Her 24-Hour Protector

by Loreth Anne White

  Lex now aimed for Epstein, who was running for his vehicle. He fired into dirt at this feet. Dust kicked up in a small explosion. Epstein kept running. Lex stepped out from his cover, weapon aimed at Epstein. “Halt! FBI!”

  But Epstein kept moving. Lex squeezed off another round, aiming for the sand at his feet.

  Panting, Epstein stopped. He raised both hands, turned slowly round. “Don’t. Shoot.”

  Lex didn’t waste time even acknowledging the bastard. His weapon trained on Epstein, he moved quickly toward the bag and length of rope they’d been going to use to raise Ciccone up from the shaft. He snagged the rope, approached Epstein, grabbed the old man, and shoved him brusquely onto his stomach in the sand.

  “Wait…think this through, Duncan. I’ve got enough cash to—”

  “You bastard,” Lex snapped as he wrenched the grizzled old lion king’s hands behind his back with the rope and hauled him to his feet. “When are you going to learn you can’t buy everything, Epstein?” He shoved the stumbling, heavily-breathing man towards the SUV as he spoke.

  “I can give you what you want—”

  “I already got what I want. I’m going to see your entire empire go down into the dirt. Where are the keys?”

  “I swear, you’re going to regret this, Duncan. I have connections in places that—”

  “Get in!” Lex barked as he yanked open the back hatch. “On your stomach.”

  “Duncan—”

  He pressed the muzzle of his gun into the old mobster’s back. “Do it! Now!”

  Once the old man was humiliatingly bundled into his own trunk, Lex hogtied him, looping the rope so that Epstein’s feet were bound to his hands. This desert king wasn’t going anywhere but down.

  Lex climbed into the driver’s seat, dialing dispatch as he started the ignition. “Connect me with someone who can give me a fix on the GPS in Agent Perez’s vehicle!” he barked. “And I need backup as soon as we get a reading on where she is.” He hit the gas as he spoke, giving dispatch a rundown of the situation. And with Epstein swearing in the back, he raced back toward the city of Las Vegas, toward the gold halo of light in the desert, dust boiling in a dark cone behind him. Lex had no idea which direction to go, but this was a start until he had a fix on Perez’s location. There was no way he could just sit and do nothing while he waited.

  He called both Jenna’s and Perez’s phones as he drove. Both kept flipping to voice mail. Tension torqued like a vise in him.

  His phone buzzed. Lex snapped it to his ear. “Yes!”

  “We have a location. Perez’s vehicle is stationary at a place called Bucktooth Ranch, an old property that was sold and slated for demolition two years ago, but redevelopment permits have been on hold because of legal issues—”

  “I know it!” Lex hit the brakes, wheeling sharply as he pulled a 180 degree turn off-road. The car fishtailed into sand, dust billowing in a cloud around him as he bounced wildly over rugged terrain, dry scrub scraping the undercarriage of the SUV as he aimed for an intersecting road about a mile ahead. “I’m not far out. I can be there in a few minutes,” he yelled into his phone. “Get that tactical team out there stat!”

  The SUV tires bit suddenly into harder packed dirt as his vehicle hit the intersecting road. He punched down on the gas, increasing speed. “I’m about eight miles out now. Can you give me the ranch specs? How many buildings?”

  “A bunch of old cabins…seven to the left of a main building, which is derelict.”

  “Approach road?”

  “One road in, dirt. There’s also an old horse trail that hooks around to the west.”

  “Wide enough for an SUV?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “I’m going in that way.”

  Lex cut his lights and engine.

  In the distance a yellow glow spilled from a window in one of the old log cabins. The dark shape of Perez’s SUV was tucked in alongside the west wall of the cabin, facing outward, as if ready for a quick getaway.

  Leaving Epstein hogtied in the vehicle, Lex ran in a crouch through a stand of dry scrub. He came up under the window, peered carefully up through broken, dusty glass. A flickering lantern stood on an old wood table, cell phone lying next to it. He shifted his gaze to the left, and his heart stalled.

  Jenna! Arms above her head, hands tied from the rafters. Her face sheet-white, streaked with dirt, tears, mascara, hair a wild tangle. A man in a black balaclava held a knife to the exposed column of her neck. He was trailing the hooked tip down to the hollow at the base of her throat.

  Although the man’s face was masked, he was familiar in height and build to Thomas Smythe, the man who’d threatened the life of exotic dancer Vera Mancuso.

  He peered up a little higher, caught sight of Perez’s body lying in a small heap in the darkened corner of the cabin. Lex struggled to draw in a breath, to hold his position. It was not known if Smythe was the same guy who’d murdered Candace, but Lex had seen enough during the standoff over Mancuso’s life to know that if this was Smythe, he was no rational man. Smythe had wanted that ring. And he’d probably do anything first and foremost for The Quetzal. Lex ducked down, checked his watch, mentally calculating how long it would take for backup to reach this remote ranch.

  Too long.

  Especially if Perez was still hanging onto life, needing medical attention. Lex had to move. But if he did act now, without backup, he could cost Jenna’s life. He peered up again.

  The man tilted Jenna’s chin up with the hooked blade of his knife. Fresh tears shimmered down her face. Lex saw blood on her dress. Was she injured? Was it Perez’s blood?

  The man began to trail the blade back down the column of her throat, moving his body closer to hers. Jenna tried to shrink away from him, arms straining visibly above her head. But the man hooked the knife tip into the top of her dress and jerked it down hard. The fabric split in a ragged gash, flaying open at her sides to reveal bare breasts and her skimpy scrap of a silky G-string. The man touched her nipple with his knife.

  Blinding rage erupted in Lex.

  He launched up, shouldered through the door. It smashed back with an explosive crash as he barreled into the room, his weapon aimed at the man. “Get back from her, now, you bastard, or you’re dead,” he growled, shaking inside, his arms steady as granite.

  “Lex! Oh, God…” Tears poured down Jenna’s face. She began shaking. Perez still lay lifeless in the far corner, blood congealing dark under her head, glistening in the lamplight.

  The man swiftly pressed his blade to Jenna’s neck. “Put the gun down,” he ordered, a faint hint of Spanish accent coming out under stress. “Or I will cut her throat before you can squeeze off a shot.”

  Lex swallowed, the shaking inside turning his gut to jelly, but he remained calm on the outside—as controlled as he could possibly be. He stared into the man’s eyes, dark-brown like Smythe’s. “I brought the ring,” he said quietly. “I have The Tears of the Quetzal. I think you want that diamond more than you want her.”

  Agitation rippled visibly through the man. He pressed the knife tighter against Jenna’s throat, sweat glistening around his eyes. With his free hand he slid a handgun out from the back of his jeans and aimed it at Lex. “Put the ring and gun on the table.”

  “Easy, buddy. Release her first, and then you get the ring.”

  His eyes narrowed in his balaclava slit. “How’d you find me? How’d you know to bring The Tears of the Quetzal? I didn’t give you directions yet.”

  “I tracked Agent Perez’s vehicle,” Lex said coolly, forcing himself not to look at his partner lying in an unconscious heap in the corner. He needed to get her to a hospital. The seconds were ticking down, time running out. Yet he had to stretch time out perhaps until backup arrived, in order to save Jenna. Tension cinched like a vise inside Lex. “Now, why don’t you step back, put your weapons down, and like I said, I will give you the ring.”

  “No, you put your gun down, and place the ring on the table.”
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  Lex could hear the nerves increasing in the man’s voice. Warning bells began to clang.

  “That’s not how it’s going to work,” said Lex. “And don’t think of pulling that trigger, because you’ll be a dead man before I even hit the ground.”

  The man pressed the blade of his knife tighter against Jenna’s throat. She whimpered, shivering, half-naked, tears streaming all the way down her breasts now. Lex trembled with bottled rage inside.

  “If you hurt her—” Lex said, voice ice cool, his mind racing and thinking of what Jenna told him about the death threats her father had hidden “—then I will kill you, and you will get nothing. No ring. No revenge for the old deed you mentioned in those notes to Harold Rothchild.”

  The man wavered.

  Good, this was his guy, Smythe, and Lex had made a connection. “That’s why you want the ring, isn’t it? To fix some past wrong. The ring that is more important to you than the ‘Rothchild trash,’ am I right? You need that ring first. Without the ring, you have nothing.”

  The man’s dark-brown eyes flickered. “Just…just put it on the table.” The Spanish accent that had crept into his voice as tension and fear got to him was thickening. His hands were beginning to shake. The warning bells in the back of Lex’s mind clanged louder.

  “Something happened back in South America didn’t it…an old deed that needs to be avenged?”

  “The Rothchilds must pay!”

  “Harold Rothchild? Or someone older perhaps? Like his father, Joseph Rothchild, maybe?”

  Agitation suddenly grew very marked in the man. Sweat began to pool around his eyes. Big damp patches were forming under the arms of his black shirt. “Just put the damn ring on the table!”

  “And if I do, what guarantee do I have that you won’t do something stupid, like try to kill us both once you have The Tears of the Quetzal?” Lex kept repeating the name of the cursed stone. It clearly had an effect on Jenna’s assailant.

  The man’s eyes darted to his right, and flicked back to the door. Lex followed his gaze, saw the trip wire. And another one. His heart began to slam. Smythe had rigged the whole cabin. This place was set to blow the minute he left here.

  “Did you rig this place? Is that your plan?”

  The man’s eyes shot to the cell phone that lay on the table. So, thought Lex, that’s probably how he was going to detonate his explosives once he’d left. Using the cell phone.

  “Okay,” Lex said slowly. “I’m going to put the ring down on the table now.”

  “Gun first.”

  “No. I keep my gun.” Lex moved his hand to his pocket, and the guy got instantly jumpy, shoving his knife tight against Jenna’s throat.

  “Easy, buddy, I’m just reaching for the ring, okay?” Lex extracted his wallet from his pocket, leaned forward, placed it on the table. “It’s in there.”

  “Take it out.”

  “No. You take it out.”

  The man’s eyes were fixated on the wallet. His whole body began to shake with desperation to snatch the ring he believed was in the wallet. They were locked in a standoff now.

  Then Lex heard it, the distant sound of approaching vehicles.

  The man picked up the sound, too. Panic flared in his dark eyes behind the mask. And Lex saw him struggling mentally, pulled by the powerful lure of the ring. Abruptly the man swung his gun, fired at the lantern. The glass exploded, lantern flying back and clattering to the floor. The room went dark, small flames licking through spilled lantern fuel.

  Lex saw the man lunge for the wallet and cell phone, but he couldn’t risk shooting in the flickering shadows from this angle. Instead, he moved on instinct to block Jenna’s body should the man fire.

  Headlights suddenly illuminated the desert outside as FBI vehicles crested the distant ridge, and Lex saw the shadow of the assailant as he fled out the door. Flames were licking into dry wood, smoke filling the cabin. Lex quickly groped on the floor for the blade the man had dropped in his desperation to grab the ring, and he cut Jenna free. She collapsed into his arms. “Oh, thank God,” she whispered, her face wet against his neck, her body soft and beautiful in his arms. “Jenna, you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”

  “I’m fine, but Perez—”

  Lex moved quickly over to his partner’s limp form, felt her neck. “She has a pulse! Get out there, Jenna! Tell them we need an ambulance. Bomb squad. And get as far away from this building as you can!”

  Holding her ripped dress together, Jenna ran outside to warn the FBI team as Lex gathered Perez in his arms, and staggered out of the smoke-filled burning cabin.

  It exploded behind him in a whoosh of orange, sparks brilliant in the desert sky. Fire began to crackle fiercely, and black smoke billowed up to blot the stars.

  Lex stood in the dark desert with his arm around Jenna as they watched firefighters extinguish what was left of the blazing cabins. Jenna was wearing a tracksuit provided to her by a female member of the tactical response team, and had a blanket draped over her shoulders. Paramedics had checked her out, and crime scene techs had taken evidence from beneath her nails—she’d managed to gouge her assailant’s neck as he’d fought to truss her up to the rafters.

  Her attacker had, however, managed to slip like a ghost into the Nevada night. He was in for a small surprise when he learned there was no diamond in Lex’s wallet.

  Meanwhile, Epstein had been taken into custody, and Perez had been rushed to hospital after being stabilized on the scene.

  “You think Rita is going to be okay?” Jenna said.

  “I believe it with all my heart,” said Lex. “The paramedics said she was lucky. The bullet just grazed her skull. She lost a lot of blood and received a bad concussion, but she was already starting to regain consciousness when the ambulance left.” Too bad Perez hadn’t managed to get a glimpse of her assailant, thought Lex. They had no definite proof it was Smythe.

  Jenna slipped her arms around his waist, holding him so tight, like she never wanted to let him go. And Lex knew immediately what he must do—take her away. Get off the case. Get the hell out of Vegas until that maniac was caught.

  Until his woman was safe.

  He didn’t care if it cost his job, his career, anything else, as long as he kept her.

  Forever.

  He was not going to allow Jenna out of his sight for a minute. His heart brimming with emotion—and purpose—Lex turned to face her. Cupping the back of her neck, he threaded his fingers up into her thick lustrous tangle of hair and tilted her jaw up with his thumb. “Jenna, I may not have had The Tears of the Quetzal on me, but I do have a diamond,” he whispered.

  “What…do you mean?”

  “I can see it, in my mind. So real. Small—tiny in fact—nothing like The Tears of Quetzal. But it’s pure, Jenna. A tiny faultless blue-white. As clean and real and enduring as I want things to be for us. And when I do find that little stone, I…” His voice caught. “I want you to wear it.”

  She stared up at him, eyes beginning to mist in the darkness.

  “Will you, Jenna? Just try it on for size while you see if you want to be my wife?”

  He felt a small tremor shudder through her body. Tears began streaming down her face again. “Lex—”

  Worry wedged into his heart.

  “Only while we try, Jenna. Promise me—”

  “Lex,” she whispered. “You’re pumped on adrenaline, anger…maybe…maybe this should wait until—”

  “I don’t need to wait.”

  “It’s only been four days, how…how can you possibly be sure?”

  “I’m as sure, Jenna, as I was when that clock struck midnight in the great Ruby Room, that I wanted nothing else but my casino princess. But if you’re not ready—” he hesitated, unsure of what the hell he’d do if she said no.

  “Oh, God, no I am ready, Lex. I’ve been waiting for you all my life. I…I just didn’t know it. I just couldn’t believe that…you…that you would want me.”

  “Is that a yes?
”

  She leaned up on tiptoe, met his lips with hers. “That, Agent Duncan, would be a yes.”

  He kissed her, hard and fast and desperate in the thick desert night, and Jenna thought her heart would burst with sheer love. He’d freed her, come riding into her rarefied life like a knight in shining armor, and he’d shown her how to be real.

  How to be true to the self she’d so long ago buried inside.

  He’d given her herself.

  Himself.

  And the promise that came with a small true blue diamond—a future, together.

  “Do you think it’s true, Lex?” she whispered, lips burning from the raw possessive passion in his kiss.

  “What?”

  “The legend…the curse of The Tears of the Quetzal.”

  Lex laughed, feeling a strange tingling chill even as he did, recalling the words of the skydiver. “It’s Vegas,” he said softly. “Anything can happen here.”

  Even magic.

  And he kissed her again under the desert stars, the quietly strobing lights of police vehicles nearby, the glow of a burning building.

  And he’d never felt more centered. More whole. More at home, than with this woman in his arms. He’d found family. His own.

  Epilogue

  With Lex and Jenna off celebrating their engagement on a small and isolated Caribbean island with no electricity, no glitz, no glam—simple and real like they’d said they wanted it, Rita Perez had been asked to temporarily take over as lead agent on the Candace Rothchild homicide case.

  Harold Rothchild’s lawyers had cut a deal with the feds, handing over the notes he’d kept hidden from police, along with an earth-shattering old video of Frank Epstein brokering a mob deal back in the 1980s—evidence that would ultimately help the FBI dismantle the entire Epstein empire.

  In turn, Rothchild’s lawyers were seeking immunity for their client on other possible charges. It looked like Rothchild would walk free.

  People with money got away with murder, thought Rita as she hung up her dishcloth, and put the last of her dinner dishes away. It also turned out that Rothchild’s little trophy wife, Rebecca Lynn, while acting suspiciously, had just been gunning for Jenna, insanely jealous of Harold’s affection for his youngest daughter.