by Jenna Mills
Her hands shook. She stood at the window and clenched the phone, swallowed to moisten her mouth. The phone rang once, twice, and each time it did Danielle’s heart stuttered.
A simple phone call shouldn’t be so hard.
She closed her eyes, bringing the old fortune teller to mind. Her somber warning gave her all the strength she needed.
Those who walk alone are the first to fall.
Letting out a slow breath, she opened her eyes at the third ring and prayed the right person answered the phone. There was no logical reason why he would answer this private number that belonged to another, but with her brother, logic rarely entered the equation.
“H’lo,” came the winded but achingly familiar voice, and Danielle’s heart strummed low and hard.
“Liz.”
“Dani!” her sister exclaimed. “Omigosh, this is such a wonderful surprise.”
The sound of Elizabeth’s voice, warm, buoyant, flowed through her like the forgotten strains of a lullaby. They exchanged pleasantries and preliminaries, Danielle listening patiently while Liz gave her the highlights of her and Anthony’s latest adventures with Jeremy.
“Enough about me,” Liz said abruptly. “Tell me about you. I’ve been worried.”
Danielle stiffened. “Worried? Why?”
“I don’t know,” her sister said. “Just a feeling, I guess. I forget what day it was, but a few days ago I couldn’t stop thinking about Alex.”“Alex?” Her son’s name came out on a broken whisper.
“It was the strangest thing,” Liz went on. “I was out shopping one afternoon and all of a sudden, right there in the middle of the crowded mall, I thought I heard him.”
Danielle bit back a sob.
“I spun around, thinking maybe you’d come for a surprise visit—”
“—but I wasn’t there,” Danielle finished for her.
“No, you weren’t. I was going to call you—” Liz’s words broke off abruptly, followed by a sharp intake of breath. “My God, Dani, what’s wrong?”
She closed her eyes and leaned back her head, drew in a slow breath, refused to let herself cry. Her sister didn’t ask if something was wrong, because she knew. She knew. It had always been like that between the three of them.
The distance between them, the estrangement with her brother, was like losing a part of herself. “I need your help,” she said, and her voice wobbled on the words.
“Anything,” Liz said. “I can be at the airport in forty-five minutes. Just tell me where—”
“It’s Alex.” Danielle swallowed hard. “I have to do something, Liz. Something dangerous.” She paused, worked hard to keep the fear out of her voice. “I need to know if anything happens to me, you’ll be there for Alex.”
Her sister gasped, and Danielle could almost see her standing there, all that spark and vitality frozen in place.
“Dani, you’re scaring me.”
“Please, Liz.” The band around her throat, her heart, tightened. The thought of her precious little boy being swallowed by the foster care system, as she, Liz and Anthony had been, destroyed her. “Promise me. Promise me you’ll be there for Alex if anything happens to me.”
“Of course I will,” her sister said, “but whatever it is you have to do, I’m not letting you do it alone. Just tell me what’s going on and where you are, and I’ll be on the next plane—”
Silently, her heart breaking, Danielle hung up the phone and moved on to the next phase of her plan.
ANT.
Three simple letters, but without the rest of the word, or the rest of the message, they meant nothing.
Liam strode through the glistening double doors of the Stirling Manor and toward the secluded elevator at the back of the lobby. On pure impulse his gaze slid to the front desk, where he’d first seen Danielle in what seemed like a long ago lifetime. She’d been so vibrant in those first moments, with that wild dark hair and flashing green eyes, like a sparkler come to life.
Then she’d gotten the phone call, and everything had changed.
Until last night. Last night she’d come back to life—
Liam shoved aside the thought, much as he’d e throughout the long hours of the afternoon, and continued toward the elevators.
ANT.
The postcard had been addressed to him, ready to mail except for the omission of a stamp. Had Constance Turner been heading to the post office? Had she been trying to warn him? Or was she just another of Titan’s minions sent to mail yet another threat.
ANT.
Antique. Antiseptic. Ant…arctica. But none of the words made sense.
Antidote?
That word chilled.
Frowning, he jabbed the button for the elevator. He’d been out of pocket all afternoon, but knew he’d have to face Danielle soon. They needed to talk, to find some way to erase what had happened the night before.
“Brooks!”
Liam spun to see Derek Mansfield, owner of the Stirling Manor, former merchant marine, and one-time target of an intense FBI investigation, striding toward him. The man’s face was hard and set, his dark eyes glinting, his hair pulled in an irreverent ponytail behind his neck. Dressed in black, he had the rogue pirate look down to an art form. “Mansfield.”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
Vaguely Liam heard the elevator ding and the doors slide open. “I’m here now.” Antidote. Could that be it? Had the med student been writing to Liam about a drug Benedict was developing? “What’s going on?” he asked, turning toward Danielle’s employer.
Mansfield pulled a long white envelope from inside his black suit coat. “Danielle asked me to give this to you.”
Liam glanced at the four block letters that formed his name. Danielle had been upset the last time he’d seen her, but she’d written his name with obvious deliberation.
“Why didn’t she give it to me herself?” he asked, using his foot to prevent the elevator doors from closing.
“Didn’t say,” Mansfield said. “I’d have to guess she didn’t plan on seeing you herself.”
The innocent statement landed with damning precision. No, Danielle probably didn’t plan on seeing him again. Not after last night.
He looked at the note, felt a chill sweep through him. “Thanks,” he said, taking the envelope and tucking it inside the folder. He stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the fourteenth floor.
Mansfield’s expression went hard, oddly protective. “Aren’t you going to read it?” he asked. “It seemed important.”
The gleaming stainless steel doors slid toward each other. “It was,” Liam said quietly. It was.
At least it had been.
Too easily he could see her as she’d been the night before, and worse, the morning after—her tears, her desperation, the vulnerability he’d freed. Regret stabbed deep. He should never have left her alone in his hotel room, raw from the night of mindless, ill-advised lovemaking, teetering on the edge and hur
The doors jammed together, leaving Liam standing alone.
Whatever Danielle had to say in her Dear John letter, he’d read it in private.
Danielle stood alone, just as she had every night since Ty died. The sun sank beneath a horizon of skyscrapers, deepening the lavender shades of twilight as darkness swept across the lake. The breeze blew in off the water and whipped across the beach, carrying with it a misty spray.
Once, Danielle would have hurried for her car with the last light of day. Once, she would have refused to stand by herself on the isolated strip of windswept beach. Once, she would have refused to heed the voice inside.
Once, she’d let tragedy turn her into a coward.
Not anymore, she vowed silently, willing herself to ignore her deep-seated unease with wide-open spaces. She was done running when it was time to stand and fight. She was done hiding when it was time to confront. For more than twenty-five years she’d felt safe only when she had four walls to protect her—four walls, that was, and her brother and sister
. Those who walk alone are the first to fall.
She didn’t want to walk alone. For the first time in two years, she didn’t want to face each sunrise, each sunset, every challenge, with no one standing by her side. For the first time in what felt like forever, she wanted—
That was just it. She wanted.
She wanted her son back. She wanted him safe. She wanted to hold him, see his smile. She wanted to give him his Spider-Man shoes. And, God help her, she wanted a man by her side. But not just any man. She wanted Liam.
And that was why she stood alone.
It was also why she’d covertly slipped the note to Derek Mansfield.
Night crept closer, shifting from hazy shades to sinister shadows.
Eight o’clock. She stared at her watch, then glanced at her mobile phone to be sure she had not missed a call.
She hadn’t.
Derek had delivered the note. If he hadn’t, he would have called her. That was the plan. And if he’d called, she would have aborted her plan. Because while she desperately wanted Alex home, the whisper deep inside warned her not to walk into Titan’s lair without backup.
Was he out there? Was he waiting in the shadows? Watching? Or had something gone horribly wrong?
The chill gripped her, despite the warmth of the early summer evening. The shiver started in the pit of her stomach and oozed to her extremities. After Ty’s death, she’d trained herself to ignore the familiar sensation, the one she and Anthony and Liz had relied on for so many years. Their skills were more tangible, more quantifiable, but it was her gift of foresight, her Gypsy intuition, that stood as sentinel for them all. She’d always know when to push forward, when to retreat, and when to hide.
But that hadn’t stopped Ty from dying.
She’d blamed herself for so long, but now realized the events of that horrible night, and the years olitude that followed, had helped her become the woman she was destined to be. And that woman was not a coward. She was a fighter. She again trusted the whisperings deep inside, the intuition she’d lost faith in after Ty’s death, the quiet awareness that enabled her to see the man beneath the aura of shadows swirling around Liam.
Now, the truth gave her strength. The ability to sense the future didn’t translate into the ability to change destiny. At least not always. She had felt something dark and slippery that hot summer night. She had warned Anthony and Liz to be careful. But Ty hadn’t been part of the plan. He wasn’t supposed to be there. She hadn’t known to warn him, too. And as a consequence, he’d died.
But that didn’t mean she should slink off and ignore the gift she’d been born with. That didn’t mean she should run and hide.
The movement was so slight, she sensed it more than she heard or felt it. Liam, she thought with a surge to her heart. The memory of the night on this very beach, when he’d followed her to the rendezvous, flared brightly. She’d felt his presence that night long before she’d seen the man.
Against the warm breeze, she braced herself, and waited.
The wind blew harder, and the last vestiges of evening dropped off into night. The darkness pulsed dark and deep, closing around her, slinking further within her. Because it was not Liam’s presence that she felt.
“You came.”
The voice was wrong. It was too plain, too reminiscent of the south side of Chicago. There wasn’t a trace of European charisma to be heard.
She turned anyway. “Where’s my son?”
The man was tall, balding, with a navy bandanna wrapped around his brow. “I don’t know anything about a kid.”
Panic backed up in her throat, much as it had the night she’d seen Ty show up unexpectedly. “Where’s Titan?”
“Not here,” the man said, then he lunged.
Danielle didn’t try to run, as she had that night on the beach with Liam. She didn’t reach for her gun. She didn’t honor the scream that scalded her throat. Instead she let the dirty man grab her, pull her arms behind her back.
Shadows danced along the lakefront, dark, fleeting, concealing any evidence that her plan had worked. She searched anyway, looking for any sign that Derek had given the note to Liam. That Liam had read it. That he understood. That he’d made it in time.
Then the darkness came, not on the wings of nightfall, but courtesy of a blindfold crammed over her eyes.
And finally, at last, it was too late for second guessing.
Chapter 15
Darkness. So much darkness. It surrounded her like a living entity, warm and pulsing, crawling against her skin and sliding through her arms and legs, pressing against her mouth and her nose. Each breath burned like the fire that had swept through her garage and consumed her attic. And the smell, it was stale and dank, stagnant like rancid mud.
Danielle squirmed against the rope binding her ankles and wrists behind her back. The dirty bandanna around her eyes stung. Lying there in the fetal position and not putting up a fight went against every grain of common sense, but she was listening to her inner voice now, trusting that exiled place deep inside, praying she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.
A series of bumps jostled her, but with her hands and feet confined, she could do nothing to soften the blow. She could only plan, and count. So far she’d reached 1,893, which meant they’d been traveling around thirty minutes.
In Chicago, thirty minutes could take them almost anywhere.
The cramped space closed in on her, but didn’t frighten her. Unlike her brother, she’d never been afraid of small crowded spaces. It was the wide-open spaces that got to her, the way she’d stood on that deserted beach, exposed from all sides, waiting for an attack she knew was imminent. An attack she welcomed, even as she prepared herself for the worst.
A sharp turn, then another thud of her body against something hard, then an abrupt cessation of movement. Danielle lay there, trying to breathe, praying she’d covered all her bases. Jeremy had trained her well. She’d been in tight spots before. She knew survival hinged upon keeping her wits and not letting the fear take over.
She welcomed the footsteps, the sound of metal scraping metal. A wave of air hit her, still warm and muggy, but no longer stifling and stale.
Hands grabbed at her, yanked her from the well of the dirty trunk where she’d been deposited. For safekeeping, they said. Whoever they were. The voices hadn’t been fine and cultured like the one on the phone, but low and crude, heavy with southside accents. Locals. Hired guns.
“Where’s my son?” she demanded through the rag cutting into her mouth.
“Don’t you worry about your kid,” one of the men said. “We got plans for you first.”
Rage tightened every muscle in her body, but she let them lead her away from the car. The blindfold made it impossible to see where they were going, but she heard the sound of doors opening, felt the texture beneath her feet change. They were in a building, she knew, but no light leaked through the cotton strip covering her eyes. And it was warm inside. Still. Quiet.
Wherever she’d been taken, it was clearly deserted.
They stopped then, and she heard more metal against metal, the sound of another door. Light then, bright and glaring, flooding through the binding over her eyes. She staggered into the room, the sudden change in temperature momentarily disorienting her. Cold. So cold. And the smell, it was sharp now, almost sterile. Antiseptic.
The door behind her slammed shut.
“This must be the kid’s mother,” came a new voice, this one older, slightly more refined. But not the one from the hotel. Not Titan. “Get her ready.”
The urge to fight was strong, but she resisted. “I want my son, damn it.”“No, you don’t,” the older voice said. Hands then, cold and rough on her body, guided her up onto a table. “Trust me, you don’t want your kid to see this.”
An insidious wave of panic tore through Danielle. She’d tried to consider every possibility, but doubts gnawed at her. There was always a loophole.
“What does Titan want with me?”
The gag over her mouth slurred the question that nagged her and Liam.
No answer came. She was shoved onto her back, her shoulders and legs held against what felt like stainless steel. Instinctively she thrashed against the confinement.
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” she warned.
The men only laughed. “You’ll hardly feel a thing,” one promised. “And after that, you won’t care.”
Horror backed up in her throat. She’d been wrong in calculating her plan. Dear God, she’d been wrong.
Those who walk alone are the first to fall.
“Liam,” she whispered, feeling the sharp sting of tears against her eyes. Somewhere along the line she’d miscalculated. She’d been so careful. Her note to Liam had been explicit. She’d been sure he would be at the beach, watching and waiting, ready to follow when Titan struck.
Now she could only pray Titan kept his end of the bargain, that in exchange for her, he would release her son. Liz would be a wonderful mother—
Darkness. Sudden, stark, complete darkness descended. There was no light straining against her blindfold now.
“What the hell?” one of the men barked.
“Get the door!” another shouted.
Danielle rolled upright, used her shoulder to push against the cloth tied around her eyes. But to no avail.
She heard footsteps then, running, drawing close. And the sound of clips sliding into place. Guns!
She rolled from the table and used it to shield her body seconds before the door blasted open. “Stand down,” she heard Liam shout. “It’s over. We’ve got you surrounded.”
“Take him down,” one of her captors barked.
Gunshots then, quick and precise.
Just as quickly as it began, the gunfire fell silent.
“Danielle!”
Her heart kicked hard. Adrenaline rushed through her. “Liam.” Her feet were still bound, her hands still behind her back, but she staggered toward the voice. “Liam.”
“Holy God,” he swore, and then his arms were around her, drawing her to his body and holding tight. His body warmth flooded her as the overhead light hummed back on.
