Money, Honey

by Susan Sey

  “I don’t give two shits about what you do with your business,” Bernard said. “But I have a real problem with obstruction of justice, which is what you’ll all be charged with if Agent Brynn isn’t back in my custody within the half hour. Now where is O’Connor?”

  Brightwater’s eyebrows shot up, and he glanced over at his wife. “Mara? You have anything you’d like to share with the nice officer?”

  “What do I look like, a babysitter?” She put a protective hand on her husband’s arm and glared daggers at Bernard. “How the hell should I know where my brother is?”

  Bernard returned her hot glare with an icy one of his own. “Any ideas would be welcome, Mrs. Brightwater.”

  “Christ.” She rolled her eyes. “For the past two weeks, he was either here, at Liz’s place or at that dance club he’s so fond of. Over in the warehouse district. Cargo?”

  Bernard cut his eyes to Agent di Guzman. “Is there any reason to suspect O’Connor would go back there?”

  “He’d go anywhere he thought he’d find Villanueva.”

  He paused to get a firmer grip on his patience, then asked with careful precision, “Would he think Villanueva’s there?”

  “Sure,” Donald spoke up. “Villanueva, like, owns the place.”

  Di Guzman nodded confirmation of this astounding fact.

  “Of course he does,” Bernard muttered sourly.

  IT WAS still three minutes shy of noon when Patrick arrived at the dank little basement door where Villanueva had punched his lights out a week earlier. The briefcase he’d picked up from Goose’s house was heavy in his hands—heavy enough to contain the whole two point five million, although he hadn’t dared open it for a precise count.

  He lifted a hand, steadied it with a conscious effort, then rapped his knuckles against the door. It swung open immediately, and Villanueva smiled at him.

  “O’Connor,” the man said. “So punctual.”

  Patrick lifted his shoulders. “There’s rarely a good excuse for poor manners.”

  Villanueva’s smiled broadened and he backed away from the door, swept a hand toward the dim interior of the room.

  “Please,” he said. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

  Patrick stepped inside, searching the shadows until he discovered Liz sitting in the corner. She was tied hand and foot, and her lip was split, but she was alive and conscious. Relief washed through him. She was dinged up a little but not seriously hurt. And not scared either. If her expression was anything to go by, Liz was good and pissed.

  God, he loved this woman.

  Villanueva laid a hand on Patrick’s sleeve. “I’m just going to pat you down now. Merely a formality. I have my standards, too.”

  Patrick shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He laid the bag at his feet and put his hands on the wall while Villanueva conducted a thorough search of his person.

  “You never change.” Villanueva laughed softly in Patrick’s ear. “No weapon. Are you truly that arrogant?”

  Patrick lifted one lazy shoulder. “Guns are so . . . crude.”

  Villanueva tipped his head in agreement. “They serve a purpose,” he said. Then he drew a wicked-looking blade from the sheath at his waist and ran a testing thumb over its edge. “But knives. What do you have against knives? They seem like such an ideal fit for you. Subtle, elegant. Almost poetic, if used properly. I could show you a few things.”

  Villanueva caressed the knife with a reverence that put a sucking hole in Patrick’s gut. His face was soft, like a lover’s, but his eyes were utterly mad. What the hell was he remembering, Patrick wondered? What had he and that knife done to put that look on his face?

  He was damn sure he didn’t want to find out.

  “Maybe later,” he said. “We have business first.” Patrick inclined his head toward the briefcase at his feet.

  Villanueva sheathed the knife and said, “Excellent. Bring it into the light.”

  The FBI had left behind a small table when they’d raided Oz’s basement workshop, empty now but for a raggedy stuffed bunny. Evie’s bunny, Patrick knew with an icy shock. The one Mara hadn’t been able to find after Villanueva had tossed her house. Proof that Villanueva had considered Patrick’s niece as a target before settling on Liz.

  Rage twisted inside him but he stuffed it down and laid the briefcase on the table with steady hands. He clicked open the latches, opened the case, then stood back so Villanueva could inspect the contents.

  “Do you mind if I ask why you demanded all this?” Patrick asked as Villanueva picked up a banded stack of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and flipped through them to make certain they were all the same denomination. “Surely your exit strategy didn’t depend on this kind of last-minute work?”

  “Of course not.” Villanueva selected another stack from a different part of the briefcase and did the same. “But how else to make you hope?”

  “Hope? For what?”

  “For victory.” Villanueva shrugged as he reached into the inside pocket and withdrew the paperwork. “After all, where’s the glory in defeating an opponent who believes he can’t win?” He scrutinized each item, and Patrick took another step away from him and closer to Liz. She was watching them both carefully, those blue eyes of hers intensely alert.

  “Oh, I believe I can win. Rest easy on that point,” Patrick said. “But now that you’ve verified my end of the bargain, I’ll just make certain that you’ve kept up yours.”

  Villanueva turned to him. “My end of the bargain?”

  Patrick nodded toward Liz and lifted his eyebrows in lofty reminder.

  “Oh, yes, the girl.” Villanueva gave him a little moue of apology and fingered the knife at his waist. “She’s fine, of course. But I’d rather you didn’t get any closer.”

  Patrick blew out a purposefully impatient breath. “I don’t have even fingernail clippers on me and you know it,” he said. “What do you think I’m going to do, chew through the ropes like a beaver?”

  Villanueva drew the knife from the sheath slowly, seemed to savor the low hiss of metal sliding over leather. “I’m afraid I just don’t trust you, O’Connor. You’ve proven yourself rather unreliable in the past.”

  “You didn’t trust me long before I screwed you in Vegas,” Patrick said. “If you’d trusted me back then, you wouldn’t have bolted like a scared rabbit at the first sign of trouble. I had a little family emergency to take care of, but I would never have sold you out entirely. If you’d trusted me just a few more hours, I’d have cut you into the deal. You’d have spent the last six years enjoying a nice little golden parachute out of the criminal life, just like I did.”

  “Family emergency,” Villanueva spat. “Your sister was a fuckup. She deserved to be caught. But you, you were something special. You had promise, or so I thought. I went out of my way to free you up from your ridiculous sense of responsibility to your incompetent sister, and how do you repay me? By turning yourself in to the FBI?”

  Patrick narrowed his eyes at Villanueva. “It was you,” he said slowly. “You turned Mara in that night.”

  “Christ, yes,” Villanueva said. “She was dragging you down. I did what I thought necessary to open your eyes, to force a choice. But I never thought in a million years that you lacked the intelligence to make the right choice. And as a result of your stupidity, I lost my wife and child.”

  He went eerily still then, and Patrick felt the impact all the way through his body.

  “Justice demands, therefore, that I take what’s most important to you,” Villanueva said. “I’ll kill you, too, of course. But first I’m going to kill her.” He waved the knife in Liz’s direction and Patrick’s mouth went utterly dry. “And you’re going to watch.”

  Chapter 26

  LIZ WORKED the ropes binding her wrists back and forth as much as she was able and watched as Patrick ignored the knife in Villanueva’s hand.

  “Surely your wife and child were worth more than one ex-criminal and a dinged-up FBI agent?” he asked with
a dismissive sangfroid that had Liz blinking. Was he baiting the guy?

  The ropes binding her wrists tore at her skin, but she twisted against them with a little more urgency. Why the hell couldn’t Patrick have done what any sane, rational person would have done and armed himself? Or arrived with a SWAT team? Or even a dozen or so of Liz’s colleagues? That would have done the trick.

  But no. The bad guy was armed to the teeth and teetering on the edge of madness, and Patrick decided to go in with the verbal attack. Christ.

  “I thought they were worth that and much more,” Villanueva said. “Once. They proved otherwise, but still. They might have had the opportunity to outgrow such weakness had it not been for you. You forced my hand, and that debt is yours to pay.” Villanueva shifted to smile at Liz, and it was the cold, slippery smile of a reptile. “I’ve been waiting some time for satisfactory payment. This is going to be sweet indeed.”

  He shifted his grip on the knife to something a bit more purposeful and all the breath left Liz’s body as she watched Patrick roll up onto the balls of his feet, his entire lanky body coming to the ready. Oh Lord, was he going to fight?

  In the eight years she’d been following his career, she’d never known him to even carry a weapon, much less throw a punch. And now he was going hand-to-hand? Unarmed? Against a guy with a seven-inch blade?

  Villanueva released a rich chuckle. “Oh, this is wonderful. Please, defend yourself at will. It’ll be all the sweeter for me to kill her in front of you if you really try to fight me first.”

  Patrick smiled back, and it was as sharp as the blade flashing in Villanueva’s hand. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Liz closed her eyes and a low moan escaped her as what was left of her heart broke and bled. She couldn’t watch this.

  “Liz.” Patrick’s voice was mild and just a little indignant. “A bit of faith might be in order.”

  “I do hope you’ve improved over the years,” Villanueva said. “Or this is going to be very anticlimactic.”

  She opened her eyes in time to watch Patrick shrug. “I’ll try not to disappoint.”

  Villanueva moved like a snake striking, sudden and lethal, the knife making a swift slashing stroke toward Patrick’s midsection. Liz couldn’t stop the thin scream that tore itself from her throat as Patrick sidestepped nimbly and put what looked like half an inch between his liver and Villanueva’s knife.

  He backed toward Liz, gave her a reassuring glance over his shoulder. She closed her eyes again, unable to accept the message of love and reassurance in all that glacial blue. He was going to die for her. She couldn’t let that happen. She forced her eyes open and started in on the rope with her teeth.

  “You’re still quick,” Villanueva commented as he circled Patrick assessingly.

  Patrick nodded. “It’s a gift.”

  Villanueva feinted toward Patrick’s shoulder this time, a deliberately testing move. Liz gnawed desperately at the ropes binding her wrists as Patrick twisted away from the blade and danced a little closer to Liz. There was a subtle flash and ping, and Liz frowned at the ground next to her knee.

  A razor blade. God damn, he’d just dropped her a fucking razor blade. Where the hell had he stashed a razor blade that Villanueva could possibly have missed it? That search had been damn thorough. She didn’t waste any time speculating. Patrick O’Connor had secrets and gifts she would never understand and she was done forcing herself to figure them out before she accepted them.

  She edged herself over to the blade, scooped it up and went to work on the ropes around her wrists while Patrick continued to hang on to his life by centimeters. Her fingers shook and she dropped the blade, scrambled to her hands and knees to claw it up again. She didn’t care if Villanueva saw her. She could only pray it distracted him before he removed something vital from Patrick’s anatomy.

  The rope was down to threads now and Liz sawed desperately at them with the dulling blade. Villanueva circled to his left with a deadly grace that had Liz’s blood running cold. He lashed out with the knife at the same time he hooked a booted foot in the opposite direction, mere inches from Liz’s knees. Patrick moved with a boxer’s nimble grace, dancing out of the blade’s reach, but the step he needed to keep his balance took him directly onto Villanueva’s boot. He stumbled, one arm flailing for balance even as his body twisted toward all that sharpened steel.

  The ropes at her wrists fell away and Liz shoved to her bound feet with a cry of fury and terror as Villanueva threw his entire weight into the thrust, following the path of the blade toward Patrick’s body. It was a killing blow and he knew it, put his entire energy into driving it home. A ghastly smile stretched his lips and his eyes glowed with an insane anticipation. Liz was moving before she even fully understood her intent.

  She saw Patrick drop to the ground as if he’d suddenly gone boneless, nothing but a sliver of air between him and the blade, but her focus was entirely on Villanueva and his slow-motion dance with murder. They were nearly on top of her now, and as Villanueva dropped his guard to deal Patrick that killing blow, Liz cocked back her arm and drove her fist into his jaw with enough force to send shards of pain splintering all the way up into her shoulder.

  But he didn’t go down. She’d deflected his aim just enough to save Patrick’s skin, but with her feet still bound, she hadn’t managed enough stopping power. All she’d done was remind him of her presence, and that he wanted to kill her, too.

  Now they would both die, she thought. Together. She’d gambled with both their lives and lost.

  The momentum of the swing had dropped her to her hands and knees at Villanueva’s feet, and she was sprawled nearly on top of Patrick’s still form. She covered him with her body as best she could and braced for the blow she knew was coming.

  Patrick’s arms came around her and she thought, Okay. If she was going to die, this was the way she wanted to go. In Patrick’s arms, doing what she knew she was meant for. Standing between the innocent and the evil.

  Because she knew—had always known, really—that regardless of what Patrick had done, regardless of what his parents had made him, of what he thought he’d been made for, he wasn’t evil. In his own way, he was a force for good in the world, same as she was. She’d done nothing but use and judge him since he’d smashed into her carefully constructed world, and yet he’d still been willing to lay down his life for hers. She would die protecting him with her body, and it was right. He deserved at least that final act of love from her.

  But then everything went topsy-turvy, because Patrick didn’t stop with embracing her. He all but bench-pressed her, shoving her up and over his head, tossing her away from him. He used the momentum to roll away from the blade meant to skewer him to the ground.

  A snarl of pure rage escaped Villanueva when his knife sparked off the concrete floor instead of spilling Patrick’s guts. In that sliver of vulnerability, while Villanueva’s arm was outstretched and his guard down, Patrick gained his feet and his balance. From the advantage of both height and position, he delivered the punch that Liz had been aiming for—a vicious, short-armed blow that drove Villanueva to one knee.

  She didn’t have time to admire it or even to speculate on where he’d learned to do such a thing. Violence always seemed so antithetical to Patrick’s whole being, and yet here he was doling it out with a grim-eyed determination that had her mouth hanging open.

  His next shot put Villanueva’s second knee on the floor. Patrick’s elbow was cocked back to deliver a third blow, his beautiful lips peeled back in a snarl that Liz had never imagined when her instinct and training kicked in.

  Villanueva had dropped to his knees not two feet from where she was still sprawled on her back, and she recognized an opportunity when she saw one. She coiled herself and jackhammered out with both feet, landing her boots squarely in the man’s crotch. He went down like a flour sack, the knife clattering to the floor. Patrick scooped it up before Liz could kick it clear and he went down on one knee beside Villanueva’
s crumpled form.

  He grabbed a handful of dark greasy hair and jerked the man’s head back until Liz could see the jugular vein pumping fast and vulnerable in his throat. Patrick laid the knife against it, pressed hard enough that a thin line of blood appeared under the blade when Villanueva’s throat worked in convulsive swallows.

  “Do I have your attention now, Villanueva?” he asked, his voice soft and deadly pleasant.

  “Fuck you,” Villanueva muttered. The words were slurred, his eyes vague, but hate rang unmistakably in every syllable. “You’re not going to kill me, you pussy. You don’t have the guts.” The man’s eyelids drifted to half-mast and Patrick pressed the blade more firmly against his throat until he opened his eyes and focused with apparent effort.

  Liz had gained her hands and knees, and she dragged herself over to Patrick’s side. “He’s altered,” she said, putting a restraining hand on his elbow. “How hard did you hit him?”

  Patrick ignored her, shook off her hand. “You’re right, Villanueva. You know me so well. I probably won’t kill you.”

  In a lightning-quick maneuver that Liz would think about later, he’d moved the knife from Villanueva’s throat and placed it against the thumb of the man’s knife hand. “But I won’t hesitate to put an end to your days of knife play forever.”

  Villanueva’s eyes fluttered open and Patrick smiled. “Oh, good. You’re awake. Pay attention, now, Villanueva, because I’m only going to say this once. If you ever come after me or my family again, if you make even one move I don’t like in the general direction of anybody connected to me, I will hunt you down like the animal you are. I will take you apart piece by worthless piece and feed your guts to stray dogs.”

  Villanueva curled his lips into a mocking snarl. “Fucking nancy. You don’t have the balls to put your sister in jail and you’re going to feed my guts to the dogs? Be a man for once in your pathetic life and just slit my throat.”