Take the Key and Lock Her Up

by LENA DIAZ,

  She blinked. “May be able to return?” She swallowed hard. “Are you saying I was right all along? I was fishing, reaching, when I originally accused you of being an assassin. But Cougar talked about an EXIT order, making it sound like a contract on my life. If that’s true, if EXIT really is a front, then what happened at my house makes a twisted kind of sense. It was my conversation with Cyprian, wasn’t it? When I told him my assassin theory, that’s when he put out that EXIT order, right? That’s why—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Devlin shoved away from the bars and strode to the bed. He stopped less than a foot away, staring down at her, his face a mask of worry. “Tell me you’re generalizing about your conversation. Please tell me that when you spoke to Cyprian, you did not say I was an assassin.”

  For the first time since interviewing Devlin, she began to comprehend that the way she’d been throwing her theories around might have been a horrible mistake. She’d always felt a certain invincibility as a member of the law-enforcement community: respected, supported by the majority of citizens who believed in the laws that made society function and kept people safe.

  But what if there really were huge corporations like EXIT Inc. to whom the law didn’t matter? How could she fight an entity like that if she was in their crosshairs?

  Her hands started to shake. She clasped them together, hoping Devlin wouldn’t notice. “No, I wasn’t generalizing.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  He stepped closer and put his hands on top of hers. She should have snatched her hands back, but the concerned look on his face brought up all her fears again and, instead, she clutched his hands with hers.

  “Tell me what you said to Cyprian.”

  “I wanted to shake the tree, see what fell out. So I . . . ah . . . bluffed my way through the conversation. I might have implied that you had confessed to being an assassin for them and that you had told me . . . um . . . everything.”

  He closed his eyes, a pained look crossing his face.

  She fought down the panic rising inside her. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, a scattergun approach, throw crazy theories out and see what happens. But I’m guessing now it probably wasn’t the brightest thing I could have done.”

  He laughed bitterly. “No. It wasn’t.”

  Earlier, when he’d faced a man with a knife or dove in front of a man with a gun to protect her, he’d seemed strong, confident, invincible. Now, at this moment, he was none of those things. His gaze darted around the cell without really seeing anything, as if he were considering different courses of action, reading through an invisible playbook in his mind and discarding every option as unfeasible.

  “You really are a hired assassin?” She wanted him to deny it, but when his dark gray eyes stared back at her, unblinking, she knew the truth. She tugged her hands out of his and wrapped her arms around her waist.

  He dropped his hands to his sides and took a step back. The earlier worry on his face was gone. He’d steeled his deceptively handsome features into an unreadable mask.

  “I don’t . . . understand,” she whispered. “You . . . kill people. For money.”

  “Yes.”

  Her gaze flew to his. “You work for the same person as Cougar and Ace.”

  “Yes,” he repeated, his voice firm, matter-of-fact.

  “But . . . but instead of letting them kill me, you risked your life to save me.” Her fingers dug painfully into her skin as she stared up at him. Anguish and confusion washed through her. “Why? Why did you do that?”

  “It’s . . . complicated.”

  Her shock gave away to anger again. “Killing people isn’t complicated, Devlin. It’s wrong. Plain and simple.”

  “Is it, Emily? Wrong? Simple? If a terrorist plans to maim and kill dozens of people and someone like me takes him out before he can destroy all those lives, is that wrong?”

  “Is that what you’re saying you do, Devlin? Kill people you think are bad before they commit a crime?”

  “What would you say if I said yes?”

  “I’d say that’s wrong. Simple. That you have no right to judge someone else. That’s not how society operates. We have rules, laws, for a reason, to keep us all civilized, to keep us all safe. I’d say that you’re deluding yourself if you think you’re a hero for making preemptive strikes against people you perceive as evil. That makes you just as bad as the people you kill.”

  The skin around his jaw tightened. “Now who’s judging? I may not be a hero, but I’m not a damn hypocrite either. You police say you want to protect people, but you come to their aid only after a crime has been committed. That’s not protecting. That’s just cleaning up the mess when it’s too late.” He leaned forward, his dark eyes flashing with anger. “If the police had done what they should have done, if they’d really cared about helping people, Arianna wouldn’t have died.”

  The pain in his voice, and the surprise on his face, told her he’d said more than he’d meant to say. He drew a ragged breath, obviously struggling to get his emotions back under control.

  “Who’s Arianna?” Emily whispered.

  He stiffened. Without another word, he turned and left the cell, locking the door behind him.

  It was only then that Emily realized she’d forgotten to try to grab his gun.

  SHE MUST HAVE dozed off because all of a sudden, Emily jerked awake and sat up in bed, disoriented, trying to get her bearings. Without a clock or a watch or even windows, she had no real perception of how much time had passed since her devastating conversation with Devlin.

  Since leaving her in the cell, he’d spent most of the time sitting at a desk in the middle of the other room. Ignoring her repeated questions and requests that he let her out, he’d focused entirely on the laptop in front of him, occasionally printing out information and making handwritten notes. Twice he went through one of two doors on the right side of the room. But he ignored her when she asked where those doors led.

  He must have been behind one of those doors again because she didn’t see him anywhere. A few minutes later, one of the doors opened and he stepped through it.

  He was dressed all in black, right down to his boots. The telltale thickness beneath his shirt told her he was wearing Kevlar. His knife was sheathed, hanging from his belt on one side, his holstered pistol on the other. But what had Emily paying close attention was the network of elastic bands fitted over the top of his head, connected to a chinstrap. Attached to the front, currently tilted up out of the way, was a piece of equipment she’d never used but recognized—night-vision goggles. He was dressed to go out into the night, maybe to tangle with some bad guys. So what did that mean for her?

  Without a glance in her direction, he headed to the stairs. Was he going to leave her behind? Panicked, she hopped off the bed and ran to the cell door, yanking on it even though she knew it was locked. “What are you doing, Devlin?” she called out.

  He didn’t answer and started up the stairs.

  “‘Take the key and lock her up,’” she yelled. “Is that what you’re doing? You’re going to just leave me to rot here like those other women in that basement in Savannah? Like Shannon Fisher?”

  He froze, his hand clutching the handrail. Even in profile, from twenty feet away, tension was evident in every line of his body. She immediately regretted her outburst. In spite of what she’d learned about him—that he was the assassin she’d originally feared him to be—she was confident he would never hurt an innocent person, especially a woman. His sacrifices for her, if nothing else, told her that. But the idea of being locked up, helpless, alone, was more than she could bear.

  “Please,” she said, hating that he’d forced her to beg. “Please don’t leave me here to die.”

  “You’re safer here than outside. I’ll be back soon.” He jogged up the stairs and disappeared through the trap door.

  PLEASE DON’T LEAVE me here to die.

  Emily’s parting words echoed in Devlin’s mind as he paused at the edge of his property,
looking down the sloping front lawn at his house. The accusation in those words, the comparison between him and the animal who’d butchered those women, had sent a hot rush of fury through every muscle in his body. But the underlying anguish in her words had sent guilt crashing down on him. For years he’d performed his job without doubts. Since meeting Emily, he was questioning every decision and, for the first time in years, asking himself whether what he was doing was right.

  He still didn’t know the answer.

  Contrary to what Emily must think of him, taking a life was never something he took lightly. It was a distasteful, necessary consequence of actions his marks had taken. A last resort when other forms of justice had failed. Thankfully, not all of his missions involved executing someone. The majority centered around reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, or escorting operatives from various alphabet agencies to and from sensitive locations. On occasion he even provided evidence to law-enforcement agencies—anonymously, of course—to point their investigations in the right direction. But never before had he forcefully abducted someone who wasn’t his mark, someone who’d done nothing to warrant such treatment. It didn’t feel right. But what was the alternative? Let her go free, only to die at the hands of an enforcer?

  The solution, whatever it was, would have to wait. Right now he needed to be on his game, in case anyone was out here watching his house to see if he’d come back. Originally, he’d planned to use only the hidden bunker—a brisk thirty-minute hike away—and not come near the house itself, but while he’d sat watching Emily, waiting for her to wake up, he’d begun weighing the risks of sneaking back to the house versus the rewards.

  Hiding in the bunker long-term wasn’t an option. He had to find Kelly. To do that, he needed information. Which was why he was here.

  Technically, it was already Sunday morning, a little after one o’clock. Ace was, hopefully, asleep somewhere, licking his figurative wounds. But he might have asked Cyprian to assign him a group of newbies, more probationary enforcers like Cougar to keep an eye on all of Devlin’s known properties overnight, just in case he showed up at one of them. Which meant a team could be close by.

  He had security cameras inside and outside the bunker, accessible through the panel in his bedroom, so he could check on Emily while he was here. That helped assuage some of his worries about leaving her alone. The trapdoor entrance at the top of the stairs was locked and concealed. There was no reason to worry that anyone would find it. And if all went as planned, he’d be back in less than an hour.

  Keeping to the tree line and using his night-vision goggles to see, he circled around to the bolt-hole a hundred yards behind the house. He’d read about bolt-holes—secret exits—in a book on castles years ago and thought that sounded like an excellent strategy. Since then he’d ensured he had one in all of his hideouts, just in case he needed to get out in a hurry undetected. Except this time, he was going to use the bolt-hole to get in undetected.

  The bushes had grown thick around the concealed entrance. It took several minutes of careful trimming with his hunting knife to make a space big enough for him to slide into the tunnel. About ten feet in was a steel door secured with an electronic lock and keypad. He entered the code and jogged down the tunnel the rest of the way. A second door required another code, and then he was sliding the wall panel back and stepping into his master bedroom. The house was dark, but there was enough light from the moon filtering through the pinhole openings around the cords in the window blinds to make the goggles still useful.

  He accessed the hidden security panel in the wall and pressed his thumb to activate the wall scanner. He swiped his finger across the screen, checking each camera angle of the house, both inside and out. All clear. Even the long winding road that led to the house was deserted.

  He keyed in an access code to check the camera views of his other properties, including the bunker. Each view displayed the GPS coordinates so he could easily direct fellow enforcers to one of his hideouts if he ever needed help. Of course tonight that was the last thing he wanted.

  Again, everything appeared as it should. He flipped back to the picture of the clearing where the bunker’s entrance was hidden and keyed in another code. A picture of Emily inside the cell filled the screen. He grinned when he realized what she was doing—testing every bar to see if it was loose.

  He switched the display back to the view outside the bunker so he could check it again. Then he went into the master closet. A panel in the back wall slid open to reveal a collection of Kevlar vests, which was the main reason he’d come. He used the vests for missions in which he had to escort someone through hostile territory. Right now, with Ace, Gage, and possibly others after him and Emily, this definitely qualified as hostile territory. He selected the vest that seemed most likely to fit her and closed the panel.

  After shoving the vest into a go bag that doubled as a backpack, he opened the wall safe, unlocked the metal box, and grabbed the binder of dossiers. He’d been in too big a hurry this morning to get it before he’d left. With what was happening now, he figured the information in that binder might help him figure out who had the most to gain by getting rid of him.

  He was about to close the safe when one of the wallet-sized pictures inside drew his attention. A tall blonde with a deep tan smiled up at him. And for one second, two, he could look at her and return that smile, remember the feel of her soft hair sliding through his fingers, the sexy little moan deep in her throat when they kissed.

  But then the moment passed, and the hurt and pain washed over him, just as fresh as the day she’d been murdered.

  Arianna. His Arianna. His fiancée. God, how he’d loved her. But he hadn’t been able to save her.

  Unbidden, images of Emily swirled through his mind, as they had so often from the moment he’d met her. She wasn’t classically beautiful, and yet she took his breath away. He loved her perky nose, her freckles, her maddeningly curly, unkempt-looking hair. But what intrigued him the most was her courage, her strength, even her moral center that had her condemning him because he didn’t live up to her ideals. He admired her for her beliefs, even if he didn’t agree with them.

  He didn’t know why, after all these years, that Emily was the one who tugged at his emotions, consumed his thoughts, when there was no possibility of a future between someone like him and a cop. But he did know one thing: above everything else, he wanted to protect her. He couldn’t save Arianna, but he would save Emily, whatever it took.

  He started to put Arianna’s picture away. But without knowing if he’d ever be able to return, he suddenly couldn’t bear to leave the picture behind. He slid it into the binder and packed it with the Kevlar vest in the backpack. He slid the straps over his shoulders and checked his watch. Only thirty-five minutes had passed since he’d left the bunker. He was making good time. Which meant he could do one more thing before he left.

  He crossed to the window beside the bed, the one where the pictures of him and Shannon had been taken the one night they’d made love. The angles of those pictures indicated the camera would have been mounted on the right side of the window, probably about halfway up, near the head of the bed pointing across and toward the footboard.

  He pulled the blinds back, not really expecting to see anything since so much time had passed. But if the person who’d placed the camera was sloppy, they might have left a round circle on the glass from the suction cup that affixed it to the window. Just knowing the size of the circle might help him calculate the maximum weight of the device. A clue like that would further narrow down the types of cameras that could have been used. Alone, that told him nothing. Added to other clues, it might paint a picture that could help him identify whomever was framing him—and whoever had Kelly and the two other women Hawley claimed to have seen.

  As he’d expected, the glass was clean, with nothing indicating a camera had ever been there. Of course. Nothing was ever that easy.

  He let the blinds slide back into position and something t
humped against the glass. He flattened himself against the wall and waited. Five seconds. Ten. Nothing. No other sounds drifted in from outside. He carefully lifted the edge of the blinds to look out and immediately realized what he’d heard. The camera had bumped against the glass. It was still there—mounted on the back of the blinds, its lens positioned to capture a full view of the bed and the room through one of the pinholes where the strings threaded through the slats.

  A red light blinked on top of the tiny camera. It was on and still transmitting. Which meant whoever was receiving that transmission had seen him tonight. They knew he was in the house. And since he’d scrolled through the security panel to check on Emily, they also knew she was in the bunker.

  And they had the GPS coordinates.

  Cursing viciously, he tore through the house, not bothering with the bolt-hole. He ran out the front door and sprinted up the opposite slope, pumping his arms and legs in a full-out run. And as he ran, he did something he hadn’t done since the day he’d lost Arianna.

  He prayed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  * * *

  THE TRAPDOOR CREAKED open at the top of the stairs. Emily tightened her fingers around the bars of the cell, obscenely grateful that Devlin was returning. She’d tried to convince herself he wouldn’t really abandon her, that he wouldn’t leave her locked in the cell all alone to die. But she really didn’t know. He was an enigma: kind, caring, or passionate one moment, binding her and stuffing her in a suitcase the next.

  While he was gone, she’d tugged and twisted on every bar in the cell, all thirty of them, hoping to find a loose one. But they were snug and tight, and she’d come close to sinking to the floor in despair. Now she stood by the door, wondering why he hadn’t come down the stairs yet.

  A pair of boots came into view, descending toward the main room, moving slowly, almost . . . hesitantly. Wait . . . those boots, those pants, those weren’t what Devlin had been wearing when he left. He’d been wearing all black. The person on the stairs was dressed in green camouflage.