Capture the Night

by Cheryl Pierson

  He made a sound in his throat, as if the pain had become too much to hold inside.

  Alexa stretched out her hand, pressing it to his cheek, letting him know he wasn’t alone. There was only one thing she could do. No choice at all, for her. She had to help him, no matter who he turned out to be.

  He moistened dry lips. “Need to—to tell Pete…”

  Alexa didn’t answer. She began to unbutton his shirt, then gently pushed him fully onto his back to complete the task more easily. Her fingers were shaking, and she could hear herself breathing much too rapidly. She made an effort to calm her nerves, to force her breathing to slow.

  Even in the dim light, she could see the dark wetness soaking his clothing. She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the scene in the kitchen below them. How had he escaped?

  When she looked down at him, he was staring back at her with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. It was not what she’d expected, those blue eyes, with the bronze darkness of his skin, the midnight black hair.

  “Pete. I need to—”

  “Shhh,” she soothed. Definitely not one of the terrorists, at least, not by the way he talked. “We’ll—We’ll do that after we take care of you, okay?” She smoothed his clean, dark hair back, her fingers lingering a moment on his cheek once again.

  He let his eyelids drift shut. Alexa unbuckled his belt, then reached to unbutton the placket of his jeans.

  “You…an angel? Or—what?”

  She opened the first three buttons and began to gently work the tail of his shirt free. In spite of their grim circumstances, she smiled at his assessment.

  “To some, maybe,” she answered dryly. “Others,” she thought of Richard, “would definitely say otherwise.”

  She pulled the dark blue cotton shirt open, revealing a red-soaked undershirt beneath. With a hole in the side. At her sharp intake of breath, he opened his eyes again, watching her as she tried, as carefully as she could, to rip the material away.

  “Wait…there’s a knife…in my belt—”

  Alexa drew it out of the sheath slowly. It was heavy, and she held it for a moment before she began to slit the material.

  “You…smell—good,” he muttered. “Spicy-sweet…”

  Alexa smiled at the blunt observation.

  As she parted the shirt, he asked, “Who says?”

  She gave him a questioning look as she drew the material away from his skin.

  “Who says otherwise?”

  The bullet wound was ugly. Alexa blanched for a moment at the sight of the jagged, seeping flesh.

  “Huh?” She glanced at his face. His eyes were closed, but he seemed to hover on the edge of consciousness. “Oh. My—my ex-husband.” Her smile was grim. “He’d tell you that I’m no angel. At least, not in his book.” She tried to keep her voice steady; tried not to betray the absolute horror of her revulsion at what she was looking at…and what it could mean for him.

  The silence stretched out between them for a moment, then the stranger said, “I wouldn’t…believe him. You are. Or—you wouldn’t be…here…with me.”

  Alexa gave a faint smile at his reasoning, in spite of her own tumbling thoughts.

  The wound was still trickling. Alexa cut a piece from his undershirt on the left side. “You might tend to agree with him by the time we’re done,” she muttered as she worked over him.

  He slitted his eyes open again. “I know…what’s comin’. It’s not like…this is my…first time.”

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Johnny reached to grip her wrist as she put the white, blood-spattered material she’d cut from his shirt across the gaping hole. “Como se llama?” he whispered raggedly. He shook his head even as he asked. No, that wasn’t right. English. Not Spanish. She wouldn’t understand.

  But she did. “Me llamo Alexa,” she answered. “Y usted?”

  An angel. Even with her rusty accent…

  “Johnny,” he responded, smiling at the formal textbook way she’d responded. Like a tourist… He took a steadying breath. “Go ’head, ’Lexa. Let ’er buck.”

  She began slow, steady pressure atop the hole in his side. Nothing had ever hurt so badly. Nothing. Not even the times before when he’d taken a bullet. Twice before. Didn’t hurt like this did.

  He gasped, his body tightening as he lost the ability to breathe. Through a fog of queasy agony, he heard her murmur a soft apology.

  From the feel of her hands on him, she was being cautious in the pressure she exerted. It needed to be stronger, but he knew he’d never withstand the pain if she pushed the slightest bit harder. No one could.

  She moved one hand away, still pressing with the other as she talked to him, a steady stream of words that pulled him back from the brink of madness.

  Johnny opened his eyes, watching as she lifted an arm to wipe her eyes with the back of her wrist, her fingers covered in his blood. Crying? For him?

  “…don’t want to hurt you—”

  His eyes slid shut. “It’s…okay. Got to be.”

  The pressure at his side gradually eased, as Alexa lifted the makeshift bandage to check the flow of the bleeding.

  By the sound of her steadying breath, she had gotten it stanched. Her fingers tentatively moved around his back to a lump that made him jerk away from her touch.

  “’Lexa—” He winced, gritting his teeth against the pain.

  “I know. It’s where the bullet stopped. I guess we should be glad it’s so close to the skin…”

  “Hurts…”

  Alexa nodded, withdrawing her fingers from his back, and shifting next to him. “I’m sure it does. I don’t know how you can stand it.” She shouldered back her hair. “Do you have a cell phone?”

  He gave her a caustic smile. “You were thinkin’ maybe about callin’ 911? They’re all outside at the front door…They couldn’t get to us anyhow…not with what’s goin’ on…down there… I—I don’t know where my cell is, anyhow…guess I dropped it…”

  “This is a little beyond my expertise, I’m afraid.”

  He grimaced at her hesitant words. “C’mon, ’Lexa. Don’t back out now.” He groaned as another wave of pain swept through his body. “I need you,” he said in a low voice.

  Her hands moved over him as he spoke, finally stopping at his hip. She made a sound of dismay, and he opened his eyes.

  He tried to move, but she pushed him back down firmly to the floor.

  “Lie down. You’ll make it start up again.”

  He took a deep, shuddering breath at the pain that rippled through him. “What’s—wrong?”

  “Can’t you feel it?” Alexa’s hands gently separated his legs, pulling the right one up and to the side.

  He gasped and swore. Her fingers gripped his thigh tightly as she turned his knee, opening his inner thigh to her thorough scrutiny.

  “You’re gonna need some new jeans, unless you just especially like that ‘grunge’ look.” Alexa reached for the knife and made a cut centering from the hole the bullet had left. She gave a deflated sigh as she bent over the bloody wound. “We’re not going to get so lucky with this one, I don’t think.”

  Johnny wanted to laugh aloud at her choice of words. Just how lucky could a guy get? How much more luck could he stand, he wondered, as he felt her move around to his other side.

  “Can we get this jacket off? Looks like you maybe took a bullet here—in your arm. I need to look.”

  He nodded in resignation.

  She pulled on the sleeve as he carefully removed his right arm, then they repeated the same process for the left. The bullet had torn cleanly through the thick-muscled part of his upper arm. Alexa cut two more plugs of material from his undershirt, folded them, and tied them on either side of his arm with a strip of material.

  Her eyes strayed to his gun as she worked. She was wondering about him. “You could…prob’ly take it…if you wanted,” Johnny muttered.

  She looked down at him.

  “If you’re…her.”

 
; Alexa’s brows came together as she tied off the bandaging to hold the pads in place on his arm. “If I’m ‘her’? Who?”

  Her voice sounded far away. He was losing his grip on consciousness. If she was just another hotel guest, he’d be all right. If not…he didn’t have much to lose now. Everything was jumbled…

  “Who, Johnny?”

  He moistened his lips again. “Terrorist…the…female.”

  Chapter 3

  Kieran McShane sat inside the death-filled lobby of The Riverwind, watching the miserable mass of humanity before him. His men had everything under control. As always. A thin smile crossed his lips, but his fog-gray eyes remained unreadable. Making love with a woman or killing a man in cold blood left him with the same cool, unaffected expression. His unreadable features were his mask, his protection.

  As in the upper restaurant and kitchen area, twenty floors above, the walls of the main lobby were riddled with pockmarks of bullets. Bodies were strewn haphazardly about the great room, blood pooling beneath those who had fallen upon the tile. For others, the sponge of carpet soaked their life up as quickly as it drained from still-warm skin.

  Those thirty-odd who remained alive sat grouped together, subdued and horrified.

  British Prime Minister Brendan Roberts was dazed, but unhurt, other than the blow that one of the captors had dealt to the back of his neck just minutes earlier. Several of his men were dead or severely wounded, and the coppery odor of blood filled the lobby, along with the ever-growing fetid scent of death.

  The children and most of the women had been sent out earlier, into the blackness of the night, to the protection that awaited them there. But many of the men had been murdered on sight just to keep the number of hostages manageable—and to provide an example for those left behind.

  Now, the hostages sat silent, some glaring at their captors, most averting their eyes. In the corner, two of McShane’s men stood talking, guns at the ready, ever watchful.

  McShane’s gaze fell on an older man seated on one of the plush navy blue loveseats. The man wiped at his eyes, testing McShane’s tolerance. McShane slid gracefully from the sidearm of the recliner where he’d rested, and sauntered toward the hostages.

  Two remaining females sat huddled close together, clinging to each other’s hands. He waited until they looked up. Then, he licked his lips in a deliberate, silent promise of what was to come. The brunette gave a small gasp of fear. The blonde squeezed her eyes shut, as if to blot out his image. He chuckled, then moved on, coming to stand before the prime minister without a word. Roberts slowly raised his head, meeting McShane’s bland gaze. The Prime Minister’s blue eyes were hard and unwavering. McShane noticed that, in person, he seemed just as imposing as he did on the telly. Roberts’s breathing was unhurried, his hands steady and unshaking. In spite of all that had happened in the few moments since his arrival, he was a cool one. And McShane didn’t like that.

  “Brendan,” McShane said after a moment, “you’re looking well. I hear you’ve put a price on my head.” McShane propped a booted foot on the dark leather of the couch. “Unofficially, of course.”

  “Evidently, it wasn’t high enough,” Roberts murmured, holding McShane’s stare.

  Looking into Roberts’s unflinching eyes, McShane knew a surge of unlimited strength like nothing he’d felt before. He savored this moment more than any other he’d experienced.

  Before me sits the Prime Minister of Great Britain, over whom I hold the balance of life…or death.

  He studied Roberts unemotionally. “I’d heard you were offering a million dollars, Brendan, m’lad.” He leaned down. Roberts sat, unwavering at the sudden move. McShane’s smile widened. “Here I am, old boy. Right where you said you wanted me. Now,” he leaned even closer, nose-to-nose with Roberts, “what do you suppose you’ll do with me, Mister Prime Minister? Maybe we can discuss it…over tea.”

  Roberts’s chin jutted and his eyes held McShane’s in a brazen glare. “Go to hell, you bloody butcher!”

  McShane removed his foot from the furniture and stood straight. A smile teased his lips. “Oh, I’m sure I will…eventually. But you may just beat me there.”

  McShane turned away and began to walk through the rows of seated hostages. Glancing at his second-in-command, Sorley O’Brian, he pointed at five of the men as he passed by them, one of them being the older gentleman he’d been watching earlier.

  “Out front?” O’Brian asked quietly.

  “Seems fitting, doesn’t it? Don’t drag it out and give those cops a chance to shoot you.”

  O’Brian grinned. “They never have managed yet, ceannaire.”

  Two of McShane’s other men began prodding the five selected hostages to their feet. The old man began to beg. McShane turned a disgusted eye toward where he stood.

  “Please! I have a sick wife at home! This was my last trip…before I retire next month. Please, have pity!” He shook his head, wiping tears from his eyes, his face flushed bright red.

  “Pity?” McShane murmured. “Oh, sure an’ I’ll have pity, that bein’ the case.” He nodded toward the front door of the lobby. “Go on with yerself man. You’re free to go. I didn’t know about your wife.”

  The man looked askance at first, unable to believe his good fortune. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He hurried to the door and started through it, but O’Brian’s first bullet caught him squarely in the back of his head, shattering his skull. He lurched forward, blood, brains and bone fragments spraying, as he tumbled into the path of the revolving door.

  A scream from the blonde woman brought a serene smile to McShane’s lips amid the collective rumble of outraged gasps and protests from the men, followed by groans of disbelief.

  “Well, damn me,” O’Brian muttered. “Looks like the ol’ bastard would’ve had the good grace to carry his fat ass past the door before he kicked it.”

  “Drag him on out, Alan,” McShane ordered, nodding to Alan Farley, one of his newer men. “And don’t get yerself shot in the process.”

  “You others,” O’Brian motioned to the other four chosen victims. “Come on and let’s get this over with.”

  The four remaining men stood frozen, just a few feet from the door. The horror of the most recent murder was removed as they watched. Farley grasped the old man’s arms and pulled him into the darkness beyond.

  McShane chuckled mirthlessly as O’Brian jabbed his rifle barrel into the back of one of the four men, giving him a shove toward the door.

  The night was just beginning.

  Chapter 4

  Alexa supposed, as she sat on the cold, unforgiving floor, that at some point, she’d have to cut both bullets out of the man fitfully sleeping beside her. But not yet. She suppressed a shudder, thinking of the task that faced her if the police didn’t resolve the situation in the hotel soon. Again, she thought of the missing cell phone, and wondered where Johnny had lost it. She knew exactly where hers was—hooked to the charger on her nightstand. She sighed, upset with herself. They were in a fix. Johnny needed help in the worst way possible.

  Johnny. Just Johnny. Who was he? A secret service man? A police detective? A private eye? Or just an overcautious hotel guest carting his .38 around in a leather shoulder holster? She had him figured for a police detective or a private investigator.

  An engaging one, she had to admit, even in his present condition. She studied him as he slept, his sensuous lips slightly parted, his dark brows furrowed against the pain. Long, dark lashes fringed the bluest eyes Alexa had ever seen. Eyes that were arresting not only because of the unexpectedness of their vivid color set in the natural bronze of his skin, but also because of their changeable expressiveness. Agony lay deep in the now-shuttered eyes, and the need to trust her had been there as well—briefly. What if he never woke up? Surely—he wouldn’t…die.

  Johnny bit back a groan as he shifted on the floor. Alexa reached to lay a hand on him, but stopped herself w
hen she saw the dark, sticky mess that covered her palm. Instead, she pulled her purse onto her lap and began digging for the wet wipes she always carried.

  She pulled one of the towelettes out and began to wipe off her hands. So much blood. Here…in the kitchen… She shook her head in disgust, then gently began to sponge Johnny’s face.

  They needed to move. He lay just inside the doorway, a sitting duck if someone else came in. “I need you, 911,” she whispered. But, they would get no help from that quarter. It would be just the two of them.

  He’s strong. It made her feel better to know that much about him. He wouldn’t give up. She watched him, the determined set of his jaw, the fitful way he turned in his sleep. His eyes had been the most beautiful blue—the color of the depths of a tropical sea. And in them, she’d seen that he trusted her.

  She combed her fingers through his tousled, black hair, fingering the dark strands one last time before she reluctantly moved her hand. His hair was too long for him to be a cop—unless he was undercover. He really was quite…handsome.

  “’Lexa?”

  Alexa stiffened. He sounded…alert. Dear God. Her heart raced as a hot blush spread up her neck and into her cheeks. Had he been conscious?

  Johnny lifted his left hand, and Alexa grasped it between hers and held on tight. He smiled in the semi-darkness, but his eyes were still shut. Alexa supposed it took every ounce of strength he possessed right now just to keep from screaming with pain.

  “Why’d you stop?”

  Before she could formulate any kind of stumbling response, he went on.

  “Let me know…you were here—hadn’t…run out on me.”

  She shook her head. His eyelids cracked slightly, and she was struck once more by the intensity of the color of his eyes… and his perceptiveness.

  “No.” She tried to smile back, but felt her chin begin to tremble, and horrified, she watched the first tear splash on the floor beside her. She gripped his hand even tighter and saw the expression in his eyes go from solid agony to concern for her, with no room for anything else. Alexa released his hand to wipe at her eyes. “I wouldn’t do that,” she whispered. “Run out on you. Leave you here alone. And I’m not a terrorist.”