Tempted by Love

by Jennifer Ryan

  The contents from her purse rained down to the floor and over her face as he upended it. He searched through the bag, then everything on the floor, scattering the items all over the place. Her phone spun and smacked her in the neck. It dinged with another text message.

  The guy bent and swiped the screen. “Lover boy won’t get any more replies from you, bitch.” He dropped the phone next to her.

  So close. But she didn’t dare try to use it. Not until he left. Waiting for him to make a move turned seconds into interminably long minutes. Or so it seemed.

  He stood and moved away, tossing her place, looking for the files.

  She faded in and out with the sounds of drawers in the living room and bedroom crashing to the floor. The whole time, she prayed she’d see Jay again.

  The guy walked out of her bedroom and sent the items on the bar top sailing through the air to the floor with one swipe of his arm across the top. “Fucking bitch got what she deserved.” She felt rather than heard him move closer. Maybe he stared down at his dead friend. Maybe he regretted the life they lived that led them here.

  She regretted not asking Jay to meet her tonight like he said he’d do if she needed him.

  Now it was too late, but not to make sure Noel and this guy paid for what they’d done.

  She hadn’t heard him leave. Maybe she’d faded out again. For how long, she didn’t know, but she took a chance and opened her eyes a slit to scan the quiet room. Nothing. She didn’t feel him here anymore either. She could barely feel anything anymore.

  She turned to her side, fumbled for the phone, and swiped the screen. Jay’s texts came up.

  Jay: Done early I’m at the office Are you still at work?

  Jay: Hey where are you

  She tapped the phone icon and waited for Jay to answer, hoping she got through and had the strength left to tell him about Noel and everything in her heart before it was too late.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Jay rolled his tense shoulders. Between work and worrying about Alina he’d barely had a moment’s peace. Tonight’s simple surveillance and arrest had turned into a shit-storm. A low-level drug dealer turned informant tipped them off to a supply exchange that included two high-up dealers who supplied Bozeman and Missoula. They showed up early, along with a lieutenant from the cartel and six well-armed guards. When the DEA stormed in to make the arrests, the drug dealers scattered like cockroaches when you turn on the lights. In the ensuing gunfight, one agent got shot. In the vest, thank God. Another twisted an ankle running after a guy. And Jay got caught by the Bozeman drug dealer who hated cops and DEA most of all. He hadn’t gone down easy, but Jay finally slapped the cuffs on him after the guy attacked him, thinking he could fight his way out despite them both having guns. Jay should have shot him, but they needed the information they could get from him.

  Now they’d get it, but Jay was a bit worse for wear with a bruised jaw and a black-and-blue swollen eye. But he’d gotten the operation done a lot earlier than expected and couldn’t wait to meet up with Alina at his place once he finished the last few details.

  He walked out of his office, slower than normal from fatigue and sore muscles. He was getting too old for this shit. Alina was going to have his head when she saw him. Then she’d go all soft when the fear dissipated and turned to concern. They’d both be happy the incident was over and he came out on top again.

  “Hey, man, put this on that eye.” Beck handed him an ice pack from the kitchenette freezer.

  He’d been headed for coffee and the first aid kit. He took the ice pack and pressed it to his face.

  “Alina is going to kill you when she sees that.”

  “She’ll be happy the other guy didn’t kill me.”

  Beck held his hand out. “Take these, they’ll help.”

  Jay accepted the two ibuprofen, popped them in his mouth, and swallowed them without any water.

  The knot in his gut prodded him about Alina’s unusual silence. She should have texted him back by now. Unless she’d left work later than normal and was on the road to his place. Still, he worried. “Have you talked to your sister?”

  Beck shook his head. “No. Why?”

  His cell rang. He pulled it from his back pocket and sighed. “It’s her.” He accepted the call and put the phone to his ear. Beck stayed at his side. “Hey, sweetheart, are you at my place?”

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was so weak he barely heard her.

  Alarms went off in his head. “Alina. What’s wrong?”

  Beck tapped his shoulder, then pointed to the phone, his mouth drawn in a grim line.

  He put the phone on speaker, so Beck could listen.

  “I really wanted that future we talked about. I’m . . . I’m sorry I have to leave you. Not . . . not much time.”

  “Alina, where are you?” He desperately needed to get to her. He didn’t know what she was talking about, but the fatalistic tone and stilted words scared him to death.

  “I’m so cold. Blood. Everywhere. Too much.”

  Jay grabbed Beck by the shirt before his knees buckled.

  “He’s dead. Me too. I love you so mu . . .”

  “Alina!”

  Beck shouted to another agent. “Start tracking this number.” Beck rattled off Alina’s cell number. “I want to know where that phone is right now.”

  Caden walked out of his office and saw them standing in the middle of the cubicles.

  “Alina, please, baby, answer me.” His voice shook.

  Caden’s face paled. Beck’s mouth set in a tight, grim line.

  Jay barely held it together.

  A heavy, ragged sigh broke the silence. “Files. In the . . . kitchen drawer.”

  “Files? What files?” Beck asked.

  “Mandi,” Alina whispered. “Mandi knows everything. With Robby from electronics store. Save her. Too late . . . for me.”

  “No! It’s not too late. We’re coming, sweetheart.”

  The agent tracking the phone rattled off Alina’s home address.

  Beck yelled, “Call an ambulance, send it there. Now!”

  Caden grabbed another agent. “Find Robby from this store.” Caden wrote the name of the electronics store across the street from the pharmacy. “I want officers or an agent protecting him and his girlfriend, Mandi, right now.”

  The agent took the note and got to work.

  Jay, Caden, and Beck ran from the building to the parking lot. Beck grabbed Jay’s arm and pulled him to his Camaro, all the while Jay called Alina’s name over and over again, hoping she’d answer him.

  Halfway to her place, a shuddering breath came through the open line.

  Relieved to hear any sign of life, he tried to reach her again. “Alina? Hold on, sweetheart, I’m almost there. Please, baby. Don’t leave me.” Jay fell into the side of the car as Beck sped around another corner on what felt like two tires. “You can’t leave me now. We’re supposed to get married and have babies and live on the ranch together.”

  “Make. Love. Under. Stars.” The words sounded far off with little enunciation.

  He was losing her. “Yes. Every damn night if you want. Please hold on. You can do it. I know you can. I love you so damn much. There’s nothing if I don’t have you.”

  “Love. You.” Another shuddering breath escaped her.

  “Yes, you love me. I love you.”

  “Gift.”

  “Yes.” He pulled the box out of his pocket. “I have it for you. You want it, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  He pressed the velvet box to his forehead and tried to hold it together. “A ring. I’ll give it to you, and you’ll say yes. You said you’d say yes.”

  “Yes.” The word came out on a heavy exhale, then nothing but terrorizing quiet.

  Caden stared at him from the front seat, fear and the shine of tears in his eyes. He glanced at the velvet box, then back at Jay. “You’ll get to put that on her finger.”

  But would she be alive or dead when he
did?

  That grim thought led to thoughts of his desolate future without her. The thought shattered his heart into a billion bits.

  Desperate, he begged, “Sweetheart, come on, hold on, I’m coming.”

  Just when he thought he couldn’t take any more, a loud bang and crash sounded. Shuffling sounds that made no sense until someone yelled, “Clear.”

  Then more movement and voices.

  Jay’s heart swelled with hope. Help had arrived.

  “Jesus, that’s a lot of blood.”

  Jay’s heart dropped into his stomach.

  “No pulse. This one’s dead.”

  Jay’s heart stopped.

  “She’s got a pulse.”

  Jay sucked in a ragged breath and thanked God she hadn’t been taken from him.

  “Barely.”

  His heart clenched again. He didn’t know how much more he could take. He needed to be with her. Now.

  “It’s thready. Let’s get an IV going. We need pressure on these wounds before she bleeds out.”

  Tears slid down his cheeks and he sat immobile, feeling useless, and overpowered with a need to get to her but stuck in this damn car instead of where he should be. With her.

  He stared at the phone willing her to make one tiny sound. Anything.

  But all he heard were the men working on her.

  Beck skidded to a stop in the parking lot behind two patrol cars and the ambulance. Red-and-blue lights swirled against the dark building and bystanders on the sidewalk outside Alina’s place. They jumped out of the car and ran into her house like a pack of wild dogs on the hunt.

  Jay beat Caden and Beck into the living room. He glanced at the destruction, the broken back window, then turned to the kitchen, the dead man lying on the floor, the table and chairs pushed back against the wall, and the two men kneeling on the floor working on Alina, lying in a pool of blood, her face completely covered in it.

  He’d seen a lot of bad shit in his line of work, but nothing as horrific as the woman he loved lying bloody and motionless.

  The phone lay on the floor next to her head, blood pooled on top of it. A bloody knife lay on the floor by her side. His gaze went from it to the guy lying dead at his feet.

  “What the hell is the DEA doing here?” an officer asked.

  Beck waved the cop to him. “I’ll fill you in.”

  Caden put his hand on Jay’s shoulder to hold him back from going to Alina. “Let them work on her.”

  Jay crouched and stared at Alina’s bloody face. “I’m here, sweetheart. You’re going to be okay now.”

  The paramedics exchanged concerned looks that tightened the band around his chest to the point he could barely breathe.

  The paramedics had placed a thick pad on her forehead and wound gauze around her head. Her arm was bound up so thick and tight he didn’t know if she broke it or what. They had her blouse spread open, round pads with wires ran from her chest to a machine on the gurney at her head. The screen showed a steady beat. At least, he hoped so.

  Small nicks and cuts left red marks just below her bra over her abdomen.

  “What’s the damage, guys?”

  The paramedics glanced up at him for a second, saw the badge, then went back to work on Alina’s arm.

  One of them finally spoke up and pointed to her head. “Major head trauma to the back.” He pointed to the blood smear on the edge of the counter. “Best guess, someone slashed her arm and face, then she hit there and fell to the floor.”

  “How bad are the cuts?”

  “Both go down to the bone. Head wounds always bleed a lot. But most of what you see on the floor”—he pointed to the fat drops and small puddles—“came from the arm. She’ll need surgery, if we can keep her stable. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “What about this guy?”

  “Stabbed once in the chest, right through the heart. When the knife came out, he died pretty quick.”

  Jay stared at the knife on the floor by Alina’s bloody right hand. The left was bandaged.

  Jay raked his fingers through his hair, chastising himself for letting this happen. “It looks like she stabbed him.”

  “That’s my guess. Cops will bag the knife and print it. If she makes it, she can tell them what happened.”

  “When she makes it,” he growled, unable to even consider the possibility he might lose her. He needed to believe. They all did. For her.

  The paramedic exchanged another grim look with his buddy as they put the backboard in place, gently rolled Alina, laid her down, then strapped her down to transport her.

  He gave them space to work because the kitchen was too small with a body on the floor, the two men, Alina, the gurney they put her on, and the tables and chairs pushed against the wall.

  He turned to Caden. “What do you think happened here?”

  “There were two of them. That guy doesn’t have any blood on him other than the chest wound.”

  “If there had only been one of them, she’d have taken him down like she did this guy.”

  Beck joined them. “Cops thought this was just another break-in. I put them on to Noel. They’re on their way to the pharmacy and Noel’s home. I want that guy in cuffs.”

  “You think he did this?” Jay shook his head. “I’ve met the guy. Your sister practically kicked his ass. No way he came after her with a knife and tried to kill her. He’s too pathetic to really stand up for himself in a physical fight.”

  “Who’s that guy?” Beck gestured into the kitchen.

  “Don’t know. The cops will ID him, but this is a crime scene. As much as I want to rip that mask off and go through his pockets, we can’t mess with the scene.”

  Caden glanced around the kitchen. “She said something about a file. The kitchen drawer. Mandi knows everything.”

  Jay stayed by Alina’s side as the paramedics packed and loaded their equipment.

  Beck carefully stepped over the dead guy and all the blood and went after the kitchen drawers, slamming them until he found her bag in the bottom one. He backtracked to the living room making sure he didn’t disturb the scene.

  Jay should have followed his gut and asked someone else to cover for him tonight. He’d let work interfere when he knew something was up with Noel.

  This was his fault.

  “Got it.” Beck opened the computer and read the open file. “Noel refills deceased customers’ prescriptions for Schedule II drugs. He gives them to someone else to sell.”

  “Probably this asshole on the floor,” Jay guessed.

  “Noel provides a list of customers who have new or recurring prescriptions and gives the list to someone who breaks into their houses to steal the pills.”

  “That explains these articles about local break-ins.” Caden held up a stack of papers he’d pulled out of her bag. “I’ll have to sort through these prescription records, but I’m guessing one bundle is deceased customers, the other customers with recent prescriptions.”

  Jay took Alina’s hand as they moved her out of the kitchen toward the front door. “You guys figure it out. I’m going with her.”

  “We’ll meet you there as soon as we confirm they’ve got Noel in custody.” Beck answered his phone, listened for a minute, then sighed with relief. “Thanks.” He hung up. “Our agent is with Mandi. She’s safe. We’ll have the story from her shortly. Keep in touch! We’ll be there soon!” Beck shouted at him as Jay walked out the door with Alina’s hand in his. He’d let Beck and Caden handle Noel and Mandi.

  He didn’t want to let Alina go. Not right now. “I’m here, sweetheart. You’re going to be okay.” He hoped she heard him. He hoped she believed like he needed to believe that she would make it through this.

  Jay climbed in the ambulance behind one of the paramedics.

  “How’s she doing?”

  He didn’t give Jay a direct answer, just yelled up front, “Let’s go. Time’s critical.”

  Jay focused on Alina’s bloodstained face, hoping for any sign that she
knew he was there. Any twitch or movement. She lay still as death, and that thought stopped his heart.

  “Come on, sweetheart, don’t give up. We have a long and happy life ahead of us.”

  He had to believe that, because a future without her wasn’t a future worth living.

  By the time they rolled into the hospital emergency room, his nerves were shot and his prayers had whittled down to a single word: live.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Distracted, on edge, Noel missed the turn for his street and swore as he drove around the block again. In the backseat, ice cream melted in one of the many bags of groceries he’d picked up for Lee. He couldn’t concentrate, his focus was on Brian and Davy. He’d given them the list they demanded, but he’d asked for one simple thing in return. Get that damn file away from Alina. If she gave them to her boyfriend or brothers, he was a dead man. Or might as well be if he got caught and ended up in jail. His wife would kill him. His girls would never speak to him again.

  He’d lose them, the business, everything.

  And all for what? It seemed an easy way to make money. He never thought too much about the lives it affected. He’d told himself it was to keep his head above water on the medical bills. Now the money coming in far exceeded them. He’d tried to keep things small, but Brian pushed for more. And now the simple scheme had grown to hundreds of customers and orders.

  And when Brian got caught in those two homes he should have walked away. But no, that punk had to go and be a badass and hit them.

  Even Noel knew he was making excuses, the same way Brian did about what happened. Nothing but an accident. Hey, he got the pills, sold them, they all got paid. What the fuck did it matter?

  It mattered to those people’s family and friends. It mattered to Noel. But not enough to put an end to this. Because he’d seen in Brian’s eyes that he’d never let Noel walk away clean. He’d threatened to go to his wife, to Alina.

  Noel stopped at the stop sign on the street behind his, stared up at the star-speckled night, and tried to calm his nerves and racing mind.

  Noel’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked caller ID and picked up immediately. “Is it done?”