by Jo Raven
I blink, not sure what this means. “A logo. Of a company?”
“Not one that exists officially. I searched for it. But he had my computers bugged. He had me dragged into his office. He told me to stop searching. I told him what I remembered.” His breath catches, releases. “That I knew my parents were murdered before they were put into the car and pushed off the bridge.”
Holy shit.
“Seeing the symbol again jolted my memory,” he rasps. “I remembered where the bird in my nightmares was. It was tattooed on the men’s arms. A gang or crime syndicate, I don’t know.” His voice is strangled now. “And my uncle was with the men who killed my parents, standing there, saying nothing. Holding me as I screamed. Then he turned and walked away.”
I sit back, pulling free of his hold. His eyes are red but dry. “He saved you.”
Storm nods.
“Why?”
“Hell if I know.”
“But when you told him you remembered? What did your uncle say to that?”
“Nothing.”
I sigh and lean back against the cushions. “Did he have a tattoo? Like the other men? Did you check after he died?”
“What do you think?” His mouth twists as he leans over me. “I asked. Nothing, except for a small circle inked on his shoulder.”
“A circle?” I frown. “And the letter with the phoenix logo? Did they find it?”
“Nope. Gone. Either he or someone else cleared out his documents when he died, before the lawyers got to them.”
“What about his will? Didn’t he left you any clues?”
“Dammit, Ray, don’t you think I looked?” He rubs a hand over his head.
“And in the copy of his will the lawyers gave you today?”
“You think…? Shit.” He lifts the jacket and pulls the thick envelope out of the pocket, tears it open and shakes out the papers. “I can’t believe…”
Something clinks to the floor. I reach down and lift a small key.
We both stare at it in the faint light of the city that seeps through the curtains of the balcony doors. Storm unfolds the will papers, glances at them and puts them back down.
“Why would he do this?” he mutters. “What does it open? It could open just about everything in the world.”
“No, look how small it is.” I twirl it between my fingers. “It has to open a cupboard or a drawer.”
“A drawer where?”
“Where would your uncle expect you to look?”
“I don’t fucking know.” He takes it from me, examines it, then gives up and closes it in his fist. “You think he left me some… evidence, some clues?”
“Why else would he go into the trouble of leaving you this? He knew that would be the only time you’d be alone with the lawyers. Bet there were lots more people when they opened his will.”
He nods, his gaze distant. “The timing,” he says. “They killed my uncle and then tried to kill me, too. It’s as if they knew I’d receive this now. But that’s—”
A phone is ringing somewhere below our feet. Storm dives for his jacket that has fallen off us to the floor and fumbles for the pocket.
“Hawk,” he growls. He connects the call. “What do you want?”
I fight a smile. His hair is standing on end, and that growl is hot, and… God, I shouldn’t be thinking of that now. Not with everything he’s been telling me and the mess this is. I’d give anything to clear this up, particularly if it means keeping him safe—but what does it have to do with what’s happening?
“Yeah, so what did the triad say?” Storm sits up straighter, his gaze sharpening, and I suck in a breath. “What did—she didn’t? Shit, Hawk, you sure about that?”
Then he grabs me, drags me to him and kisses me hard. “It’s gonna be fine,” he whispers. “You didn’t kill anyone. They just want the money.”
“I didn’t?” I shake my head, my eyes burning. This can’t be true. Too good to be real.
He turns to the cell phone. “Hawk, tell her.”
“Hey, Raylin.” His voice trickles over the phone like warm toffee. “You there? Things aren’t as bad as we thought. My contacts already asked. The triad says they only want to have back the money owed to them. Nobody died at any shooting you were involved in. Plus, you’re with Storm now, and they don’t want to that kind of trouble. Jordan enterprises vs. a triad? Not what they’re looking for.”
My throat is closing up fast. I can’t speak.
“Oh and the shooting back at Boca Raton? That wasn’t about you, sugar. In fact…” He sounds intrigued, and a bit miffed. “In fact they said they know nothing about it.”
Jesus.
Storm extracts the cell from my numb fingers and stands up. “Thanks, man, I owe you one. Yeah, a bit fat one, okay. Bastard. I only—”
For the second time this evening, he doesn’t finish what he was about to say, because the glass door to the balcony crashes with a deafening noise, and the next thing I know Storm jerks and drops back on the cushions, clutching his arm. Blood trickles through his fingers.
Holy shit. Guess the reprieve is over.
Another bullet smashes through, hitting a painting with a thunderous crash, and I pull Storm down, to the floor. He drops in an ungainly heap, his face white.
“Stay here,” I tell him. “My turn to keep you safe.”
Chapter Eighteen
STORM
“Ray, no,” I manage through clenched teeth. Fuck, my arm burns like it’s on fire. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“He’s right outside,” she whispers and pulls something out from under the sofa. It’s the gun Hawk gave me, I realize. Damn, my ears are buzzing. “Quiet.”
Another bullet smashes into the wall, passing so close to my head I swear I feel it. I grab her arm and start to crawl backward, but she slips through my fingers like water.
And she rolls away and starts shooting, breaking the balcony doors the rest of the way.
Fuck it all to hell. Blood runs down my arm, warm and plenty of it. Not good. Need to move. Need to do something.
More glass shatters before I can move and grab her, pull her away from this mess. Bullets hit right and left, and I hiss when another line of fire forms in my leg.
Ow, dammit.
I drop to the floor, barely swallowing a howl as the floor meets my brand new wounds, and drag myself across the floor to Raylin. We need to get out of here, call someone, fuck is Raylin hurt? I’m gonna just—
The door to the suite bangs open, and security guys spill inside, guns drawn. My prepaid cell is making tiny pissy noises, and I realize the line is still open, with Hawk on the other end, and I fuzzily wonder if he’s the one who alerted the hotel security or if the sound of the shots and glass shattering was enough.
The two guards move through the apartment, and Ray is pointing at the balcony. They circle toward it.
Need to move. I shift on the floor, but my leg and arm burn like a mother even with the adrenaline coursing through my veins.
“Ray.” I reach for her, but even if she’s almost there, she’s too far, and my world is turning dark at the edges. “Damn…”
Need to stop the bleeding before I pass out. Can’t afford that, even if no more shots have been fired and the guards are checking, guns drawn on the ready.
Like Raylin is, still lying belly-down on the floor, scanning the door and balcony. Looking out for me. Putting her life on the line to protect mine.
Jesus. One thought keeps playing in a loop in my sluggish brain: you know, back at the beach house, when she looked like she knew how to use a gun?
Well, she does—and now I know why.
Meanwhile… Fuck, I’m dizzy. Why…?
Oh yeah, bleeding. Shit. I clamp a hand over the wound on my biceps and groan between my teeth. Fucking hell, it feels as if my bone is shifting in my flesh, trying to push out.
Broken bone, my mind whispers.
The hell, who cares? Need to check on Ray. I struggle to lift my head
that suddenly weighs about a ton, and she’s right there, beside me. When did she move?
“Storm,” she says, and her voice is the best sound in the world. It’s low and warm and concerned, free of pain. Which she’s unharmed, and a weight lifts off my chest. She puts her hand over mine. “Let me see that wound.”
So I let her, let her roll me on my side and check my leg. Sure it hurts like hell when she presses her hand over the wound there, and I wonder just how screwed I am this time, but fuck, it doesn’t matter.
Not if she’s here with me.
***
Hawk has taken over, directing the security, the police, the doctor and nurses as they stream in and out of the suite.
He can’t help it, it’s in his nature—as it is in mine, and between us and Rook, we have always fought for the top. But now? Now I’m damn glad he’s taken control, because my brain has taken a hike and is desperate to shut down for a while.
Not that I’ll let it. Apart from the shooting and the guy the police arrested—wounded in the chest, from Raylin’s bullets, but he’ll survive, it seems—there’s still the whole mess with my uncle and the will and the fucking key to resolve.
Find answers now, finish with the triad business, put those after me behind bars—then sleep. When it’s all said and done. It’s my mission, and it’s what’s keeping me going.
That and the doctor putting stitches in my arm and then my leg. The local anesthetic is working, so that I only feel the pressure and tugging as he patches me up, but my whole body hurts too much to relax.
A good thing at this point.
“You need to go to the hospital, have an x-ray done on your arm. I don’t like the way it looks. You’ve also lost a lot of blood,” the doctor is saying, her face creased with concentration as she puts away the needle and thread, and a burly nurse steps in to bandage everything. “You may feel a little dizzy for a few days. Don’t drive, and I’d recommend bed rest for a day or two, until you regain your strength. And take the antibiotics I’m prescribing you.”
Yeah, right. “Sure.”
She gives me a long look that means she can see right through my lie. Must be a doctor thing. “I mean it, Mr. Jordan.”
“He will rest,” Raylin says. “Don’t worry. I’ll see to that.”
I arch a brow at her. Can’t tell if she’s serious or not. Her smile is faint, slightly strained. It’s been a tough couple of days.
“You have more lives than a feral cat.” Hawk is walking toward us with a swagger best seen on a cowboy than the heir to millions.
Yeah, I’m one to talk, I know. Then again, the three years I spent away from all this left its mark on me.
“Storm. Have you gone deaf, man? Are you listening?” Hawk is waving a hand in my face. He’s sat down on his heels in front of me. “Hey.”
Have I mentioned my brain is kinda doing its own thing tonight? Today. The sky outside is a light gray. The breeze coming through the broken balcony door is cold.
“What?” Raylin is sitting next to me on the sofa, and I lean into her.
“I said, good job getting the shooter.”
“Wasn’t me. That was Ray. She’s the reason I’m still alive.”
His light eyes flick to her and emotions flash across his face—suspicion, surprise. Approval. “Good.”
“What about the shooter?” Raylin puts a hand on my uninjured leg, distracting my already scattered brain.
“Nothing on him yet. No documents, no tattoos, no nothing. He’s unconscious, so can’t do anything before he wakes up.” He shoves dirty blond hair from his face. “If left to me, I’d waterboard him until he woke up, but the docs wouldn’t let me.”
“He has to be a hitman,” Raylin says, “someone who won’t be missed, that nobody knows. You wouldn’t be able to connect him to the mastermind behind this plan. They’re too clever for that.”
Hawk shakes his head, clasps his hands together and presses his thumbs into his eyes. “Yeah, I know. It’d make me feel better, though.”
Raylin snorts, the sound turning into a faint sob, and I lift my arm to put around her—only my arm isn’t happy with me right now, and pain screams up my shoulder.
Jesus. Fuck.
“You’re coming with me this time,” Hawk says, “and no fucking arguments. Can’t do a thing when there’s some psycho after you.”
Now he believes me.
Of course he does. You don’t shoot someone in a penthouse suite by accident.
“That would be quite the feat,” Hawk agrees, and wait a minute, did I say that out loud?
Nausea rises in my throat, and I swallow hard. “You don’t think I’m crazy anymore?”
“That’s still on the table.”
“I can’t come with you. We—” I glance at Raylin, who flashes me a quick smile, making my heart trip, “we can’t. Too risky.”
“Enough.” Hawk gets up and dusts his pants. “This isn’t up for debate.”
“You’re right. We can’t go with you, because we’re going to the beach.”
“We are?” Raylin is staring at me with wide eyes.
Those wide eyes that caught me when I first saw them and never let me go. Like dark nets in a night sky. And…
“He’s a bit out of it,” Hawk says. “Doc told me it’s the blood loss. He’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
“My uncle,” I say, turning to Raylin, because we never finished our conversation that the shooting so rudely interrupted. “Left me the house.”
“The mansion at Boca Raton. Yeah, you told me.”
“In his will.” My mind is performing those weird leaps it normally does when you’re pissing drunk or on drugs. “That’s it.”
“That’s what?”
“The key he left me. What would it open? Something that was his and left to me in his will.”
“The mansion? But it’s not a house key…” She hisses. “Of course. The desk. In the office. One of the drawers was locked.”
I blink at her. “How the hell do you know that?”
She shrugs and grins. “Snooped around a bit.”
If I start laughing now, I may never stop. I put my hand over hers and lift it, turn it over. “I’d never have made it without you.”
Back at the beach, when I couldn’t seem to be able to surface from the dark. During the shooting afterward. The explosion. Rook getting hurt. And now this. The shooting. The riddle.
Disconcerting, how everything’s brighter when she’s around.
She smiles, mouth trembling a little. “Don’t you know I love you, Storm Jordan?”
I frown, then grin, then just stare at her. Wait a minute. Did she just say…?
“You really think we may find something at the house?” Hawk is standing there, hands in pockets, gaze cloudy. Oblivious.
Because she said she loves me. And suddenly I’m so happy I feel like I could float right of this sofa and out of this suite into the fucking clouds.
“I’ll take you to the beach house,” Hawks goes on and turns to signal to one of the security guys. “Besides, unless you get to the bottom of this and put the psychopath who’s after you in a pit, you won’t be safe anywhere. I’ll call my chopper to come pick us up, take us to the airstrip.”
“Now?” Raylin squeaks.
“Well, Ms. O’Brien, since we’re all at sea,” Hawk winks because this is Hawk, and he can’t get serious to save his own life, “I guess we’d better hurry, wouldn’t you say?”
***
I make a phone call to the hospital to make sure Rook is doing okay. Apparently he’s been ordering the nurses and doctors around, demanding they let him go, and threatening to get them fired if they don’t get him some steak and whiskey.
I grin.
“How is he?” Hawk asks as I lean on him, making my limping way to the elevator. We’re heading to the hotel roof to wait for the chopper.
“He’s ordering people around.”
“Then he’s fine.”
Yeah. Relieved, I giv
e the cell to Raylin and let them both drag me into the elevator. “You coming with us, then? To Florida?”
“Damn right I am. Not letting you out of my eyesight until I’m sure you’re safe. Brat.”
“You’re only five months older than me,” I point out.
“In age. About five decades older here.” He taps his head as the doors ding open, and he steps out onto the roof, pulling out his cell phone.
“You’re getting on in years, then,” I mutter, leaning on Raylin as I half-limp, half-hop out of the elevator and onto the roof. “Probably can’t even get it up anymore.”
“Fuck you, man.” Hawk turns, gives me the finger, then starts barking orders into his cell.
“Not for all the money in the world, ugly face,” I mutter. The one person I wanna fuck is right next to me, her hold on me strong.
Her hold on me is complete, in every way.
The roar of engines and rotor blades from overhead drowns out our voices. Raylin shivers, and I clutch her to me.
Which reminds me. “Hawk, what about the triad?” I have to shout to be heard over the noise, and damn, I feel exposed, a moving target up here on the roof. Thank God there aren’t any buildings of this height around. “Did you arrange a meeting?”
“It’s tomorrow night. Meanwhile, you’ll need to secure the money. Cash, of course.”
Yeah. I wonder how feasible that is.
Doesn’t matter. I will make it feasible. “Need to call the lawyers.”
“All in good time. Let us get on the chopper first.”
That proves a bit tricky, because I am still woozy, and we need to get onto the chopper fast as the blades are still spinning. Hawk and his bodyguard who’s riding with us lift me up, and I sprawl in one of the backseats, groaning.
“Crazy bastard.” Hawk shakes his head as he helps Raylin inside. “Should be in a hospital, not doing this shit.”
“It’s my shit,” I counter, trying to find a position that isn’t making my wounds scream in pain. “I’ll shovel it myself.”
“A shitstorm’s about to hit.” Hawk winks at Raylin, making her laugh, and the sound is so sweet I forgive the asshole his shitty sense of humor.
See? I can make a funny, too.
“You’re clever for an old man,” I grunt, straightening my leg the best I can. “Not so bright, though. I mean, I had to be gunned down for you to believe someone’s after me. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
