan’s arms, Eryn stared up into his slate-gray eyes. Then he released her and surged to his feet like a big cat, the motion so smooth she couldn’t see the parts of it. He was suddenly just standing.
Eryn sat up, not sure if she could trust her trembling knees. The adrenaline still flooded her system and left her shaky. She’d never come so close to being killed. She looked across the garage and saw a guy on the ground. Just a tourist in the wrong place at the wrong time. Miraculously, she’d managed to hang on to the cell phone and it wasn’t broken. She called 911 to get an ambulance to him, even knowing he wasn’t alive.
At the end of the parking garage, the van cut the corner sharply and pulled into the exit lane. The tires shrilled against the pavement.
For a moment Callan stared after the fleeing vehicle, hard and cold as stone. Then he wheeled on her. “You let them get away.”
Chapter 3
Eryn stared at Callan, not believing what she’d just heard. Angry, clad in a skimpy costume, still afraid and buzzing with adrenaline, she stood on trembling legs. Despite their size difference and the volatile circumstances, she refused to back down from him.
“I let them get away?” Eryn’s words came out harsh and angry as she leaned toward Callan. “You ass! I just saved your life!”
“I had everything under control.”
“What were you going to do? Tackle that van?” Eryn snorted sarcastically, her anger momentarily overriding her fear. “I’m sure that would have worked out really well for you. They’d have peeled you off the grill. But that would have made the car easier to identify. Maybe I should have let you go.”
The planes of his face hardened. “Who are those guys? Who took Daniel?”
“I don’t know!” Eryn sipped a deep breath and looked at the phone. She pulled up the shots she’d taken, then triggered the email function and sent them to her phone back in the hotel room and to her home computer.
“Are you calling them?” Callan reached for the phone.
Eryn turned sideways and threw her shoulder into the big man’s arms to block the grab. “No. I’m securing evidence. Back off.”
“What evidence?”
This time his grab was too quick for her and he snatched the phone from her hand while she’d been focused on sending the images. She resisted the impulse to try to get the phone back. Unless she had a baseball bat or a Taser, that wasn’t going to happen until he was ready to hand it over.
“What is this?” Callan peered at the phone screen.
“What does it look like?”
“You took pictures of the van?” He studied her with hard-edged curiosity.
“Yes. If we get lucky, maybe we can enlarge those images and read the plates.”
He flicked his gaze back to the image and stared hard at it, as if memorizing every detail. “They won’t have used their own vehicle. They were too professional.” He spoke more to himself than to her.
“What makes you so sure?” The thought that the kidnappers had stolen the van had crossed Eryn’s mind. But the pictures at least gave them something to work with. Then she caught herself and couldn’t believe how easily she’d transitioned to “them” instead of her.
“They were professionals.”
“And you know professionals.”
His voice turned cold and flat. “Yeah, I know professionals.”
Eryn folded her arms across her chest and stared at him. For the first time she noticed the scars on his hand and neck. They were hard and violent, some of them recent and not the result of childhood misadventure.
Callan looked at her. Even while he’d been studying the images on the phone screen, he’d never taken his attention wholly from her. “Is this the only picture?”
“Image. No, it’s not.”
“How many more?”
“Three altogether.”
“Show me the others.” He handed her the phone.
Taking the phone, Eryn flipped through the three images. She went one more image than expected and saw a picture of her stepping into the cake. It had been taken from behind. Evidently Toby had snapped her in the hallway.
Callan took back the phone and flipped through the images the way Eryn had. He was a quick learner. “Can you save these pictures?”
“Images. I already have.”
“How?”
“I sent them to my phone and home computer.”
“This isn’t your phone.”
“What gave it away? The fact that I couldn’t have taken that shot of myself? Or the fact that I wouldn’t have taken that particular shot?”
“The fact that the underwear you have on is too skimpy to have concealed this phone.”
The comment made Eryn immediately feel uncomfortable. But she was almost scandalized at the satisfaction she took in knowing that Callan had noticed how she’d been dressed. Or, rather, undressed. Self-consciously, she covered herself with an arm, clinging to her shoulder with her hand.
“It’s Toby’s phone. I took it on the way out of the room.” Eryn knew from the wary glint in his eyes that she had surprised him. He’d underestimated her, and now he knew that he had on several levels.
Callan studied her. “Why did you take these pictures?”
“To give to the police.”
He stared at her harder and she found it difficult to meet his gaze.
“I’m not working with them.” She was surprised at how much she cared that he believed her. Her reaction was foolish, and it was wasted. One thing she knew for sure about Callan was that he was pigheaded.
Stubbornly, he shook his head. “You were a last-minute substitution. No way that wouldn’t be suspect. The police are going to think the same thing.”
“Did you think maybe me being there was a surprise to those guys, too?” Still, she knew he had a valid point. The investigating detectives were going to be all over her.
Callan growled a little but appeared to consider the possibility. “Maybe the girl you replaced was in on the kidnapping. She could have set you up.”
Eryn cursed to herself. The last thing she wanted to do was get R
enee involved in this. “No.”
“Maybe she got cold feet and left you hung out to dry.”
“No, that’s not what happened. I stepped in for a friend. Someone I’ve known for years. She got sick and needed someone to take her place for this job. She couldn’t afford to miss out on the money.” As she said that, Eryn felt bad. With the way things had gone down, Renee was still going to come up short. But that would be okay. Between them they would work things out. Renee just liked to be independent.
“Why did that guy want to take you with him?”
Thinking of how the man had eyed her, the hunger in his dark eyes, Eryn suddenly felt insecure about her near-nudity. The devil costume didn’t cover much and the parking garage was cold. She shuddered. “I’d rather not think about it.”
After a moment, Callan nodded. He slipped off his suit coat and draped it over her shoulders. The coat was scuffed and dirty from the scramble across the parking garage pavement, but it was warm and hung nearly down to her knees. “Thanks.”
Sirens screamed to life and thundered into the parking garage.
“The police are coming.” Eryn relaxed a little. She felt bad that Daniel Steadman wasn’t safe, but she was glad she was.
Callan gripped her elbow and yanked her into motion again. She pulled back against him. He tightened his grip and pulled harder. He growled irritably. “C’mon.”
“C’mon where?”
“I don’t want to get caught up with the police.”
“Why?” For the first time Eryn wondered if Callan might be dangerous. Not just physically dangerous, because she was certain he was that, but dangerous in a criminal sense. Toby had said that Callan was a soldier, but people thought mercenaries were soldiers, too. Many of them had been. Too many private armies were springing up around the globe, and not all of those people were nice. Maybe Callan had something to hide.
“Because I’m going to get Daniel back.”
“The police can help.” Eryn dug in her heels, but Callan pulled her toward the emergency exit all the same.
“Working with the police on this kidnapping would be like swimming in quicksand. They take too long to form up, think too much before they act. Since this is a kidnapping and Daniel is from out of state, and they killed that guy in the garage, the FBI is going to get called in. Especially because of who his family is. That’ll slow Daniel’s rescue down even more. He’ll be dead if they get too involved.”
Best Man for the Job Page 3
