by Lisa Childs
Did Lars know how he felt about Nikki yet?
“I won’t threaten you,” Nick assured him.
A slight breath of relief slipped between Ecklund’s lips. As if he’d been worried about Nick…
“I am going to offer you some advice, though,” he warned him.
Lars closed his eyes.
“Praying for patience?” Nick asked him.
Lars’s eyes opened again and he stared at him in surprise. “Nikki said that you and your mom just know things…”
Nick’s mom hadn’t known a damn thing. Drugs had destroyed her brain and her sense of decency. Lars was referring to Nikki’s mom, though. Nick wished Penny Payne had been his mother, too. But it was enough that he had her now. He’d found his family.
He hoped Lars found his—in the warehouse. They’d had the kid point it out earlier. Nick had officers watching it now. But he would pull those officers once Payne Protection arrived to do the search. The prosecutor had regretfully informed them they didn’t have enough for a legal search warrant.
“I just assumed you were praying for patience,” Nick said. Waiting for news of his sister had probably taken whatever he’d already had. “You’re going to need it if you want a relationship with Nikki.”
Lars shrugged those ridiculously huge shoulders. “I don’t think it matters what I want.”
“You would let Logan and Cooper scare you off?” Nick asked. Maybe he didn’t really care about Nikki. “Parker—you’d just have to buy him a beer.” Parker was the easiest going of all the Paynes.
“They’re not the ones scaring me off.”
Nick gestured at himself.
Lars chuckled now. “None of her brothers is as scary as Nikki. She doesn’t want a relationship.”
“She might,” Nick said. He’d seen how his sister had looked at the big guy. “But more than a relationship, she wants respect. Respect her and her abilities. Don’t try to protect her or you’ll lose her for certain.”
“We’re about to storm a warehouse that could be full of gunmen,” Lars needlessly reminded him. “If I don’t protect her, I’ll lose her for certain.”
“There’s a fine line with Nikki,” he advised. “Be careful you don’t cross it.”
Lars shook his head. “I don’t care if she gets mad at me. I don’t care if she never wants me to see her again. I’m going to damn well make sure she doesn’t get killed. And if I lose her, at least she’ll be alive.”
Nick grinned. His sister hadn’t been looking. She hadn’t wanted it, but she’d found the love of her life. Now if only they would both survive to their happy ending.
Chapter 19
Emilia was dead.
She could muster no energy—no will—to fight. Maybe it was the fever that had been raging through her body, making her alternate between freezing and burning alive.
Maybe it was the anticipation. Every time the door had opened over the past few days, she’d suspected that someone was coming to kill her. She knew they intended to. They’d told her, either inadvertently or—in the case of Webber—intentionally that she was no longer of any use.
She was disposable. And soon they would dispose of her. The waiting for the end was the worst. She just wanted it to be over—not her life—but the waiting.
She wanted to live, and yet she was too weak to fight for herself anymore. She was even too weak to fight for her baby boy.
She needed her brother. But Lars was dead, too—because of her.
If only she hadn’t screwed up so badly…
This was all her fault. Maybe it was better that she die rather than live with the guilt of what she’d caused.
Sounds echoed within whatever building she was being held. She heard metal creaking. Heard footsteps.
They were coming for her.
The end was now.
*
This was it.
The unmarked police cars had left a short while ago. Nikki sat in a Payne Protection Agency black SUV with Lars, waiting for the others to arrive.
“They’re taking too long to get here,” Lars complained, his muscular body tense in the driver’s seat. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.
She was surprised the plastic hadn’t broken into pieces. But she understood his tension. She was on edge, too. But she forced herself to be patient. “They had to come from the estate.”
His big body got even more tense, muscles bulging in his arms. “We can’t leave the baby unprotected.”
“Candace is still there, in the nursery with him, and Milek and Gage are on the estate, too,” she assured him. They were pulling double shifts to cover while everyone else got in place for the plan.
“But Webber—”
Her lips twitched, and she gave in to the smile. “He’s a little busy down at the bank right now.”
“What did you do?” he asked with the same tone her mother had used when Nikki had ripped her clothes climbing trees or getting into fights on the playground.
Her smile turned into a smirk. “I just messed with his money a little…”
“You hacked into his bank accounts?”
She shook her head then brushed a curl from her eyes. “Of course not. That would be illegal.”
“Yes, it would,” he agreed, and his voice deepened with concern. “I hope you were careful.”
“Nothing can be traced back to me,” she assured him. She had made certain of that.
He turned fully toward her, studying her across the narrow space of the console and asked, “Is there anything you don’t think of?”
You.
She hadn’t thought of him, hadn’t thought she would ever meet anyone who would make her question her decision to never risk her heart on love. But he wasn’t the chauvinistic lunkhead she’d originally thought he was.
He was a man who took on responsibility for sick women and young girls. He was the kind of man who made promises and strove to keep them—even at the risk of his own life and freedom.
As she stared into his pale blue eyes, something shifted in her chest, her heart lurching as if reaching for him. Like he reached for her…
He lifted his hand and brushed his fingertip along the edge of her jaw. “You are so damn smart,” he murmured. “And so damn beautiful…”
Her pulse quickened at his touch—and his compliments. She leaned forward, meeting him as he lowered his head. His lips brushed softly across hers.
It was a gentle kiss. An almost reverent one.
And as he lifted his head from hers, he murmured, “Thank you…”
“For what?” she wondered.
They hadn’t accomplished anything yet. They had no reason to even hope anymore that they would find Emilia alive. And getting Blue wasn’t a sure thing, either. Webber still had his guys guarding the estate, men who had proven last night that they had no compulsion against killing.
And they couldn’t legally force Webber to hand over the baby. There was nothing to link him to Emilia but the letter she’d sent Lars. And they had no way of proving she’d even shown up for that appointment. They needed to find real evidence of their connection. They needed to find evidence to pin a crime on the corrupt lawyer.
So far all he had done was hire a delivery boy. That was no crime. Even the threat was just Gregory’s word against his. That was why they hadn’t been able to get a search warrant granted for the warehouse.
But they had to search it—and soon. However, they were no longer alone.
A van pulled up to the building that had looked abandoned until now. When the delivery kid had brought them there earlier, they hadn’t seen anyone around, and the officers who’d been watching it since then had said that nobody had gone inside yet.
But there was no seeing through the steel walls and roof. There could have been several gunmen in there waiting for them. That was why they had agreed to not to go inside until backup arrived in the form of more Payne Protection bodyguards.
As Lars not
iced the van, too, he sucked in a breath. He knew what she did—this didn’t look good.
Maybe it was just their transportation. But it was one of those longer, cargo kind of vans used for hauling stuff.
Or disposing of stuff…
Like a body…
*
Lars closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of the van and the sight of Nikki’s beautiful face taut with fear and regret. She knew what the van meant, too.
“She’s dead,” he murmured.
He’d vacillated between thinking Emilia was alive and dead for weeks now. He had grieved her loss over and over again. So the pain should not have struck him as hard as it did. He should have been used to it. But for a moment it stopped his heart.
“No, no,” Nikki said, her voice higher than it usually was. She sounded panicked or scared. “This doesn’t mean she’s dead yet.”
“Stop it!” he yelled at her as his heart began to beat frantically again. “Stop trying to make me hope…”
“Why?” she asked.
“It hurts too much,” he said. “It hurts too much to hope for the best and to then be disappointed.”
Nikki smacked his shoulder. “Don’t give up on her!”
He didn’t want to. He wanted to hope. But he had seen too much—far too much devastation—to believe in happily-ever-afters anymore.
“She’s not like you,” he reminded Nikki.
And that was his fault.
Instead of always trying to take care of Emilia, he should have taught her to take care of herself. He should have given her the skills that Nikki had: the self-defense moves, the shooting ability, the street sense…
But for as tough and pragmatic as Nikki acted, she was really an optimist. In that way she and Emilia were alike. Emilia had been so sweet and innocent that she’d always seen the best in everyone, that she had believed everyone was a good person.
He should have prepared her for the people like Myron Webber—for the evil men who would prey on innocents like her. But he’d wanted to protect her from that, too.
“We won’t know until we go inside if she’s alive or dead,” Nikki told him. “That’s why we have to go in there.”
He knew that. He wanted to. But he didn’t want Nikki getting hurt. “We should wait.”
But even as he said it, he knew he couldn’t. He reached for the door handle with one hand and his holster with the other. Nikki followed suit out the passenger side.
It was crazy—the two of them—taking on whatever awaited them in the warehouse. It could have been filled with gunmen already and the van had just brought more…
It could have been wired to explode.
Lars had faced all of those situations before in war. This was war now. And like in most wars, he expected there to be casualties. He just hoped one of those wasn’t Nikki. She met him at the back of the SUV, where they had both crouched low so no one would see them. And know they were coming…
She wore a bulletproof vest like the one he wore. Nick had insisted they take them before he had let them leave his office. But her head was bare, her curls tousled from the breeze blowing around the deserted street. If she got hit in the head…
The warehouse was in the old industrial area of the city—the one devastated when companies had moved most of their manufacturing jobs overseas. It had yet to recover. Lars suspected it never would. And neither would he if something happened to Nikki. Losing his sister would be hard enough.
“We should wait for help,” he said.
“There’s no time,” Nikki replied. “Emilia could still be alive…”
Maybe they had needed the van to move her somewhere else to kill her—to a crime scene that couldn’t be traced back to Myron Webber. It made sense.
It gave him hope despite himself.
Nikki gave him hope.
“We need to split up,” she said.
A twinge of regret struck his heart. But she wasn’t referring to them personally. They had never truly been together in order to break up.
“You take the front,” she said. “And I’ll move around to the back.”
He should have been relieved that she didn’t want to storm in the front herself. But she was still going in; she was still risking her life.
“You could wait out here,” he told her. “Wait for the others to arrive.”
She sighed. “We don’t have time for you to act like the macho jerks my brothers are about my safety,” she reminded him. “I am a damn good shot. I can take care of myself.”
And she could take care of him, as well. She had saved his life once already.
He could return the favor.
But if they separated…
“We should stick together,” he insisted. “We need to go in side by side.”
Her lips curved into a sad smile. She knew he intended to use his body to shield hers.
“It’s the only way I’ll do this now,” he said. The only way he would risk her life was if he knew he could do his best to save her.
She gave a reluctant nod of agreement. And he leaned forward and kissed her again like he had in the SUV. He kissed her with the emotion that filled his heart with the love he felt for her.
Her breath whispered across his lips as it escaped in a ragged little sigh. She stared up at him, her dark eyes wide as if she were trying to drink in the sight of him.
Or memorize his face…
She was clearly as concerned as he was that they might not survive. Finally she pulled her gaze from his and murmured, “Let’s do this…”
Weapons drawn, they headed toward the door to which the van had pulled up. The white cargo vehicle was parked at a dock in front of the building. The sliding door on the side of the van was open, revealing the empty interior. And the overhead door of the dock had been lifted halfway.
They definitely intended to move something.
Or someone…
Emilia…
He ignored the pain lancing his heart and headed for the concrete steps at the side of the dock. He was so intent on keeping his body between the open door, and whatever dangers lurked inside the warehouse, and Nikki that he hadn’t realized she’d slipped away.
Lars didn’t know until he heard the gunfire at the back of the building, and he whirled around to see that she was gone.
Damn woman!
Why was she so determined to prove herself all the time? Or was she trying to get killed? Before Lars could move from the stairs to the back of the building, more gunfire rang out.
Closer.
Bullets pinged off the overhead door and the van as gunmen began to shoot at him. He ducked low and returned fire. But the interior of the warehouse was dark. He could see only shadows. While he had extra ammunition, he had to make sure every shot counted. Even with Nikki, he was outnumbered. And if she’d already been hit…
Then he wasn’t just outnumbered. He was dead. Because losing her would kill him more effectively than any damn bullet.
Chapter 20
“Damn it! Damn it!” Nick shouted, his voice reverberating off the glass walls of his small office in the River City Police Department.
Penny flinched at the volume and anger but mostly about the fear. She had never heard Nick sound so afraid. And she’d gone through many fears with him.
“Who was it?” she asked even before he clicked off his cell.
His hand shook as he shoved the phone in his pocket. Then he dragged open a desk drawer and pulled out his weapon.
“What is it?” she asked this time.
As if unaware she was even in the room with him, he muttered, “They didn’t wait for backup…” He shook his head. “I should have known they wouldn’t.”
She didn’t need to ask whom he was talking about. She knew. The fear had gripped her all morning. Hell, it had been with her since last night when she’d gone to the hospital to see her wounded daughter.
“Nikki…”
As if she’d asked a question, Nick nodded. “They were
sitting on a warehouse where they think Lars’s sister is being held.”
“And?”
“That was just a report of shots being fired there,” Nick said as he headed toward the door. “Nobody else had time to get there yet.”
She could have pointed out that he wouldn’t, either. Whatever was going to happen was happening now. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.
She reached out for his arm as he tried to pass her. And she held tightly to him. Seeing the guilt in him, along with the fear, she assured him, “Whatever has happened is not your fault, Nicholas Payne.”
His eyes widened with surprise as they did every time someone called him Payne. It was his name—the one he would have always had had she and his father known about him.
He shook his head, not in denial of the name because he had finally accepted it. “It is my fault.”
She doubted it but asked, “Why? What could you have possibly done?”
“I gave Lars bad advice,” Nick said.
Penny tensed. Lars Ecklund. Of course Nikki would have been with him, just as she’d been the night before when she’d gotten shot. The man wasn’t good for her.
Why—damn it—why when her daughter had finally fallen in love did it have to be with a man who would probably wind up getting her killed?
Because she was Nikki, of course. She wouldn’t fall for a computer nerd or an accountant. As much as she disparaged them, she would fall for a man like her brothers—like her father—one who regularly risked his life. But he hadn’t risked just his now; he was risking hers, too.
“What did you tell him?” Penny asked.
Nick shook his head as if disgusted at himself. “I told him not to try to protect her.”
Penny sucked in a breath.
“I told him to trust that she can take care of herself. It’s why they would have gone inside without backup,” Nick explained. He pulled away from Penny—not with urgency but with more guilt. “I need to get there.”
It was clear that he knew he would be too late to help. But he had to know just how bad his advice had been.
Was Nikki dead?
Penny couldn’t tell. She’d never had the connection with Nikki that she had with the boys, that Nick had with Nikki. From the grim look on his handsome face, she worried that he already knew what he would find when he got to the warehouse.
