“That weak-minded fool of a doctor?”
“If he was so weak, why did you kill him?”
Cohen laughed. “I didn’t. The stupid fucker shot himself when I found Jayme’s picture in his room.”
My chest squeezed, but I made myself go on. “He was stronger than you’ll ever be, Cohen. He protected me and he protected Jayme and he died doing what he thought was right. When he heard I was pregnant, Howell came to me. He told me he knew the baby wasn’t yours. I thought maybe he’d seen me with Andy, or somehow witnessed what really happened between you and me. But the truth is, Cohen…you’re sterile. Dry as a goddamned bone. He showed me your medical records.” I took two steps toward him, hatred and self-satisfaction rolling off me. “You lost a testicle in a bar fight when you were twenty. Your other one is equally useless. Howell told me you could barely get it up, and that for years the women you brought home had been paid by your team to keep their mouths shut. ”
“Fuck you, you stupid bitch.”
A soft chuckle from Painter made both of us swivel our heads. He’s been so quiet I’d nearly forgotten his presence.
“Well, Cohen,” he said, his voice full of amusement. “Apparently fucking you has never been much of an option.”
“Fuck you, too.”
Cohen raised the pistol and pointed it at Painter’s head.
Do something! My mind commanded.
But I was rooted to the spot and my mouth dropped open in a silent scream.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Painter
I watched impassively as Cohen’s finger closed around the trigger and squeezed. Nothing happened. No resounding pop, no recoil, no change in the air.
Deliberately, I let a wide grin stretch across my face. “You didn’t really think I’d hand over a loaded weapon, did you, Cohen? Not with two innocent lives in the balance?”
Finally, the man lost his cool. His face went red, and he shook with rage. He drew back his arm and hurled the gun at me, but I ducked instinctively and reached into my boot to draw out my hunting knife.
Cohen bent his knees and sprung toward me. At the last second, he changed direction and bolted from the room.
“Fu—” I glanced at Jayme and ground my teeth together to cut off the swear word. “I’m going after Cohen.”
“Painter, let’s just leave. We can go through the walls, we can take a car and drive to Mexico,” Polly urged.
I shook my head. “I can’t let the man go, Polly. He won’t ever stop looking for us.”
“Please!”
“It’s the only way I can keep you safe. It’s the only way I can keep him safe.”
She wanted to argue with me. I could tell by the tightness of her mouth and the irritated gleam in her eyes. She shifted Jayme on her hip and shot me a pleading look.
With a sigh, I pulled them toward me. I took Jayme from her and set him on the bed.
“One second, buddy,” I said.
I kissed Polly. Gently at first and then with increased ardour. She tried to pull away, but I refused to let her go. I parted her lips with my tongue and tasted every bit of her mouth before letting her go. When I finally released her, she was breathing heavily and her cheeks were stained a shade of pink that made my body ache.
“Painter,” she said in a throaty voice that did nothing to ease my want.
“Sweetheart,” I replied an equally raw tone.
“Ewwwwww,” Jayme interrupted loudly from his spot on the bed.
He was staring at us with his wide, blue eyes and grinning. Polly’s head whipped toward him as if just remembering that he was there, and then spun her glare back to me.
“What was that?” she asked.
“I’m showing you why you need to let me go.”
“I don’t see how kissing me does that.”
“You want me as much as I want you,” I told her. “But you need Jayme and he needs you.”
The fight went out her body, and she sagged against me. I kissed her again, softly this time, on her forehead. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my keys.
“Take him back through the walls and find the red Charger,” I said. “I’ll catch up to you when I’m done with Cohen.”
I love you, I added in a pain-filled, internal voice, and promised myself that I’d live to tell her for real.
* * *
I slipped out into the hall and looked in either direction. One way would take me to Cohen’s office. The other back to Polly’s room.
Where would I go, if I were Cohen?
The answer was obvious.
To the money.
The man would never leave without his cash or his files. Without them, he was nothing. And I knew where he kept it all.
I darted for the stairs. Midway down, I met with the first of Cohen’s guards. He opened his mouth, probably to alert the others, but I didn’t give him a chance to follow through. I shoved him. Hard. He flew the air and landed at the bottom of the stairs with a thump. He groaned, then went still.
I stepped over him and ran on. I slowed when I reached the door that led to the garage and put one foot out cautiously. A bullet pinged on the floor, an inch from my boot. I yanked my foot back.
“Shoot on sight, I guess,” I muttered.
I put myself flat against the wall, thinking quickly. Cohen’s guards were deadly, but not clever. So I needed to be clever instead.
As fast as I could, I undid my boots and took them off. I unthreaded the laces, tied them together and then fastened them through one of the eyelets. With a deep breath, I tossed the lace as hard as I could and slid the boot out at the same time.
The guard fired again, striking the steel toe and sending the bullet ricocheting across the hall. I feigned a yell as I pulled the boot away once more.
“You’re an idiot!” the shooter yelled.
I grinned. The lace stretched across the hall, blending into the tiled floor and unnoticed by the guard.
“Fuck you!” I yelled back.
Then, making a lot of noise so the man would know I’d left, I backtracked down the hall and approached from the other side. I grabbed a hold of the lace and pulled. The boot thumped into sight and the guard went nuts, firing at it.
Keeping close to the ground and off to the side, I slipped around the corner. The big man with the gun was staring intently at the loose boot with a puzzled look on his face. Too late, he saw me. I was already on him. I dove for his knees and took him to the ground.
“Who’s the idiot now?” I asked and ripped the gun from his hand.
He opened his mouth.
“Yell, and I’ll shoot,” I warned him.
His lips pressed together.
With the gun trained on him, I grabbed the lace once more. I wound it around his hands and secured him to a vent in the wall. I patted his head.
“Wait here,” I said and strode past him.
I crossed the garage in just a few steps and paused as the trapdoor that led to Cohen’s version of a man cave—a room full of other men’s secrets, waiting to be manipulated to his advantage—flew open.
Cohen’s head appeared at the top of the hatch, then his shoulders, then his torso. I held very still with the gun aimed at his chest.
“Whatever you’ve got in your hands, toss it out,” I commanded.
Cohen froze. “You were free to go, Painter. Twice. And you’re still here.”
“Six years of my life, Blue,” I replied. “You owe me six fucking years!”
He didn’t even have the decency to look smug. “To be fair, for the first year I genuinely believed she was dead. And the next few after that, I was merely working on a hunch. Where is she now, by the way?”
“Safe.”
“I somehow doubt that. I’ve got the whole house surrounded with an armed guard. They’ll catch her and they’ll bring her straight here to me.”
“Bullshit,” I replied casually. “None of the men outside know you’re in here and they sure as hell don’t know about that
little panic room of yours. You don’t trust them as far as you can throw them. The two who you had to tell have been incapacitated.”
Cohen shrugged. “So shoot me, then.”
“I’m getting to it.”
He looked unmoved. “Let me guess. You want an explanation.”
“I do.”
“That’s one of your problems, Painter,” he said easily. “You see things in this weird, black-and-white tinted world, where a certain number rights even out the wrongs, where each action has an equal consequence. And that’s just not how it is.”
“But why?” I demanded. “Why waste my time like this? Why let me live with this guilt? You didn’t care about Polly, or her kid.”
He shrugged again. “Would you have continued to work for me otherwise?”
“Of course not,” I managed to get out. “But you have plenty of people to do your dirty work. You could have just let me go.”
“But it’s not about you. Never has been,” Cohen stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I saw an opportunity the second Howell brought you to me. Anyone who could fight back from death like that…well…I was right, wasn’t I? You’re the best bounty hunter I’ve ever met. You probably would have made one hell of a cop if you’d managed to follow in your dad’s footsteps. But this is about me. I want the best. I know what motivates the best. I needed to motivate you to be that man you became. Even after I started to suspect that Polly might be alive, it would’ve been counterproductive to tell you about it. I realized a little too late that it was a mistake for me to send you after Polly and Jayme. But it was a risk I had to take. I’d sent four others after them, and they all came back empty-handed. I needed the best.”
“You’re a cold son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
I gritted my teeth. “Toss whatever you’re holding to the fucking floor. The least I can do is give every other person you’re manipulating a chance to get free of you.”
“How very fucking sweet of you.”
“Now, Blue.”
The other man brought his hands up slowly. He was clutching a large black satchel. He took a few more steps up the stairs so his entire body was above ground.
“Take it,” he offered.
He drew back his arms and used the strap to launch it at me. The bag flew through the air, forcing me to dance out of the way. Too late, I remembered my feet were bootless. My socks slid with my sideways motion and I immediately lost my footing. One foot went one way and one foot went the other and Cohen seized the opportunity. He came up the rest of the steps, two at a time, and barrelled toward me. His hands closed over the gun before I could even react. The warm metal slipped from my grip, and I when I looked up and met Cohen’s eyes I could see he was as surprised as I was by the success of his plan.
“Well, shit,” he murmured gleefully and started to turn the weapon in his hand.
Move!
I obeyed my own silent command just in time to avoid be fired on, point-blank. Desperately, I dove away and hunkered down behind one of Cohen’s cars. I scrambled along the floor, trying to put as much distance between us as possible. When I reached the fifth and final car in the row of vehicles, I sat there trying to catch my breath.
The other man’s dark chuckle echoed through the garage.
“Hide-and-seek isn’t going to work out in your favour,” he called.
I ignored him, running over every scenario in my head. Cohen stood directly in front of the entrance into the house so there was no way I could get through directly. The big garage doors were closed and the panel switch that opened them was beside the entry into the house, so that was out, too. The only other door was the one that led down to Cohen’s safe room. I was trapped.
My eyes travelled up and fixed on the light switch behind me and just above my head.
“Come out, Painter. You’ve got nowhere to go.”
“Come and get me,” I countered.
“Have it your way.”
Cohen’s feet hit the concrete floor heavily as he crossed the width of the garage. I counted off his steps, estimating how close he was getting by their measured pace.
Five steps, one car. Ten steps, two cars.
The third car would put him close enough to fire off a reasonably well-aimed shot.
Now.
I sprung from my crouch, tossed my arm up and flicked off the light.
The garage plunged into darkness.
“Jesus!”
Cohen’s curse pinpointed his location for me as I felt my way along the wall.
Thirty feet, I thought. Just make it thirty feet.
My pant leg caught on a tool bench and a metallic clang rang through the garage. Cohen fired blindly in my direction, momentarily lighting up the area around me. In the brief, dim light, I saw that Cohen was only a few steps away. His gun was up and it was aimed right at me. In a desperate move, I vaulted forward, hitting the ground. His shot went over my head, near enough that I could feel the air whip by.
“You’re using up all your bullets, Cohen,” I called out.
“And you’re using up all your luck, Painter,” Cohen replied out mockingly. “All I need is one, in just the right spot.”
I stood up and inched my way toward the sound of his voice.
Time to take him down.
In the pitch-black, a lighter flicked, illuminating a space around my former boss. He spun around and grinned at me from five feet away.
“Gotcha!” he yelled.
I lunged toward him and as I did, the gun went off once more. The bullet flew wide and it was my turn to grin. But my self-satisfaction was short lived. A thick, dangerous sound reverberated through the garage. Cohen’s face filled with horror as he caught sight of something behind me, and a sudden, searing heat stung my back.
I went straight for the ground and smoke gusted out overtop of me. A burst of flames enveloped Cohen, and I heard him scream and scream and scream before his cry cut off.
I looked back once. Cohen’s still form was engulfed in flames. His chest didn’t move and his skin was already blackening.
I didn’t need to see anymore,
I turned away crawled along the floor trying to outrun whatever burned all around me. The air was getting heavy quickly and the oxygen was burning up fast.
My hand met something soft but heavy.
Cohen’s bag.
I shoved it to move it out of my way, and it slid forward, then disappeared.
What the—
My thought cut off as I tumbled forward, too, straight into oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Polly
Getting out of Cohen’s house was the easy part. But waiting for Painter was killing me. I paced the length of the tall shrubs once more. I kept expecting the neighbour to come out and demand to know why I was wearing a hole in his lawn at two in the morning while my son slept underneath his rhododendron.
I knew—knew—Painter was going to come running out any second and tell me that Cohen was dead. We were going to jump into the flashy car sitting a half a block up the street and hightail it out of there. So when a boom rocked the air and a chunk of roof shot straight upward from the garage, flew through the air and landed in the street, I was stunned into immobility.
“Mommy?”
I heard my son’s voice, but I couldn’t look away from the scene in front of me. My jaw hung open as thick as black smoke billowed from inside. A second bang followed the first and in just seconds, a lick of fire poked through the hole in the roof.
Jayme’s hand snaked into mine.
“Where’s Painter?” he asked.
“Painter’s…” I trailed off.
I forced my mind away from what had to be the truth. Whatever the source of the fire was, it had something to do with Painter.
“Mommy?”
“He’s fine,” I managed to get out.
“I didn’t ask you how…I asked you where,” Jayme po
inted out.
“I know.”
Flames danced across the garage, seeming to move in time with the sirens that now filled the air.
How is it spreading so quickly?
But the answer was obvious. Gasoline and oil and an old house.
The sirens were getting louder and the streets were already filling up with curious bystanders.
I need to get to the house now, I realized. Or I won’t be able to at all.
“Jayme, I need you wait in Painter’s car, okay?” I said.
“By myself?”
“Yes, buddy. Can you do that?”
He hesitated, then replied, “So you can find Painter?”
I nodded. Then I reached down, scooped him up, and pushed my way through the thickening crowd of people. I unlocked the door and set my son into the car.
“I’ll lock the door and come right back. Don’t look at anyone or talk to anyone.”
I kissed his head and bolted back up the block. I made it three feet from Cohen’s driveway before a set of wide, yellow-covered arms came crushing around my shoulders and a fireman dragged me back. I kicked and fought, but couldn’t get free.
“Let me go!” I hollered.
“I can’t do that, ma’am.”
“You can’t hold me against my will!”
“What I can’t do is allow you to go up there,” the fireman told me.
“Please!”
“Do you live here?”
I hesitated, a lie on my lips, but went for the truth instead. “I used to.”
“You have a loved one inside?”
I swallowed against the thick lump in my throat. “Yes.”
“You got a loved one on the outside, too?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the one who needs you now. If I let you go, you promise you won’t go running for the house?”
“Okay.”
Very slowly, the fireman released me.
“We’re going to get this fire out, all right?” he said. “But it’s not going to be pretty when it’s done. The house is old and it’s going up fast.”
A loud crack from the direction of the house punctuated his words, and a group of other fireman rushed from one of the trucks up the driveway. When my gaze whipped toward the house, my knees got weak. The fire had leaped from the attached garage to the main part of the house and already one side was flickering with orange.
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