by Lee Taylor
She looked down at the floor and the unattractive, bloodstained brown and green-flecked carpet covering it. The carpet wasn’t the kind that came off a roll, but in one-foot square tiles. If a spill or snag ruined one area, only a small part of the carpeting would have to be replaced. Not the whole room.
This must have happened sometime within the last year or so. One square on the floor didn’t quite match the others. The brown was a shade darker and the green a shade brighter.
Vega crouched down and ran her finger over the newer carpet tile. The floor underneath felt different—slightly harder.
A floor vault.
Barging into Whitfield’s world and holding a gun under his nose was merely a manageable irritation for him. Discovering papers that could potentially bring his empire crashing down around his ears raised the stakes significantly. Either Grayson killed Greg Harper or Whitfield paid one of his guards to do the deed. Whether Whitfield was part of the crime or not, didn’t matter to Vega as much as the danger lurking in that floor vault posed. She had to assume the contents of the vault got Greg Harper killed and put Fiona’s life at risk.
Whitfield might go as far as risk a few bullet holes to stop her from turning whatever she might find over to the police. And she was not willing to take that chance.
Since she’d already used the twin pair of handcuffs she always carried to lock up the guards in Whitfield’s office, she had nothing to use to secure Whitfield and the third guard.
“Give me your tie,” she said, eyeing his cool blue silk tie—it looked sturdy enough.
Whitfield scowled while undoing the knot. He tossed the tie to her and she gave it a few yanks.
“Stand with your back to your guard.”
“Why?” His cheeks whitened. “You want money? I can pay you double what you’re being paid.”
“I don’t want your money.” She pressed the guard’s automatic pistol to Whitfield’s belly and moving quickly, secured his wrist together with the guard’s, using Whitfield’s pricey silk tie.
With them standing by the window, essentially helpless, Vega was free to search the floor vault at her leisure.
“Don’t move,” she warned. She crouched over the floor vault and peeled up the carpet square. She was struck immediately by the complicated electronic lock standing between her and the contents hidden in the vault. Her simple lock-pick kit couldn’t help her here. Anxious to get a look at the files before the police arrived, she stood and aimed the Beretta.
It would probably bring the whole building down upon her, but Vega pulled the trigger anyhow.
Whitfield screamed.
The guard winced.
The small vault sprang open.
She holstered the Beretta—there was no need to get shot by a nervous guard or police officer just for having a gun in her hand—and reached into the vault. The stainless steel interior felt cool to the touch. Where were those files Grayson seemed so desperate for her to find?
The only thing in the vault, far in the back, was a compact disc in a black case. Was this what Grayson had wanted her to find? There was only one way to find out.
She locked Whitfield and his guard in Harper’s office with the warning that she’d come back and kill the both of them if they made a sound, and settled in front of the computer on the secretary’s desk.
A harried-faced manager in a cheap tan suit ran by, followed by a few nervous security guards dressed in the usual dull-gray uniforms.
“Did you hear that?” a young woman dressed in a burgundy suit with an assortment of pencils sticking out of her hair stopped at the desk to ask.
“Hear what?” she asked. The computer whirled to life. She put in the disc and waited for the computer to recognize it.
“That noise. It sounded like a gunshot.” The woman’s hands were quaking worse than Whitfield’s. Her eyes narrowed as she studied Vega’s face more closely. “You from system’s administration?”
“Yep. I’m getting this computer ready for use in accounting.” Vega clicked on the mouse to bring up a listing of the files on the disc.
“Oh my, oh my. I suppose things like that need to be done. I haven’t been able to think straight since Mr. Harper’s death. The killer could be anyone. He could be in the building now.”
“I thought Grayson Walker killed him,” Vega said absently, while scanning the long list of files that had appeared on the computer screen.
The woman stepped away from the desk. “I don’t know what’s going on here and I’m not asking any questions.” She stumbled over her own feet in her haste to get away.
Vega shrugged. The arrival of Whitfield’s special guards probably had every employee quaking. She returned to work on the computer. The documents she brought up were financial statements with long lists of payments coming in to and leaving the company’s accounts. Her eyes crossed. The numbers were meaningless to her. It would probably take a trained accountant several days of poring over the files to find anything fishy.
This could be important. Or it could just be a routine disc containing office financials. Not wanting to leave before making sure she’d gotten the right piece of evidence, Vega began randomly opening files. A long list of names, payments, and dates caught her eye. It wasn’t the list that stood out, but one name near the top in particular.
Butch Polsen.
A sum of ten thousand dollars had been paid to him from Six-Star Enterprises. Had Butch been hired by Six-Star, or more specifically Whitfield, to capture Grayson?
Perhaps, but this file had been made before Harper’s death.
She scanned down the list further and stopped on another, more disturbing name on the list.
Finn Kayne.
Weekly payments, all in the thousands of dollars, were being paid to Finn. Could this be the same big dog Finn Kayne taking over the crime scene in Detroit? Vega chewed on that thought for a moment. Why would a Fortune 500 Company want to get their hooks into organized crime? There were at least a hundred more names, besides Finn’s, with equally large weekly payments included in the list.
Interesting information, but nothing that would help her track down Grayson.
She scanned the disc’s list of folders again and found one titled ‘partnership’. That looked promising. She opened the folder and then brought up several of the files.
One was a report Harper had written the day he was killed. She read it through while dialing the number for a contact of hers in the local FBI field office.
Harper’s report explained, citing which files on the disc proved this, how Six-Star funds had been diverted to various terrorist organizations. She read the last statement in Harper’s report aloud to Johnson, the FBI field agent who she’d helped in the past.
“Large payments from Six-Star to various questionable organizations appear to be for the sole purpose of spurring continued economic instability, giving Six-Star an edge over smaller, competing entities. Although this conspiracy was implemented by one of the founding partners, evidence suggests leadership decisions are being made by what appears to be an emerging domestic terrorist organization known simply as Spider.”
“Whoa,” Johnson said. “I’m sure it’s a crank, but I’ll send a team right out just to be safe.”
“Please do. I’ve got a guard here that attacked Fiona.”
The heavy thumping in her chest told her this wasn’t a crank. Something very wrong was going on at Six-Star…something that had nearly killed her sister.
“And Butch knew about it…”
“Hey! Who are you?” The manager dressed in the cheap tan suit returned. A different pair of security guards, ones dressed in black and sporting automatic weapons, approached.
The manager quivered when his gaze flicked toward them. “What are you doing here?” he asked somewhat more subdued.
“Servicing the computer.” She ejected the CD and pretended to be too busy to bother with someone as inconsequential as a mid-level manager.
“Where’s your securi
ty badge?” the beefier of the two guards asked. His voice rumbled in the hallway.
“Good question,” the manager said. “Well, where is it?”
She searched the empty desktop, “Must have left the damn thing home. Sorry.”
The guard smiled a wide, toothy grin. “I think we’ve found our security breach.” He swung toward the manager. “You didn’t see any of this.”
The manager stammered something incoherent, nodding heavily and hurried away.
“Now, what should we do with her? She’s about as pretty as her sister.” The second guard licked his thin lips.
“Boss would want this done quiet-like.” He tapped his automatic pistol on the desk. “Get up. You’re coming with us.”
She pocketed the CD and stood. As long as they didn’t take her CD or free Whitfield from Harper’s office, she’d let the guards think they were in control.
“You stay quiet, and you won’t suffer,” the guard warned.
They led her through the hallway, down back a set of stairs, and out a fire door that led into a small, relatively clean alleyway.
If she wanted to be perfectly honest with herself, she’d have to admit that she was in a bit over her head. These two guards could blast enough holes in her to make Greg Harper’s hacked up body look pretty damned untouched.
But who needed that kind of honesty?
Sweet, impetuous Fiona had been helpless the night several guards just like these had attacked with plans to rape and kill. Despite the uneven odds, Vega was determined to give those guards what they had coming to them.
She swung her fist, aiming for the bigger of the two. Careful not to telegraph her intentions, her attack surprised both men. Before either could fire a shot, she’d chopped the beefier guard’s wrist. His pistol clattered to the ground, and dealt a roundhouse kick to the thin-lipped guard’s arm. He had to juggle to keep the gun in his grasps.
“Thought I told you to stay away from Six-Star.” Grayson appeared beside her. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” He sounded genuinely pissed.
“I don’t take orders well.” Vega ducked a wild fist and kicked the thin-lipped guard in the gut. He grunted and staggered back a step. She lunged to the left when he produced a knife of his own and thrust, aiming for her belly. He stumbled when his blade hit nothing but air.
“I see that,” Grayson said. The beefy guard sucker-punched him square in the nose.
“Bastard!” Vega turned her back on her own battle to help Grayson. She chopped the bigger guard’s heavily muscled neck. It didn’t have much of an impact.
“Now isn’t the time for name-calling. I’m trying to help, damn it.” Grayson had grabbed an arm as big as a log. The two men struggled, wrestling each other to the ground.
She hesitated a moment, trying to gage the best way to help, when the thin-lipped guard pounced and sliced his knife into her injured shoulder.
A stupid move on his part. The pain fed her battle rage.
“You know how long it took me to find this jacket?” She kicked the knife from his hand and struck him in the head with a quick right followed by a quick left hook. Bright red blood oozed from his nose.
“Of course you don’t.” She swung again. A sharp crack accompanied the unnerving sensation of cartilage breaking underneath her knuckle. He wobbled. She swung again.
“That’s for my sister.”
The guard dropped like a corpse.
She plucked his automatic, a heavy-enough weapon, and swung around. The butt cracked against the second guard’s skull. The hands crushing Grayson’s neck fell away.
“You okay?” Grayson coughed the question. He rolled the body off him and pulled himself to his feet.
Was she okay? A few spots of blood along with a nagging sharp pain told her that she’d been stabbed, but not more seriously than a scratch. She glared at the tear in her jacket. Another leather jacket ruined. Damn.
“Whoa.” His hands flew to the air. “I’m the one who just helped you, remember?”
His gaze locked with hers. A commanding strength lurking deep in his brown eyes held her motionless. He advanced, stepping over the guards and wrenched the gun from her hands.
“The battle’s over.” His gaze pressed on her. She struggled for a steady breath. “You beat the bad guys. It’s over.”
Over? Hardly.
Her heart thundered at the sight of him. He’d appeared out of nowhere like some damned knight in shining armor. Like a hero.
“What kind of hero would strangle a girl and leave her defenseless behind some dark, dangerous bar?” Yes, keep remembering his evil deeds. Keep him from looking like the hero—the kind of man who only lived in a child’s fairy-tale.
“I’m no hero, Vega. It’s true. I didn’t worry about leaving you alone last night. Once your lungs took a nice long bath in the fresh air pumping into them, you woke up, didn’t you? I know you. You’re strong enough to protect yourself from whatever unfortunate beast that might have stumbled into your path.”
Wasn’t he the smart villain, stroking her ego?
“I suppose you say that to all the girls.”
His expression tightened.
She braved a step closer. This was it…her chance to capture the one prey who’d eluded her. All she needed to do was attack. To pit her will against his.
“You’re a killer. Why spare me?” she asked instead.
“I’m not a killer.”
“What about Mirna Catanzaro?” Mirna, the woman Grayson killed in Colombia. Vega had no idea why she needed to know. She just did. She needed to hear about Mirna from him.
“I shot her.” He turned away as if he couldn’t face the ugly truth.
“Why?” He’d saved Fiona and had protected her. Vega held her breath waiting for a logical explanation of Mirna’s death.
“Okay. You’re right. I’m a killer. That’s what I’m trained to do, damn it. Kill. Condemn me.”
The words fit with the profile of the monster she’d created in her file. They didn’t fit with the man standing in front of her.
“I don’t buy it. You wanted to marry her. You were there to kill the drug czar Carlos Briceno and you fell in love with Mirna. What happened? Did you find her in his bed? Tell me.”
Grayson shook his head as if trying to chase away his memories. “I killed her.”
“The file says she was in his bedroom with him, that you shot them both. What was it? Had she betrayed you?”
“No…don’t.” He grabbed her wrists and pulled her close. “Let the dead stay dead.”
His lips captured hers. He took, demanding she give into the passion burning just below the surface. She did nothing to stop him. His guilt and heat seeped deep into her soul. What did he want? Her forgiveness? Understanding?
For a wild moment she was ready to believe anything he’d tell her. She was ready to believe him innocent.
He pulled away and held her at arm’s length, scrutinizing her. “Last night, at the bar. Why did you kiss me?”
Why had she kissed him? “Because you’re safe, I suppose.”
“Safe?” He swallowed a laugh. “I’m a killer, Vega.”
There was something seriously wrong with the picture he’d painted of himself. He wasn’t a killer. His admission of coldly killing Mirna didn’t ring true. There was much more to that story. Just like there was much more to the story of what happened to his partner, Greg Harper. Her instincts had lied to her. He’d never been safe.
“You see me as unattainable? And that makes me safe? Is that it?” He raked a hand through his hair. “Jeez, and I thought I was messed up when it came to relationships.” He caressed her bruised cheek, tracing the line of her jaw.
“Who did this terrible thing to you? Who made you seek out men who can never offer you anything permanent?”
Vega jerked away. He’d hit too close to a truth she’d been unable to admit. Ask someone who was loveable how to find a lasting relationship. Not her.
Life drove her to
harden any soft edges that could get her killed. That was just the way—the only way she could ever hope to become the very image of the stern man who’d made her.
“I’m not some sexy woman hiding behind a tough-girl package, Grayson. I am that tough girl. There’s no room in me for anything pink and frivolous like love.”
He pulled her back into his arms and gave her a little shake. “You’re a terrible liar. Who did this to you?”
The question cut deep and pain spilled out.
“No one.” She choked down a throat filled with tears. “I’m just trying to be the best…” To make my father proud.
“I’ve never met anyone as capable and sexy and so damnably desirable as you, Vega. You have nothing to prove to anyone.”
She let him hold her tightly against his chest while he rained kisses on her forehead. Her ironclad defenses weakened. She felt lighter, like she didn’t have to fight quite so hard.
“Excuse me,” a man cleared his throat. “Not to interrupt this tender moment. But damn, Vega. You’ve made one hell of a mess. What the hell’s going on?”
Grayson’s hands slipped away, leaving her standing alone. Cold.
“Agent Johnson,” she said. The FBI Johnson, a dark-haired man in his late thirties, was dressed in a dark suit and fit the federal agent stereotype perfectly. “Am I glad to see you.” Just not right now. Five minutes ago would have been better.
Grayson increased his distance, preparing to flee around a corner and through a maze of alleyways she knew nothing about. She had to stop him. She had to get him to face his lies and tell her the truth about Mirna and Harper.
“Don’t,” he said when she took a step toward him. He plucked an automatic from the ground and pointed it at her chest, which didn’t worry her. He wouldn’t shoot her—at least, not again. Well, she didn’t think he would.
Agent Johnson drew his pistol. “Drop it, Walker.”
Vega remained completely still, cursing silently. Johnson would pull the trigger and shoot Grayson without hesitation. Things were getting messy.
“I can’t let you take me, Vega. I need to be out here.”
“Why? If you’re as innocent as you claim, why run?” She stepped between Johnson and Grayson, effectively blocking the FBI agent’s aim.
