by Avery Flynn
He called all the time…
Without taking the time to think about it or second guess, she grabbed Flynn's phone. The guy may be aces on the ice and in the sack but he sucked at phone security. His passcode was his birthday. Scrolling through his contacts, she stopped when she hit Slater, T. Then, she hit call.
"Yes?" The same male voice from the back of the SUV.
Keeping her voice quiet but firm, she said, "You wanted to talk to me yesterday."
"Miss Pike, I presume?"
"Yes."
"I wanted to talk to you yesterday," the man said, boredom thick in his tone. "Today I have no need for you."
"No one can get as close to him as I can right now." Just saying the words made her insides cramp up.
"That's the problem," Slater said. "I believe you're a little too close."
"Don't tell me how to do my job and I won't tell you how to act like a crazy rich guy," she shot back in an angry whisper yell.
He laughed. "Fine. I can give you ten minutes this morning."
"Where?"
"Fifteen Sycamore Street."
"I can be there in an hour." Ditching Flynn when he left to go to the airport to meet the Cup wouldn't be easy but she'd figure it out.
"Make it thirty."
The shower turned off and she tensed. "I'll be there as soon as I can."
"I look forward to it."
Taking a note from Orlando's book she hung up without a goodbye and put Flynn's phone back on the nightstand next to her own. Telling herself to play it cool, she gathered up her clothes and her phone and was holding them in front of her like a shield when Flynn opened up the bathroom door and stepped out.
"All yours," he said.
"Thanks."
For a second she couldn't move. She could tell him about the conversation with Slater. But if she did, there was no way he'd let her go meet him on her own. And if he went with her, it would crush any chance they had of figuring out a way to blow up Slater's plan to frame Flynn for stealing the Cup. Once again she was lying to him. That it was by omission and for his own good probably wouldn't mean shit to him. God, it made her whole body ache.
"You okay, Sparkles?" Concern was clear on his face and he took a step toward her.
She sidestepped his advance and gave him her best barn burner smile. "Just in awe of your hotness."
After blowing him a kiss, she hustled into the bathroom and shut the door. She turned on the water, got dressed, and scrawled a quick message in lipstick on the mirror. Then, forcing herself not to look back at the door or even worse run back out to him, she opened up the window and climbed out.
9
Flynn
Not that Flynn didn't love the mental image of Gillie naked and soapy in the shower, but she'd been in there for forever. He tapped on the door.
"Hey, you need help scrubbing your back?"
No answer.
The hair on the back of his neck woke up and said hello. He opened the door and stepped inside. "Sparkles, you okay?"
Nothing.
She could have slipped on the soap suds and cracked her head on the faucet. Aliens could have abducted her. Maybe she was playing a joke. It wasn't any of that, he knew it in the pit of his stomach but he needed to believe she hadn't just ghosted on him. He swept back the plastic curtain. The shower was empty. That's when something red on the bathroom mirror caught his eye.
BACK SOON. XOXO, GILLIE
A soft breeze came in through the open bathroom window as he read the message for the fifth time.
What. The. Fuck.
Slater. She must have made contact but…realization punched him in the nose and he pulled his phone out of his pocket. One thumbprint scan and a quick perusal of his recent calls later and he had his answer. She must have found Slater's numbers in his contacts. The call log showed she'd been the one to reach out.
He was going to strangle her when he tracked her sweet ass down. There was no way she should have gone up against Slater on her own.
Right on time, a reminder popped up on the screen that the Cup would be landing in Snow Bay in thirty minutes. A half second later his phone buzzed and a photo of his old pal, and Gillie's older brother, popped up on his screen. He hit call accept.
"We just landed," Marko said in way of greeting. "Why isn't Gillie answering her phone?"
He shoved a hand through his hair and stared at her lipstick message while guilt and frustration did a little hockey sweater over the head punching dance at center ice in his chest because he'd failed to protect her. "She's gone."
Dead silence.
"What do you mean gone?" Marko asked, nothing but a deceptively icy calm in his voice.
Flynn knew that voice. He had one just like it for the times when he was about to unleash holy hell on someone. So he gave it right back.
"She faked taking a shower and snuck out the bathroom window gone."
"When I find her," Marko said. "I'm gonna kill her."
Yeah, he could get in line.
"I'll be at the airport in fifteen." Flynn rushed out into the motel bedroom, grabbed his keys and hustled out the door to his truck parked outside. "We'll find her together.”
Gillie
Fifteen Sycamore had to be the biggest house in Snow Bay. The two-story, upscale log cabin home sat on the edge of the bay behind a security gate that spanned the driveway. The same no-neck thug in a suit who had tried to snatch her off the street was at the gate waiting for Gillie when she got out of the town's single taxi—as the driver, Poppy, had proudly proclaimed on the short trip from the Brown Bear Diner.
"Nice shiner," Gillie said, staring at the black and blue under the goon's right eye.
He grunted, pressed a few buttons on the keypad and walked through the gate as it opened, heading straight for the house without even a glance back her way. He didn't bother to manhandle her or force her at gunpoint or anything. She was almost disappointed. Making sure her phone was still powered on so that once Marko got here he could track her down via the GPS signal if things went dangerous, she followed Slater's main muscle man to the house. Offering up a silent prayer that he wouldn't have to, she walked up the stone steps to the front door and came face to face with a mounted ten-point buck's head.
Who put a dead animal head in the foyer?
Thomas Slater walked in through a doorway on the left. He was short, had a bland everyman face and led with his belly. He also had the most luscious thick brown hair she'd ever seen outside of a shampoo commercial.
"Miss Pike," he said, tipping an imaginary hat as if they were back in Texas and he was showing off the manners his mama gave him.
Too bad she was way past playing it that way—not to mention it went against the plan she'd thrown together on the ride over from the motel. "Do I call you Tom or Tommy or Tommy Boy or Tom The Asshole?"
The thug took a step toward her, but Slater waved him off.
Slater pulled himself up to his full height of right around five feet, eight inches in obvious lifts tucked away in his designer shoes. "You have quite the mouth on you."
"Yeah, it's part of my charm." She batted her eyelashes at him but made sure her smile didn't reach anywhere near that far north.
"Well then, let's just move forward with this little meeting. Are you here to beg me to spare your boyfriend?"
And that was exactly why she was playing ultra bitch right now. The only way to make this work was to get him to buy her little con so he'd call off his mob guys who were going to set up Flynn for stealing the Cup.
"No." She jutted out one hip badass style and crossed her arms. "I'm here to help you set up the jerk, but I can't exactly do that if you're ordering your muscle to kidnap me or bringing in bent-nose thugs to do a delicate task."
"One you're better suited for?"
This time she let her smile almost go to her eyes. "Exactly."
Slater strolled closer with his gaze locked on her tits, proving her mom's favorite maxim: Having money doesn't mean ha
ving class.
"So you're saying you're not emotionally invested in Flynn Kazakov?"
Keep it cool and don't fuck it all up now.
She rolled her eyes. "Not in the least."
"That's too bad, he certainly seems smitten with you. That little dinner you had last night made it seem so."
"All part of the con," she said, half hating how true the words sounded.
Finally, Slater's attention moved from her boobs to her face. "So you're only worried about losing your cut of the payment?"
"What else would there be?"
"Oh, Miss Pike, you show a decided lack of imagination." He glanced over at his goon and nodded.
Steroids in a suit took two long strides and grabbed her, shocking her enough that she dropped her purse. He locked one arm around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides, and lifted her off the ground. Bending over, he swiped her bag up off the floor and shook out its contents. Out came two emergency tampons, three lipsticks, her wallet and her cell. Two stomps later and her phone was nothing but electronic debris.
"What are you doing?" she hollered, twisting ineffectively in the giant's grasp.
"Holding on to you just in case," Slater said in a calm tone that told her this wasn't his first rodeo of the kidnapping kind. "If my friends from Las Vegas fail, you'll have the opportunity to redeem yourself. If they succeed, well, I'll want to have you close so I can tie up loose ends. After all, I can't have you wandering around with the truth of my plot tucked away in that pretty little head of yours."
Her stomach sank. "Sounds like I'm dead either way."
"It does indeed." He turned around and walked to the door he'd emerged from when she walked in, he was halfway through when he issued one final order over his shoulder. "Why don't you show Miss Pike to her chambers?"
Chambers. That was one way to describe the windowless kitchen pantry she found herself in a few minutes later. Mr. Silent and Seriously Pissed Off shoved her inside and shut the door closed behind her. Inside and alone, she barely heard the sound of the lock clicking shut over the sound of panic screeching in her ears.
Flynn
The Snow Bay Private Airfield was only a fifteen-minute drive outside of town. Flynn made it in eight. Most of the town was waiting outside the chain-link fence surrounding the tarmac when he arrived. Driving slowly through the crowd, he returned the bare minimum of shouted greetings before the harried security guard let him pass through onto the landing strip. He parked his truck about ten feet away from a small jet and got out.
Marko and one of the female B-Squad Security and Investigations agents (Elaine? Eliza? Emily?) were waiting outside a small jet that he knew from talking with Marko was practically a flying armory.
Flynn was a big guy at six, three. Marko was bigger, knew how to fight dirty, and could make a helluva improvised explosive device if the occasion called for it. So, in other words, not the greatest guy in the world to have pissed off and marching right at you with murder in his eye. If the circumstances weren't what they were, Flynn might actually be worried. As it was, all he knew was that they didn't have time for this shit.
Marko stopped dead with less than three inches between them. "Explain to me why my sister is here with you?"
He could bullshit. He could pussyfoot around why Gillie ended up in Snow Bay. That would only cause them time they didn't have so he stood his ground and readied himself to take a punch.
"She showed up by surprise and said some guy hired her to steal the Cup. She said she accepted the job to pay back a debt she owed me."
Marko's face went completely neutral—always a very dangerous sign. "Why would someone hire Gillie to steal something and why in the hell would she owe you?"
Next to them, the woman clapped her hands. "Oh, Marko, I think your mind is about to get blown and I can't wait to see it happen." The woman stuck her hand out, inserting it right between him and Marko as if they weren't about to throw down. "Elisa Sharp. We met forever and a day ago at one of Marko's barbecues. Now tell us everything and don't leave a single thing out."
Flynn shook her hand out of habit and gave an abbreviated account of everything that had happened up to now, glossing over Gillie's thief past as much as he could and completely leaving out any mention of the two of them together.
"So you gave her a phony alibi and that's why she owed you enough to come up to this Godforsaken tundra—no offense?" Elisa said. "Wow. You must have really loved her to risk your career like that. And here she is returning to a life of crime to save your ass. I'd say you weren't the only one feeding a flame."
Marko ground his teeth together. "Shut up, Elisa."
"Grow up, Marko." She rolled her eyes. "Gillie is an adult woman with her own mind, feelings and sexuality. You don't have to be a total caveman about it."
"Who said anything about sex?" Marko asked in a whisper that was as close to a yell as any spit-laded cursing fit his last coach issued.
Elisa didn't flinch. Instead, she gave him a self-satisfied smile and stirred the pot some more. "Just look at him when he talks about her. He's a goner and no matter if you do still think of your little sister as a baby playing with Barbie, no woman in her right mind is turning down a fine piece of hockey player ass like him." She turned that blinding smile on him. "No offense."
His brain was a little shorted out from the connections she'd made almost immediately but he managed to get out a few words. "None taken."
Ignoring Elisa, Marko turned the full force of his fury on Flynn. "I'm going to kill you, Kazakov."
Now this was familiar territory. Fighting. This he could do. He might have failed to keep Gillie safe from herself but this he could fucking do.
He took a step closer so he and Marko were practically bumping chests. "I'd like to see you try."
"Boys," Elisa said in a bored voice. "Don't you think there are more important things to deal with right now than your antiquated patriarchal bullshit?"
Flynn kept his attention zeroed in on Marko.
"Like, I don't know, the fact that Gillie's in the wind and the plan to frame foxy boy for stealing the Cup…" The sound of a plane overhead momentarily drowned her out. "Which just arrived?"
The private jet carrying the Cup and Edwin Motz, the Cup's keeper, landed to cheers from the crowd outside the chain-link fence. It taxied to a spot next to the B-Squad jet and stopped.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He stepped back from Marko and pulled it out. The caller ID read Gillie and he closed his eyes in relief as he hit answer. "Sparkles, where are you?"
The chuckle wasn't Gillie's. Flynn's blood turned to ice.
"She's somewhere safe…for now."
It had been a few years but he still recognized Slater's voice.
"What do you want?"
"Only your cooperation," Slater said.
"That's not gonna fucking happen."
"Then Miss Pike will pay the price."
A white-hot fury blasted through him, melting away the icy shock. He'd kill him. He really would. "You better not touch a hair on her head."
"Only if you fail to do exactly what I tell you to do."
Pacing, he covered his free ear to block out the sound of the crowd cheering as the Cup was unloaded. "What's that?"
"I understand you have friends with you, friends who know their way around trouble. Is that correct?"
He glanced up at Marko and Elisa who were watching him closely. "Yes."
"Well, with their help, you're going to steal the Cup and when it is found in your possession two days later, you're going to confess to the entire scheme and take your banishment from hockey and society in total silence."
"Why in the hell would I do that?"
"Because if you don't, my friends who are already at the airfield will steal the Cup and plant it in your house for the cops to find," Slater said. "The only difference is that with this second option Miss Pike will pay the price for your stubbornness with her life."
"You'll pay for this." H
is grip tightened on his phone until his knuckles were white.
"No, I won't. The only question is, will Miss Pike?"
The words were ringing in Flynn's ear when the phone went dead. The bastard. He'd do it. Flynn knew all about Slater's reputation. It was one of the reasons why the guy creeped him out so much. None of that mattered though. Only Gillie did. If keeping her safe meant going down as one of hockey's biggest villains, then so be it.
Marko and Elisa looked at him expectantly as he pocketed his phone. Decision made, the calm that always hit when the puck dropped at the beginning of a game steadied him.
"Let's go," he said, starting toward the other jet. "We have to steal the Cup."
10
Elisa
If Elisa doubted for a second that they weren't going to successfully steal the Cup, rescue Gillie, and teach this Slater guy a lesson for the ages, she just might feel bad for Marko. As it was, seeing him deal with both the fact that his little sister was a reformed thief and a real human being with sexual urges was too much fun not to enjoy—especially after his high-handed attitude about knowing her better than she knew herself bullshit that he pulled during the job in Idaho when they'd had to go undercover as husband and wife to get inside a cult's compound.
While Flynn walked ahead, she hooked her arm through Marko's—not a mean feat since he towered over her—and leaned in close as they strolled over to the nerd in a suit as if they weren't about to steal the Cup out from right under him. "This is even better than I expected when I twisted your arm into bringing me with you."
"Do you think you can make me do anything I don't want to do?" Marko asked, his voice still gruff but the opportunity to possibly kick some ass mellowing him out a bit.
